Re:Radical hydrogen-boron reactor leapfrogs current nuclear ...
by saagarjha on Friday February 21, 2020 @08:26AM
(#22382875)
Not a physicist, but I thought it seemed fishy as well. I’m curious how they plan to sustain a reaction, since their setup didn’t seem to be useful for more than a single shot…
[ Parent
| on HN ]
Re:Radical hydrogen-boron reactor leapfrogs current nuclear ...
by tic_tac on Friday February 21, 2020 @08:44AM
(#22382989)
At https://www.hb11.energy/our-technology they list a number of papers they've published supporting their approach.
On ignoring the H B-11 reaction with high intensity lasers: https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms3506
On the reaction avalanche: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/laser-and-particle-b...
On the conversion of alpha particles to electricity: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/laser-and-particle-b...
Re:Radical hydrogen-boron reactor leapfrogs current nuclear ...
by lab-notes on Friday February 21, 2020 @08:36AM
(#22382940)
This reads like a type of ICF which normally has a stream of pellets being fed in after the initial pellet has reached a hot enough temperature to sustain the fusion reaction.
Re:Radical hydrogen-boron reactor leapfrogs current nuclear ...
by londons_explore on Friday February 21, 2020 @09:53AM
(#22383514)
I don't think the goal is to sustain the reaction here... I think the goal is to make a pulsed reactor, where you start the reaction on each pellet in turn. You could imagine a laser firing at 1000 pulses per second, and firing a stream of 1000 pellets per second into the reaction vessel that each pulse hits.
Pellets could turn out to be the size of a grain of sand.