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0 pointshtag2y ago0 comments

> The D-He3 reaction is purely aneutronic, and while some D-D will still happen, they can tune it so it doesn't happen much. That would mean very little neutron radiation at the power plants.

Yea. I'm just very curious as to what these numbers look like in practice. Neutrons are essentially waste emissions with their plan, but physics and engineering constrains will determine how much they can tune out D-D reactions.

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schiffern2y ago

> very curious as to what these numbers look like in practice

At their stated "optimum" temperature of 200 million kelvin[0] or ~17 keV, the selectivity of the two cross-sections (D-H3/D-D) is about 0.7[1].

Let x = the fraction of D (we'll generously assume no T contamination, so the remainder 1-x is He3), plug in the reaction energies[2], and rearrange.

Graph is here: https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=plot+y+%3D+1.225+x%5E2%...

The top line is total non-neutron power, and the bottom line is neutron power. The horizontal axis is the fraction of D in the mix, and the vertical axis is proportional to power.

It might help compare the relative tradeoffs if you zoom in on the rising slope of the power curve, and normalize both curves to 1: https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=plot%3A+y%3D1%2F3.9503+...

[0] https://www.reuters.com/technology/microsoft-buy-power-nucle...

[1] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:RxDT-DD-DHe3.jpg

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_fusion#Criteria_and_ca...

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