Re: Fusion chain reaction?

Joseph Warner <Joseph.D.Warner@xxxxxxxx> wrote:

"Uncle Al" <UncleAl0@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:46E89E93.C0A22070@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
eastmond@xxxxxxxxx wrote:

Light element fusion requires the product of density, time, and
temperature exceed a critical value. Fusion spontaneously
disassembles without propagation (second order reaction) unless
actively confined - implosion, gravitation, external EM fields,
possibly inertia. Deuterium is nobody's idea of inertial confinement
- including deuterated polyethylene. You only have a few shakes (tens
of nanoseconds) to get the job done before the mass thermally expands,
reaction rate dropping as the inverse square of concentration.

You could dump in muons. That works on paper and nowhere else.

As I remember that doesn't work on paper. The muon's half-life is too short.

It's long enough for producing many muon-catalyzed fusion events.
The problem is producing muons cheaply enough.
When some clever soul invents a way to produce muons
for a few hundred MeV apiece the proces
will become quite practical.

Jan

.