Sandia National Labs FY20 LDRD Annual Report

FY20 ANNUAL REPORT

Development of a deuterium-ice extruder for advanced fuel configurations in inertial confinement fusion experiments at the Z Facility. Deuterium is a critical isotope needed to study fusion in the laboratory, and a variety of deuterium fuel configurations are needed to optimize the fusion conditions that can be achieved at the Z Facility. One configuration of interest is a frozen-rod of deuterium ice, which has now been demonstrated using a screw-type extruder. Extruder testing

occurs in Sandia’s Pulsed Power Sciences Center Cryogenics Test Laboratory (CTL). The CTL supports cryogenics R&D and is used for pre-experiment testing of all cryogenically-cooled Z-Facility targets. (PI: Thomas Awe) (Left) Schematic of deuterium-ice extruder for inertial confinement fusion experiments. (Right) Four images of the initial extrusion of a rod from a 300-µm diameter nozzle.

The linear Hermes pulsed power machine — the most powerful gamma ray producer in the world — is serviced for its next shot by technicians. (Photo by Randy Montoya)

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LABORATORY DIRECTED RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT