Muon-catalyzed fusion Totally Explained

Everything about Muon-catalyzed Fusion totally explained

Muon-catalyzed fusion (μCF) is a process allowing nuclear fusion to take place at temperatures significantly lower than the temperatures required for thermonuclear fusion, even at room temperature or lower. Although it can be produced reliably with the right equipment and has been much studied, it's believed that the poor energy balance will prevent it from ever becoming a practical power source. However, if negatively charged muons (μ⁻) could be made more cheaply and efficiently somehow and/or if virtually every one made could somehow be used to catalyze as many nuclear fusion reactions as possible, the energy balance might improve enough for muon-catalyzed fusion to become a practical power source. It used to be known as cold fusion; however, this term is now avoided as it can create confusion with other suggested forms of room-temperature fusion that are rejected by mainstream science. A much more appropriate name would be cool fusion, particularly if muon-catalyzed fusion ever did become a practical power source.

Etymology

This process is referred to as muon-catalyzed fusion because muons are crucial to the reaction mechanism, but are not themselves used up.

Deuterium-tritium (d-t or dt)

In the muon-catalyzed fusion of most interest, a positively charged deuteron (d), a positively charged triton (t), and a negatively charged muon essentially form a positively charged muonic molecular heavy hydrogen ion (d-μ-t)⁺. The muon is basically a heavy electron and, like an electron, is also a fundamental, point-like particle (as far as present day experimental measurements can tell). The muon has an electric charge identical to that of an electron, about −1.6x10⁻¹⁹ coulomb.
   The muon, with a rest mass about 207 times greater than the rest mass of an electron, is able to drag the more massive triton and deuteron about 207 times closer together to each other in the muonic (d-μ-t)⁺ molecular ion than can an electron in the corresponding positively charged electronic molecular hydrogen ion (d-e-t)⁺. The average separation between the triton and the deuteron in the electronic molecular ion is about one angstrom, so the average separation between the triton and the deuteron in the muonic molecular ion is about 207 times smaller than that. Due to the strong nuclear force, whenever the triton and the deuteron in the muonic molecular ion happen to get even closer to each other during their periodic vibrational motions, the probability is very greatly enhanced that the positively charged triton and the positively charged deuteron would undergo quantum tunnelling through the repulsive Coulomb barrier that acts to keep them apart. Indeed, the quantum mechanical tunnelling probability depends roughly exponentially on the average separation between the triton and the deuteron, allowing a single muon to catalyze the d-t nuclear fusion in less than about half a picosecond, once the muonic molecular ion is formed. as measured in its rest frame wandering around looking for suitable deuterons and tritons with which to bind.
   Another way of looking at muon-catalyzed fusion is to try to visualize the ground state orbit of a muon around either a deuteron or a triton. Suppose the muon happens to have fallen into an orbit around a deuteron initially, which it has about a 50% chance of doing if there are approximately equal numbers of deuterons and tritons present, forming an electrically neutral muonic deuterium atom (d-μ)⁰ that acts somewhat like a "fat, heavy neutron" due both to its relatively small size (again, about 207 times smaller than an electrically neutral electronic deuterium atom (d-e)⁰) and to the very effective "shielding" by the muon of the positive charge of the proton in the deuteron. Even so, the muon still has a much greater chance of being transferred to any triton that comes near enough to the muonic deuterium than it does of forming a muonic molecular ion. The electically neutral muonic tritium atom (t-μ)⁰ thus formed will act somewhat like an even "fatter, heavier neutron," but it'll most likely hang on to its muon, eventually forming a muonic molecular ion, most likely due to the resonant formation of a hyperfine molecular state within an entire deuterium molecule D₂ (d=e²=d), with the muonic molecular ion acting as a "fatter, heavier nucleus" of the "fatter, heavier" neutral "muonic/electronic" deuterium molecule ([d-μ-t]=e²=d), as predicted by Vesman, an Estonian graduate student, in 1967.
   Once the muonic molecular ion state is formed, the shielding by the muon of the positive charges of the proton of the triton and the proton of the deuteron from each other allows the triton and the deuteron to move close enough together to fuse with alacrity. The muon survives the d-t muon-catalyzed nuclear fusion reaction and remains available (usually) to catalyze further d-t muon-catalyzed nuclear fusions. Each exothermic d-t nuclear fusion releases about 17.6 MeV of energy in the form of a "very fast" neutron having a kinetic energy of about 14.1 MeV and an alpha particle α (a helium-4 nucleus) with a kinetic energy of about 3.5 MeV. An additional 4.8 MeV can be gleaned by having the fast neutrons moderated in a suitable "blanket" surrounding the reaction chamber, with the blanket containing lithium-6, whose nuclei, known by some as "lithions," readily and exothermically absorb thermal neutrons, the lithium-6 being transmuted thereby into an alpha particle and a triton.

