A simplified economic model for inertial fusion.

A simple model for the levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) of an inertial fusion power plant is developed. The model has 14 parameters. These have been designed to be technology agnostic, such that the model may be applied broadly to all variants of inertial fusion. It is also designed to allow easy use of proxies from existing technology. The variables related most intimately to the physics challenges of inertial fusion, such as gain and target cost, are treated as parameters such that requirements can be found without bringing complex physics into the model. A Monte Carlo approach is taken to explore the parameter space. The most important conclusion is that a combination of high gain (greater than 500) and high fusion energy yield per shot (greater than 5 GJ) together appear to unlock more cost competitive designs than those in the existing literature. Designs with LCOE as low as $25/MWh are found with optimistic but not obviously unrealistic inputs. This article is part of a discussion meeting issue 'Prospects for high gain inertial fusion energy (part 1)'.

Modeling asymmetric cavity collapse with plasma equations of state.

We explore the effect that equation of state (EOS) thermodynamics has on shock-driven cavity-collapse processes. We account for full, multidimensional, unsteady hydrodynamics and incorporate a range of relevant EOSs (polytropic, QEOS-type, and SESAME). In doing so, we show that simplified analytic EOSs, like ideal gas, capture certain critical parameters of the collapse such as velocity of the main transverse jet and pressure at jet strike, while also providing a good representation of overall trends. However, more sophisticated EOSs yield different and more relevant estimates of temperature and density, especially for higher incident shock strengths. We model incident shocks ranging from 0.1 to 1000 GPa, the latter being of interest in investigating the warm dense matter regime for which experimental and theoretical EOS data are difficult to obtain. At certain shock strengths, there is a factor of two difference in predicted density between QEOS-type and SESAME EOS, indicating cavity collapse as an experimental method for exploring EOS in this range.