The fusion breeder is a fusion reactor designed with special blankets to maximize the transmutation by 14 MeV neutrons of uranium-238 to plutonium or thorium to uranium-233 for use as a fuel for fission reactors. Breeding fissile fuels has not been a goal of the US fusion energy program. This paper suggests it is time for a policy change to make the fusion breeder a goal of the US fusion program and the US nuclear energy program. The purpose of this paper is to suggest this policy change be made and tell why it should be made, and to outline specific research and development goals so that the fusion breeder will be developed in time to meet fissile fuel needs.

This paper reviews research in the United States and Japan on structural materials for high-field superconducting magnets. Superconducting magnets are used for magnetic fusion energy devices and for accelerators that are used in particle-physics research. The cryogenic structural materials that we review are used for magnet cases and support structures. We expect increased materials requirements in the future.

For heavy-ion fusion energy applications, Mark and Yu have derived hydrodynamic models for numerical simulation of energetic pinched-beams including self-pinches and external-current pinches. These pinched-beams are applicable to beam propagation in fusion chambers and to the US High Temperature Experiment. The closure of the Mark-Yu model is obtained with adiabatic assumptions mathematically analogous to those of Chew, Goldberger, and Low for MHD. Features of this hydrodynamic beam model are compared with a kinetic treatment.

Recently revised estimates of target gain have added additional optimistic inputs to the interface between targets, accelerators and fusion chamber beam transport. But it remains valid that neutralization of the beams in the fusion chamber is useful if ion charge state Z > 1 or if > 1 kA per beamlet is to be propagated. Some engineering and economic considerations favor higher currents.

None