A tritium catalytic fusion reactor concept

The performance of deuterium targets with small tritium seeding is analysed . The objective is to take advantage of the features of fusion reactivity r atios for very high burning temperatures in order to minimize tritium needs and to reduce the ignition temperature as much as possible. It is found th eroretically and computationally that there is a regime for deuterium-triti um DTx plasmas (with x approximate to 0.03) where the final content of trit ium in the pellet debris is the same as the initial contents in the origina l pellet. No external blankets to breed tritium would thus be needed. Altho ugh energy gains are limited because of the small fusion yield of DD reacti ons, the energy gain of DTx targets is higher than that of pure deuterium p lasmas. The ignition temperature and the driver energy are lower than the c orresponding values of DD pellets. This concept is also very useful to redu ce the tritium inventory and to simplify the complexity of inertial fusion reactors which use stoichiometric DT.