-----Original Message----- From: [email protected] > This is why I want to use H/Li7 for space travel. For use on Earth, I would prefer H/B11, which is less energetic, but Boron is more common. Note also that the alphas from the H/Li7 reaction are energetic enough to produce a few spallation neutrons, so this reaction is not quite as clean as the H/B11 reaction.
Robin, This is not necessarily true, if we are talking about alphas from the f/H- pathway. That is a QM pathway - not a thermonuclear pathway. Your are transposing new physics into old physics, and that could be the problem in analyzing this or any QM reaction. The two high energy alphas of the known Li-7 reaction would only be true when the atom is split by an accelerated proton, but now we have what is essentially a cold dense ion with a Coulomb attraction, instead of repulsion. Importantly, it seems to involve nuclear tunneling and the strong force. We must assume that in order to get to the low redundancy (which is implied by the deep Dirac electron), the f/H- is already energy depleted. Plus we must assume that the reaction also depletes the strong force in a way that reduces the mass of the end products. You may counter that, even if the f/H- is somewhat energy-depleted, it has not lost a high percentage of the 8+ MeV, and that is true - BUT - these kinds of QM reactions are seldom comparable as logical or linear variations to hot reactions. It could easily be the case that in the fractional hydrogen situation, the two resulting alphas are far lower in energy than one would normally imagine, if extrapolating from the hot reaction. There are two additional possibilities, in addition to the energy depleted f/H ... which could explain two alphas which are in far lower in energy and do not produce spallation effects. One is the strong force depletion mentioned above and the other is the release of neutrinos, as well as two alphas. Bottom line. When a novel kind of reaction is instigated by what is, in effect, a new particle - fractional hydrogen - then there is little justification for trying to plug the results into known hot fusion parameters. Jones
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