From: Dan Clemmensen (Dan@Clemmensen.ShireNet.com)
Date: Mon Jan 25 1999 - 20:18:18 MST
Eliezer S. Yudkowsky wrote:
> If I really wanted to be speculative, with respect to "nanofusion", I
> would ask why you couldn't focus nuclear reactions so as to catch
> individual neutrons, or perhaps arrange materials so that a solid
> barrier of neutron-catchers existed instead of a haphazard crystal. I'd
> expect nuclear reactions to be considerably more efficient once we start
> working close to that scale.
> --
In particular, there are three broad classes of possible controlled
thermonuclear fusion: magnetic confinement (tokamaks and the like),
inertial confinement (laser or beam implosion of pellets), and
beam fusion. Beam fusion is the best match for small-scale systems,
since the other two systems require a full-surround capture system to
extract the energy. The smallest beam reactor that achieves practical
break-even might be the size and shape of pencil. I thought we had
discussed all this about three years ago, either here on in sci.nanotech.
The basic idea is to use nanotech fabrication techniques to radically
increase the efficiency of the beam generator and the energy capture
systems.
It is this sort of reactor that is the basis of a viable small autonomous
nanotech system.
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