The Ignition Requirements of the Degeneracy Microspheres of Deuterium Helium-3 Mixture with Low-Radioactive

Abstract

This paper examines the burn characteristics for inertial confinement D/³ He fuel pellets with different concentrations of Helium-3. It is shown that the Helium-3 relative density of the fuel mixture plays a significant role in determining the burn characteristics and fuel gain. In spite of the safety of the plasma degeneracy of D/³ He fuel with fraction of y = 0.2 (y: Helium-3 content parameter), ignition of fuel is impossible. In design fuel extra to safety should be considered fractional burn-up and fuel gain. The main contribution of this research is to show that the plasma degeneracy of equimolar mixture of D/³ He fuel lowers the ignition temperature and increases fuel gain. The results indicate that a $n_{D} /n_{{^{3} He}}$ ≤ 0.3 is difficult to ignite reasonable driver energy. A fuel gain of 378 can be obtained with a D/³ He fuel with fraction of y = 0.33, and areal density (ρR) of 12 g/cm². It is found that the fuel gain of an equimolar D/³ He fuel at temperature of 70 keV and ρR value of 8.5 g/cm² is 480. This value gain is higher by about 22% than the case of the pellets (y = 0.33).