A Subcritical Thorium Fission-Deuteron Fusion Hybrid Reactor: Dd Collider Instead of Muonic Fusion as a Neutron Source

Abstract

The use of thorium as nuclear fuel in fusion reactors will contribute to the reduction of radioactive waste due to the much lower production of transuranics. Fusion reactors, which are considered promising, are still in the research and development phase. In this respect, hybrid fusion-fission reactors seem more promising, and the recently proposed combination of muon-catalyzed deuterium-deuterium (DD) fusion with a cascade thorium reactor is worthy of appreciation, as 10 MW of electric power can be obtained with approximately 80 times lower input power using muons obtained from a giga-electron-volt energy proton accelerator. This study showed that the same electric power can be obtained with approximately 2500 times lower input power (compared to muon-catalyzed DD fusion) by using a relatively simple, small, and low-energy deuteron collider with 100 keV of center-of-mass energy instead of a muon-catalyzed system for neutron production by fusion. It was considered that the DD collider would be a continuously fed ring-type collider; its main parameters are discussed.