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FUSION FUEL

RocketCat sez

Why fool around with dirty, obsolete, uncool, relatively weak, and dangerously radioactive nuclear fission when you can use clean, cutting edge,
trendy, more powerful, and practically radiation-free nuclear fusion?

Because we can't figure out how to build a blasted fusion reactor, that's why.

Researchers have been promising us a workable fusion reaction "in the next ten years" for more than half a century now. To me they look like Lucy telling Charlie
Brown to come kick the football just one more time. Methinks the problem is just a tad more difficult than they are willing to admit to their investors.

This is also one of two reasons why fans of mining Helium-3 on Luna are actually trying to sell you swamp land in Florida.

Magnetic confinement fusion tries to hold the frantically squirming fusion plasma in a complicated magnetic field. I've been told this is about as easy as using a web
of rubber bands to hold a blob of gelatin or trying to nail Jell-O to the wall. Every time they figure out how to add more magnetic fields to deal with the latest fusion
instability, the fusion plasma figures out three more new ways to wiggle out.

And inertial confinement fusion is shooting at a speck of fusion fuel with hundreds of lasers arranged like a three-dimensional circular firing squad, and hope that if
you get lucky the resulting fusion explosion doesn't scrag the reactor.

But if they can ever get it to work, woo-boy, then we'll be cookin' with gas.

Fission weapons (aka "atomic bombs") did bring an end to World War II, but nuclear scientists did not rest there.
The second way to use nuclear physics to release vast quantities of energy is by nuclear fusion. By 1951 the first
fusion weapon had been designed, the Teller-Ulam thermonuclear weapon (aka "H-bomb"). Fission was now old-
hat, fusion was tapping the same source of power as the freaking sun. It was the energy of the future.

And as year overtakes year, fusion power remains the "energy of the future", it never becomes the energy of today.
As with most things it is far more difficult to do something constructive than to do something destructive. Scientists
all over the world have been trying to develop fusion power since the 1950's, and they are still far away from the
"break-even" point (where they actually get more energy out of the fusion reactor than they put in to kick start it).
They keep working on it, though, because the benefits are huge. You get more energy from a gram of fuel, there is
no chance of a runaway reaction (it is hard enough just to keep the reaction running), no chance of large-scale
releases of radioactivity, little or no atmospheric pollution, the fuel is mostly harmless light elements in small
quantities, waste has only short-lived radioactivity, and it does not produce weapons grade plutonium as a by-
product.

There are two basic operations possible in the universe, analysis and synthesis. That is, breaking one large object into smaller parts, or assembly smaller parts into one
larger object. The ancients called this "solve et coagula." With fission, you take one large unstable atom and break it into fission fragments (aka "split the atom"). With
fusion, you take two or more small atoms and fuse them into one larger atom.

In both cases, when you weigh the things you start with and weigh the result, you will find the result weighs less. This is know as the binding energy mass defect. It
represents the amount of matter that is turned into energy. Everybody knows that e = mc2, but unless you've had a physics class you may not know that c (the speed of
light in a vacuum) is a mind-boggling huge number, and squaring a mind-boggling huge number makes it astronomically huger. Bottom line is that microscopic amounts
of matter create titanic amounts of energy.

The conversion is 1 atomic mass unit = 931.494028(±0.000023) MeV.

Example

D-T fusion starts with deuterium and tritium and has a result of one helium-4 atom and a neutron. The starting mass is 2.013553 + 3.015500 = 5.029053. The
ending mass is 4.001506 + 1.008665 = 5.010171. Subtracting the two, we find a mass defect of 0.018882. Multiply by 931.494028 to find an energy release of
17.58847 MeV. This is rounded up in the table below to 17.6 MeV.

Iron-56 is at the basin of the binding energy curve

As a side note, fission and radioactive decay makes atoms become smaller atoms, until the atoms become atoms of lead, where they are stable (i.e., they do not
decay or otherwise undergo fission). Fusion, on the other hand, releases energy as you fuse larger and larger atoms, until the atoms grow such that they are atoms of
iron. After than, fusing heavier atoms actually consumes energy instead of releasing it.

Golden-aged science fiction authors E.E."Doc" Smith and John W. Campbell jr. noted this and postulated space-opera science that required elements in the middle of
the periodic table for direct conversion of all the mass into energy. In Doc Smith's "Skylark" series the element was copper (63 nucleons) and in John Campbell's The
Space Beyond the element was iron (56 nucleons). But I digress.

Particles
The Particles table gives the symbols of the various fusion fuels. The particle mass is given if you want to
Symbol Name Mass amuse yourself by calculating the binding energy mass defect of various reactions.

p Proton, ionized Hydrogen 1.007276 Jerry Pournelle is pretty sure tramp spacecraft owners will call Deuterium "Dee". For the same reason people
Neutron
n 1.008665
(or Neutron Radiation)
1H
Hydrogen-1, common Hydrogen 1.00794
D Deuterium, Hydrogen-2
T Tritium, Hydrogen-3
3He The infamous Helium-3
call automobiles "cars."
Tritium is annoying since it has a fast half-life of only 12.32 years; e.g., after about twelve years half of your
tritium has decayed into Helium-3. Use it or lose it. This is why there are no tritium mines. Most reactor designs
that use tritium incorporate a tritium breeder.
2.013553
The infamous Helium-3 is often touted as an economic motive for space industrialization, unfortunately it is not a
3.015500 very good one. There are no Helium-3 mines on Terra, so it is hard to obtain. Space enthusiasts trumpet the fact
that there are helium-3 deposits on the moon that can be mined, but they don't mention that it is in a very low
3.014932 concentration. You have to process over 100 million tons of Lunar regolith to obtain one lousy ton of helium 3.

