Fusion Chain Reaction - A Chain Reaction With Charged Particles

When a Dt-plasma is compressed to very high density, the particles resulting from nuclear reactions give their energy mostly to D and Τ ions, by nuclear collisions, rather than to electrons as usual. Fusion can thus proceed as a chain reaction, without the need of thermonuclear temperatures. In this paper, we derive relations for the suprathermal ion population created by a fusion reaction. Numerical integration of these equations shows that a chain reaction can proceed in a cold infinite Dt-plasma at densities above 8.4 x 1027 ions -cm”3. Seeding the plasma with a small amount of 6Li reduces the critical density to 7.2 x 10” ions-cm”3 (140 000 times the normal solid density).