Research and Development of Compact Neutron Sources based on Inertial Electrostatic Confinement Fusion

摘要

Recent progress is described in the research and development of an inertial-electrostatic confinement fusion(IECF) device. Use of a water-cooling jacket with non-uniform thickness shows promising success for landminedetection application, such as effective channeling of neutron flux toward the target and a very stable dc yield in excessof 107 D-D neutrons/sec. Addition of an ion source to the conventional glow-discharge-driven IECF enhances theconverging deuterium ion energy distribution by allowing a lower operating gas pressure. Improvement in normalizedneutron yield, which corresponds to the fusion cross-section averaged over the device radius, by a factor of ten has beenobserved.