Reply To: NIMBY FUD

[jamesr]

Steven Sesselmann wrote: what I do believe is that ionizing particles below ground potential, lowers the relative Coulomb barrier.

In a word… No.

All the potential does is create a E-field to accelerate the ions & electrons. At the point of closest approach any two ions in question will be right on top of each other so the the potential difference between them will be near enough zero. The E-field creating the ‘Coulomb barrier’ from their own positive charge is many orders of magnitude larger.

Lets do a few quick sums.

The deuterium cross-section at 50keV is roughly 0.02barns = 2E-30 m^2 This probability of fusion reaction corresponds to the area swept out by one ion as it approaches the other
take the square root of this to get the rough distance (to an order of magnitude) = 10^-15m – We need them to get this close to fuse (NB this is smaller than what is sometimes thought as the geometric size of a nucleus which corresponds to its scattering cross-section)

The electric field created by one ion at the position of the other at this distance is E=1/(4pi*eps0) *q/r^2 ~10^20 V/m

So in any case a few hundred thousand V/m Electric field created externally is insignificant to the field the ions must work against as they approach each other.