Revision as of 15:08, 2 August 2017

Most speculative potential applications

[Todo: fill this topic skeleton]

Types of fusion

pursuable:

• envirounmentally friendly
• low cost
• relatively small and lightweight

Magnetic enclosure

Tokamak devices can be scaled down greatly by raising the intensity of the plasma confining magnetic field. The power fluxes become very high though. (Higher than atmospheric reentry of a space-shuttle)

• APT is great at dealing with very high levels of power density (TODO: add link).
  High thermal power densities require refractory materials.
• APT is bad at dealing with radiation. (See: radiation damage)

It's hard to project how the performance of superconductors will further increase. This limits the range of predictions severely. (See: non mechanical technology path).

Using light diamondoid materials for the structural frame parts and superconductor carrier strips (cables) that have low radiation exposure can reduction the overall weight by a lot. This is especially important for application in spaceships. Currently (2016) it still seems rather impossible to reach anything near light enough.

The requirement to absorb most of the neutron radiation before it reaches coils and cryo-system creates a natural lower end size limit for magnetic enclosure fusion.

Inertial fusion

• macroscopic vibration damping
• neutral particle carriage acceleration
• highly symmetric enclosement (thermal and quantum mechanical uncertainty)
• low reflectivity of hydrogen - minimal isolating plasma shell thickness (severe!)
• fast cavity cleanout
• fast radiation seals
• carriage particle accelerators
• small scale Laser particle accelerators

Highly speculative one try one hit fusion

• forum discussion

General notes

• Thermal throughput bottleneck thermal energy transmission
• self repair of thermal and radiation damage
• isotope sorting (e.g. tuning fork method) & closed loop nuclear waste recycling
• usage for spacecraft propulsion possible? - earth or space only?
• Implications of Liouville's theorem or "why nuclear mechanosynthesis don't work" - detour over thermal step unavoidable
• surface power/(heat flor) density limit - capsule based thermal energy transport (asymmetric figure eight loop in tokamaks?) may move it further down to more tacklable values.
• consistent high temperature stable designs SiC (H-passivation?)

Related

• APM and nuclear technology
• Spaceflight with gem-gum-tec
• sci-nanotech.com forum: Highly speculative discussion about "shoot-and-hit" fusion