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by bilsbie 1276 days ago
How do they plan to deal with the neutrons though? Won’t it damage the equipment?

How much waste heat will there be?

If waste heat is low this could be ideal for space or mars operation.

2 comments

Here's my understanding:

The main electricity-generating fusion reaction is aneutronic -- 3He-D fusion yields regular hydrogen and a proton. But a fuel mixture of 3He+D will inevitably produce some D-D fusion, which yields 50% T+p (tritium and a proton) and 50% of He3 + neutron. The neutrons produced are slower than those produced in D-T fusion (2.45MeV vs 14.06MeV), and are similar to those produced by radiation therapy medical devices.

Since they need the products of D-D fusion anyways (tritium decays into 3He in 12.5 years) they can either run D-rich fuel in the main reactor and extract the yield for future fuel inputs or, if the slow neutrons of D-D fusion still prove too damaging to the device, they can lower the Deuterium ratio in the main reactor's fuel, and designate separate reactors to do the D-D fusion exclusively. That way they can concentrate the cost of neutron damage mostly to one fuel producing reactor, and not have to replace every electricity-generating reactor as often.

IIUC, only the De-De reaction generates neutrons. This is the process they use for generating He-3 (and a tiny bit of power). The video mentions that their plan is to separate the De-De reactors from the from the power-generating De-He3 reactors (which do not create neutrons). Therefore, their main power-generating reactor won't have to deal with damage from neutrons.