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

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