Accelerators for energy production

A tremendous progress of accelerators for these several decades, has been motivated mainly by the research on subnuclear physics. The culmination in high energy accelerators might be SSC, 20 TeV collider in USA, probably the ultimate accelerator being built with the conventional principle. The technology cultivated and integrated for the accelerator development, can now stably offer the high power beam which could be used for the energy problems. The Inertial Confinement Fusion (ICF) with high current, 10 kA and short pulse, 20 ns heavy ion beam (HIB) of mass number ∼200, would be the most promising application of accelerators for energy production. In this scenario, the fuel containing D-T mixture, will be compressed to the high temperature, ∼10 keV and to the high density state, ∼1000 times the solid density with the pressure of ablative plasma or thermal X ray produced by bombarding of high power HIB. The efficiency, beam power/electric power for accelerator, and the repetition rate of HIB accelerators could be most suitable for the energy production. In the present paper, the outline of HIB ICF (HIF) is presented emphasizing the key issues of high current heavy ion accelerator system. (author)