Analysis of the retrograde hydrogen boron fusion gains at inertial confinement fusion with volume ignition

Abstract

The very clean nuclear fusion reaction of hydrogen and boron-11 by inertial confinement arrives at conditions for power stations by volume ignition only at compressions to 100,000 times the solid state. The earlier (numerically) observed anomaly of decreasing gain at increasing density (retrograde behavior) is analyzed and the reason clarified: the strong stopping power mechanism, based on Gabor's collective model, is reaching its limit of too small Debye lengths at the extremely high densities because of the optimum temperature in the range of 30 keV due to the reabsorption of the bremsstrahlung. The relativistic correction of the bremsstrahlung for the always much higher temperatures after volume ignition is included from Maxon's model.