Reply To: Energy Output – MW & GW

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JimmyT wrote: Keep in mind that the radiation hazard is only one of the reasons for wanting to avoid neutron production. The energy from charged particles in a beam is easy to harvest. Any neutrons produced would carry away energy too. But the only way to harvest it would be by some sort of heat engine. Now if you are wanting to produce neutrons for some transmutation process, fine. But keep in mind you are going to sacrifice harvestable energy in the process.

nuclear reactors run fine on heat engines. Its a matter of energy multiplication: if you put in 1 unit of energy in and out comes only .5 units of energy out from fusion it going to be really hard to make that energy positive no matter how efficient the conversion process, but if the fusion reactions emits neutrons which cause nuclear fission in spend nuclear fuel then you can increase the energy return. Its called a subcritical reactor were the fuel in the reactor can’t maintain a chain reaction anymore from its own neutrons so a outside neutron source is provided, the neutrons produced by the fission help to supplement to neutron source but it never achieves criticality (hence subcritical reactor). Its safer then existing nuclear reactors, can run on more types of fuel and can actually consume nuclear waste, The only problem has been trying to make a reasonable sized high flux neutron source, at present particle accelerators are considered but their so god dam huge and expensive, what if a dense plasma focus the size of a tin can could do what a half mile long particle accelerator does?