Talk:Aneutronic fusion

message: * Talk:Nuclear fusion/Annotated bibliography of p-B11 fusion is a somewhat dated (1998) list of references with my (POV warning!) comments on them. It doesn't have a clear place in this article, at least in the present form, but I thought it might be useful enough to be pointed out here. --Art Carlson 10:16, 8 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Untitled 

message: Independent of the blood being shed on the front, I would like to come to an agreeement on the data we use, starting with <σv> as a function of temperature. The numbers I use are verifiable, but I think they come from multiple sources and may not be entirely consistent. Can we agree to use the functional form and coefficients given in
 Cox, Larry T., Thermonuclear Reaction Bibliography with Cross Section Data for Four Advanced Reactions.,
 AF-TR-90-053, Edwards Air Force Base: Phillips Laboratory Technical Services Office, 1991
and reproduced here? I'm open to other suggestions. --Art Carlson 08:19, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Consistent data set 

message: Since Eric seems to have difficulty focussing on detailed arguments, I have created this section to give him a leg up. Specifically, he has several times made a reversion essentially identical to this one. I provide space here for him to explain why he made each of these changes. --Art Carlson 20:56, 3 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: This argument is not worth the time devoted to it. I have merged part of your paragraph with part of mine. I will narrow my objection to the fact that your claim that one measure is most imortant is totally unsourced and is your own original opinion, so does not belong there. Find a citation for it and then say "according to so and so..." other wise drop it.Elerner 18:33, 9 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I can live with that. Speaking of dropping it, I guess you saw the light about points 4 and 5. I'm still looking forward to hearing your reasons for maintaining points 1 through 3, though. --Art Carlson 19:14, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

text: oh, put them back in yourself without reverting and let's end this!Elerner 20:58, 9 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Glady. Just for the record, there were eight rounds of reversions due to these differences, which you now concede without having once justified them. I hope we can work more efficiently in the future. --Art Carlson 21:18, 9 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Eric's justification for his reversions 

message: We now have 12 inline references in fifty-some lines of text in Aneutronic fusion#Technical challenges. Do we still need the  template? --Art Carlson 10:00, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  References in section on "Technical challenges" 

message: In every published fusion power plant design, the part of the plant that produces the fusion reactions is much more expensive than the part that converts the nuclear power to electricity.
This equipment is sufficiently expensive that about 80% of the capital cost of a typical fossil-fuel electric power generating station is in the thermal conversion equipment.[citation needed]
Not really a contradiction, but the latter seems irrelevant. — Omegatron 00:46, 23 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Actually I think with some re-wording this is actually useful information. If the second sentance is correct, and I believe it is, then it would seem the capital costs of a fusion plant would be very different, and that seems to be worth mentioning. That said, I'm not sure this is the proper article to do it in! Maury 19:04, 23 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Contradiction? 

message: The second paragraph doesn't give a very convincing explanation why this reaction chain is impractical:
 p + 6Li   → 4He (1.7 MeV) + 3He (2.3 MeV)
 3He + 6Li → 2 4He + p + 16.9 MeV
 3He + 3He → 4He + 2 p
All it says is that the non-thermal distribution of 3He provides an insufficient enhancement to the later stages.
Is the cross-section of 3He+6Li too low?  Does electromagnatic repulsion require too high a reaction temperature?
Can someone elaborate or reword this section a bit? --Dgies 21:04, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  p+6Li fusion efficiency? 

message: "For given densities of the reacting nuclei, the reaction rate for hydrogen boron achieves its peak rate at around 600 keV (6.6 billion degrees Celsius or 6.6 gigakelvins) while D-T has a peak at around 66 keV (730 million degrees Celsius)."
What are these "given densities" that the article speaks of, and why are they the important ones for aneutronic fusion such that the article mentions the (I assume) ion energy of the p11B peak for these particular densities and no others. -- TristanDC 20:51, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: It means, choose any densities you want, but keep then constant while you vary the temperature. No matter what densities you take, you will always find the maximum reaction rates to be maximum at 600 keV and 66 keV respectively. --Art Carlson 09:55, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm going to change the wording to "For any given density of the reacting nuclei, ..." -- TristanDC 20:24, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Given Densities? 

