Affordable, manageable, practical, and scalable (AMPS) high-yield and high-gain inertial fusion
Abstract
High-yield inertial fusion offers a transformative path to affordable clean firm power and advanced defense capabilities. Recent milestones at large facilities, particularly the National Ignition Facility (NIF), have demonstrated the feasibility of ignition but highlight the need for approaches that can deliver large amounts of energy to fusion targets at much higher efficiency and lower cost. We propose that pulser-driven inertial fusion energy (IFE), which uses high-current pulsed-power technology to compress targets to thermonuclear conditions, can achieve this goal. In this paper, we detail the physics basis for pulser IFE, focusing on magnetized liner inertial fusion (MagLIF), where cylindrical metal liners compress DT fuel under strong magnetic fields and pre-heat. We discuss how the low implosion velocities, direct-drive efficiency, and scalable pulser architecture can achieve ignition-level conditions at low capital cost. Our multi-dimensional simulations, benchmarked against experiments at the Z facility, show that scaling from 20 MA to 50-60 MA of current enables net facility gain. We then introduce our Demonstration System (DS), a pulsed-power driver designed to deliver more than 60 MA and store approximately 80 MJ of energy. The DS is designed to achieve a 1000x increase in effective performance compared to the NIF, delivering approximately 100x greater facility-level energy gain -- and importantly, achieving net facility gain, or Qf>1 -- at just 1/10 the capital cost. We also examine the engineering requirements for repetitive operation, target fabrication, and chamber maintenance, highlighting a practical roadmap to commercial power plants.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2504.10680,
title = {Affordable, manageable, practical, and scalable (AMPS) high-yield and high-gain inertial fusion},
author = {Andrew Alexander and Laura Robin Benedetti and Indrani Bhattacharyya and Jared Bowen and June Cabatu and Virgil Cacdac and Chhavi Chhavi and Chiatai Chen and Karen Chen and Dan Clark and Jerry Clark and Tyler Cope and Will Dannemann and Scott Davidson and David DeHaan and John Dugan and Mindy Eihusen and C. Leland Ellison and Carlos Esquivel and David Ethridge and Blake Ferguson and Bryan Ferguson and Jon Fry and Fernando Garcia-Rubio and Tarun Goyal and Gary Grim and Justin Grodman and Ben Haid and Fred Howland and Van Huynh and Vishal John and Patrick Knapp and Isaac Kravitz and Eric S. Lander and Samuel Langendorf and Keith LeChien and Anthony Link and Nathan Meezan and Douglas S. Miller and Nantas Nardelli and Queenelle Ogirri and Jon He Peng and Alexander Pinto and Rudolph Powser and Fritz Roy Puno and Kenny Quang and Brett Rahn and Will Regan and Kelsey Reichenbach and Adam Reyes and Courtney Richardson and David Rose and Joseph Samaniego and Paul F. Schmit and Victor Silva and Nick Simon and Shiva Sitaraman and Hardeep Sullan and James Trebesch and Minh Truong and Carrie Von Muench and Cory Waltz and Doug Williams and Echo Wood and Sid Wu and Alex B. Zylstra},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2504.10680},
year = {2025}
}
Comments
41 pages, 21 figures