Helium-4, common Helium

4He 4.001506 It is possible to manufacture the stuff, but it takes lots of neutrons. Basically you breed tritium and wait for it to
(or Alpha Radiation) decay. There is lots of helium-3 available in the atmosphere of Saturn and Uranus, if your space infrastructure is
up to the task of traveling that far from Terra. Helium-3 concentration is estimated at about 10 parts per million,
6Li Lithium-6 which beats the heck out of Luna. Jupiter has helium-3 as well, but its steep gravity well makes it uneconomical
7Li
to harvest.
Lithium-7, common Lithium
Helium-4 is also called an alpha particle. It is a charged particle. This means that any fusion reaction that
11B Boron-11, common Boron 11.00931 produces alpha particles can be used to generate electricity. The particles are directed by magnetic fields and
trappped to extract electrical current. This can be useful if you wish to use that reaction for both propulsion and
ship's electricity.

Therm 1000 MW
MeV / MeV / Exhaust
Reaction TJ/kg Neut burn L-C A-N
fusion particle velocity
Rad g/s
T T 1.01
4.03 97.23
97.23 12% 0.01028
0.01028 4.3%c
+p p 3.02
D+D ⇒ 38% 30
3He 3He 0.82 78.90 50%
3.27 78.90 0.01267
0.01267 4.2%c
+n n 2.45
100%
YES
p + 11B ⇒ 3×4He 8.7 69.97
69.97 0% 0.01429
0.01429 500
note
4.5%c
0%

4He ?%
3He+3He ⇒ 12.9 207.50
207.50 ?% 0.004819
0.004819 ? YES 6.8%c
+ 2×p ?%

4He 4He 21%

3.5
D+T ⇒ 17.6 339.72
339.72 79% 0.002944
0.002944 1 8.7%c
+n n 14.1 8%

4He 4He 75%

3.6 YES
D + 3He ⇒ 18.3 353.23
353.23 5% 0.002831
0.002831 16 note
8.9%c
+p p 14.7 20%
Proton- ?%
Proton ⇒ 4He 26.73 644.93
644.93 0% 0.001551
0.001551 Huge YES 11.7%c
Chain ?%
4He ?%
CNO
⇒ + 2 ve 26.7 0% Huger YES
Cycle
+3γ ?%

T tritium
n + 6Li ⇒
+ 4He breeding

T
tritium
n + 7Li ⇒ + 4He
breeding
+n

Reaction: Input fusion fuels ⇒ reaction products (for example the fourth row shows that fusing one nuclei of deuterium with one nuclei of tritium results in one
helium-4 nuclei, one neutron, and 17.6 MeV of energy)
MeV / fusion: mega-electron-volts of energy from each individual fusion event (as per the equation above)
MeV / particle: mega-electron-volts of energy in each particle
TJ/kg: Terajoules of energy from one kilogram of fusion fuel (I calculated this, use at your own risk)
Thermal / Neutrons / Radiation: Breakdown of energy released into thermal energy, neutron energy, and Bremsstrahlung radiation energy
1000 MW burn g/s: grams per second of fusion fuel requred to burn at a rate of 1000 megawatts (I calculated this as well, treat this also as suspect)
L-C: Lawson criterion, how hard it is to start and maintain the reaction
A-N: Aneutronic, does the reaction produce neutrons? Please note that even if there is no n symbol in the results column neutrons can still be produced by side-
reactions
Exhaust velocity: Exhaust velocity for a pure fusion engine

The Reaction table displays the various fusion reactions that look promising for power plants and spacecraft. Note that the Deuterium + Deuterium reaction has two
possible outcomes and thus two rows in the table. Each outcome has about a 50% chance of occurring. The two lithium reactions are not power or rocket reactions,
they are the tritium breeding methods mentioned above.

Pay attention to the ⇒ reaction products column. An n means deadly neutron radiation. 4He is not-so-deadly but still annoying alpha radiation.

There are many fusion reactions, but only a few are suitable for use as power sources or rocket fuels. There are lots of limitations that you can read about here. Of the
candidates, you want to use those with low Lawson criterion, which measures how hard it is to start and maintain the reaction. It is a plus if the reaction only produces
charged particles, since these can be turned into elecctricity directly, instead of having to be converted into heat first.

Finally it is a plus if the reaction does not release neutrons, because they are not only dangerous radiation, but they have the nasty habit of weakening engine parts
("Neutron embrittlement"), and transmuting engine parts into radioactive elements ("Neutron activation"). Unless you are using the neutrons to breed tritium. In addition,
the fusion reaction energy used to make neutrons is basically wasted since they radiate isotropically. That means they produce zero thrust. Though there is theoretically
a way to turn the neutrons into thrust and avoid the need for radiation shields with Nuclear Magnetic Spin Alignment.

The D + 3He reaction is of particular interest for rocket propulsion, since all the products are charged particles. This means the they can be directed by a magnetic
field exhaust nozzle. But for those fans who think that lunar Helium-3 is going to be the gold rush that industrializes space, I've got some bad news for you. Understand
that while D-3He is aneutronic, if you mix a bunch of deuterium and helium-3, some of the deuterium is going to be wayward and insist upon fusing with other deuterium
instead of helium-3 like you want. Sadly D-D fusion reactions do produce neutrons. In theory it is possible to use spin-polarized 3He in the fusion fuel to absorb the
neutrons. You will get less energy out of each gram of fusion fuel, but with the advantage of a lot less deadly neutron radiation.

