Moontanman Posted December 28, 2017 Share Posted December 28, 2017 An aneutronic reaction is being proposed for a new fusion reactor that would not emit neutrons and it's energy could be turned directly into electrical power with no steam turbines involved. https://www.livescience.com/61298-new-fusion-reactor-uses-boron-and-hydrogen.html?utm_source=notification Quote If you fuse hydrogen-0 (just a single proton with no neutrons or electrons) and boron-11 (a version of boron with six neutrons) to make three helium-4 nuclei (each containing two protons and two neutrons), the researchers wrote, no neutrons get wasted. The atoms combine cleanly without losing any of their core particles. And in the reactor Hora proposes, the energy of the plasma could be converted directly into electricity without wastefully heating up water along the way, because the fusion's energy is released as a stream of electronically charged particles, which can relatively easily be turned into current in a wire. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MigL Posted December 28, 2017 Share Posted December 28, 2017 (edited) Eliminates a lot of the losses associated with Deuterium-Tritium reactions, but Boron plasma temps are about 10 times higher than the D-T reaction. So the 'engineering' and technological obstacles are even higher. Once those challenges are overcome , we can worry about squeezing efficiencies with optimized cycles. Nevertheless. a very interesting article. Edited December 28, 2017 by MigL 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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