Speaker
Description
There's no industry without energy. There's no environment without clean energy. Renewables are too little too late--and they are much less than fully green. Moreover, renewable energy is not cheap—merely competitive amid high energy prices. HIF-IFE will do it all: stabilizing energy prices at earlier levels with the greenest of all energy sources.
Size is the key. The world energy system is immense. It needs a makeover within 50 years. This will be accomplished by comprehensively green HIF-IFE plants that produce cheap heat therefore cheap electricity therefore cheap hydrogen to make carbon neutral hydrocarbons and hydro nitrogens, plus major flows of potable water. Output as large as a supergiant oilfield, built with common materials and sited underground, global buildout of the fusion energy system will be in time, on time, and producing not only affordable green energy but a financial bonanza.
HIF-IFE uses the single pass rf driver (SPRFD) [1], conceived in 2004 to drive the large yield fusion pulses that LLNL overwhelmingly concluded to be the key to the green HYLIFE (High Yield Lithium Injected Fusion Energy) power chambers [2]: fusion energy yield ≥ a ton of TNT/ MWh/ BOE—substantial economic value per pulse. Neutronically thick injected lithium eliminates the neutron-materials problem that is the nemesis of MFE. Like HYLIFE, stable deployment of neutronically thick injected lithium in the SPRFD’s chambers depends on BOEs of high value energy per neutron-protected pulse and a full second to restore the configuration of injected lithium.
Based on Basko’s [3] assessments of the requirements for stable compression, fast ignition, and high-gain fusion burn of large cylindrical fuel pellets, SPRFD’s recently evolved U4 version extends Koshkarev’s use of + and - charged beams for fast ignition [4] to beams for compression and fast ignition. U4 uses multiple parallel linacs for isotopes with masses from cadmium to thorium. Each of the 10 linacs is duplexed for + and - beams, in separate but integrated RF structures. Large unit-cost reductions are presumed with designs innovated for mass manufacturing to make HIF-IFE the reliable base-load supplier for the large energy demand that will continue into the long future.
Energy must again become cheap as well as comprehensively green to realize desirable aspirations such as those expressed for the Green New Deal. HIF-IFE plants are big, but the financial proposition is impressive. A $50billion plant will produce $25billion worth of electricity annually at 5¢/kWh, with negligible fuel costs and typical accelerator and power plant O&M cost.
References
[1] Burke, R.J., The Single Pass RF Driver: Final Beam Compression, Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research Section A, Volume 733, 1 January 2014, Pages 158-167.
[2] HYLIFE: Blink, James A., Hogan, William J., Hovingh, Jack, Meier, Wayne R., and Pitts, John H. (Compilers); Kellie L. Essary, Kevin E. Lewis. (editors) "High-Yield Lithium-Injection Fusion-Energy (HYLIFE) reactor". 1985. United States. Manuscript date: December 23, 1985. UCRL—53559. https://www.osti.gov/biblio/6124368
[3] Basko, Mikhail M., M. D. Churazov and Aleksei Aksenov. “Prospects of heavy ion fusion in cylindrical geometry.” Laser and Particle Beams 20 (2002): 411-414.; Ramis, Rafael and Jürgen Meyer-ter-Vehn. “On thermonuclear burn propagation in a pre-compressed cylindrical DT target ignited by a heavy ion beam pulse.” Laser and Particle Beams 32 (2014): 41-47.
[4] Koshkarev, D.G. Charge-symmetric driver for heavy-ion fusion. Nuov Cim A 106, 1567–1573 (1993). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02821253; D.G. Koshkarev, A.V. Barkhudaryan, AN. Talyzin, “New concept of a charge-symmetric driver for HIF,” Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research A415 (1998) 263-267.
