A Plan for the Development of Fusion Energy

This is the final report of a panel set up by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Fusion Energy Sciences Advisory Committee (FESAC) in response to a charge letter dated September 10, 2002 from Dr. Ray Orbach, Director of the DOE's Office of Science. In that letter, Dr. Orbach asked FESAC to develop a plan with the end goal of the start of operation of a demonstration power plant in approximately 35 years. This report, submitted March 5, 2003, presents such a plan, leading to commercial application of fusion energy by mid-century. The plan is derived from the necessary features of a demonstration fusion power plant and from the time scale defined by President Bush. It identifies critical milestones, key decision points, needed major facilities and required budgets. The report also responds to a request from DOE to FESAC to describe what new or upgraded fusion facilities will best serve our purposes over a time frame of the next twenty years.     

A Review of the U.S. Department of Energy's Inertial Fusion Energy Program

This is the final report of a panel set up by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Fusion Energy Sciences Advisory Committee (FESAC) in response to a charge letter from Dr. Ray Orbach (Appendix A). In that letter, Dr. Orbach asked FESAC for an assessment of the present status of inertial fusion energy (IFE) research carried out in contributing programs. These programs include the heavy ion (HI) beam, the high average power laser (HAPL), and Z-Pinch drivers and associated technologies, including fast ignition (FI). This report, presented to FESAC on March 29, 2004, and subsequently approved by them (Appendix B), presents FESAC's response to that charge.     

An overview of the development of the first wall and other principal components of a laser fusion power plant

This paper introduces the JNM Special Issue on the development of a first wall for the reaction chamber in a laser fusion power plant. In this approach to fusion energy a spherical target is injected into a large chamber and heated to fusion burn by an array of lasers. The target emissions are absorbed by the wall and encapsulating blanket, and the resulting heat converted into electricity. The bulk of the energy deposited in the first wall is in the form of X-rays (1.0-100 keV) and ions (0.1-4 MeV). In order to have a practical power plant, the first wall must be resistant to these emissions and suffer virtually no erosion on each shot. A wall candidate based on tungsten armor bonded to a low activation ferritic steel substrate has been chosen as the initial system to be studied. The choice was based on the vast experience with these materials in a nuclear environment and the ability to address most of the key remaining issues with existing facilities. This overview paper is divided into three parts. The first part summarizes the current state of the development of laser fusion energy. The second part introduces the tungsten armored ferritic steel concept, the three critical development issues (thermo-mechanical fatigue, helium retention, and bonding) and the research to address them. Based on progress to date the latter two appear to be resolvable, but the former remains a challenge. Complete details are presented in the companion papers in this JNM Special Issue. The third part discusses other factors that must be considered in the design of the first wall, including compatibility with blanket concepts, radiological concerns, and structural considerations.     

A unified approach to noise removal, image enhancement, and shaperecovery

We present a unified approach to noise removal, image enhancement, and shape recovery in images. The underlying approach relies on the level set formulation of the curve and surface motion, which leads to a class of PDE-based algorithms. Beginning with an image, the first stage of this approach removes noise and enhances the image by evolving the image under flow controlled by min/max curvature and by the mean curvature. This stage is applicable to both salt-and-pepper grey-scale noise and full-image continuous noise present in black and white images, grey-scale images, texture images, and color images. The noise removal/enhancement schemes applied in this stage contain only one enhancement parameter, which in most cases is automatically chosen. The other key advantage of our approach is that a stopping criteria is automatically picked from the image; continued application of the scheme produces no further change. The second stage of our approach is the shape recovery of a desired object; we again exploit the level set approach to evolve an initial curve/surface toward the desired boundary, driven by an image-dependent speed function that automatically stops at the desired boundary.     

Optimal Algorithm for Shape from Shading and Path Planning

An optimal algorithm for the reconstruction of a surface from its shading image is presented. The algorithm solves the 3D reconstruction from a single shading image problem. The shading image is treated as a penalty function and the height of the reconstructed surface is a weighted distance. A consistent numerical scheme based on Sethian's fast marching method is used to compute the reconstructed surface. The surface is a viscosity solution of an Eikonal equation for the vertical light source case. For the oblique light source case, the reconstructed surface is the viscosity solution to a different partial differential equation. A modification of the fast marching method yields a numerically consistent, computationally optimal, and practically fast algorithm for the classical shape from shading problem. Next, the fast marching method coupled with a back tracking via gradient descent along the reconstructed surface is shown to solve the path planning problem in robot navigation.     

