In reply to Eric Walker's message of Fri, 23 Nov 2012 13:56:15 -0800: Hi, [snip] >The crux of Ron Maimon's proposal is that there is a >third way to deal with the resulting potential energy -- it could end up >being transferred to a deuteron in the area in the form of kinetic energy >(if I have understood him). So instead of a characteristic photon or an >Augur electron you would have a deuteron with ~20 keV energy. [snip] The problem with this approach is lack of ROI. To start with only a fraction of the incident x-rays are going to kick an electron out of a lower orbital. When it does happen, only a fraction of the time would this produce an energetic D nucleus. Then only a fraction of those energetic D nuclei would actually undergo fusion.
All in all, I fear that all those fractions multiplied together are going to result in a COP << 1. Besides it's a very indirect approach. It's much more efficient to just use an RF source to ionize D atoms, then accelerate the resulting nuclei in an electric field of 20 kV of so. This is in fact how the first fusion reactions were created, yet even this direct approach has a COP << 1. Regards, Robin van Spaandonk http://rvanspaa.freehostia.com/project.html
