The world's second biggest economy, which wants to double its provision for its fuel consumption, will make an announcement in June on whether it indends to press ahead with the plants, the Nikkei business daily said.

Japan has few energy resources and relies on nuclear power from 53 plants for nearly one third of its domestic electricity needs.

The government is eager to boost its energy self-sufficiency ratio, which stands at 18 percent at home and at 38 percent with government and corporate interests overseas taken into account, the report said.

The government is looking to build eight nuclear plants by 2020 and at least six more by 2030 to double the figure to 70 percent. It will provide funding to companies looking to work on nuclear power projects

The usual laser compression developed for burning deuterium–tritium (DT) fuel cannot be used for H–11B because densities of 100000 times the solid are needed. Instead, the alternative laser fusion scheme of side-on ignition with uncompressed fuel is proposed to enable ignition of the H–11B fuel along with PW laser interactions. This approach employs a recently discovered laser-plasma interaction technique that uses very high contrast ratio laser pulses (i.e. pulses nearly free from pre-pulses). Plasma blocks of modest temperature are generated causing highly directed ion current densities above 10^10 A cm−2. This new ignition process is termed side-on block ignition, and it is described here in some detail.

The NIF laser is expected to produce ignition by delivering pulses of 1.1 MJ on the ICF target over a few nanoseconds. The ignition campaign at NIF is scheduled to achieve ignition in 2010–2011, demonstrating for the first time on Earth a controlled fusion reaction capable of generating more energy than delivered by the input laser pulse. The DT fusion reaction burns (reacts with) isotopes of heavy hydrogen (deuterium, D) with the super-heavy hydrogen isotope (tritium, T), where the laser irradiation compresses the fuel to more than 1000 times the solid density, causing heating to ignition temperatures of several tens of millions of degrees centigrade. Following on this success, LLNL scientists have proposed a prototype power station for 2020, based on use of a very compact, high efficiency, and high repetition rate diode pumped laser which builds on current laser technology. Simultaneous development of a power plant using similar technology is also proposed for use as an actinide burner to resolve the radioactive waste problem from existing light water reactors.

Parallel to these developments, new schemes for ICF power have been proposed based on the new type of laser offering more than PW (petawatt) pulses over picoseconds. The basic scheme is to use a slower pulse laser to initially compress a target to reasonably high density and then use this PW laser to heat (ignite) some volume in the target, which will burn into the rest of the high density fuel. Called fast ignition (FI), this method significantly reduces input power requirements, hence giving higher energy gain operation. If achieved, this approach promises a higher performance power plant than possible with the conventional direct compression and burn of the ICF operation. For one of these FI options, a design by Nuckolls and Wood using electron beam ignition, initial compression to only about 10 times solid state density is needed. The ignition occurs with very intense electron beams (of 5 MeV energy). These PW laser beams interact with the pre-compressed target through highly non-linear effects. This technique arrives at fusion gains of 10000. A pre-compression of the target to about 1000 times solid-state density is required to generate the intense electron beam.

This paper now reports on another method8 that uses PW–ps laser pulses without high pre-compression of the target. It uses side-on ignition of the target at normal solid state or slightly increased density. The technique follows mechanisms which were actually observed in 1972. However, according to these early results, it appeared impossible to use this in a practical system.

The use of nonlinear force driven plasma blocks with the ultra-high current densities using a PW–ps laser-plasma interaction permits a come-back of the side-on ignition of uncompressed DT.

Side-on ignition for fusion using plasma blocks driven by nonlinear forces laser interactions is based on preventing self-focusing of the laser beam as previously described. This requires strong suppression of laser pre-pulses, i.e. a contrast ratio higher than 10^8, for times dozens of ps before arrival of the main pulse. The resulting plasma blocks have high momentum and are directed back towards the incoming laser beam. Momentum conservation causes an imploding block of plasma towards the inner portion of the target fuel. This implosion produces an inward moving thermonuclear reaction shock front as elaborated in the work by Chu. If the laser is obliquely hitting the plane target, the direction of the nonlinear force accelerated blocks is mainly perpendicular to the target surface, with minor deviations due to collision absorption, anticipating the later derived TNSA (target normal sheet acceleration) by Wilks from his discovered particle-in-cell computations

