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originally posted by: swanne
Unless, as Larson suggests, you smash the to-be-fused particles into one another. You don't need heat - the energy of the acceleration does the job instead. So in a way, you could achieve "cold" fusion using a small particle accelerator instead of an impossibly hot furnace.
originally posted by: swanne
You mean, more like 14 minutes? Neutrons really don't last long, they usually decay into proton+electron. Which is pretty harmless.
I wonder if placing thermopiles around the fusion event could convert heat more directly into electricity?
Thermopiles are even less efficient. Some fusion reactions that produce high energy alpha particles - p-B11 is one - can directly produce electricity with no conversion and are the most efficient of all.
The U bends at the end are an issue.
originally posted by: swanne
Unless, as Larson suggests, you smash the to-be-fused particles into one another. You don't need heat - the energy of the acceleration does the job instead. So in a way, you could achieve "cold" fusion using a small particle accelerator instead of an impossibly hot furnace.
originally posted by: TEOTWAWKIAIFF
a reply to: swanne
Nuclear fusion will happen if two things happen first. One, power storage since these devices will be operational 24x7x365 because they are difficult to start up/shut down. Two, there is an efficient energy transmission line created (either room temperature superconductor or bundled carbon nanotubes). When these two items become news, fusion will be "announced".
originally posted by: Arbitrageur
Big accelerators take a lot of energy. Small accelerators maybe less, but then they get less acceleration and I think you need a fair amount for fusion. The vast majority of protons in the LHC experiments don't collide, they miss. So I think you have potentially one of the same problems that you have with Tokomak, you might put more energy in than you get out.
Also I'm not sure accelerated particles are "cold", if there's any validity to this explanation of temperature:
The collisions in the LHC can reach trillions of degrees, temperatures hotter than a supernova. They would be less for a smaller accelerator but I don't think it can be called "cold".
originally posted by: swanne
The two tubes are only put in contact where the fusion must occur. I am inclined to think that miss particles won't go wasted - they'll simply return in the loop and make another round. The miss particles are given multiple chances to collide.
Hehe, you misunderstood (sorry, my bad!) By "cold" I meant not the beam or the collision event, but actually the fact that fusion could be achieved without you having to physically heat up particles so to induce thermonuclear fusion.
The magnets are all foreseen to be permanent magnets
originally posted by: Bedlam
Just looking at the diagram, I see a number of issues:
1) It's going to take energy to emit, accelerate, and collect the electrons. That won't be trivial.
2) The U bends at the end are an issue. You are not going to be able to bend the ions and the electrons around the same radius. Not only are they different masses, they're likely going to be going different speeds just looking at it. One or the other is going into the wall. And that's a big energy loss.
3) The U bends, part 2, will radiate synchrotron radiation both from the electrons and ions. Another energy drain.
4) You'll lose ions to recombination with your electrons. More as the speeds differ.
5) At the focus, you will not be able to keep the deuterium on one loop and the tritium on the other. They're going to mix and come out randomly. If they mix, you could have issues on the u bends again as the deuterium and tritium will bend differently, it's a little mass spectrometer.
6) you get the current up, you're going to have trouble GETTING a focus - the particles are going to want to unbunch due to mutual repulsion.
originally posted by: swanne
Acceleration of particles still require a time-varying magnetic field, though? Would the magnet physically move so to achieve time variation? If so, how much energy would it take to move the magnets?