Reply To: Improving the Pitch

[belbear42]

Tasmodevil44 wrote: In a previous topic, I mulled around with the idea of injecting something else to help get the pB11 reaction over the “hump”, so to speak, or to get it going at lower temperature and/or pressures. It seems that after talking to belbear and others that the physics of fission of massive atoms like uranium, thorium, and etc. is just too incompatible with the focus fusion device. But nobody has yet replied back (as far as I know) about the Helium 3 that I also mentioned as a possibility. One major drawback to this lighter helium isotope is that it is scarce here on Earth. It is more common in the lunar soil of the Moon. Could the injection of He 3 and/or deutrium help to ignite the pB11 reaction any easier?

The problem with He-3 – D reaction is not only He-3 being “unobtainium” in large quantities, but mostly that deuterium is much more likely to react with another deuterium nucleus in a neutronic D-D reaction than with anything else.

And D-D reactions are lousy plasma-heaters because most energy is carried away in neutrons.
These neutrons can be slowed and captured to produce thermal energy, but they do little to heat the plasma.
In fact that’s the whole trouble for the Tokamak people, who can’t get their plasmas hot and dense enough to achieve ignition.

Nevertheless, deuterium is a great diagnostic tool to measure your fusion rate in an experiment, because nothing else than fusion produces neutrons.