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Inertial Confinement Fusion: The Quest for Ignition and Energy Gain Using Indrect Drive (AIP-Press)

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John Lindl's "Inertial Confinement Fusion" is a must read for those interested in the future of energy R&D, space travel and science for the 21st century. ICF (inertial confinement fusion) was first demonstrated in the early 1950s with the development of the hydrogen bomb. The nuclear fusion of hydrogen to form helium is the primary source of the energy which lights the stars. One gallon of sea water contains enough heavy hydrogen (deuterium) to generate the equivalent energy of 300 gallons of gasoline--and only costs a few cents to extract. Beginning in the 1950s and accelerating with the invention of the laser, scientists working at national laboratories, like Los Alamos and Livermore, and elsewhere, began to pursue the harnessing of ICF on a scale one million times smaller than that of thermonuclear weapons. On this scale, the fusion energy output can be readily harnessed like the "explosion" of gasoline in the internal combustion engine.! ! As Dr. Lindl details, the scientific feasibility of accomplishing this scale down of H-bombs was demonstrated in the mid-1980s with halite/centurion underground tests. And within a couple of years a laser which can achieve the same physical conditions will have been constructed at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California--the National Ignition Facility (NIF). But, until the publication of this work, most of the science underlying this approach to harnessing fusion was classified "top secret." And in fact many of the references in Dr. Lindl's book are still classified top secret. For the first time, Dr. Lindl reveals the actual history of ICF and the science involved. That is, Dr. Lindl details how the concept of "indirect drive" was developed and applied to laser pellet fusion. Instead of lasers directly driving the implosion of fusion fuel pellets to the densities and temperatures found in the center of stars, the laser energy! ! is first transformed into X-rays and the X-rays are trappe! d within a chamber, called a hohlraum. The trapped X-rays are then utilized to implode the fusion fuel pellet. Dr. Lindl details for the first time the research effort which has been carried out over the last four decades to accomplish this approach to harnessing the virtually unlimined energy potentials of nuclear fusion.