Subjective Surfaces: A Geometric Model for Boundary Completion

We present a geometric model and a computational method for segmentation of images with missing boundaries. In many situations, the human visual system fills in missing gaps in edges and boundaries, building and completing information that is not present. Boundary completion presents a considerable challenge in computer vision, since most algorithms attempt to exploit existing data. A large body of work concerns completion models, which postulate how to construct missing data; these models are often trained and specific to particular images. In this paper, we take the following, alternative perspective: we consider a given reference point within the image, and then develop an algorithm which tries to build missing information on the basis of the given point of view and the available information as boundary data to the algorithm. Starting from this point of view, a surface is constructed. It is then evolved with the mean curvature flow in the metric induced by the image until a piecewise constant solution is reached. We test the computational model on modal completion, amodal completion, and texture segmentation. We extend the geometric model and the algorithm to 3D in order to extract shapes from low signal/noise ratio ultrasound image volumes. Results in 3D echocardiography and 3D fetal echography are also presented.     

An overview of level set methods for etching, deposition, andlithography development

The range of surface evolution problems in etching, deposition, and lithography development offers significant challenge for numerical methods in front tracking. Level set methods for evolving interfaces are specifically designed for profiles which can develop sharp corners, change topology, and undergo orders of magnitude changes in speed. They are based on solving a Hamilton-Jacobi type equation for a level set function, using techniques borrowed from hyperbolic conservation laws. Over the past few years, a body of level set methods have been developed with application to microfabrication problems. In this paper, we give an overview of these techniques, describe the implementation in etching, deposition, and lithography simulations, and present a collection of fast level set methods, each aimed at a particular application. In the case of photoresist development and isotropic etching/deposition, the fast marching level set method, introduced by Sethian (1996), can track the three-dimensional photoresist process through a 200×200×200 rate function grid in under 55 s on a Sparc10. In the case of more complex etching and deposition, the narrow band level set method, introduced in Adalsteinsson and Sethian (1995), can be used to handle problems in which the speed of the interface delicately depends on the orientation of the interface versus an incoming beam, the effects of visibility, surface tension, reflection and re-emission, and complex three-dimensional effects. Our applications include photoresist development, etching/deposition problems under the effects of masking, visibility, complex flux integrations over sources, nonconvex sputter deposition problems, and simultaneous deposition and etch phenomena     

The high-density Z-pinch as a pulsed fusion neutron source for fusion nuclear technology and materials testing

The dense Z-pinch (DZP) is one of the earliest and simplest plasma heating and confinement schemes. Recent experimental advances based on plasma initiation from hair-like (10s m in radius) solid hydrogen filaments have so far not encountered the usually devastating MHD instabilities that plagued early DZP experimenters. These encouraging results along with the debut of a number of proof-of principle, high-current (1–2 MA in 10–100 ns) experiments have prompted consideration of the DZP as a pulsed source of DT fusion neutrons of sufficient strength (S _N 10¹⁹ n/s) to provide uncollided neutron fluxes in excess ofI _w = 5–10 MW/m² over test volumes of 10–30 liters or greater. While this neutron source would be pulsed (100s ns pulse widths, 10–100 Hz pulse rate), giving flux time compressions in the range 10⁵–10⁶, its simplicity, near-term feasibility, low cost, high-Q operation, and relevance to fusion systems thatmay provide a pulsed commercial end-product, e.g., inertial confinement or the DZP itself, together create the impetus for preliminary consideration as a neutron source for fusion nuclear technology and materials testings. The results of a preliminary parametric systems study (focusing primarily on physics issues), conceptual design, and cost vs. performance analyses are presented. The DZP promises an inexpensive and efficient means to provide pulsed DT neutrons at an average rate in excess of 10¹⁹ n/s, with neutron currents I_w10 MW/m² over volumes V_exp 30 liter using single-pulse technologies that differ little from those being used in present-day experiments.Work supported by U.S. DOE.     

Shape modeling with front propagation: a level set approach

Shape modeling is an important constituent of computer vision as well as computer graphics research. Shape models aid the tasks of object representation and recognition. This paper presents a new approach to shape modeling which retains some of the attractive features of existing methods and overcomes some of their limitations. The authors' techniques can be applied to model arbitrarily complex shapes, which include shapes with significant protrusions, and to situations where no a priori assumption about the object's topology is made. A single instance of the authors' model, when presented with an image having more than one object of interest, has the ability to split freely to represent each object. This method is based on the ideas developed by Osher and Sethian (1988) to model propagating solid/liquid interfaces with curvature-dependent speeds. The interface (front) is a closed, nonintersecting, hypersurface flowing along its gradient field with constant speed or a speed that depends on the curvature. It is moved by solving a “Hamilton-Jacobi” type equation written for a function in which the interface is a particular level set. A speed term synthesized from the image is used to stop the interface in the vicinity of object boundaries. The resulting equation of motion is solved by employing entropy-satisfying upwind finite difference schemes. The authors present a variety of ways of computing the evolving front, including narrow bands, reinitializations, and different stopping criteria. The efficacy of the scheme is demonstrated with numerical experiments on some synthesized images and some low contrast medical images