Re:Lattice Confinement Fusion
by s1artibartfast on Wednesday September 23, 2020 @06:49PM
(#24573144)
My understanding is that they are talking about bulk heating of a metal carrier, probably by a tens to low hundreds of degrees for power production. Not every particle in the medium is at Mev, otherwise it would be trillions of degrees kelvin.
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Re:Lattice Confinement Fusion
by marcosdumay on Thursday September 24, 2020 @09:24AM
(#24578367)
In direct conversion, all of the particles used on the conversion have MeV energies. It is exactly that bulk heating that is the problem.
When you get a very low entropy source and your first step on using it consist on increasing the entropy 1000000000 times, you lose a lot of flexibility and efficiency.
Nuclear fusion is pretty much the exact opposite of a low entropy source. In any case, thermal power plants (gas, coal or nuclear) reach up to 50% efficiency with modern gas or steam turbines.