https://doi.org/10.1140/epjd/s10053-020-00032-0
Regular Article - Plasma Physics
Dependence of Inertial Confinement Fusion capsule performance on fuel reaction rate
1
École Normale Supérieure Paris-Saclay, Centre Borelli UMR 9010, 4 Avenue des Sciences, 91190, Gif sur Yvette, France
2
CEA, DAM, DIF, F-91297, Arpajon, France
3
Université Paris-Saclay, CEA, LMCE, 91680, Bruyères-le-Châtel, France
4
ETSI Aeronáutica y del Espacio, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, 28040, Madrid, Spain
Received:
5
November
2020
Accepted:
16
December
2020
Published online:
11
January
2021
In Inertial Confinement Fusion the ignition of the Deuterium–Tritium fuel and the self-sustained thermonuclear burn-wave propagation depend on several factors among them the reaction rate, product of the number densities of the reactants and the thermal reactivity of the fusion reaction. Different mechanisms could affect the reactivity and modify the final thermonuclear gain leading to a failure of ignition. Here, it is analysed the effect of a fuel reaction rate degraded by a given factor 
on the kinetic energy needed to reach fuel ignition and thermonuclear burn-out. Ignition and burnout thresholds are firstly defined in the metrics of reactivity factor 
and homothetic scaling curves. Then a parametric variation of shows that a reduction of 10% (20%) on the reaction rate approximately implies a 15% (50% respectively) increase in the kinetic energies thresholds.
© EDP Sciences, SIF and Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2021
