Deuterium targets and the MDMT code

Abstract

By means of a new two-dimensional three-temperature hydrodynamical code we considered the burning of the deuterium fuel with a small amount of a catalytic 3He in a cylindrical channel. To reduce the requirements for an ignition heavy ion beam we used an irradiated DT tablet (Jbeam = 4·106 TW/g, Ebeam = 0.5 MJ). We received the steady burning wave for the parameter ρr [gsim ] 8–10 g/cm2 with a gain coefficient G [gsim ] 30 in comparison with such parameters for the DT fuel G ∼ 140 at ρr = 0.5 g/cm2. Upon reducing the parameter ρr ∼ 4 g/cm2, the burning wave disappears moving along a channel. A part of the deuterium fuel burns with a reduced gain coefficient of 3–5. In the case of large fuel densities ρ = 100 g/cm3, our estimates show extremely large requirements for a compression beam 450–750 MJ for ρr ∼ 4 g/cm2.