message: Bp fusion engin thepry by MHz theta pinches plasma  focus fybrid
Toyokawa High Phyisics Labratory, Japan T&F 0533-87-3880,  Shigetaka  Ikegami
10~-6Ω　one turn resistance MHz strong magnetic field C-L resonance elements bundle first mode coil, 1m dia., is easy. It is found that linear relation between coil conductance and elements number is hold for C capacity part with air or gass space, as well as L fine coated wires number.　Vortex Jule loss is constant for 0.01mm dia. coated steel wires number.  Theta pinch and plasma focus system hybrid is easy. 
 
By Bp fusion engine the sea containing boron becomes more than oil. By BxJ acceleration of expanding magnetic field mat piston, 200～600kev velocity snowplow plasma of high density 10ev is possible. Skin current Jule heat is recovered by heat cycle. During acceleration and expansion, plasma is recombined with hｖ radiation. It is efficient to acclerate low density large volume ｐlasma by large width cylinder boundary, with slops for plasma slips to center boundary. At pinch, leaks from both plasma ends are impossible by composited millor magnetic field of skin current and axial focus current. Adiabatic compression without shock is considered. And verfied with shallow water suimlation experiment. High density is confitmed with isothermal ionizing cooling compression. High density small quanrity plasma dia. is vey very small.  Pinch time, solitary wav pass time through pinched plasma, is vey small so that electron radiation is small. Fusion energy is larger than sum of all losses. Fusion energy, compressed plasma energy and piston magnetic field energy are compleatly recovered every MHz cycle by piston withdrow. Fusion pulses series generates power with efficiency of abou 0.6～0.7.
--(Contributed on 05:18, 2007 March 12 by user 211.129.222.223)
:This is so incomprehensible that it is impossible to refute. More to the point, the citation of the source (if indeed that is what it is) is also incomprehensible. With all reluctance to revert without detailed discussion, I have no other choice here. --Art Carlson 11:34, 12 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: OK. It looks like the ref. is S. Ikegami, "A new type of low-loss, strong-field RF coil for commercial nuclear fusion", Electrical Engineering in Japan, Vol.111, No.4, 1991, pp. 52-59. I can't find it online. I can check, but I doubt that it's in our library. Has anyone read this? Can anyone vouch for the reliability of the source? (peer-reviewed? conference proceedings?) Can anyone justify why this particular article/concept is notable enough to be singled out in this article? (Does this paper have a significant number of citations? Is the author a well-respected expert in the field of fusion energy?) Finally, assuming positive answers to these questions, the language and NPOV are so poor that they would have to be cleaned up before going live. --Art Carlson 09:16, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: There are full text issues of EEJ online here, but they only go back to Vol 118 (1997). If that is the most recent (perhaps the only) publication on this concept, that is an additional indication that it does not come from a reliable source. --Art Carlson 11:40, 20 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  MHz theta pinch 

message: I am not a physicist, but from what I understand, the idea behind Polywell is that high velocities can be reached without high temperatures, which would enable p-B11 fusion.  So should this:
Be changed to emphasize velocity? — Omegatron 14:52, 17 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: That quote is correct. Temperature is somewhat misleading, but essentially no different. Ion energy (eV) and temperature  (K) are interchangeable, except that temperature is usually referring to the average energy of a whole species of particles.  A Polywell is a hot fusion device.  You would not want to stick your hand in the plasma (if that were even possible).  The idea is the same as any other IEC device.  Instead of using ECR heating to increase the average velocity (I.E. temperature) of a magnetically confined maxwellian plasma to the point where significant fusion occurs, you set up an electrostatic potential well to accelerate ions to the optimal velocity for fusion.  This creates a nearly monoenergetic (non-maxwellian) plasma in the reaction area.  Instead of increasing the energy of the whole plasma, it manipulates the plasma to move the high energy ions together. — Blane Dabney 20:57, 31 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Temperature or velocity? 

