Boron cage provides a ready-made Hohlraum

[Andrew Palfreyman]

http://phys.org/news/2014-07-boron-buckyball.html

Stuff protons inside and …viola?
Is this better for NIF?
Is this better for FF?

Andrew

[benf]

I’m also wondering about this boron buckyball material. Would it still be relatively transparent to x-rays? It’s said to be a decent conductor….Can it be produced more easily than Beryllium, or is it just atomic scale? Use it as a coating for the anode?

[Andrew Palfreyman]

If it found itself at the plasma focus, in the sweet spot of the plasmoid, it might improve fusion efficiency. With luck it functions as a containment amplifier. The cage would hopefully be crushed into its contained protons. Looked at another way, it might reduce input energy requirements and automatically boost containment time. It also boosts local density (integrated just over the cage itself). Put yet another way, a boron cage stuffed with protons is a nano fusion bomb waiting to happen.

[benf]

I like the term “amplifier” better than “bomb”…but either way, if it enables fusion it would be a good thing…

[Andrew Palfreyman]

If I were working at Livermore or Oak Ridge or Los Alamos, I’d likely be bidding for supercomputer time to simulate implosion of a boron cage stuffed with hydrogen under NIF conditions. But maybe FF is enough. Only putting in the work will tell. Anyway, my intent was simply to present this idea to this forum.

[delt0r]

Err guys, we are talking about something as small as 60 atoms. Even stuff full of hydrogen its gonna be nothing for fusion. At the temperatures you need its not going to be a bucky ball anymore either.

Also Hohlraum don’t reflect xrays in the “mirror” sense. They absorb xrays or other energy and get so hot they radiate in xrays.

[Author]

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