THE LIGHT-ION BEAM APPROACH TO ICF ENERGY-PRODUCTION

Light ion beam fusion is an approach to electrical power production in which intense beams of low atomic number ions would be used to drive inertial confinement fusion (ICF) targets to ignition and gain, We ant icipate that an Engineering Test Facility (ETF) designed to demonstrat e moderate yield with a repetition rate would be a major step along th e route to an ICF demonstration power plant. In the present paper, we will describe our vision of how ongoing light ion beam and pulsed powe r research at Sandia National Laboratories (SNL) might be utilized for ETF and eventual inertial fusion energy (IFE) applications.