message: The article states that Helium-3 provides a fuel supply problem but its abundance on the moon is relatively higher, some fraction of a part per million. The words relatively higher link to the helium-3 page which states its natural abundance as 0.00013% or so. If i'm correct, that works out to 1.3 ppm which would make helium-3 much more abundant on earth, so either this article or the helium-3 nat. abundance figure is incorect!  -ZMiller  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.183.44.109 (talk) 12:21, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: One figure refers to the fraction of all the stuff in the material on the Moon's surface that is Helium-3. The other figure refers to the fraction of all Helium atoms, wherever they occur in the Solar System, which have the isotope number 3. The numbers are in no way comparable to each other. --Art Carlson (talk) 12:47, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Helium-3 Abundance 

message: There are a lot of "could"s, "should"s, and "would"s in this article which should refer to who thinks these things might be the case and why. As it is it reads like journalism. I know a lot of those parts were written by a former science journalist so it's to be expected, but it could do with being made more sure of what it's saying. I suspect that a good few fact tags will have to show up when they are changed. Does anybody agree that these sentences should be bolder about what they are saying and fact tags should be added? TristanDC (talk) 02:37, 24 March 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Conditional case used where positive statements /should/ be made (pun intended) 

message: Since I am a layperson, I cannot implement changes myself, but I think the section on "Direct conversion of energy" could be improved in a couple of ways.
i. A wikilink could be added to each of the mentioned conversion techniques, since they are not obvious. For example, I would like to know more about microwave technology that would enable harvesting the energy from an aneutronic reactor. As for electrostatic methods, do they mean Electrostatic generators? If so, it is not obvious from the relevant link how they could be applied to the case. The same applied to inductive techniques, although this case is more down to earth to the eyes of a layperson (after all, the basic laws of electromagnetism are a common topic in Secondary School).
ii. They say that aneutronic reactors generate most of their energy in the form of charged particles. I can see that in the case of the protrons in the first, fourth and fifth reactions in the candidate section. But the remaining reactions only generate uncharged atoms such as helium and carbon. Where would the energy come from in these cases, which include the p-B reaction? Plus, what is the form of the electromagnetic energy that is released by the reactions (the MeV numbers in brackets next to each one)? Is this just heat (i.e., infrared radiation), or is it a more coherent wave such as X-rays, gamma rays, visible light etc., that can be harvested as well?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 144.92.43.122 (talk) 21:07, 23 July 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Suggestions for the last section 

message: # Aneutronic here seems to be reactions that do not generate neutrons to the outside world or are we talking no contamination (reactor structure) whatsoever. Would seem that n + 10B > 11B* > 7Li + 4He generates energy without producing neutrons.
# This article seems to concentrate on magnetic containment methods that, for all the excessive energy input, can't get more than a few percent conversion. 
# Example the p + 11B reaction: are the energy thresholds from actual fusion reactions or proton beam tests or what?
# 1H + 11B > 12C* > 3 4He  We do some engineering testing and have a "tube head" type X-ray for metals that will max out just under an MeV. The asterisk on the previous equations refers to the high energy metastable isotope e.g. 236U is stable but 236U* (from n + 235U) fissions. 9Be generates neutrons when exposed to x-rays, can we generate energy or initiate reactions with x-rays on 7Li? 6Li + n > 7Li* > 4He + 3H + 4.7 MeV and 7Li + n > 6Li + 2 n + 3 MeV. The Thermonuclear Wiki section notes that most of the 238U fission and Li fusion reactions were caused by x-ray and gamma from the initiator.
# See neutron Source Neutron Generator and Fusor Wikipedia articles also including ion beams for p + 11B reaction. Notes high efficiency of D_T reaction with 160KeV ion source. 
# Industrial size ion generators: c.f. the Thyratrons used to commutate (DC to AC) the 1400 Megawatt 500KV DC lines from Bonneville dam to California.
# Find any proton absorbtion cross sections? Apparently 9Be + 1H > 2 4He + 2H has a low ion beam voltage threshold.
Shjacks45 (talk) 01:10, 24 July 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: i have nothing to add except for (1), that because neutrons are unstable, they have to come from somewhere, so n + 10B > 11B* > 7Li + 4He isn't aneutonic after all. -- 99.233.186.4 (talk) 14:21, 15 August 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Questions? Comments. 

