Reply To: Some about a fusion dispute in Sweden.

[AaronB]

So, the idea is to have one beam of tritium ions, and to shoot another beam of faster-moving deuterium ions at it from the back, and then shoot both beams with an electron beam from the front. Is that right?

If that’s the case, I think it would be very difficult to make the second beam intersect with the first beam without hitting whatever produced the first beam. However, if that problem was resolved and the two beams were able to interact, because they are going in the same direction, there would be less energy difference between them to take advantage of to make them collide and fuse. Most people try to collide the beams from opposite directions. The electron beam is meant to make the two combined beams pinch. Is this a pulsed device, or are the beams constant? It would probably have to be pulsed, because after you send in the ions, assuming they fused along the way, they would reach the electron source and be attracted to it, which would erode it very quickly, and the eroded material would interfere with the ion beams. Depending on the energies involved, there would be quite an X-ray show! If the fusion reaction produced neutrons, you’d still have to use the steam cycle to capture the energy.