Open AccessTarget production for inertial fusion energy
Author(s) -
J. G. Woodworth,
W.R. Meier
Publication year - 1995
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Reports
DOI - 10.2172/125415
Subject(s) - production (economics) , capital cost , factory (object oriented programming) , electricity generation , process engineering , electricity , environmental science , computer science , power (physics) , engineering , electrical engineering , physics , quantum mechanics , economics , macroeconomics , programming language
Inertial fusion energy (IFE) power plants will require the ignition and burn of 5-10 fusion fuel targets every second. The technology to economically mass produce high-quality, precision targets at this rate is beyond the current state of the art. Techniques that are scalable to high production rates, however, have been identified for all the necessary process steps, and many have been tested in laboratory experiments or are similar to current commercial manufacturing processes. In this paper, we describe a baseline target factory conceptual design and estimate its capital and operating costs. The result is a total production cost of {approximately}16{cents} per target. At this level, target production represents about 6% of the estimated cost of electricity from a 1-GW{sub e} IFE power plant. Cost scaling relationships are presented and used to show the variation in target cost with production rate and plant power level