Is the Polywell reactor tailored exclusively to the Boron/Hydrogen fusion reaction? I was reading about fusion of elements to produce exotic stuff like Ununoctium and was wondering how various and sundry heavy ions would fare in the reactor. I'm not the least bit concerned about power generation, only the production of transactinides.
Is the Polywell a general-purpose fusion device? Can ions of two elements be tossed in, resulting in their fusion? If not, is there a range of atomic weights or specific pairings that would also fuse in the environment of a Polywell reactor?
JB
Production of Transactinides
No, it takes a lot more energy to slam heavy nuclides. Here's an article that talks about a 265MeV cyclotron. With only a few keV for sources and 2MeV for alphas, there's no way to do that in a fusion reactor.
It's kind of a difference between quantity (what you need for fusion) and quality (what you want for esoteric science).
It's kind of a difference between quantity (what you need for fusion) and quality (what you want for esoteric science).