One of the things the reactor creates is neutron radiation. A fucking LOT of it...
It uses deuterium and tritium for the reaction.
Water + neutron = Deuterium, right?
Deuterium + neutron = tritium, isn't it?
So wouldn't an ideal fusion reactor run with pure water, "breeding" it to D and T and then let it react with each other?
You could use water as "neutron stopper" and breeding material.
I've read in some scifi-book (don't know where) that they refueled their reactors with distilled water, and now I remembered this and it made sense...
Ordinary hydrogen has a very low reaction cross-section. You wouldn't get fusion for shit if you fed it with regular H. You have to feed it D and T right off the bat, so you have to make your deuterium and tritium elsewhere. Besides, the reaction cross-section for neutron capture is much lower with fast neutrons, so you want slow neutrons. You're sure as hell not going to slow down neutrons appreciably within the wispy plasmoid of a tokomak reactor.
The Sun only runs on H-H hydrogen because it's so fucking huge that a truly pitiful reaction rate is still enough to make a lot of energy. And even then, it still has to squeeze the hydrogen to many times the density of lead; something that we cannot achieve in a tokomak even in our wettest dreams.
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I didn't mean that the ordinary water would be injected into the reactor/plasmoid. That would not work.
Use the neutron radiation of a D&T reaction, channel it through something to decellerate them (Isn't deuterium used to slow them down in fission reactors?) and then fire them into an water tank to breed at least some deuterium & tritium. Those will be extracted and stored in the fuel tanks of the reactor.
It would be a cycle - you make/buy/whatever some D&T and use it to start the reactor, and use some of the reactors neutron radiation to make more D&T. So, all you need is to refill the D&T breeding chamber with pure water and occasionally use another neutron source to intensify breeding when the reaction speed is too slow to maintain fuel production (since it's more a "lucky hit" issue to produce D&T) .
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^ The recommended way to get tritium (H^3) is to zonk lithium with neutrons.
One of the schema I've seen for a tokamak-type fusion reactor has lithium deuteride forming part of the outer jacket of the reaction chamber. The neutrons from the reaction are absorbed by the jacket, which heats the jacket, and breaks up the lithium deuteride into tritium, deuterium and what-have-you. So, you have neutron shielding, working fluid and fuel breeding all at the same time.
Neet, but I cannot comment about its practicality.
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