Hi, Consider this, to split a deuteron costs 2.2 MeV. Hot fusion of two deuterons yields about 4 MeV. At best this would never yield more than about a factor of 2....and that's not taking into account any of the losses. And those losses will be very significant.
1) Maybe 1% of the electrons will create significant x-rays, of which only a fraction will have the requisite minimum energy of 2.2 MeV. => most of the electron energy ends up as heat. 2) Only a fraction of the 2.2 MeV or greater x-rays will split a deuteron (1%?). The rest just ionize atoms and end up as heat. 3) Of the split deuterons, only a fraction will produce neutrons with even the minimal energy required to fuse two deuterons (5 keV? - but the more the better). 4) Of those neutrons, only a fraction will actually accelerate a deuteron resulting in a fusion reaction. 5) A fusion reaction will primarily create two energetic particles, both of which can further accelerate other deuterons, however only a tiny fraction of them will actually do so. Most will simply lose energy ionizing surrounding atoms, and end up as heat. In all, I think they would be lucky to get even one part in a million of the electron beam energy out as fusion energy, if the proposed method were actually an accurate description of what happens in their reactor.
