Meet the Reactors Accelerating Us Toward Fusion Energy

[Marlin]

Meet the Reactors Accelerating Us Toward Fusion Energy

http://singularityhub.com/2016/08/12/meet-the-reactors-accelerating-us-toward-fusion-energy/?utm_source=StoryGrid&utm_medium=link&utm_campaign=content%20access

[thenuttyneutron]

I do not think our current pursuits of fusion in a torus will yield the answer.  I will embellish on this and provide reasons for this as well as other alternatives. 

The problem with a D-T fusion reaction is that you end up making a neutron that carries away a lot of the energy.  We don't yet have a good energy conversion system for high energy neutrons to electricity.  Most of the energy in a fission reaction goes to the kinetic energy of fission fragments which is easy to convert into heat.  This is why I think our focus should be on aneutronic fusion created in a pollywell design.  The fusion waste is high energy helium nuclei that can easily be converted into heat.  Add in a heat engine like the ones we have been using for many decades and you may have a good start.  With additional work, we may one day have a direct power conversion process of converting the high energy of these helium nuclei directly into electricity. 

http://www.geekwire.com/2016/emc2-revives-quest-to-harness-polywell-nuclear-fusion/ (I am not endorsing EMC2)

Another possibility that I think goes unnoticed is muon catalyzed fusion.  These short lived particles may provide an answer to the coulomb repulsion issue if we were to make a lucky scientific discovery.  What if we somehow figured out a way to make a tight beam of these particles at nearly the perfect energy range to be absorbed by a hydrogen plasma?  The short halflife of a muon may be longer than the time required to get the fusion event to occur.

These are just my personal opinions.