In reply to Jones Beene's message of Sun, 25 Apr 2021 22:12:43 +0000 (UTC): Hi,
Assuming a radius of 10 fm for the nucleus of a Uranium atom, to which a negative muon would be attracted, and thus gain kinetic energy, coming from "infinitely" far away, the muon would gain about 13 MeV of kinetic energy. That's more than enough to fission even U238 (or any actinide for that matter) directly. So whether the muons are created by a proton beam or from UDH probably wouldn't make any difference. This would result in complete "burn up" of Uranium in the reactor, leaving no long lived actinide waste. Also, because it is muon based rather than neutron based, there is no issue with "poisons". So you end up with a reactor that runs for decades without refueling, and as a bonus produces no long lived waste. Furthermore, with a bit of luck, a muon that caused a fission reaction, might even be re-accelerated by the fission event giving it enough energy to trigger more fission reactions. If so, this would make such a reactor (much?) more efficient. Note that the short lifetime of the muon ensures that you don't get a complete runaway cascade, unless collision of a very energetic muon with a proton/neutron can trigger the production of more muons. Fission reactions usually deliver roughly 1 MeV/amu of mass, so for Uranium it's about 200 MeV, which would be the most energy that a muon could acquire from a fission event. If GeV protons are needed to create muons, then 200 MeV may be too little to produce more. > "Sticking" is a problem with muon catalyzed fusion, but with fission as far > as I know, this was not a major issue as there is a great excess of muons > from a GeV proton beam. > >A lot of that work was done at Brookhaven 3-4 decades ago. I'm sure the >details are in old issues of Fusion Technology but I haven't looked into all >of the differences so far, which would emerge from substituting UDH in the >target and laser irradiation. Here is a citation for the old work, but there >are probably better ones out there. > >https://www.osti.gov/biblio/6991700 >In fact, the details of how UDH would differ from fast protons in the >equation, are totally speculative at this point. > >With accelerator driven fission you are accelerating protons and making huge >amounts of muons in the target as a bonus. The dynamics would be much >different with dense hydrogen instead of fast protons. > >Also - with the Holmlid effect, presumably the fuel would need to be U-Hydride >which fortunately is stable at high temperatures, and muons would catalyze the >molecular proton overcoming Coulomb repulsion and into the U nucleus - >somewhat like the Oppenheimer-Philips effect, following which one or more >neutrons are freed and the non-fissile U238 become fissile Pu. > >It is a fascinating prospect and hopefully more info will be found, but of >course most physicists are not buying into UDH yet and apparently he is not >cognizant of this possibility. >Jones > > > Gary Steckly wrote: > > Wasn't there a problem with "sticking"? >Each muon wasted to much of its short life hanging around after completing >each reaction? >Steve Jones was the expert on this. Wonder if he's still around lurking? >Best regards >Gary > >Jones Beene wrote: > >This is not a typo - in fact muons can catalyze fission as well as fusion. >Holmlid devotees should take notice of this opportunity. > >Decades ago, government Labs were looking at accelerator driven fission >using massive beam lines and un-enriched fuel, but this turned out to be >economically nonviable due to the high cost of the beam line. >The big advantage however is that the scheme allows the complete burnup >of waste and the breeding of fissile material so that if (BIG IF) one can >avoid the >massive expense of the beam line (which costs twice as much as the reactor >itself) >then there could be a huge economic benefit in a new approach. > >Having a subcritical reactor also cuts that hardware cost by 75% over what we >now are stuck with - which is,in effect a "controlled bomb" poised on the edge >of >catastrophe. > >Thus - if one can provide a cheap source of muons without the beam line - such >as >via the Holmlid effect, then this route could be highly preferable to muon >catalyzed >fusion - both in cost and and in eliminating waste. >If this idea has not been patented, then let me now dedicate it to the public >domain. > > Regards, Robin van Spaandonk <mixent...@aussiebroadband.com.au>