message: Surely p+B, p+Li and p+N are fission reactions, not fusion reactions. The products have lower atomic number than the fuel. That p is an element is irrelevant: the fission induced by p hitting U238 is always referred to as fission, not fusion.
Qemist (talk) 05:03, 29 June 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: There is a brief thread on this on Talk:Nuclear fusion. If you want to discuss this further, that article is probably a better place. The upshot is that you can make a case to call it either one, but everybody has been calling it fusion for decades, so Wikipedia will too. --Art Carlson (talk) 07:23, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

text: Totally agree. No matter how many people in how many places keep calling this a fusion reaction (because it sounds fancier and because fission has come to be associated with radioactive byproducts), this is nevertheless a fission reaction. All that matters for fusion is that small particles enter and a big (stable) particle emerges - as in stars. Boron getting bombarded by protons in order to break it into Helium, is fission. 190.25.37.118 (talk)  — Preceding undated comment added 13:54, 1 February 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Fusion misnomer 

message: Consider underground oil versus "methane hydrate". We have "proven" oil reserves yet, even though there is estimated to be ten times that energy in gas hydrates, all we hear of methane hydrate are disasters attributed to it.
Muon mediated fusion via tunneling is a given, yet due to foolish attempts to duplicate "excess heat" generated in an open system delegates "cold fusion" to the scrap heap of history. With some experience in metals testing and trace analysis, (and having come from one of the few schools with a reactor on campus) the claim of Deuterium fusion seems unlikely. However the reaction conditions for the testers who reported success all seemed to required Lithium in alkaline Deuterium Oxide at high currents. The H-H bond requires 104KCal/Mole to break yet only a gentle pressure is required to force Hydrogen through a Palladium disk. At higher Hydrogen pressures pure Palladium can exhibit an explosive phase change. I have worked on high pressure (50,000 psi) Palladium Hydrogenations. Purportedly the Deuterium nuclei exist interstitially surrounded by the metallic electron cloud which like the Muon, theoretically allows close approach by the nuclei especially if they both occupy the same interstitial location, say at a deformity, their close approach allows tunneling of a nucleon. The reaction conditions however are similar to Copper plating where I observed Potassium diffused several microns into the Steel underlying the Copper plating. My experience tells me there is something occurring between the Deuterium and the Lithium. Weather Balloon (like from Area 51) Hydrogen Generators used 1 mm Pd(Ag 5%) membranes to purify Hydrogen as that alloy didn't fracture like pure Pd. Of course can't test with 6Li, it is illegal. Unlike Deuterium and Lithium, Helium is immobile in the Palladium lattice, and has been noted when Pd cathodes were sacrificed. I cannot abide the "excess heat" argument because of electrical energy entering the system unmonitored and gaseous Hydrogen and Oxygen escaping the system, but no matter how impure there is no way to explain the Helium in the Palladium.
My reason for going into this much detail is two well documented Japanese articles. One which proved that Lithium with normal water, normal Hydrogen, did not show excess heat, or other sign of reaction, until Borate was added. Note that the first historical discovery of Boron was electrolysis of aqueous solution of Borate. The second note was Electrolysis of (alkaline) Potassium Hydroxide solution at high currents using Nickel cathode and normal water. The reacted cathode on dissolution showed traces of Calcium but the control cathode did not.
Consider: there are major differences between the reactivity of 235U and 238U to thermal neutrons and fast neutrons and X-rays. (From 10-15% of a reactors power comes from fission of 238 from fast neutrons; 40% of the energy of a "Hydrogen Bomb" comes from Gamma rays causing 238U fission. Binding energy calculations suggest 9Be extra neutron is held by 500KeV yet neutron energy admixed with 210Po suggest a 1.2MeV barrier. Could the 9Be neutron tunnel to 10B ?  7Li has a low thermal neutron cross section (absorbs a neutron then rapidly decays to 2 alpha) yet fast neutrons give n + 7Li = 2 n + 6Li. Under high energy plasma conditions you discuss high temperatures and short contact times; read the description of the Muon catalyzed reaction and the higher contact time noted in the tunneling based processes. And particles only are mentioned yet X-rays can give 11B* = 7Li + 4He and 7Li* = 4He + 3H.
:2H + 6Li = 2 4He  
:1H + 11B = 3 4He  
:1H + 39K = 40Ca  as another aneutronic energy possibility? 
Shjacks45 (talk) 13:56, 2 August 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  At the risk of sounding weird : cold fusion - 2 Japanese articles 