The p + 11B reaction is the celebrated Hydrogen-Boron fusion, sometimes called "thermonuclear fission" as opposed to the more common "thermonuclear fusion". It too
is aneutronic, but it does have two nasty side reactions. One makes a Carbon-12 atom and a gamma ray, the other makes a Nitrogen-14 atom and a neutron. The first
side reaction is quite a bit less likely than the desired reaction, but gamma rays are harmful and quite penetrating. The second side reaction occurs with secondary
alpha particles before they are thermalized. However the main draw-back is a truely ugly Lawson criterion. D+3He only has a Lawson of 16, Hydrogen-Boron has an
overwhelming 500. On the plus side, in theory the Lawson criterion can be lowered by using antiprotons as a catalyst. Recently (2015) one study suggested that using
picosecond laser pulses instead of microsecond could make things easier. In 2018 Chirped pulse amplification lasers were suggested to ignite hydrogen-boron fusion,
papers here , here , and here . This has been patented by HB11 Energy Pty. Ltd.

The Deuterium-Tritium reaction is easy to ignite (low Lawson criterion), but it uses that pesky decaying tritium. Hydrogen-Boron (a proton is an ionized hydrogen atom)
has the advantage of being aneutronic, but is very difficult to ignite, with a whopping Lawson criterion of 500! Helium-3+Helium-3 is also aneutronic, but helium-3 is hard
to come by. Which is probably why I could not find any source quoting its Lawson criterion.

The Deuterium-Deuterium reaction looks sort of lackluster, and it is. But only if you stop there. Notice that of the two reaction chains one produces tritium and the
second produces helium-3. Both of which will react with deuterium. The idea is to send the reaction products into an afterburner with deuterium to extract even more
fusion energy. This is called the "Catalyzed D-D fuel cycle". The other even more attractive option is Catalyzed D-D + D fuel cycle, where you send the neutrons into a
deuterium breeder.

Proton-proton fusion is what the Sun uses, and what Bussard Ramjets would like to use. Four protons fuse to create an atom of helium-4 and 26.73 MeV of
energy. Trouble is that the Lawson criterion is off the top of the chart. Trying to get four protons to simultaneously fuse is almost impossible, short of using an actual star.

Ultra-Dense Deuterium
Ultra-dense deuterium (UDD) is an exotic form of metallic hydrogen called Rydberg matter. As you can probably figure out from the name the stuff is dense. Real dense.
As in 1028 to 1029 grams per cubic centimeter dense. About a million times denser than frozen deuterium.

For our purposes the interesting point is it is about 150 times as dense as your average pellet of fusion fuel when laser-compressed to peak compression. Yes, this
means do you not need metric-assloads of laser energy to crush the fuel pellet, a pellet just sitting on the table is already at 150 times the needed compression. It is pre-
compressed. All you need is a miniscule 3 kilojoules worth of laser energy to ignite the stuff. That is pocket-change compared to what 200-odd compression lasers
require. In fact it is so little that a single laser can handle the job. This results in a vast savings on laser mass and capacitor mass.

The laser pulse has to be quick, so the power rating is a scary 1 petawatt. But by the same token since the pulse is quick, it only require the aforesaid 3 kilojoules of
energy.

Since you do not have to compress the fuel you can avoid all sorts of inconvienient hydrodynamic instabilities and plasma-laser interation problems.

You also have virtually unlimited "fusion gain". Meaning that with a conventional IC fusion engine there is a maximum fuel pellet size due to the hydrodynamic
instabilities and the geometric increase in compression laser power. With UDD you can make the fuel pellet as large as you want (well, as large as the engine can
handle without blowing up at any rate). With other laser intertial confinement fusion, if you make the pellets larger, you have to make the laser array larger as well. Not
so with the UDD drive. The fusion gain depends solely on the size of the pellet, you do not have to make the lasers bigger.

An important safety tip: since UDD has such absurdly low ignition energy, there is a statistical change a large number of UDD atoms would undergo fusion
spontaneously. This dangerous instability means the spacecraft will carry ordinary deuterium fuel and only convert it into UDD immediatly before use.

The cherry on top of the sundae is UDD fusion does not produce deadly neutron radiation. The reaction is aneutronic. Instead it produces charged muons, which
are not only easier to deal with, but also can be directly converted into electricity. Left alone, the muons quickly decay into ordinary electrons and similar particles.

And since deuterium is plentiful in ordinary seawater, you do not have to go strip mining Lunar regolith or set up atmospheric scoop operations around Jupiter were you
to use a fusion reaction requiring Helium-3.

Sounds too good to be true, I hear you say. Well, there are a couple of drawbacks.

The minor drawback is that D-D fusion has a specific impulse (and exhaust velocity) which is about half of what you can get out of D-T fusion or D-He3 fusion. This
drastically increases the mass ratio required for a given mission delta-V. Having said that it is still much better than what you'll get out of chemical or fission engines.

But the major drawback is UDD might not even have that magic ultra-density.

You see, the vast majority of the UDD-related papers has been published by a single scientific group at University of Gothenburg, Sweden, led by Dr. L. Holmlid.
Currently there are no third-party confirmations about UDD observations and generally very few discussions about it in the scientific community. Until the density
figure is confirmed, it might be all a pipe-dream.

PRACTICAL PROTON-PROTON FUSION

Can we harness the most abundant fuel in the universe?

The Bussard Ramjet — a proton-proton fusion propulsion system

artwork by Rick Sternbach

Introduction

Nuclear fusion is often marketed as “star energy”, but this glosses over a fundamental difference between the fusion reactions that occur in stars and terrestrial
fusion reactors. While stars are capable of fusing the lighter (and more abundant) isotope of hydrogen into helium, fusion reactors are limited to reactions that
involve heavier (and rarer) isotopes of hydrogen, such as D-D, D-T, and D-He3. The reason for this is that reactor plasmas of practical density are optically thin and
therefore lose energy by bremsstrahlung radiation (in contrast, magnetized plasmas of achievable density can efficiently absorb cyclotron radiation). The
requirement that fusion power exceeds bremsstrahlung power rules out all but a small number of possible fusion reactions.

