Fusion Via Persuasion

SEWilco writes "Researchers are making progress toward causing muon-catalyzed fusion. A muon allows creation of a tritium-deuterium molecule, then forces the nuclei together. This is fusion by atomic-level trickery rather than the brute force approach of simulating the center of a star. Progress is being made on the two lab-level problems in the process; if those are solved then a muon-catalyzed fusion plant becomes an engineering problem."

Comments

Someone didn't get enough coffee

[the_other_one]

The source listed at the bottom of the article Physics Review Letters (vol 85, p1674) is incorrect.

It looks like the correct source should be Physical Review Letters -- August 21, 2000 -- Volume 85, Issue 8, pp. 1642-1645

The Abstract is available here

You can download the .PDF or gziped PS version of the article for $20 US but I'm not that interested.

Re:Sustainable?

[AdrianG]

I think the low temperature was used because it is easier to collect useful data without letting other factors pollute the results. Muon catalized fusion is considered a cooler fusion mechanism because it can, in theory, produce useful output at temperatures of 1000 C or less. It cannot be used to produce useful amounts of energy (i.e. more energy than you put in) at the extremely low temperatures cited in the artcile, but it might produce useful experimental results.

Adrian

Do it in your home?

[ka9dgx]

What if we just take a nice palladium or nickel target, put it in an aqueous solution of lithium hydroxide, and apply a voltage differential to it? This would cause the metal matrix to load with the available lithium and/or hydrogen ions near the surface. We then just wait for a muon to happen along (cosmic rays, etc)... and watch what happens (aneutronic nuclear fusion). It might happen more frequently at altitude, say Denver or Boulder Colorado. It would be less likely to happen at lower altitudes, and might be very sensitive to impurities (aka Poisons) just like the first nuclear fission reactors were. Similar situations have happened with novel physics before, for example, If it weren't for stubborn engineers from Westinghouse insisting on more room for fuel, all the work at Hanford during WWII would have been waste. It was only later learned that certain products of fission reactions act to poison the reaction.

All the above could be done... any competent chemist could do it, no physicist required. Even the home brew experimenter can get into the game.

It might be interesting to consider the case of this happening with in a metal matrix that has just been so loaded, then compressed quite a bit, using something like a diamond anvil press, etc. It's quite possible it could go BOOM in a big way, converting some mass directly to energy. (If this were possible though, one might expect certain three letter Government agencies to get into the act of surpressing the technology).

That's my two cents for the day.

--Mike--

PS. Why didn't I see this story on the main page?