title: Lead (Pb) hohlraum: target for inertial fusion energy.
abstract: Recent progress towards demonstrating inertial confinement fusion (ICF) ignition at the National Ignition Facility (NIF) has sparked wide interest in Laser Inertial Fusion Energy (LIFE) for carbon-free large-scale power generation. A LIFE-based fleet of power plants promises clean energy generation with no greenhouse gas emissions and a virtually limitless, widely available thermonuclear fuel source. For the LIFE concept to be viable, target costs must be minimized while the target material efficiency or x-ray albedo is optimized. Current ICF targets on the NIF utilize a gold or depleted uranium cylindrical radiation cavity (hohlraum) with a plastic capsule at the center that contains the deuterium and tritium fuel. Here we show a direct comparison of gold and lead hohlraums in efficiently ablating deuterium-filled plastic capsules with soft x rays. We report on lead hohlraum performance that is indistinguishable from gold, yet costing only a small fraction.
authors.affiliation: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, CA 94551, USA. ross36@llnl.gov
authors.forename: J S
authors.initials: JS
authors.lastname: Ross
authors.forename: P
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Amendt
authors.forename: L J
authors.initials: LJ
authors.lastname: Atherton
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Dunne
authors.forename: S H
authors.initials: SH
authors.lastname: Glenzer
authors.forename: J D
authors.initials: JD
authors.lastname: Lindl
authors.forename: D
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Meeker
authors.forename: E I
authors.initials: EI
authors.lastname: Moses
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Nikroo
authors.forename: R
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Wallace