Peter S. Ebey
MS-C927, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico 87545, USA
ebey
lanl.gov
James M. Dole, James K. Hoffer, Arthur Nobile, Robert L. Nolen
Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico 87545, USA
John D. Sheliak
General Atomics, Los Alamos National Laboratory Los Alamos, New Mexico 87545, USA
Many designs of targets for inertial fusion research and ignition in OMEGA, NIF, LMJ, and future facilities rely upon beta-radiation driven layering or symmetrizing of spherical cryogenic deuterium-tritium (DT) ice layers contained within plastic or metal shells. In most concepts symmetry considerations prohibit the use of gas filling tubes for admitting DT into the target shells. For plastic shells this requirement necessitates permeation filling at room temperature followed by cooling to cryogenic temperatures (~30 K) before removal of the gas overpressure. At Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) we have developed the Cryogenic Pressure Loader (CPL) as a testbed for studying the filling and layering of plastic inertial fusion targets with DT. The CPL consists of a cryostat, which contains a high-pressure cell for permeation and has optical access for investigating the dynamics of beta-layering. The cryostat is housed within a tritium glovebox that contains support manifolds necessary for supplying high pressure DT. The CPL shares some design elements with the Cryogenic Target Handling System at the University of Rochester’s OMEGA facility to allow some testing of tritium handling issues related to that system. The CPL has the capability to permeation fill plastic targets to pressures up to 1000 atmospheres and to cool them to 15 K. The CPL’s permeation cell size can accommodate a wide range of targets and target mount structures — making it an ideal tool for testing a range of current and future target concepts. Future modifications could add diagnostic or layering tools such as infra-red light or resonant ultra-sound spectroscopy to supplement optical data acquisition.
The CPL is located in a LANL tritium facility and has been thoroughly acceptance tested using deuterium. Following a readiness assessment in January 2002 the CPL, DT operations are approved and will begin during late spring 2002. This paper will present the initial deuterium and DT target filling and layering results from the CPL.
This work is performed at Los Alamos National Laboratory and supported by the U.S. Department of Energy under contract number W7405-ENG36. LA-UR-02-1972
