A pathway to laser fusion energy in Japan

Abstract

High-density compression of DT to one thousand times its liquid density is the critical path of inertial fusion and was demonstrated in Japan and US in late 1980's. The Osaka group has achieved high-density compression that meets one of the critical requirements for thermonuclear ignition and burn. Although the compression densities were well reproduced by computer simulations, the neutron yields were much lower than the simulation predictions by three orders of magnitudes, suggesting catastrophic collapse of a hot spark, from which thermonuclear reactions are triggered. In order to overcome this difficulty the international ICF community has adopted two approaches: one is to generate a larger hot spark than the mixed layer with MJ-Class lasers, such as NIF and LMJ. The other approach is to externally heat the compressed fuel. The second approach is the fast ignition. After the proof-of-concept experiment in 2002, we started the Fast Ignition Realization Experiment (FIREX) project to complete the world most powerful high-energy peta-watt laser “LFEX” as a heating laser.