For those people who hope that D-T fusion can obsolesce nuclear fission, there is a fatal flaw. While the fusion reaction D + T --> He-4 + n produces a neutron, it takes a neutron to create tritium, Li-6 + n --> He-4 + T. Even if the fusion neutrons are used to breed more tritium, some neutrons will be lost. A neutron source is needed to sustain the fusion cycle, and currently it is the nuclear reactor within which tritium is manufactured from Li-6. Nuclear fission will necessarily accompany D-T fusion. One possibility is to use the fast 14 MeV fusion neutrons to fission natural uranium and thorium, and use the released fission neutrons to breed Pu-239 and U-233 for use in a reactor. I don't feel qualified to judge Mr. Lerner's proposal for B-H fusion. -- Gene
________________________________ From: Warren Smith <warren.wds@gmail.com> To: math-fun <math-fun@mailman.xmission.com> Sent: Friday, May 25, 2012 3:21 PM Subject: [math-fun] revolutionize world energy?
"Lawrenceville plasma physics" is a company that plans to revolutionize energy production with a new fusion reactor, headed by Eric Lerner, author of book "The big bang never happened."
http://www.lawrencevilleplasmaphysics.com/
They just got funded by... Iran, after USA funding sources all refused. Here's a video of Lerner explaining:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4w_dzSvVaM
Be a big coup for Iran if they succeed, but unfortunately I suspect Lerner's plans will not work. (For example all his plans to directly generate electricity strike me as very dubious...)
Still, one has to sort of admire their spunk, perhaps enough of his ideas will work that some progress happens, and I agree with them that neutronless Proton+Boron11 fusion is the only way to go that ever could hope to be economical.
(Normal fusion reactions that emit fast neutrons are complete garbage from any economic standpoint since they convert your ultra expensive fusion reactor to radioactive waste... it is totally pointless to develop them. Also, reactors that use tritium are stupid since there is no tritium in the world, and lithium is rare, and a typical outrageous lie told by fusioneers is that lithium-6 could be extracted from seawater at far less than the energy cost you'd get from it, whereas actually those of us who can do high school physics & chemistry can demonstrate it'd probably cost "more" energy, not "way less"...)
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