JoshuaZ comments on Open Thread June 2010, Part 3 - Less Wrong

6 Post author: Kevin 14 June 2010 06:14AM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (606)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: JoshuaZ 16 June 2010 09:30:37PM 3 points [-]

Yeah, but a lot of that energy that is released isn't in happy forms. D-T releases not just high energy photons but also neutrons which are carrying away a lot of the energy. So what you actually need is something that can absorb the neutrons in a safe fashion and convert that to heat. Lithium blankets are a commonly suggested solution since a lot of the time lithium will form tritium after you bombard it with neutrons (so you get more tritium as a result). There's also the technically simpler solution of just using paraffin. But the conversion of the resulting energy into heat for steam is decidedly non-trivial.

Comment author: simplicio 16 June 2010 09:31:50PM 0 points [-]

I see, thanks.