Recently I found out that Hydrogen-1 and Boron-11 together are considered a viable nuclear fuel. Fusion of Hydrogen-1 and Boron-11 produces three highly energetic Helium-4 nuclei. Basically the entire amount of energy produced by the reaction is in form of alpha radiation, there is no gamma radiation and no high energy neutron output. The problem with H-B fusion is that the ignition temperature is very high, about 1 billion degrees.
It's unachievable with tokamaks, so researchers in the field develop other methods suitable for fusion of those two elements, most notably the "Dense Plasma Focus" device. This device as well as the other types however, are all basically versions of the hot fusion method. I was thinking isn't there an easier way?
Lets say we have a tubular container full of solid chemically pure Boron-11. Though an opening on one end of the tube the interior boron content is s bombarded by a beam of protons accelerated at about 100keV, so that the beam is directed along the tube's length for maximum impact. A beam of protons accelerated to 100keV can be achieved with a really small cyclotron.
My question is: Would that setup produce a continuous fusion for some period with positive net energy generation?
Here is my argument why I think it would: Since Boron is solid at room temperature, it's density is high, so I think the fusion rate per nucleon would be quite high. As far as I know 100keV is the energy needed for Hydrogen-1 and Boron-11 to fuse, while the resultant three He-4 nuclei should have about 8MeV of energy. So indeed if all accelerated protons fuse then the energy produced should be quite higher than the input.
The problem that immediately comes to mind is that as the container starts to rapidly heat up as a result of the reactions the Boron inside would no longer be solid and may even start to leak through the opening. But before that happens, would there be at least a brief period where an efficient fusion can be sustained?
Best Answer
After doing some more research I found the answer to my question.
The method I proposed was actually one of the first methods for hydrogen-boron fusion that was tested. It's called "fixed/solid target proton-boron-11 fusion". Experimentation very quickly showed that the method could not work because of two big problems:
As #dmckee already commented above, the use of particle accelerator as part of the design was extremely impractical since particle accelerators are very inefficient. But that wasn't the biggest problem;
The electron clouds surrounding the boron nuclei of the solid target, acted as shields, absorbing most of the incoming protons' energy and thus greatly reducing the probability of fusion (1 in 10 000 000 if I remember correctly, and that considering the density of the solid target). The density also proved to be a disadvantage (counter-intuitively), since the 675keV protons could barely penetrate 10 microns into the target, which reduced the number of atoms they could react with.
In the end the number of fusion reactions was so negligible that they could barely measure it.