http://nextbigfuture.com/2009/09/japan- ... usion.html
Seems like they have a long way to go, but interesting none-the-less!
![Image](http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_VyTCyizqrHs/SsJDN5Pc--I/AAAAAAAAFFk/2KmIb_TX2Bc/s400/muonfusion23jpg.jpg)
Unfortunately, unlikely because the muons are injected into liquid or solid D or T - viz. is an operation performed at very low temperatures.D Tibbets wrote:Of course if the decay products end up producing heat at least some of the energy could be recovered in a thermal generation cycle.
that is true, but in this case the refridgerated deuterium is there by mechanical (energy-input) means. We've got plenty that is 'hotter' than liquid deuterium, there's no work benefit that can be recovered from this situation.kunkmiester wrote:They do thermal cycles at lower temperature--there's a thing that runs on the ocean, pumps propane or something down a hundred feet or so to the colder section. You really just need enough temp difference. I'm not sure a cryogenic thermal cycle would be feasible.
Okay, forget solar panels, cosmic rays are where it's really out. We'll build muon catalyzed fusion surfaces, and we'll call them cosmic panels.wikipedia wrote:About 10,000 muons reach every square meter of the earth's surface a minute; these charged particles form as by-products of cosmic rays colliding with molecules in the upper atmosphere. Traveling at relativistic speeds, muons can penetrate tens of meters into rocks and other matter before attenuating as a result of absorption or deflection by other atoms.
—Mark Wolvertron, science writer, Scientific American magazine, September 2007, page 26 "Muons for Peace"
I'm not claiming that temperature effects the muon halflife. What I'm speculating on is that the muons, once produced are traveling at millions of eV speeds, and will have to be cooled both to prevent then from heating the liquid hydrogen, and because they will have to be slowed before they have a chance to be captured into an atom. This will require some finite amout of time to do, and this could decrease the time they are aviable in the hydrogen soup before they disapear.chrismb wrote:There seem to be a few misunderstandings there, Dan. Muon lifetime is not affected by their 'temperature' (whch is a bulk property) and the idea would have to be to get the fast particles (neutrons and alphas) out to generate a thermal high somewhere other than the reaction mass.
As I mentioned, you cannot make a 'plasma' out of muon atoms, it's non-sensical. A plasma is the ionisation of atoms, but the idea with muon fusion is that you are forming atoms.
Problem with this is that if a square meter of material is loaded with deuterium and or tritium and then almost all of the muons are captured and quickly transferred to subsequent hydrogens as the fusion progresses, each muon would ideally result in perhaps 200 fusions. If 10,000 muons per min ( ~ 160 muons per second) hit your 1 M^2 target, you could get ~ 30,000 fusions per second. You need about 1 trillion fusions per second to get 1 Watt of power. So your 1 M^2 panel would be delivering ~ 0.00000003 Watts of power. This is a little less than the output from a solar panelMirariNefas wrote:Okay, forget solar panels, cosmic rays are where it's really out. We'll build muon catalyzed fusion surfaces, and we'll call them cosmic panels.wikipedia wrote:About 10,000 muons reach every square meter of the earth's surface a minute; these charged particles form as by-products of cosmic rays colliding with molecules in the upper atmosphere. Traveling at relativistic speeds, muons can penetrate tens of meters into rocks and other matter before attenuating as a result of absorption or deflection by other atoms.
—Mark Wolvertron, science writer, Scientific American magazine, September 2007, page 26 "Muons for Peace"
Are you talking about a three-body reaction?! You can wait forever for that to happen.D Tibbets wrote:In a plasma the muons would be free flying. Do to their semirandom motions in the plasma (free ions, electrons, and muons) occasionally they will pass very close to the nucleus of an ion( maby even completing half an orbit before departing if the plasma is cool enough). Compared to a muonic atom, the time spent in this neighborhood would be much less, but the temperature dependant fusion crossection would be much greater. ...