Reply To: Is Deuterium + Boron 10 aneutronic?

[BSFusion]

jamesr wrote:

Do you know a book with tables about cross sections for different elements, like proton or deuterium + element? It might be that D+B10 cross section is much higher than D+D at its peak value.

This is a little 30-page chapter from a larger book that discusses a number of reactions relevant to controlled fusion and fusion in stars. (Warning: PDF.) Unfortunately, nothing about D + B 10. Interestingly, it shows p + B 11 with a huge, but very sharp resonance at 146 kEV, before its main peak over 500. Could some machine be designed to take advantage of that?

The full book is “Tokamaks” by John Wesson

Although the resonance is important, the ions will be close to thermal equilibrium as so have a Maxwellian velocity distribution. If you refer to fig 1.5 on page 18 of the pdf, rather than fig 1.3 it shows the Maxwellian averaged fusion cross section. The averaged fusion cross section is slightly higher at temperatures below 100keV than it would otherwise be if you didn’t take the resonance into account. But to get to appreciable reaction rates you still need to be over 100keV.

You could try a to create a non-Maxwellian system eg a beam of protons at exactly that energy. But the energy you need to create a beam will always be many orders of magnitude more than the benefit.

I think you have the wrong source for that pdf, it has been copied verbatim from Chapter #1 of “The Physics of Inertial Fusion” by Stepfano Atzeni and Jurgen Meyer-ter-vehn (2009).