In the early 1950s, both fission and fusion processes were under serious study, and ways to combine them, that is hybridize them, began. By 1974 the studies had matured to the point that a review meeting was held. This collection of reports will help readers brief themselves on past work.
The following three proceedings summarize the early work up to 1977.
DCTR Fusion-fission energy review meeting Dec 3 and 4, 1974 ERDA, Germantown, Maryland, Conceptual Fusion-Fission Energy Systerm, ERDA-4 UC-20, Edited by S. Locke Bogart, 382 pages.
Proceedings US-USSR symposium on fusion-fission reactors, July 13-16, 1976, Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, Livermore, California LLL-ERDA, CONF-760733, 272 pages.
Proceedings of the Second Fusion-Fission Energy Systems Review Meeting, Nov 2 and 3, 1977, Washington, D.C. July 1978, U.S. Department of Energy, Edited by S. Locke Bogart, 578 pages. Volume I and Volume II .
Power versus fuel production. The question of hybrids designed to produce fuel for fission reactors or electrical power only or some combination of both was studied in a 544 page report. Because fusion reactors tend to be more expensive to build than fission reactors, the power only option was not found economically favorable unless the plant size was very large to obtain strong economy of scale. Tenney et al., "A systems study of tokamak fusion-fission reactors," PPPL-1450 (1978) 544 pages.
Laser fusion as a fuel producer. A laser fusion neutron source with a lead neutron multiplier was studied for fuel production and power. SOLASE-H A LASER FUSION HYBRID STUDY R. W. Conn et al., 1979, UWFDM-270.
A coordinated set of studies followed involving Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, PPPL, ORNL, INL, ANL, GA GE, W and Bechtel among others. The following reports document some of this work.
A yin-yang coil magnetic mirror with a fast fission fuel producing blanket provided enough energy multiplication and fuel sales to make the low gain (Q=1) system close to economical. D. J. Bender, K. R. Schultz, et al., "Reference design for the standard mirror hybrid reactor," UCRL-52478, GA-A14796 (1978). 542 pages.
The new magnetic mirror configuration, Tandem mirror, formed the basis for this design that had large enough Q values so that high energy multiplication by fission was not necessary and the ideas of fuel production while suppressing fissioning by use of beryllium neutron multiplications was employed. The team involved GA, GE, Bechtel and LLNL. R. W. Moir, et al., "Tandem Mirror Hybrid Reactor Design Study Final Report", Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, CA, UCID-18808 (1980). 636 pages
The ideas evolved further resulting in this well documented report: J. D. Lee, et al., "Feasibility Study of a Fission-Suppressed Tandem-Mirror Hybrid Reactor", Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, CA, UCID-19327 (1982). Hosted by www.Geocities.ws