Deuterium-deuterium (d-d or dd) and other types

The first kind of muon-catalyzed fusion to be observed experimentally, by L.W. Alvarez et al., was actually protium (H or ₁H¹) and deuterium (D or ₁H²) muon-catalyzed fusion. The fusion rate for p-d (or pd) muon-catalyzed fusion has been estimated to be about a million times slower than the fusion rate for d-t muon-catalyzed fusion.
Of more practical interest, deuterium-deuterium muon-catalyzed fusion has been frequently observed and extensively studied experimentally, in large part because deuterium already exists in relative abundance and, like hydrogen, deuterium isn't at all radioactive By way of contrast, tritium, with a half-life of about 12.5 years, or so. Effectively, this means that each muon catalyzing d-d muon-catalyzed fusion reactions in pure deuterium is only able to catalyze about one-tenth of the number of d-t muon-catalyzed fusion reactions that each muon is able to catalyze in a mixture of equal amounts of deuterium and tritium, and each d-d fusion only yields about one-fifth of the yield of each d-t fusion, thereby making the prospects for useful energy release from d-d muon-catalyzed fusion at least 50 times worse than the already dim prospects for useful energy release from d-t muon-catalyzed fusion.
Potential "aneutronic" (or substantially aneutronic) nuclear fusion possibilities, which result in essentially no neutrons among the nuclear fusion products, are almost certainly not very amenable to muon-catalyzed fusion. predicted the phenomenon of muon-catalyzed fusion on theoretical grounds before 1950. Ya.B. Zel'dovitch also wrote about the phenomenon of muon-catalyzed fusion in 1954. As mentioned in the previous section, L.W. Alvarez et al., to publish one of the first comprehensive theoretical studies of muon-catalyzed fusion in his ground-breaking 1957 paper. Jackson regretfully concluded as far back as 1957 that useful energy or power production is unlikely, unless the "Gordian knot" of the so-called "alpha-sticking" problem (mentioned briefly above and discussed in somewhat more detail in the next section) could be unravelled and/or an energetically cheaper way of producing the catalyzing muons in the first place (also discussed more in the next section) could be found. The α-sticking problem is the approximately 1% probability of the negatively charged muon "sticking" to the doubly positively charged alpha particle "ash" that results from the deuteron-triton nuclear fusion "burning," thereby effectively removing the muon from the muon-catalysis process altogether. Even if muons were absolutely stable, each muon could catalyze, on average, only about 100 d-t muon-catalyzed nuclear fusions before sticking to an alpha particle, which is only about one-fifth the number of d-t muon-catalyzed nuclear fusions needed to produce break-even, where more thermal energy is generated than the electrical energy that's consumed to produce the muons in the first place, according to Jackson's rough 1957 estimate. Indeed, the team led by Steven E. Jones achieved 150 d-t fusions per muon (average) at the Los Alamos Meson Physics Facility. Unfortunately, 200 (or 250 or even 333) muon-catalyzed d-t fusions per muon are still not quite enough even to reach "break-even," where as much thermal energy is generated (or output) as the electrical energy that was used up (or input) to make the muon in the first place. This means, of course, that not nearly enough thermal energy is generated thereby to be able to convert the thermal energy released into more useful electrical energy, and to have any electrical energy left over to sell to the commercial electrical power "grid." The conversion efficiency from thermal energy to electrical energy is only about 40% or so. Also, some not inconsiderable fraction of that electrical energy (hopefully not all of it) would have to be "recycled" (used up in deuteron particle accelerators, for example) to make more muons to keep the muon-catalyzed d-t nuclear fusion fires burning night and day. The best recent estimated guess of the electrical "energy cost" per muon is about 6 gigaelectronvolts (GeV), using deuterons that are accelerated to have kinetic energies of about 800 MeV per nucleon, with accelerators that are (coincidentally) about 40% efficient at taking electrical energy from the alternating current (AC) mains (the plugs in the wall) and accelerating the deuterons using this electrical energy.

Potential benefits

If muon-catalyzed d-t nuclear fusion were able to be realized practically, it would be a much "greener" way of generating power than conventional nuclear fission reactors because muon-catalyzed d-t nuclear fusion (like most other types of nuclear fusion), produces far fewer harmful (and far less long-lived) radioactive wastes, and hardly any greenhouse gases. Practical and economically sensible muon-catalyzed d-t nuclear fusion would go a long way toward reducing the production of greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide (CO₂), by reducing or even eliminating the need to burn fossil fuels and biomass that contain carbon, for example.
Some people have proposed a "hybrid" fusion/nuclear fission schemes to use the large amount of neutrons produced in muon-catalyzed d-t nuclear fusions to "breed" fissile fuels, from "fertile" materials - for example, thorium-232 could breed uranium-233 in this way. The fissile fuels that have been bred can then be "burned," either in a conventional supercritical nuclear fission reactor or in an unconventional subcritical fission "pile." One example of an unconventional subcritical fission pile is an Accelerator-Driven System (ADS) that has been proposed for, and in some places is currently being developed for, the Accelerator Transmutation of Waste (ATW)—for example, using neutrons to transmute large quantities of highly radioactive and extremely long-lived nuclear wastes, such as those produced (mainly) by conventional nuclear fission reactors, into less harmful, less radioactive, less toxic, and much less long-lived transmuted elements. Another example of the creative use of an unconventional subcritical fission pile is the energy amplifier devised by Physics Nobel Laureate Carlo Rubbia, among others.

Some conclusions

Except for refinements such as these, not all that much has changed in nearly half a century since Jackson's assessment of the feasibility of muon-catalyzed fusion, other than Vesman's prediction of the hyperfine resonant formation of the muonic (d-μ-t)⁺ molecular ion, which was subsequently experimentally observed. This helped spark renewed interest in the whole field of muon-catalyzed fusion, which remains an active area of research worldwide among those who continue to be fascinated and intrigued (and frustrated) by this tantalizing approach to controllable nuclear fusion that almost works. Clearly, as Jackson observed in his 1957 paper, muon-catalyzed fusion is "unlikely" to provide "useful power production… unless an energetically cheaper way of producing μ⁻-mesons can be found."Further Information

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