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The Lebedev Physical Institute (LPI) actively develops innovative technologies for creating the HTSC—MAGLEV accelerator for delivering a cryogenic fuel target (CFT) placed in a levitating HTSC-carrier to the ICF chamber for interacting with laser radiation. The LPI approach is based on the phenomenon of HTSC quantum levitation in a gradient magnetic field. Acceleration is provided by a sequence of current-carrying solenoids, and HTSC-carrier levitation occurs due to the use of a magnetic rail, along which the solenoids are placed. A prototype of an elementary block for accelerating an HTSC-carrier is developed and its motion control processes are studied. For this purpose, a special system of operational control of the acceleration block is developed and tested. The HTSC-carrier acceleration up to 1 m/s at the acceleration length La = 20 cm is demonstrated using only one pair of matched solenoids. The results obtained are of practical importance in the area of creating noncontact systems for CFT delivery due to constructing a linear magnetic track by connecting one elementary acceleration unit with many others to achieve a required CFT injection rates from 20 to 200 m/s and higher. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Magnetic levitation technologies are studied as an innovative basis for developing contactless systems for delivering cryogenic targets to the laser focus of an ICF facility or future power plant. A necessary element of such systems is a special target carrier made of high-temperature superconductors (HTSC) with high vortex pinning. It is shown experimentally that an HTSC carrier in the form of an outer coating of the target makes it possible to completely eliminate mechanical friction during target acceleration due to its levitation in gradient magnetic fields. The prospects for further development of this direction in the area of creating HTSC nanostructured films and coatings are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The development of a system for noncontact positioning and transport of cryogenic fuel targets (CFTs) is an important task in the inertial confinement fusion (ICF) program. In this paper, we investigate the possibility of constructing a levitation system for accelerating the CFT magnetic carrier along a superconducting tape guide made of HTSC materials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the key problems in the ICF program is the development of rapid methods for forming cryogenic fuel targets (CFT) for their feeding to the focus of a high-power laser setup or an ICF reactor. The simulation results on temporal parameters of the formation of reactor-scaled CFTs by the free-standing target (FST) method are presented. The CFT design includes hollow 4-mm-diameter shells of compact and porous polymers, containing solid hydrogen fuel on the inner surface. It is shown that the time of the cryogenic layer formation in the targets does not exceed 30 s, which makes it possible to implement line production of reactor-scaled CFTs based on the FST method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The results of a series of experiments using a piezovibration formation module for producing cryogenic targets with a given fuel layer structure are presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]