Muon-catalyzed Fusion Power?

[JimBowie1958]

The Star Scientific Breakthrough | Star Scientific Limited

Scientists have been producing nuclear fusion reactions from muon catalysed fusion for decades – just not consistently, or in sufficient volumes for it to be considered a viable energy source – until now.

For years, Star Scientific Limited has had a singular focus – producing in abundance the elusive catalyst to make muon catalysed fusion a reality – just like the process occurs in nature.

In the scientific world, conventional thinking has been that pions (which decay into the muons required for muon catalysed fusion) must be manufactured in large particle accelerators, at massive energy costs.

As a result, research into this area has run into a number of hurdles, which has seen many scientists abandon the idea of muon catalysed fusion in favour of other methods, such as plasma fusion technology.

Unlike many of our predecessors, Star Scientific Limited has remained focused on overcoming the notorious “alpha sticking problem” (whereby 1% to 2% of the muons in a muon catalysed reaction bond with by-products rather than catalysing, reducing the number of muons available to liberate energy) by developing a method to efficiently and consistently produce pions – and hence muons – in their hundreds and thousands, meaning the loss of some muons is of no consequence.

By focusing years of determined research on a single element of the fusion process – the catalyst – Star Scientific Limited is perfecting a world-first technique to economically produce pions, and hence muon catalysed fusion, in a CONTROLLED and SUSTAINED way.

Sounds very interesting. Will be glad to see their claimed trial generator coming online in 2012.

http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/12/australian-star-scientific-is-probably.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muon-catalysed_fusion

 

[JimBowie1958]

Read somewhere a few days ago that the breakthrough has been in the form of finding a way to generate these pions at considerable quantities in a reliable way. Normally it takes hhuge amounts of energy to generate those things, so much that the threshold to make the resulting energy a net gain is almost impossible.

But this guy has been working on the problem for 40 years, quietly behind the scenes and apparently found such a source that pions are easily generated and targetable.

Very cool.