In reply to Jones Beene's message of Sun, 12 Mar 2006 08:26:54 -0800: Hi, [snip] >To restate the facts, no tritium occurs in nature since it has a >10 year half-life. The most promising source of in-situ tritium is >the breeding of tritium from lithium-6 by neutron bombardment of >thermal neutrons - except that Li-6 is only 7.5% of natural, and >the losses drop you way below what is needed to self-sustain. You [snip] Looking at the long term, I'm not really sure that this makes any difference, for two reasons.
1) There's a huge reservoir of Li salts in the ocean, even though these are extremely dilute. 2) Even the restricted quantity available on land is likely to last long enough for us to develop reactors that no longer use the D-T reaction, hence no longer rely on Li6 availability. The huge cross section of the Li6 + n -> He4 + T reaction gives me hope that the cross section of the Hy + Li7 -> 2 x He4 reaction would be even greater. This despite the fact that the cross section for p-Li7 is quite low. IOW I suspect that the long confinement times and high densities made possible by hydrinos will drastically alter the reaction cross section. Regards, Robin van Spaandonk http://users.bigpond.net.au/rvanspaa/ Competition provides the motivation, Cooperation provides the means.
