A few days ago I asked about a fusion reactor design I was thinking about and got a well-founded answer by #BowlOfRed#.
There is the question I posted:
Another cold-fusion reactor scheme 🙂 Is it feasible?
He explained why it wouldn't work and he proceeded to point out that even the Sun's core isn't very efficient "reactor" since only one collision per $10^{26}$ attempts is a successful fusion. This got me thinking…
If that is the successful fusion rate in a hydrogen bomb the presence of hydrogen wouldn't make much difference, would it?! As far as I know an H bomb consists of several small fission bombs surrounding a load of hydrogen which is not much, only like 100 grams or so. Is that right? When they explode they compress and heat up the hydrogen greatly so hydrogen atom start to fuse…
So in order for the hydrogen in the bomb to make it significantly more powerful then the fusion rate per nuclei should be quite large. That to me says, that the core of an H bomb has better conditions for fusion than the core of the sun?! It's mind boggling to think that the fusion failure rate is that big in the Sun's core, considering the pressure and heat that exist there. Knowing that I'd say why do we even consider fusion as energy source?…
I'm probably missing a lot here, so can you guys clear that up for me. 🙂
Best Answer
The Sun fuses protons, and this is a very slow process because there is no bound state of two protons. Hydrogen bombs fuse deuterium and tritium, and this is much, much faster because there is a bound state of these nucleides.
You might like to have a look at:
as these cover related issues.