Eric Walker wrote:
In muonic lead, the mean charge radius of the 1s muonic orbital lies
/within/ the nucleus. So that's almost an additional -1e of charge that
is screening the Coulomb barrier. We've discussed the possibility of
induced fission through screening of the Coulomb barrier here before,
and there were good arguments for and against additional electron
density increasing the fission rate.
Eric - A paper can be downloaded here which I am now wading through,
which indicates that a type of internal conversion can occur with muons,
leading to fusion instead of beta decay.
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:v80JaMsbHwUJ:arxiv.org/abs/nucl-th/0403087+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us
I suppose that a muon orbital within the space of another nucleus would
invariably lead to internal conversion and if that can be kept at beta
decay with no fusion - there could be advantages.
If a reaction of muons with a heavy nucleus like lead can be limited to
beta decay with no fusion, then the problems of shielding are less and
that advantage could outweigh the low yield.