This issue represents a significant limitation on the ultimate fusion energy resources available to an advanced civilization. Fusing all the Deuterium in Earth’s
oceans with maximum energy utilization would release 2.7 ·10³¹ Joules (8.5·10²³ watt-years), which could power a Type-I civilization (1.7·10¹⁷ watts) for 5 million
years. In comparison, complete fusion of hydrogen would release 10³⁵ Joules (3·10²⁷ watt-years), which could power a Type-I civilization for 18 billion years.

The limitations of fusion reactors will be explored in more detail in the following sections. In addition, a speculative proposal for the practical utilization of hydrogen
in fusion reactors will be discussed.

Fusion Reaction Types

Fusion reactions fall into three categories based on the fundamental force that mediates the reaction. The strong nuclear force, the strongest fundamental force,
mediates fusion reactions with the highest cross sections (i.e. highest probability of occurring). These reactions typically involve two reactants forming two products,
with momentum conserved by opposing motion of the products. A important example is the D-T reaction, which is used in nuclear bombs and fusion reactors:

Cross sections for these reactions tend to be on the order of 0.1–1 barns:

Cross section vs. Energy for various strong force mediated reactions

While fusion reactors exclusively use strong force mediated reaction, stars incorporate them only as part of reaction chains that include slower reactions mediated
by electromagnetic or weak forces. Because the slowest-step in a reaction chain determines the reaction rate, strong force reactions never set the reaction rate
inside a star.

Fusion reactions mediated by the electromagnetic force typically involve two reactants forming one product, with momentum conserved by the emission of a gamma
ray. These reactions tend to have intermediate cross sections and play a significant role in stellar energy production. An important example is the following reaction
between carbon and hydrogen which forms the first step of the CNO-cycle, a hydrogen burning reaction chain:

The cross section of this reaction is much lower than the strong force mediated reactions, reaching 0.1 millibarns at 0.46 MeV.

Other CNO reactions display similarly low cross sections:

Finally, weak force mediated reactions typically involve two reactants forming one product, with momentum conserved by emission of leptons (and/or anti-leptons).
These reactions tend to have the lowest cross sections. Unlike the previous two reaction types, weak force reactions do not conserve atomic number. The most
important example in this category is the pp-reaction, which converts a proton to a neutron by positron emission:

A less common variant known as the pep-reaction converts a proton to a neutron by electron-capture:

Either reaction can form the first step of the Proton-Proton chain, a slow hydrogen burning reaction chain.

Bremsstrahlung

As mentioned previously, in order for a fusion reaction to be viable for use in reactors here on Earth, it must produce energy at a rate that exceeds bremsstrahlung
emission. This is not a relevant constraint for stellar nuclear fusion because the stellar core is dense enough that it can reabsorb nearly all bremsstrahlung that is
produced.

Power densities for D-T, D-D reactions and Bremsstrahlung radiation at plasma density = 1015
nuclei/cm3

There are several conditions that must be met for fusion reaction viability. The first is that the reaction must have a sufficiently high cross section to maintain high
power output. In practice, only strong force mediated reactions have sufficiently high cross sections to be considered viable. The second condition concerns the
composition of reactants involved. Bremsstrahlung power scales quadratically with ion charge, so reactants with high atomic numbers are disfavored. Finally, the
reaction itself must be highly exothermic to have the best chance of achieving ignition. The combination of all these conditions restricts the set of viable fusion
reactions to D-T, D-D, and D-He3.

The “bremsstrahlung problem” is a significant constraint for futuristic applications of fusion energy. Robert Bussard proposed that instead of a starship carrying
enough fuel to take it all the way to its destination, it could propel itself by fusing hydrogen collected from the interstellar medium en-route. Such spaceships are
known as Bussard Ramjets

Video Clip "Carl Sagan - Cosmos - Space Travel"

click to play video

The flaw with Bussard’s idea that the pp-reaction cross section is far too low to be useful. Daniel Whitmire’s proposed modification of the Bussard Ramjet replaces
the pp-reaction with the CNO cycle for hydrogen burning:

Here we show that the problem of the slow PPI rate can be resolved in principle by exploiting a proton burning catalytic cycle similar to the well known
CNO BiCycle occurring in sufficiently hot main sequence stars. The slowest links in the catalytic chains will be found to be 10¹⁸–10¹⁹ times faster than
the PPI rate at an ion temperature of 86 keV and number density of 5 x 10¹⁹/cm³.

However, the paper mainly addresses the ability of reacting fusion plasma to accelerate itself at a rate comparable to 1 g. While the CNO cycle would certainly give
better performance in this regard, Whitmire acknowledges that the CNO cycle is not capable of overcoming bremsstrahlung losses:

A straightforward calculation indicates that radiation energy losses at T(electron)=86.2 keV are greater than energy production for either catalytic cycle.

He goes on to propose that an optically thick plasma could resolve this problem:

At the reactor densities and dimensions considered here…some of the cyclotron and bremsstrahlung radiation will be reabsorbed. On the other hand,
too much interaction between the radiation and matter will tend to bring the electron and ion temperatures into equilibrium and create a radiation
pressure that must be taken into account.

Unfortunately, a closer analysis shows that this will not work. Equilibrium confinement of outgoing radiation at fusion temperatures requires plasma densities similar
to those found in stellar cores. Such densities are inaccessible in a magnetic confinement reactor, but can be achieved briefly using inertial confinement.

