A Review of Kinetic Confinement Fusion.

Kinetic confinement fusion (KCF) is a novel and promising approach to achieving nuclear fusion by using explosively formed projectiles to compress and ignite a fusion target (e.g., Deuterium-Tritium pellet). Although KCF still falls within the umbrella of inertial confinement fusion (ICF), it differs from other, laser-based confinement approaches by using the impact of high-energy kinetic projectiles to compress the target and initiate fusion conditions. KCF could be operationalized with lower energy requirements than laser-based ICF, and the potential of leveraging simpler system architectures lowers maintenance costs to further improve long-term system economics. This work reviews the motivations and technical underpinnings of kinetically driven fusion, a possible pathway for KCF implementation at bench scale, and the comparative suitability of KCF to certain applications. This work is the first step in a larger research effort aimed at designing a bench-scale KCF device.