Status of the Mercury pulsed-power generator, a 6-MV 360-kA, magnetically-insulated inductive voltage adder

Mercury is a nominal 6-MV, 360-kA, 2.2-TW magnetically-insulated inductive voltage adder that is being assembled at the Naval Research Laboratory. Mercury, originally known as KALIF-HELA, was located at the Forschungszentrum in Karlsruhe, Germany. Once assembled, Mercury will be used as a testbed for development of high-power electron- and ion-beam diodes. Applications include source development for high-resolution flash radiography, nuclear weapons effects simulation, and particle-beam transport research. This paper highlights the progress of the Mercury assembly and supporting activities, including modifications from the original design, circuit modeling to optimize the Mercury circuit, power-flow simulations to understand and optimize Mercury power flow and load coupling, and MITL theory and modeling to develop a transmission-line code capability for modeling transient effects in MITLs.