In conventional ICF, high density is not strictly mandatory — there is a trade-off between density and pellet radius. The energy confinement time of an ICF plasma is
approximately equal to the time needed for a thermal ion to traverse the radius of the plasma. Working through the math, the figure of merit for ICF fusion can be
given as ρR, which is the minimum product of density and radius that an ICF plasma must attain in order to produce net energy. The reason why compression
factors are so large is that the initial volume of fuel is quite small (NIF uses 40 MJ of fusion fuel per pulse). Thus, to get a good ρR, one must use a very high density
and low radius. Note that this implies that the high density condition for conventional ICF could be relaxed by using a much larger pellet . Once the desired level
of compression is achieved, methods for starting fusion in the pellet include volumetric ignition and hotspot ignition leading to a thermonuclear detonation wave.

If the plasma is required to be in equilibrium with its own radiation, the dimensions of the pellet are bounded below by the attenuation length for bemsstrahlung
radiation, which is a function of plasma temperature and density. Very high plasma densities (comparable to NIF pellets) are needed to achieve reasonable
attenuation lengths (on the order of meters). Plasma density also sets the ratio of photon energy to thermal energy in equilibrium, which once again requires very
high densities (comparable to NIF pellets) for a reasonable ratio. For fusion reactions that produce orders of magnitude more bremsstrahlung than fusion power
(such as electromagnetically mediated reactions), the pellet dimension may need to significantly exceed bremsstrahlung attenuation length in order to achieve a
high degree of energy confinement. Development of high-efficiency drivers for high compression is essential for net-energy burning of advanced fusion fuels with
ICF.

In addition to increasing pellet radius, energy confinement may be increased by using magnetic fields. Externally applied magnetic fields cannot achieve the
strengths required to confine an ICF plasma, but external fields can be amplified into ultra-strong fields during the compression process itself, helping to improve
energy confinement time and favorably alter other properties of plasma burning.

Electron degeneracy effects in ultra-dense plasmas and ultra high fields (on the order of 1 million Tesla) could directly suppress bremsstrahlung power.
Bremsstrahlung may also be suppressed by operating at the low temperature, ultra high pressure regime (“pycnonuclear fusion ”). Reaction rates may be
enhanced in dense plasmas through plasma screening of the coulomb barrier.

The extreme conditions needed for burning advanced fusion fuels using ICF are a significant obstacle to realizing the “Caplan Thruster”, a Bussard Ramjet that
uses the CNO and Triple Alpha cycles to power a stellar engine:

The Caplan Thruster would require ICF pellets with unfeasibly large
dimensions and driver power
Video Clip "How to Move the Sun: Stellar Engines"
click to play video

Using ICF to run a hydrogen burning CNO cycle carries additional challenges. ICF cannot accommodate reaction chains that include radioactive decays, because
decay times vastly exceed the confinement time of ICF plasmas. This is reflected in the proposal to only carry out the Hot-CNO cycle up to Oxygen-14. However,
this is only a limitation for a “once through” system. Full hydrogen burning could be accomplished in multiple stages by capturing products, waiting for radioactive
decay, and reinserting into a later stage.

Proton Burning

Avoiding large ICF pellet sizes requires a different approach to hydrogen burning. For practical hydrogen burning, we will need to consider a method of proton
burning that improves on the CNO cycle. The main difficulties are that the cross section is too low and the rate of bremsstrahlung emission is too high. The cross
section problem can be addressed by replacing the CNO cycle with a higher cross section reaction, and bremsstrahlung emission can be reduced by using a non-
neutral plasma in which all electrons have been removed.

The main reason why hydrogen burning is hard is because of the role that the weak force must play in generating atomic number violation. The pp-chain requires
that atomic number is violated at the exact moment of fusion, resulting in an exceedingly low cross section.

The CNO cycle achieves higher performance than the pp-chain by deferring atomic number violation until after the fusion reaction is complete. Each fusion reaction
is mediated by a relatively high cross section electromagnetic interaction that requires no atomic number violation. Atomic number is only violated later by
radioactive decay. A series of proton-capture reactions followed by radioactive decays eventually ends in a strong force mediated reaction that results in the
emission of a helium nucleus, completing the cycle.

Thus, if we want to achieve further improvements in cross section, we will need to find hydrogen-consuming fusion reactions that are mediated by the strong
interaction, generate atomic number violation by subsequent radioactive decay, and produce products that eventually match the inputs, resulting in a complete
cycle.

A simple class of reactions that can satisfy these conditions are the (p,n) reactions, which involve a nucleus capturing a proton and subsequently emitting a neutron.
Reactions which satisfy all three conditions are necessarily endothermic, but as part of a series of reactions that start with hydrogen and end with helium, the net
energy release will still be positive. The basic idea is that we use these reactions to convert protons into neutrons, use the neutrons to produce deuterium, and then
fuse deuterium by conventional methods into helium. These reactions can be divided into two sub-types:

The first type involves a product that decays by positron emission, lowering the atomic number by 1. These reactions tend to be more endothermic due to the
production of a positron, but some of the energy can be recovered by annihilating the positron with an electron. In addition to their use for producing neutrons, these
reactions would also make a great source of antimatter (positrons). An example of this reaction type involves the conversion of carbon-13 to nitrogen-13:

The reaction has a relatively high cross section at energies of a few MeV:

The second type involves a product that decays by electron capture, lowering the atomic number by 1. These reactions tend to be less endothermic than the
positron emitting reactions, but also tend to require nuclei with higher-Z. In a fusion plasma, these reactions would lose more energy to bremsstrahlung as a result.
An example of this reaction type is the conversion of chlorine-37 to argon-37:

This reaction also has a relatively high cross section at energies of a few MeV:

In either case, because the atomic numbers are significantly greater than one, bremsstrahlung losses will be high. One method of reducing radiation losses is by
using a pure-ion plasma. Ions radiate far less intensely than electrons, which makes pure-ion plasmas ideal for low bremsstrahlung fusion.

