Repetitive Pulsed Power Technology for Inertial Confinement Fusion

The pulsed power requirements for inertial confinement fusion reactors are defined for ion beam and laser drivers. Several megajoule beams with 100's of terrawatt peak powers must be delivered to the reactor chamber 1–10 times per second. Ion beam drivers are relatively efficient requiring less energy storage in the pulsed power system but more time compression in the power flow chain than gas lasers. These high peak powers imply very large numbers of components for conventional pulse power systems. A new design that significantly reduces the number of components is presented.