Re:US Department of Energy: Fusion Ignition Achieved
by tgflynn on Wednesday December 14, 2022 @09:31AM
(#33983947)
The question is whether once ignition is achieved there could be a way to design the target/geometry in such a way that the fusion reaction becomes self-sustaining/self-propagating.
The history of thermonuclear weapons leads me to think that the answer may be yes. There does not seem to be any real upper limit to how large a thermonuclear weapon can be made. In the 50's and/or 60's there were proposals to build GT devices. I don't think the fission trigger for such a weapon could have scaled by nearly as much.
So by analogy if a relatively small fission trigger can cause a fusion explosion that is many orders of magnitudes larger maybe one or more tiny laser induced fusion reactions could be used to trigger a much larger one.
If that were the case the efficiency of the laser trigger would be of little importance.
The history of thermonuclear weapons leads me to think that the answer may be yes. There does not seem to be any real upper limit to how large a thermonuclear weapon can be made. In the 50's and/or 60's there were proposals to build GT devices. I don't think the fission trigger for such a weapon could have scaled by nearly as much.
So by analogy if a relatively small fission trigger can cause a fusion explosion that is many orders of magnitudes larger maybe one or more tiny laser induced fusion reactions could be used to trigger a much larger one.
If that were the case the efficiency of the laser trigger would be of little importance.