Volume ignition of 3He pellets

During the past 15 years, using the volume ignition model, a computational code has been designed and gradually developed with the purpose of simulating the laser or ion projectile driven nuclear fusion. Up to now using this code various calculations have been done in different conditions for evaluating fusion gain and time dependence of temperature of fuels such as DD, DT, H11B and D3He, respectively, and the results have been published in several papers [R. Khoda-Bakhsh, et al., Fusion Technol. 22 (1992) 50; R. Khoda- Bakhsh, Nucl. Instr. and Meth. A 330 (1993) 268; G.H. Miley, et al., Fusion Technol. 19 (1991) 50 [3]; R. Khoda-Bakhsh, et al., Fusion Technol. 24 (1993) 28; R. Khoda-Bakhsh, AIP Conf. Proc. 369 (Part One) (1996) 289 [5]]. Here, using this extended code and for the first time, we have simulated the conditions under which pure 3He fuel pellets with different volumes and initial compressions begin to ignite. Fusion gains of more than 50 are obtained with an ignition temperature decreased to only 22.9 keV at an initial compression to 500 000 times the solid-state density. Also calculations showed that for spin-polarized fuel, there is a driver energy reduction which for maximum gain condition, is less for low initial densities and a gain increase which varies irregularly for different initial conditions.

3He; Inertial fusion; Volume ignition; Spin polarization