Fusor Forums

Would this work for a first time fuser. The idea is to fully ionize argon and Deuterium the argon gets attracted to the shell more and the columb force of full strip argon over <10cm will force the Deuterium ions to within 25pm of each other. As the Deuterium fuses it should send neutrons into argon and make it radioactive with electron capture and beta decay to the reaction.

Ideas, improvements

edited, 10cm radius, 5771volts

This is not an idea that is well-grounded in reality.

For a first-time project, I recommend doing something simple, orthodox, and commensurate with your abilities and resources; something that you can understand; and learn from. Like a "demo fusor". And I recommend that you break major, multidisciplinary projects---like even a demo fusor---down into smaller projects that are easier to plan (vacuum system, high voltage supply, and so forth), rather than try to plan the whole thing from scratch.

Anyone with experience here will challenge 427 kV as being unrealistic and unprecedented for a fusor. The critical issue is the insulation needed to feed this potential through the chamber, and there are no known examples of anything much in excess of 100 kV that you can use. Such a development would be a major project in its own right. I don't think you want to spend a year or two (or more) working on how to get 400 kV into a 27-cm vacuum chamber; I think you'd rather be working on a fusor.

On the theory side, there seems to be confusion about what happens when argon absorbs a neutron. DD fusion does make neutrons, and argon can absorb them. Most natural argon is argon-40. When a neutron is added, you get Ar-41. From a Web resource like www.nndc.bnl.gov, you can see that Ar-41 exclusively decays to K-41 (stable potassium) by negative beta decay. There's no electron capture involved.

I can appreciate the theoretical interest in recovering energy from the exothermic capture of a neutron on some other nucleus. I can't understand the rationale for making that other nucleus of interest an argon nucleus in particular. I can't understand why you would put that argon into the fusor, where it contaminates the fusion gases and kills your yield, and where the neutrons are all essentially too fast to react with it. I can think of materials I might put outside the fusor that the neutrons could land in with the release of much more energy. But I would not focus too much attention on this question right away if your main goal is to build a fusor. Once you have a fusor, it's a very sensible thing to pursue.

My two cents...

Carl

I will be building this, as I can't afford or have the skills for a vacuum setup.
I've edited my post to more realistic voltages. The idea wasn't about making radioactive argon, so much as to use the argon to compress the D in a fluid motion field, when as the argon heats up, should exponential compress more D.

The voltage level is for the radius of the chamber any more and two Ds can't get with in orbit radius(guess this is were tunneling starts to happen) of hydrogen.

The argon being more positive charged should migrate to the outer radius more than D, as a strong attraction force to the negative terminal.

Cheers

Andrew,

There is no electrostatic gradient inside a charged sphere, so why would the Argon ions be attracted to the sides?

Steven

Steven
Forgot about that, it wouldn't be a 100% sphere, maybe adding on the outerside a postive sphere or wire grid.

Cheers

Bouncing around abit , but would this work as a zpinch. What would be the amps I would need for a minimum level of fusion, say at vacuum or atmosphere pressure. Should be-able to post some pics of the capacitor and some arc discharges in a couple of days if it helps.

Cheers

Andrew, You have truly mastered the art of wandering from topic to topic.

Do yourself, and us, a favor and do a lot of searching and reading on these forums. Voltage and Amperage requirements have been covered in tremendous detail in the past, as have vacuum configurations and equipment, even how to do it relatively inexpensively. Dig a bit deeper and you will even find why Fusors need vacuum to work.

For what it's worth, vacuum is not the largest hurdle you will have to overcome in order do fusion. If after reading through these forums you still consider vacuum to be an insurmountable obstacle, then you may want to reconsider the project you have set yourself to.