In reply to [email protected]'s message of Wed, 16 Oct 2013 08:36:54 +1100: Hi,
My notion of how it might work:- The fast particles from the thorium fission process could excite a gas causing it to lase. The laser light would then accelerate protons in the same gas which would fission more thorium. This would be entirely self contained, and self powering. Of course you would need to be able to turn the laser on and off at will. BTW, 8 gm of Thorium would provide either 25 kW for 7200 hours or 250 kW for 720 hours, assuming 100% conversion efficiency. [snip] >In reply to James Bowery's message of Tue, 15 Oct 2013 11:40:35 -0500: >Hi, > >Yes, that may be an option. Also, AFAIK, it's possible to accelerate particles >in a plasma with a laser. Probably based on the same or similar principle. >However any such scheme doesn't appear to take into account the neutrons >released by fissioning the thorium. I suspect that the neutrons would make a >fission based power source unacceptable in car, reason why it was dropped back >in the 50's. Furthermore there is also the "small" matter of dealing with the >radiation from the daughter products. [snip] Regards, Robin van Spaandonk http://rvanspaa.freehostia.com/project.html
