High Density Plasma Beam Target Fusion: An Alternative form of Inertial Confinement to Ignition

A scaling law has been demonstrated for a plasma gun in a 30 m diameter space chamber. Using a specific combination of delay time between the gas valve opening and operation of a capacitor bank switch, and the capacitor bank's voltage, the deflagration gun (Ref. 1) is capable of producing high kinetic energy and at a high density beam. Using a convergent gun barrel it is possible to compress beam density by a factor of 100. A 10$^{17}$/c.c.beam was obtained. If the kinetic energy is at 280 Kev (fusion threshold) Neutron flux up to 5 x 10$^{19}$ could be produced in a 1 micro-second period. This represents 500 MJ of energy yield. If the classical fusion energy data were in error by a factor of 100 that still would yield 5 MJ of fusion energy. Results obtained from experiments in the 30 m diameter space chamber have demonstrated such a capability using a 120 KV capacitor bank with 200 KJ of stored energy (Ref. 1). A very small scale experiment has demonstrated a yield of 10$^{15}$ neutrons using less than 10 kJ of capacitor energy.\newline References:\newline 1. Cheng, D.Y. 1970 Plasma Deflagration and the Properties of a Coaxial Plasma Deflagration Gun. \textit{Nuclear Fusion}, 10, pp. 305- 317