Re:DARPA wants to bypass the thermal middleman in nuclear po...
by exabrial on Friday August 09, 2024 @06:36PM
(#41205933)
There definitely trendy since some high profile YouTubers were invited to tour! I sincerely hope they can succeed. I believe a limiting factor is going to be fuel unfortunately, as well as I’m not entirely sure it’ll be radiation free.
[ Parent
| on HN ]
Re:DARPA wants to bypass the thermal middleman in nuclear po...
by DennisP on Friday August 09, 2024 @08:25PM
(#41206487)
The original fuel is deuterium, which is absurdly abundant on Earth. Pure deuterium fusion results in half helium-3, and half tritium which decays to helium-3 with a 12 year half-life. Then their main reaction is D-He3.
The D-D reaction is less energetic and produces a neutron, and the D-He3 reaction doesn't produce a neutron. The combined reaction would release about five percent of its total energy as neutron radiation. The neutrons from D-D are about as energetic as fission neutrons, rather than the extremely high energy of D-T fusion neutrons.
They'll never run out of fuel; there's enough deuterium in your morning shower to provide all your energy needs for a year. But the need to breed He3 will put a limit on how fast they can possibly scale up. It could be that manufacturing will be slower than that anyway though.