The fuel target in Inertia’s power plant design is a scaled-up version of the indirect drive target that has been proven at NIF. Ignition experiments at NIF are only run a handful of times per year, thus only a small number of targets are produced. Because, unless a direct repeat is planned, each run of the experiment is designed to test different attributes or achieve different outcomes, each target is made differently. In addition, due to the limited number of shots performed on NIF, each target is carefully crafted to perfectly achieve the design specifications for the shot. These are hand-made, bespoke, and lovingly crafted specimens. Some parts of the target contain exotic materials, such as depleted uranium or gold. So, if you took the cost of the entire target fabrication program and divided it by the small number of targets they produce – each target would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.

By contrast, Inertia will shoot targets 10 times per second. For 24x7 operation, we’ll use 864,000 targets per day. So unlike NIF, our targets need to be made in an assembly line of commodity materials for less than $1 each. So how are we going to bring down the cost and ramp up the production?

First, we start with a scaled-up version of the NIF target, which produces much greater energy. Our baseline 10 MJ target has a theoretical output of 15X the NIF target – 300 MJ. This is much more than we need to create the initial conditions for the fusion power plant. We will use this extra margin to accommodate imperfections inevitably introduced in the mass-manufacturing process.

Second, we are replacing exotic materials with commodity ones. Namely, instead of gold-lined depleted uranium hohlraums, we’re using lead (Pb). Data at large laser facilities - already shows how lead performs as a hohlraum, and it’s nearly identical to its more exotic counterpart. The process of stamping out lead hohlraums is pretty much identical to making ammunition.

Third, we are scaling up to batch production. Like any progression from hand-made prototypes to factory scale-up, we are going to use fabrication processes that are designed to scale. The process of manufacturing the components for, and the assembly of our targets is remarkably similar to factory production of consumer electronics and other precision components.

For example, current NIF targets utilize a process called chemical vapor deposition (CVD) to create the fuel shell. This process can be scaled up to create tens of thousands of shells at a time. CVD is a 65-year-old, mature process used in a variety of manufacturing activities already, such as semiconductors.

Additionally, our targets (which are cold) have to be robust enough to survive injection at high speed into the target chamber, which is hot. Luckily, the hohlraum protects our targets from both the kinetic and thermal impacts of injection. But rigorously testing the injection survivability will be a key area of engineering for us.

So, at a high level – while NIF’s goal is to make pristine targets to maximize fusion output, our goal is to use a high power 10 MJ driver to overcome the challenges of a less-pristine target.