In addition to radiating far less intensely, pure-ion plasmas are much easier to magnetically confine. However, a major obstacle to using pure-ion plasmas in fusion
is the requirement that the magnetic field overcomes electrostatic repulsion on top of thermal pressure. The Brillouin Limit quantifies how dense a non-neutral
plasma can be for a given confining magnetic field. For an all proton plasma confined by a 20 Tesla field, that density is only 10¹² ions/cm³.

Achieving plasma density of order 10¹⁴ ions/cm³ in a pure ion plasma— a comparable plasma density to the ITER reactor, would require a field strength of 200
Tesla. Such fields are beyond the capabilities of existing technology. The record field produced in a lab was 100 Tesla, and that field generated an outward pressure
of 3.98 GPa on the coil structure. Increasing the field strength to 200 Tesla would require the ability to handle pressures of 16 GPa. By comparison, the tensile
strength of commercially available carbon fibers can reach 7 GPa, while atomically engineered nanomaterials like Graphene are theoretically capable of achieving
130 GPa. Clearly, a 200 Tesla field would be extraordinarily challenging to realize without ultra-strong nanomaterials. Using only existing materials, we can take
advantage of the fact that the stress in the confining structure will differ from the internal pressure depending on geometry. In particular, stress can be reduced
arbitrarily in a thick shell.

More speculatively, the outward pressure produced by solenoid currents (in an internal layer) could be countered by the inward pressure generated by axial
currents (in an outer layer) — removing mechanical strength as a relevant constraint. The solenoid layer only produces a non-zero B-field in its interior, while the
axial layer only produces a non-zero B-field on its exterior layer. Thus, the magnetic fields will not interfere. This works in the infinite case; determining whether the
concept can work in the finite or toroidal case is crucial to making this concept work in practice. Finding superconducting materials with a sufficiently high critical
field would be necessary, as resistive electromagnets would dissipate too much power.

Lower fields may be usable in situations where volume is not an important constraint. Operating the reactor at 20 Tesla instead of 200 Tesla would require 10,000
times more volume for the same power output. Such large volumes are impractical for Earth-based reactors, but could be feasible in space.

The exact details of reactor operation would depend on the type of (p,n) reaction involved. If a reaction from the electron-capture category is used, we will have a
choice between directly removing the fusion product from the plasma or injecting electrons into the plasma to permit the product to decay by an electron capture
reaction. If a reaction from the positron-decay category is used, we will have a choice between direct removal of the product or permitting the product to decay in-
situ and either removing the positrons or injecting electrons into the plasma to annihilate the positrons. Which ever technique is chosen, it will have to be done in a
way that does not significantly degrade energy confinement time.

By using (p,n) reactions as a neutron source for the conversion of hydrogen into deuterium, followed by reaction chains that convert deuterium into helium, full
conversion of hydrogen into helium would become possible.

The requirement to stringently minimize losses in the (p,n) reaction could be relaxed if an external source of high-energy protons can be obtained. A high energy
proton source could directly “drive” the lossy (p,n) reactions, instead of relying on recirculating power to do this. The D-He3 reaction, an intermediate step in the
process of fusing deuterium into helium, produces a highly energetic 14.7 MeV proton, making it an ideal source of high energy protons to “drive” an endothermic
(p,n) reactor.

Conclusion

Precise calculations need to be done to confirm whether a (p,n) reaction can produce neutrons at sufficiently low energy cost to enable profitable hydrogen burning.
Fusing 4 hydrogen atoms into helium requires the conversion of 2 protons into neutrons, yielding a net energy gain of 26.7 MeV. A (p,n) reactor can therefore afford
to lose 13 MeV per neutron and still be profitable, a figure that compares favorably to the 1.5–3 MeV consumed by the endothermic reaction itself (though all loss
channels will need to be accounted for to assess feasibility).

If determined to be feasible, a demonstration reactor using low-fields could be built today. Profitable operation of the (p,n) reaction will allow us to look forward to a
future with thousands of times more fusion energy than we once thought available.

From PRACTICAL PROTON-PROTON FUSION by deepfuturetech (2020)

FUSION CONTAINMENT

Of these reactions, the fusion of deuterium and tritium (D-T), has the lowest ignition temperature (40 million degrees K, or 5.2 keV). However, 80% of its energy
output is in highly energetic neutral particles (neutrons) that cannot be contained by magnetic fields or directed for thrust.

In contrast, the 3He-D fusion reaction (ignition temperature = 30 keV) generates 77% of its energy in charged particles, resulting in substantial reduction of shielding
and radiator mass. However, troublesome neutrons comprise a small part of its energy (4% at ion temperatures = 50 keV, due to a D-D side reaction), and
moreover the energy density is 10 times less then D-T. Another disadvantage is that 3He is so rare that 240,000 tonnes of regolith scavenging would be needed to
obtain a kilogram of it. (Alternatively, helium 3 can be scooped from the atmospheres of Jupiter or Saturn.)

Deuterium, in contrast, is abundant and cheap. The fusion of deuterium to itself (D-D) occurs at too high a temperature (45 keV) and has too many neutrons (60%)
to be of interest. However, the neutron energy output can be reduced to 40% by catalyzing this reaction to affect a 100% burn-up of its tritium and 3He by-products
with D.

