Scanning the Technology

Summary of Typical Various Pulsed Power Requirements for Given Applications tems describes a straight line, the line with the lower slopein Fig. 2. The challenge of future pulsed power systems, inthis regard, is to develop and incorporate novel materials thatwouldthenincreasethepowerdensityoffuturepulsedpowersystems. The line with the faster rising slope illustrates suchsystems, ranging from inherently efficient explosively drivenpulsed power systems to those manufactured using newerhigher energy density components.II. E XAMPLES OF P ARAMETERS OF P ULSED P OWER S YSTEMS The largest pulsed power systems are those used in thelaboratory to study high energy density plasma physics andequations of state. They routinely generate in excess of tensof terawatts of electrical power. These include the SandiaNational Laboratories’“Z” accelerator and its planned up-grades [5], [6], and the Los Alamos National Laboratory’sAtlas machine [6] (which is now located at the Nevada testsite). These large systems are intended to produce a singlehigh-power pulse, and then would require some maintenancebeforebeingabletoproduceanotherpulse.Theresultantshotrate on these large machines is typically about a single pulseper day.Contrast this with high-power microwave sources, asanother example, where some of their pulsed power ac-celerators can deliver 100-ns electrical pulses with tens ofgigawatts of power and can be repetitively pulsed in burstmode with repetition rates as large as 1 kHz. These systemscan operate for many shot cycles with minimal maintenance.Table 1 summarizes the parameters of pulsed power sys-tems used in some typical applications.III. A