
Micro-scale fusion in dense relativistic nanowire array plasmas - nabla9
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-03445-z
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nabla9
In case it's unclear from the abstract, this is not related to fusion as
energy source. Its a new way to generate neutron pulses for neutron imaging.

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ISL
It's also just cool. The thoughtful variety of things people are finding to do
with ultrafast lasers is both awesome and inspiring.

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mkstowegnv
I'd appreciate any recommendations for ways to keep up with developments in
femtosecond and faster lasers - both in the lab and what is available
commercially, or a recommendation for a guru out there who is keeping up with
all the widely scattered, obscure sources in all the asian and other
languages.

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dflock
That is _the most_ sci-fi headline.

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00N8
obviously this is sci-fi speculative, but anybody else think: this is exactly
the kind of fusion you'd want if you were trying to modify internal combustion
engines to run on fusion :P instead of injecting diesel, you pump cold water &
laser a microdot of deuterium nanowire , bam! sweet zero emissions
powerstroke. let's split the royalties if you get it working, eh?

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00N8
if you can come up with a way to produce the nanowire substrate at scale, I
didn't see anything saying it wouldn't be good for energy production - did I
miss that section?

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gpm
For 1J of energy it's producing ~ 10^6 neutrons each with ~ 10^-13 joules of
energy. I'm not quite sure what fraction of the energy is released as high
energy neutrons (it should also release high energy protons and gamma rays
sometimes) but I think it's very high, so we are looking at something in the
vicinity of a 1 millionth the energy input - output.

There do seem to be a few substantial improvements left on the table per the
paper (mixing tritium in, scaling up a bit, etc) but getting to break even via
this technique in the near future seems unlikely. And even after that you have
to capture the energy.

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anfilt
After briefly skimming the paper I don't think this method was even devised
for energy production. It mainly just a neutron source.

