SIRIUS-T: A study of a symmetrically illuminated inertial confinement fusion tritium production facility

The aging US tritium production reactors are slowly being phased out and the US Department of Energy has initiated a New Production Reactors Program'' which will provide for the design, construction and operation of new facilities for the production of tritium and other special nuclear materials. Preliminary requirements are currently being prepared, leading to construction and operation by the year 2000. Unfortunately, inertial confinement fusion (ICF) cannot possibly be ready to perform such a task on this short time scale. However, it is instructive to see how well it can do in producing tritium when ICF has been demonstrated and a comparison with the proposed production schemes is conducted here. SIRIUS-T is conceptual design study of a tritium production facility utilizing direct drive symmetrically illuminated inertial confinement fusion. The T'' designation distinguishes it from SIRIUS-M, a materials facility, and SIRIUS-C, a commercial power plant. As in any other fusion related design study, a certain amount of technical extrapolation has been made in SIRIUS-T. It should be said early on, however, that in areas of uncertainty, we have always taken the conservative approach. This is evident in our choice of target gain, number of beams selected for symmetric illumination and elsewheremore » throughout the study. In performing the economic analysis we have also attempted to err on the conservative side. This too is evident in our costing of the driver and the reactor chamber. For these reasons, we feel that this study projects enough confidence as to make it worthy of comparison with the other proposed production systems.« less