Investigating 2MJ Double Shell Designs

The current double shell inertial confinement fusion campaign at Los Alamos utilizes a 1.5MJ reverse ramp pulse on the National Ignition Facility. This volume ignition platform achieves 1D yields of 1MJ of fusion yield by traversing a different phase space compared to traditional hot spot ignition. Changing the drive pulse to 2MJ, an increase of 1/3, could allow for additional margin when considering 2D degradations such as surface roughness and joint features. This talk will focus on exploring the design space of 2MJ drive designs, starting with a hydro scaling of the current point design. Parameters of interest include the gas radius, pusher thickness, tamper material, tamper thickness, and outer ablator radius. Comparing these results with the current point design will give a physics-based argument for potential new double shell designs.

This work conducted under the auspices of the U.S. DOE by L os Alamos National Laboratory under contract 89233218CNA00000. LA-UR-25-27299