In reply to Eric Walker's message of Fri, 10 Oct 2014 16:56:30 -0700: Hi, [snip] >On Fri, Oct 10, 2014 at 3:29 PM, <[email protected]> wrote: > >...but note that energy is required to remove the neutron from the source >> isotope, so a lot of those 2965 isotopes will be useless, depending on >> which >> isotope supplies the neutrons. >> > >Yes, this is true. I forgot to mention that the reactions were deuterium >stripping reactions, so the other reactant was deuterium. In these cases >the reaction was exothermic. But I think 2965 sounds high, so there's >probably a mistake somewhere.
No, for D it sounds about right. The energy to remove the neutron from D is only 2.2 MeV, and the per nucleon binding energy of almost all isotopes is larger than this (see binding energy curve), so transfer of a neutron from D to almost anything else will be exothermic. Regards, Robin van Spaandonk http://rvanspaa.freehostia.com/project.html
