Comment on “Deuterium-tritium fusion reactors without external fusion breeding” by S. Eliezer et al. (Phys. Lett. A 243 (1998) 311)

Abstract

Inclusion of inverse Compton effects in the calculation of deuterium-deuterium burn under the extreme conditions considered by Eliezer et al. [Phys. Lett. A 243 (1998) 298] are shown to decrease the maximum burn temperature from about 300 keV to only 100-150 keV. This decrease is such that tritium breeding by the DD → T + p reaction is not sufficient to replace the small amount of tritium that is initially added to the deuterium plasma in order to trigger ignition at less than 10 keV.

Energy deposition of charged particles and neutrons in an inertial confinement fusion plasma

“…We find that the amount of tritium left in the pellet after the burn is significantly larger than that estimated earlier. Further, we observe that inverse Compton scattering, as incorporated by Gsponer and Hurni [14], has a lesser effect on tritium breeding. The organization of this paper is as follows.…”

“…The conditions necessary for realizing tritium breeding crucially depend on the energy deposition and loss rates from the plasma. Thus radiation losses due to inverse Compton scattering and photon losses have been shown to affect tritium breeding in a major way [14]. Therefore we re-evaluated different configurations with the improved model of charged particle and neutron energy deposition discussed above.…”

“…The bremsstrahlung loss term including the inverse bremsstrahlung term incorporated in [14] is given by…”

“…We have used Hurwitz's three temperature model [14] for the rate equation for the radiation temperature:…”

The Effect of Energy Leakage Probability on Burn Propagation in an Optically Thick Fusion Plasma

“…Another solution has been proposed to be adding a small amount of tritium to the deuterium fuel in the form of DT x , where x is the ratio of tritium to deuterium in initial fuel 18,19 . It has been shown that in x ∼ 0.01 and with a given initial condition, namely, density ρ 5000 g/cm 3 , areal density ρR 12.5 g/cm 2 , and temperature T 10 KeV , internal breeding of tritium takes place.…”