A much more detailed analysis is needed but at least the basic characteristics for side-on ignition are clearly visible. Most significant are the very surprising results that uncompressed H–11B can be ignited. This fusion energy generation with laser pulses in the range of few dozens of PW power and ps duration can achieve H–11B power production. The remarkable fuel avoids neutron generation, results in negligible radioactivity, and allows direct energy conversion, which in turn reduces heat pollution. Such a power plant is ideal for stationary electrical generation in a power station or for space propulsion. Modest pre-compression by chemical driving or with high density cluster methods55 could improve performance even further especially for p–11B. The X-ray radiation produced in the reaction chamber is 200 keV which can be screened off and does not lead to nuclear reactions in the power stations. This provides an exciting vision of a very attractive sustainable future power plant for worldwide use. Its achievement will depend on continued advances in laser optics, target physics and power conversion technology. However, the studies reported here show that such a system is rather close at hand—something not realized before, since p-11B ignition had always been viewed as virtually impossible

The advent of ultra-high power lasers allows laser power levels that are about 1000 times the power of all the power stations in the USA. This opens the way to new approaches for inertial confinement fusions (ICF) that in turn can drastically reduce the laser input energy needed to achieve practical ICF power. The specific approach discussed here involves inducing a fusion burn wave by laser-driven impact of a relatively large block of plasma on the outside of a solid density fusion target. This new method is specifically selected to enable the extremely attractive, but demanding, neutron-free proton–B-11 fusion that potentially can lead to the long sought goal of an ultra clean fusion power plant.

Conventionally, the fusion process occurs with deuterium and tritium as fuel. The fuel is spherically compressed - meaning compression occurs from all directions - with laser irradiation to 1000 times its solid state density. This ignites the fuel, producing helium atoms, energy and neutrons which cause radiation. Fusion is also possible with hydrogen and boron-11, and this could produce cleaner energy as it does not release neutrons, explains Hora.

To make this first batch of NUE fuel, Qinshan managers collaborated with AECL, the Nuclear Power Institute of China and China North Nuclear Fuel Corporation. Fuel that had previously been used was processed to recover unspent uranium and this was mixed with some depleted uranium to achieve a mix with the same overall characteristics as natural uranium. Technical challenges in doing this included the highly-radioactive nature of the used fuel and achieving the right blend of depleted uranium and the recovered stocks still enriched up to around 1.6%.

A report late in 2009 suggested that China should build another two Candu reactors as part of a used fuel managment strategy.

A program in South Korea has pursued similar goals for some time. Dupic (Direct Use of PWR fuel in Candu) envisages the used fuel pellets from PWR fuel being broken up, heated to drive off radioactive fission products and then reformed for use in Candu fuel. Using Candu reactors in a similar way is also under investigation in Ukraine.

Success isn't assured. The WB-8 experiment could conceivably show that the approach pioneered by Bussard, known as inertial electrostatic confinement fusion or IEC fusion, can't be scaled up to produce more power than it consumes. And if Nebel's team comes to that conclusion, he doesn't plan to pull any punches.

"No B.S. and no excuses," Nebel told me over the weekend. "If it looks like we have a problem with this, we're going to tell them."

But if IEC fusion actually works, Nebel wants to be ready to commercialize the technology. "Generally what you want to do is have one machine operating, one machine being built, and one machine designed," he said. "We want to be in a position that if we have good results from WB-8, we can hit the ground running."

That's what the contributions being sought under the umbrella of the New Mexico Community Foundation would go toward, he said. Nebel doesn't expect anything near $200 million to start with. "We're just looking for a few hundred thousand to do the design work and do some basic physics on this," he said. "There are some open questions we have to take a look at."

The EMC2 Fusion Web site sports a picture of a 100-megawatt WB-D fusion demonstrator, which looks like a cube about 20 feet on a side. Nebel said the eventual design may not look like the picture, but he does believe the best path to success leads to relatively small-scale reactors rather than the mega-reactors envisioned by ITER's backers.

The Department of Energy's budget request for FY2011 currently includes more than $1,000 million for small, light water reactors whose allowed market is limited to military vessels. It would seem that technologies used in that program could be used as the basis for prototype licenses for systems like the mPower and NuScale in a process that could take far less than 10 years.

Inertial Electrostatic fusion can make power at about 5/8 the cost of conventional plants (most is BOP, Balance of Plant costs) process steam at 1/3 the cost of others, make synfuels (ethanol) at less than $0.5/gallon, destroy nuclear waste, and make space engines commercial, etc, etc. The basic physics is summarized in Bussards IAC paper in October, 2006. And in much earlier papers in the early 1990's. All still valid.

Israeli Infrastructure Minister Uzi Landau told delegates his country wanted to build new nuclear plants to reduce its dependence on coal.

With plans in the UK for a new Areva EPR to operate at the end of 2017, and three more following at 18-24 month intervals, it is conceivable that even early units could feature main forgings made in Britain.

The rest of the UK's build program comes later, with perhaps another by six to eight reactors by 2025