Experimental HTSC-MAGLEV System and Efficiency Evaluation of a Noncontact Acceleration of IFE Target Placed in a Levitating Carrier

Abstract

Over the last two decades, superconducting materials have undergone an evolution that has broadened its application space. This work focuses on the issue of noncontact acceleration of fusion targets for fueling of a commercial Inertial Fusion Energy (IFE) power plant. This approach attracts a significant interest due to its potential for almost frictionless motion. The operational principle is the magnetic acceleration of the levitating target carrier (or HTSC-sabot) made from high-temperature superconducting tapes of the second generation (2G-HTSC). From physics, the possibility of their practical applications is directly related to the flux pinning of quantized magnetic flux lines in the superconductors (so called, high-pinning, Type-II HTSCs). The article describes the important achievements made in this area: 1) measurements of the magnetic moment of 2G-HTSC tapes (Tc = 92 K) in the wide temperature range of 10–95 K; 2) building a circular PMG system (outer radius is R = 50 mm, В = 0.13−0.25 T) to study magneto-thermo-mechanical interactions between HTSC-sabot and permanent magnets under external variable load with a rate of 2‒5 Hz; 3) studying a static and dynamic stability of the guidance force for a set of different top-down suspended HTSC-sabots; 4) calculation of the HTSC-sabot velocity at which it leaves a circular trajectory at temperatures of ~ 80 K to evaluate its behavior at T ~17 K. The obtained results are in a good agreement that will allow one to estimate the parameters of a circular accelerator of R = 1 m based on HTSC magnetic levitation (HTSC-MAGLEV) transport; the operating temperature is T ~17 K which is characteristic of the target delivery to IFE power plant. The results of this work provide theoretical and experimental support for the practical design and application of such ac-celerator for reaching the target injection velocities in the range of 200−400 m/s.