2D radiation magnetohydrodynamic calculations of a doped deuterium gas puff experiment on Z

Summary form only given. A few years ago, double-shell deuterium gas puff experiments were performed on the Z accelerator with the objective of investigating the production efficiency of thermal neutrons using a Z pinch approach. Analytic estimates and 1-D and 2-D simulations predicted thermal neutron yields of ~5x10¹³, which was in agreement with the neutron yields measured on Z. Since the neutron yield is shown to scale as I⁴ where I is the peak current of the pinch and ZR should produce -30% more current than Z, neutron yields on the order of 5x10¹⁶ are predicted to be possible with the use of D-T. In order to accommodate the large currents of ZR, new larger diameter load are being evaluated by performing 2-D r-z simulations with the ALEGRA MHD code. These simulations will be described in this work.