The fusion of 10% hydrogen to 90% boron (using 11B, the most common isotope of boron, obtained by processing seawater or borax) has an even higher ignition
temperature (200 keV) than 3He-D, and the energy density is smaller. Its advantage is that is suffers no side reactions and emits no neutrons, and hence the reactor
components do not become radioactive.

The 6Li-H reaction is similarly clean. However, both the H-B and 6Li-H reactions run hot, and thus ion-electron collisions in the plasma cause high bremsstrahllung
x-ray losses to the reactor first wall.

From HIGH FRONTIER by Philip Eklund

TORCHSHIP FUSION

(ed note: Luke Campbell is giving advice to somebody trying to design a torchship. So when he says that magnetic confinement fusion won't work, he means won't
work in a torchship. It will work just fine in a weak low-powered fusion drive.)

For one thing, forget muon catalyzed fusion. The temperature of the exhaust will not be high enough for torch ship like performance.

You might use a heavy ion beam driven inertial confinement fusion pulse drive, or a Z-pinch fusion pulse drive.

I don't think magnetic confinement fusion will work — you are dealing with a such high power levels I don't think you want to try confining this inside your
spacecraft because it would melt.

D-T (deuterium-tritium) fusion is not very good for this purpose. You lose 80% of your energy to neutrons, which heat your spacecraft and don't provide
propulsion. 80% of a terrawatt is an intensity of 800 gigawatts/(4 π r2) on your drive components at a distance of r from the fusion reaction zone. (see here for more
about drive component spacing)

If we assume we need to keep the temperature of the drive machinery below 3000 K (to keep iron from melting, or diamond components from turning into graphite),
you would need all non-expendable drive components to be located at least 120 meters away from the point where the fusion pulses go off.

(ed note: 120 meters = attunation 180,000. 800 gigawatts / 180,000 = 4.2 megawatts)

D-D (deuterium-deuterium) fusion gives you only 66% of the energy in neutrons. However, at the optimum temperature, you get radiation of bremsstrahlung x-
rays equal to at least 30% of the fusion output power.

For a terawatt torch, this means you need to deal with 960 gigawatts of radiation. You need a 130 meter radius bell for your drive system to keep the temperature
down.

(ed note: 130 meters = attunation 210,000. 960 gigawatts / 210,000 = 4.5 megawatts)

D-3He (deuterium-helium-3) fusion gives off maybe 5% of its energy as neutrons. A bigger worry is bremsstrahlung x-rays are also radiated accounting for at least
20% of the fusion output power. This lets you get away with a 66 meter radius bell for a terawatt torch.

(ed note: 66 meters = attunation 55,000. 250 gigawatts / 55,000 = 4.5 megawatts. I guess 4.5 megawatts is the level that will keep the drive machinery below 3000
k)

To minimize the amount of x-rays emitted, you need to run the reaction at 100 keV per particle, or 1.16 × 109 K. If it is hotter or colder, you get more x-rays radiated
and more heat to deal with.

This puts your maximum exhaust velocity at 7,600,000 m/s, giving you a mass flow of propellant of 34.6 grams per second at 1 terawatt output, and a thrust of
263,000 Newtons per terawatt.

This could provide 1 G of acceleration to a spacecraft with a mass of at most 26,300 kg, or 26.3 metric tons. If we say we have a payload of 20 metric tons and the
rest is propellant, you have 50 hours of acceleration at maximum thrust. Note that this is insufficient to run a 1 G brachistochrone. Burn at the beginning for a
transfer orbit, then burn at the end to brake at your destination.

Note that thrust and rate of propellant flow scales linearly with drive power, while the required bell radius scales as the square root of the drive power. If you use
active cooling, with fluid filled heat pipes pumping the heat away to radiators, you could reduce the size of the drive bell somewhat, maybe by a factor of two or
three. Also note that the propellant mass flow is quite insufficient for open cycle cooling as you proposed in an earlier post in this thread.

Due to the nature of fusion torch drives, your small ships may be sitting on the end of a large volume drive assembly. The drive does not have to be solid — it could
be a filigree of magnetic coils and beam directing machinery for the heavy ion beams, plus a fuel pellet gun. The ion beams zap the pellet from far away when it has
drifted to the center of the drive assembly, and the magnetic fields direct the hot fusion plasma out the back for thrust.

Luke Campbell

TORCH FUSION ENERGY

It seems like the main question is how much energy you get from burning 1 kg of deuterium—helium-3 mixture.

If you are just burning it without worrying about using the reactants as a rocket, you will get 350 TJ/kg. Assuming 100% efficiency, complete burnup. and
the ability to collect all the emitted energy (including neutrons).

If you are using it for a rocket, however, it will be difficult to just find a way to only emit the reaction products without also letting the fusion fuel leak out. After all,
you're producing the exhaust stuff in the middle of your fuel. Instead, what you probably do is heat the fusion fuel with the fusion reaction until it is at 100 keV of
energy, and let the hot plasma escape as your rocket plume. This will produce 29 TJ of useful work for each kg of fuel/propellant expended. Since you're
losing about 25% of your energy to neutral particle radiation, your actual fusion reaction will be producing more like 39 TJ/kg. But you can't use the latter figure in
any of your thrust equations because the bremsstrahlung and x-rays won't be doing you any good.

For the question about the contribution of visible, infrared, and ultraviolet light to the heating, it will be negligible. Actually, it should already be included in the
bremsstrahlung losses, but the spectrum of the bremsstrahlung at 100 keV is so heavily peaked toward the x-ray spectral region that lower frequency stuff will be
tiny in comparison. You will get some minor corrections to the spectrum when the fusion exhaust fuel/propellant is optically dense (that is, light produced inside it
has difficulty getting out) leading to a black body spectrum over the optically dense spectral regions — but any practical fusion fuel will be optically thin to x-rays so
this will not make much of a difference.

