The National Ignition Facility - applications for inertial fusion energy and high-energy-density science

Over the past several decades, significant and steady progress has been made in the development of fusion energy and its associated technology and in the understanding of the physics of high-temperature plasmas. While the demonstration of net fusion energy (fusion energy production exceeding that required to heat and confine the plasma) remains a task for the next millennia and while challenges remain, this progress has significantly increased confidence that the ultimate goal of societally acceptable (e. g. cost, safety, environmental considerations including waste disposal) central power production can be achieved. This progress has been shared by the two principal approaches to controlled thermonuclear fusion--magnetic confinement (MFE) and inertial confinement (ICF). ICF, the focus of this article, is complementary and symbiotic to MFE. As shown, ICF invokes spherical implosion of the fuel to achieve high density, pressures, and temperatures, inertially confining the plasma for times sufficient long (t approx 10sup -10 sec) that approx 30% of the fuel undergoes thermonuclear fusion.