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To: inquest

We can create He-3, but it takes too much energy. We would spend more power generating the fuel than we'd get out of the resulting fusion reaction.

It would be like chemically synthesizing gasoline...we could do it, but gas would cost us $50 a gallon and it would take 5 gasoline gallons worth of energy to create one. It's possible, but pointless.


69 posted on 04/27/2005 6:00:00 PM PDT by Arthalion
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To: Arthalion
One possible product of the D+D reaction is 3He plus a neutron. The other is D+D leading to a triton and proton. But making measurable amounts of 3He this way would take forever using accelerators.

These are some of the reactions that occur in thermonuclear devices, but I wouldn't want to make the 3He that way, either. Much too messy.

We'd have better luck mining it from the moon, as some have suggested. But I don't think we'll see that happening for a while yet. For now, aneutronic fusion isn't going to happen. If fusion happens at all, it will be with some neutron production, which leads to activation, embrittlement, etc. Plus some of this reactions (one is noted above) produce tritium, sometimes in sizable quantities, so there goes the "no radioactive waste" argument. Granted that tritium is a low-energy beta emitter and thus not too difficult to manage, but it is awfully mobile in the ecosphere, and can cause certain groups of radiophobic individuals to freak out (just ask the people who used to work at the High Flux Beam Reactor at Brookhaven Lab, that my old pal Bill Richardson had shutdown).

71 posted on 04/27/2005 6:41:53 PM PDT by chimera
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