message: See http://www.tpub.com/content/doe/h1019v1/css/h1019v1_108.htm Boron-11 plus alpha generates neutrons in neutron source.
Shjacks45 (talk) 17:26, 5 August 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Side reactions 

message: I propose that the article Proton-boron fusion be merged into this article, Aneutronic fusion. Proton-boron fusion is a very small article already, and there is a lot of content overlap in this article. This article contains a lot of information about p –11B fusion, while there is comparatively virtually nothing in the P-B fusion article. And, there is not a single link to Proton-boron fusion in this article, even though it talks about that a lot, so it seems like both articles have been developed separately. It would be better to merge the former into the latter. Llightex (talk) 09:06, 21 July 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Merger proposal 

message: Does the D+D reaction qualify for this article? The source below says it produces "no" neutrons...
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/09/150925085550.htm
Lfstevens (talk) 02:42, 11 October 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  D+D? 

message: I noticed that the article refers to this reaction:
:11B + α → 14N + n + 157 keV
I thought the reaction was 
:11B + p
what's up? Lfstevens (talk) 16:27, 11 October 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Copyedit 

message: https://newsroom.unsw.edu.au/news/science-tech/pioneering-technology-promises-unlimited-clean-and-safe-energy should be added to at least this article. 
And why doesn't this article even mention LENR or even have a link to cold fusion, and why doesn't that article even mention boron-hydrogen fusion or even boron? --Espoo (talk) 15:02, 25 February 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  cold fusion  

message: The table in the Reaction rates subsection has a confusing right hand column. The section has no source to check with.
The text says the column is cross-section (and the values could fit), but the column heading is <sigma.velocity>/T^2. Perhaps the values are the cross section, in which case the column heading should be explained, or the text is wrong and the column is somehow related to maybe the Lawson criteria. A source for the table, or the values in it, would be helpful. - Rod57 (talk) 12:36, 8 November 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Unclear table under Reaction rates 

message: I am not an expert, but have read a bit about this topic today, and it seems to me that while the fusion reactions are the same, the way in which two lasers trigger fusion in the work by Cohen et al. (the paper in Nature) differs from the mechanism proposed by Hora et al. (and patented for the Australian company HB11). Am I right? Elias (talk) 19:30, 12 October 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Confusion regarding proton-Boron methods that employ two lasers 

message: If Li7 has a high cross section for p(,n) reaction then what about Li6 (p,n) = 2× He3? TaylorLeem (talk) 12:48, 8 December 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  High crossection?