I think you (Winchell) already have a good description of the likely appearance of a torch drive nozzle on your site, with diagrams of magnetic nozzles and blade
shields.

If I missed something, or there are other questions, let me know.

SHOW YOUR WORK SECTION:

If you are just burning it without worrying about using the reactants as a rocket

From Wikipedia Nuclear Fusion the energy of the He-4 particle from D - He-3 fusion is 3.6 MeV, and the energy of the proton is 14.7 MeV. 1 MeV is 1,000,000 times
1.602×10-19 J (1.602×10-13 J). This gives the energy of the reaction products of a singe D - He-3 fusion.

(ed note: 3.6 MeV + 14.7 MeV = 18.3 MeV = energy of reaction products in MeV
1.602×10-13 * 18.3 = 2.932×10-12 Joules = energy of reaction products in Joules)

The mass of a He-3 atom is 3.016 AMU (atomic mass unit, also sometimes denoted u), the mass of a deuteron is 2.014 AMU. One AMU is 1.66E-27 kg. This lets
you find the mass of all the reactants going in to the fusion reaction.

(ed note: 3.016 AMU + 2.014 AMU = 5.03 AMU = mass of all reactants in AMU
1.66×10-27 * 5.03 = 8.35×10-27 kg = mass of all reactants in kilograms)

Divide the one by the other and you get the specific energy (energy per unit mass) of the fusion reaction.

(ed note: 2.932×10-12 Joules / 8.35×10-27 kg = 3.511×1014 J/kg = 350 TJ/kg if you are just burning it without worrying about using the reactants
as a rocket)

If you are using it for a rocket with reaction at 100 keV of energy

A temperature can be shown to be the average energy per degree of freedom of the particles making up a system. So with a temperature of 100 keV, we find that
we get 100 keV of energy per degree of freedom of the plasma. 1 keV is 1000 times 1.602E-19 J (1.602E-16 J).

(ed note: 100 * 1.602×10-16 = 1.602×10-14 J)

For an equal mixture of D and He-3, each ion has three degrees of freedom (it can move up-and-down, right-or-left, and forwards-or-backwards … or if you are
more mathematically inclined one degree of freedom for each dimension on your Cartesian grid. Rotational degrees of freedom are probably not important).

Each electron also has three degrees of freedom (for the same reason). If we take as our system of analysis one D atom and one He-3 atom, we have two ions (the
D and the He-3) and three electrons (one for the D and two for the He-3).

So our system has 15 degrees of freedom.

Multiply this by the energy per degree of freedom and you get the thermal energy of the system.

(ed note: 15 * 1.602×10-14 = 2.403×10-13 J)

You already found out the mass of a D and He-3 atom, so divide by that to get the energy per unit mass.

(ed note: 2.403×10-13 Joules / 8.35×10-27 kg = 2.878×1013 J/kg = 29 TJ of useful work for each kg of fuel/propellant expended)

Luke Campbell

THE 11 BILLION DOLLAR BOTTLE OF WINE

However, there is a major flaw in the Traveller ship system which Marc Miller apparently does not realize and the implications of which are not reflected in other
aspects of the game. The smallest power plant that can be mounted on a spaceship is an A-rating plant. An A-plant consumes 20 tons of hydrogen in the course of
a standard one-week interstellar jump. Now, starships do not in Traveller carry liquid oxygen, so it is clear that the hydrogen is not being burned to create energy.
Instead, the power plant must be operating as a fusion device. Further, Miller does not permit ships to separate out the deuterium (heavy hydrogen, the easiest
atom to fuse) and use only that to generate power. If he did, ships could carry vastly less fuel and would thus have much more space available for cargo. So the
energy must be created by proton-proton fusion of raw hydrogen, tons of which are consumed each week — the same fusion reaction which produces most of the
sun's energy. (Actually, considering the energetics of proton-proton reactions, Imperial technology must be extremely advanced, since even at temperatures of
millions of degrees, proton-proton fusion occurs very rarely. The Imperium must have some mechanism for catalyzing such reactions, something beyond the
slightest glimmer of our comprehension at the moment.)

In proton-proton fusion, through a series of three reactions, four protons fuse to produce a single helium atom plus about 25Mev (million electron-volts), plus some
stray gamma rays, neutrinos, and positrons. H1 weights 1.008 g/mole, so 1 kilogram contains about 992 moles of hydrogen, or 5.97 x 1026 atoms. Fusing these
atoms produces 3.73 x 1027 Mev. There are 1.60 x 10-19 J/ev, so this is about equivalent to 5.97 x 1014 Joules, or about 19 MW-years. So there are about 19 MW-
years of energy per kilogram of hydrogen.

The smallest power plant which may be installed on a ship in Traveller is a standard "A" power plan. The A-plant can consume 20 tons of hydrogen over a period of
a week, convert it to energy, and feed it to an "A" FTL drive. (This is how much energy is needed by the smallest FTL drive to make a jump of 1 parsec if installed in
a 200 ton ship.) If we assume Miller is using metric tons (1 ton = 1,000 kg), an A power plant then can deliver 380,000 MW-years of energy over a period of one
week. Over a year, it could deliver 19,800,000 MW-years. Thus, a single A power plant produces about 86 times as much energy in a year as all of the electrical
generating plants in the United States. A single jump in Traveller uses about 160% of the energy the US produces in a single year.

A "Jump 1" in Traveller corresponds to a travel distance of one parsec, about 3 1/3 light-years. Let us be generous and say a ship can travel 5 light-years at Jump 1,
consuming 380,