Heavy ion driven reactor-size double shell inertial fusion targets

Inertial Confinement Fusion (ICF) is considered as an alternative to Magnetic Confinement Fusion to achieve controlled thermonuclear fusion. The main goal is to exploit the energy released from thermonuclear fusion reactions to produce electric energy. Heavy ion beams were proposed in 1976 as one of the possible drivers in ICF. The method consists in igniting few milligrams of deuterium-tritium, using small capsules that contain the fuel. Heating the outer part of the target with short pulses of heavy ion beams it is obtained the spherical implosion and compression of the inner part. For a profitable energy production in power plants using nuclear fusion, it is necessary pulsed operation with few micro-explosions per second and drivers with high efficiency. So, heavy ion beams are a very attractive driver for an ICF power plant because accelerators have high repetition rate (practical accelerators already have repetition rates of 10 to 30 Hz) and high efficiency (efficiencies of 20 to 30 % are obtained, relaxing the need for high target gain). The scheme of a reactor design could be the following: