Pulsed Power (PP) technology deals with storing energy over a relatively long period of time (sec-min), and releases it within a very short time (ns-us) to achieve very high electrical output power to the load. The birth of PP technology is deeply related to the development of nuclear weapon, from the ignition of fission bomb to the simulation of prompt intense X-rays burst and radiation transport in Ulam-Teller design. The Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty signed in 1963 accelerated the development of PP, and since then it has evolved into many military and commercial applications, but the main focus is on fusion research. Because the original design of boosted fission weapon and hydrogen bomb have strong influence over the fusion research decades to come, therefore we will begin by a simple explanation of the nuclear weapon design. Next we will briefly review the history of PP in US and UK, and explain the key milestones and concept changes; this will be followed by the introduction of the basics in PP technology like the common PP configurations, the energy storage configuration, capacitor, inductor, spark gap, Marx Banks, Blumlein line, superconductive magnetic energy storage (SMES), and linear transformer driver (LTD). Application examples include EMP simulator, X-ray radiograph, High Power Microwave (HPM), railgun, and fusion research like the Z-machine. Finally we will introduce foreign proposals for future big PP facilities. |
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