Status of Target Injection and Tracking Studies for Inertial Fusion Energy

Recent target injection and tracking experimental results with simulated room-temperature indirect-drive targets are briefly discussed. Extensions of those experiments for improved timing accuracy and for sabot removal from warm solid plastic spheres without significant accuracy degradation are presented. Recent direct-drive and indirect-drive target heating calculations are presented. Proposed experiments to test Deuterium-Tritium (DT) mechanical strength, improve target tracking accuracy at higher injection speeds, and measure effects of rapid target heating on survivability arc presented.