Production of muons for fusion catalysis in a magnetic mirror configuration Page: 2 of 7
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PRODUCTION OF MUONS FOR FUSION CATALYSIS IN A HAGNETIC MIRROR CONFIGURATION*
UCRL—93987
DE86 012811
Ralph W. Molr and George F. Chapllne
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Livermore, CA 9^550
MASTER
ABSTRACT
For muon-catalyzed fusion to be of
practical Interest, a very efficient means
of producing muons must be found. We
describe a scheme for producing them that
may be more energy efficient than any
heretofore proposed. There are, in
particular, some potential advantages of
creating muons from collisions of high
energy tritons confined in a magnetic mirror
configuration. If one could catalyze 200
fusions per muon and employ a uranium
blanket that would multiply the neutron
energy by a factor of 10, one might produce
electricity with an overall plant efficiency
(ratio of electric energy produced to
nuclear energy released) approaching 30J.
One possible near term application of a
muon-producing magnetic-mirror scheme would
be to build a high-flux neutron source for
radiation damage studies. The careful
arrangement of triton orbits will result in
many of the x *s being produced near the
axis of the magnetic mirror. The pions
quickly decay into muons, which are trans-
ported into a small (few-cm-diameter)
reactO£ chamber producing approximately
1-MW/m neutron flux on the chamber walls,
using a laboratory accelerator and magnetic
mirror. The costs of construction and
operation of the triton injection accelera-
tor probably introduces most of the uncer-
tainty in the viability of this scheme. If
a 1Q-pA, 600 HeV neutral triton accelertor
could be built for less than $100 million
and operated cheaply enough, one might well
bring muon-catalyzed fusion into practical
use.
I. INTRODUCTION
The EG&G Idaho/Los Alamos Meson Physics
Facility (LAMPF) experiments on muon-
catalyzed fusion ’ have revived interest in
the muon catalyzed fusion process'5 as a
source of fusion neutrons. Before this
process could be economic, one would_need an
efficient and cheap way to produce p *s,
which is the subject of this paper. We will
assume here that the fusion yield is_the
very likely attainable 200 fusions/p . .Eor
this yield, a production rate of 5 x 10
p *s corresponds to a fusion power of
300 MW. This level of fusion power output
would allow one to use a fast-fission l J0U)
blanket to produce 3000 MW of nuclear power
and fuel for approximately four light water
reactors of 1000-MW electrical power each.
As was noted by Petrov the break-even Q for
such an arrangement is fairly low (0.5).
However, realistically, one would require
Q > 3 to make such an arrangement economi-
cally practical. With a suppressed fission
blanket, one would require Q ^ 6.
We believe that the best way to produce
p 's for fusion catalysis is to employ
colliding triton beams.
One may estimate * jross sections from
the measured values for * production in p-p
collisions and x production in p-n colli-
sions. If we neglect the shadowing effect
of one nucleon on another in the triton (the
"Glauber effect"), the pion production
cross-section will be given entirely in
terms of nucleon-nucleon cross-sections for
n production. Taking into account the
relative numbers of neutrons and protons in
a triton^and making use of the charge
symmetry relation j(n + n-*n+p + ir)«
a(p+p-*n+p + x)we obtain
a(t+t+x ♦ ...) - 4a(p+p+n+p+ir+)
+ iJatp+n^p+p+x )
+ Iio(p+n*p+n+x++x ) (1)
as an initial estimate of the x production
cross-section. For example, at a laboratory
energy of 900 MeV/amu, corresponding to a
center-of-mass energy of 200 MeV/amu, the
sum of the three terms is 90 mb. If we
reduce this estimate by 20J to account for
shadow corrections we obtain
o(t+t"*T +...) - 70 mb , (2)
as an estimate for the p production cross
section at a center-of-mass energy of
200 MeV/amu.
From estimates of the total cross
section for inelastic triton-triton
collisions one can guess that approximately
two-thirds of triton-triton collisions at a .
lab energy of 900 MeV/amu lead to i 's. If
one were to produce x *s by directing a 900-
MeV/amu tritium beam at a fixed tritium
target the beam energy needed to produce a
p would be approximately 3/2 x 2700 MeV *
*t050 HeV. Therefore, even for the produc-
tion of 200 fusions (3520 MeV per p ) one
could only hope to achieve energy break-even
Work performed under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Energy by the Lawrence
Livermore National Laboratory under contract number H-7405-EN6-48.
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Moir, R.W. & Chapline, G.F. Jr. Production of muons for fusion catalysis in a magnetic mirror configuration, article, June 25, 1986; [Livermore,] California. (https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc1093432/m1/2/: accessed May 6, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, UNT Digital Library, https://digital.library.unt.edu; crediting UNT Libraries Government Documents Department.