Investigating Fe under WDM conditions for energy generation by fusion

Inertial Confinement Fusion is an established research field that addresses the need of new energy generation sources. It attempts to initiate nuclear fusion reactions by spherical implosion of fuel targets through a set of shock waves. An approach that is currently under modelling is the use of intense shock waves to collapse gas filled metallic cavities inducing asymmetric collapse. It is thus necessary to characterise the properties of the involved high-Z metals, at thermodynamic conditions up to 800 GPa. We propose here to use ns time resolved XAS to characterise the properties of Fe, subjected to high-power laser shock and release, exploiting the capabilities of the new High-Power Laser Facility (HPLF) at the ESRF.