Fission-Fusion Neutron Source Progress Report Sept 30, 2009

In this report the authors describe the progress made in FY09 in evaluating the feasibility of a new concept for using the DT fusion reaction to produce intense pulses of 14 MeV neutrons. In this new scheme the heating of the DT is accomplished using fission fragments rather than ion beams as in conventional magnet confinement fusion schemes or lasers in inertial confinement schemes. As a source of fission fragments they propose using a dust reactor concept introduced some time ago by one of us (RC). An attractive feature of this approach is that there is no need for a large auxiliary power source to heat the DT plasma to the point where self-sustaining fusion become possible. Their scheme does require pulsed magnetic fields, but generating these fields requires only a modest power source. The dust reactor that they propose using for their neutron source would use micron-sized UC pellets suspended in a vacuum as the reactor fuel. Surrounding the fuel with a moderator such as heavy water (D2O) would allow the reactor to operate as a thermal reactor and require only modest amounts of HEU. The scheme for using fission fragments to generate intense pulses of 14 MeV neutrons is based on the fission fragment rocket idea. In the fission fragment rocket scheme it was contemplated that the fission fragments produced in a low density reactor core could be guided out of the reactor by large magnetic fields used to form a 'rocket exhaust'. Their adaptation of this idea for the purposes of making a neutron source involves using the fission fragments escaping from one side of a tandem magnet mirror to heat DT gas confined in the adjacent magnetic trap.