Patent Number: 043280706
Section: abstract

The invention relates to a novel method for the controlled release of thermonuclear energy by inertial confinement. The essential feature of the invention is that is uses for the achievement of this goal high temperature black body radiation. The black body radiation is generated by hypervelocity impact onto a tenuous gas trapped inside a small cavity. The tenuous gas is shock-heated to high temperatures and thereby becomes a source of intense photon radiation, which after reaching thermodynamic equilibrium becomes a black body radiation. The thusly generated black body radiation is the furthermore amplified by adiabatic compression through the implosion of the cavity. During the implosion process the photons inside the cavity must be sufficiently well confined by the opacity of the cavity wall which sets a lower limit for the implosion velocity. The thusly created and amplified black body radiation is then used to ablatively implode and ignite a thermonuclear target placed inside the cavity. Because the attainable black body radiation temperatures typically reach values of .apprxeq. 1 keV, the corresponding short photon wave length should with much greater ease permit high density target compression than with other proposed drivers. The cavity implosion itself can be driven by any one of the available sources hitherto proposed for inertial confinement fusion, including laser beams, beams of charged particles and hypervelocity projectiles, but unlike in case of direct pellet fusion with a greatly reduced power and power density.