3 ms·
There will be barely any D-T fusion. Neutrons from D-D is a problem they will have to manage, but they have lower energy than D-T would have.
by u320 3y ago
There will be barely any D-T fusion. Neutrons from D-D is a problem they will have to manage, but they have lower energy than D-T would have.
- sebzim4500 3y agoReally? Based on this[1] I was assuming that there would be more D-D fusion than D-He fusion and any resulting tritium nucleus would react almost immediately. Unless they are planning to use an insanely high temperature (like 1B K or something) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_fusion#/media/File:Fusion_rxnrate.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_fusion#/media/File:Fus...
- u320 3y agoNo the resulting T would not react immediately. This doesn't happen in existing D-T reactors, why would it happen here where the T/D ratio orders of magnitude lower? Most atoms in a cycle will never fuse.
- sebzim4500 3y agoIt feels like even if they only give an opportunity for 0.1% of the He3 to fuse, then we would still expect to see significant amounts of D-T reactions. My reasoning is that, at plausible temperatures, D-D fusion is say 5x more frequent than D-He3 reactions, and then D-T fusion is ~1000x more reactive than D-He3. So if 0.1% of the He3 fuses, then ~0.5% of the sample will become tritium, most of which will fuse. Either I'm significantly overestimating the amount of reactants that are expected to fuse in each cycle, underestimating their target temperature, or they plan on have a very helium-rich mix of fuel.