DARPA wants to bypass the thermal middleman in nuclear power systems

Re:DARPA wants to bypass the thermal middleman in nuclear po... by DennisP on Friday August 09, 2024 @09:02PM (#41206622)

Yep, for D-T 80% of the energy is in neutrons. Helion is using D-D/D-He3, and for that it's about 5% in neutrons, and most of the rest in fast-moving charged particles.

So they have a simple way to extract electricity directly. They squeeze the plasma with a magnetic field from a copper coil, then there's an explosion of charged particles, which pushes back against the magnetic field and causes electricity to flow in the coil.

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Re:DARPA wants to bypass the thermal middleman in nuclear po... by sigmoid10 on Monday August 12, 2024 @02:41AM (#41221715)

D-D (which they are going for right now) is still 50% neutrons. D-He3 is the only aneutronic reaction, but it has tons of other issues.

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Re:DARPA wants to bypass the thermal middleman in nuclear po... by DennisP on Monday August 12, 2024 @06:30PM (#41230093)

As I said, the combined reaction generates 5% of its energy as neutron radiation. The reason it's only 5% is that D-He3 is a much more energetic reaction.

The main issue with D-He3 is that it's more difficult.

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Re:DARPA wants to bypass the thermal middleman in nuclear po... by sigmoid10 on Tuesday August 13, 2024 @10:23AM (#41235762)

That's what I said. But all things equal, D-D is definitely not the best path for direct energy production because of the vast amount of neutrons.

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