Nuclear physics
379. Thermonuclear fusion: list of posts
Before proceeding to the discussion of hydrodynamic instabilities in plasma, let me list for further reference all the posts I wrote so far about thermonuclear fusion and thermonuclear reactors:
1. Thermonuclear fusion: some basic facts about thermonuclear reactions, where I start explaining why such phenomenon as thermonuclear fusion can even take place in Nature 
I also briefly discuss the issue of Coulomb barrier and two possible strategies to overcome it.
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375. Inertial confinement: concluding part on lasers
The previous parts on interaction between laser emission and material of fuel capsule are “Inertial confinement – using lasers for compression” and “Inertial confinement: more on interaction of laser emission with matter“. I hope to finish with discussion of laser-target interaction today and proceed to instabilities (the most interesting part of the physics of inertial confinement reactors from my point of view).
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368. Inertial confinement: more on interaction of laser emission with matter
Yeah… so, where did we stop last time? I’ve just said another triviality – that laser emission strongly interacts with material of the fuel capsule. There are several mechanisms of this interaction: deflection (ablator and fuel are almost transparent but not quite), absorption and scattering.
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365. Inertial confinement – using lasers for compression
I hope you are not getting bored too much by my discussion of thermonuclear fusion in inertial confinement reactors, because today I’m going to continue and finally start explaining why do they want to use lasers in HiPER to compress plasma.
Read more on 365. Inertial confinement – using lasers for compression…
364. Thermonuclear reactors. More on inertial confinement
Last time I did not quite finish with the discussion of physics of inertial confinement, so let me continue…
An important parameter that characterizes plasma in reactors with inertial confinement is the ratio between the geometric size 
of the region where reactions take place and the mean free path 
of 
-particles. It basically determines the ability of thermonuclear reactions in the plasma to self-sustain – if particles are adsorbed faster, plasma is getting warmed up more effectively. In other words, one naturally would want to increase or decrease . How to do that?
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358. Thermonuclear reactors. Inertial confinement
I am currently keeping studying thermonuclear fusion and reactors a bit and, I should admit, I’m absolutely in love with HiPER and inertial confinement as an idea – it is so much more elegant than magnetic confinement used in Tokamaks… But before I’ll turn to the discussion of inertial confinement reactors, let me finish with generalities and trivialities (I’ll need them anyway for further reference).
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355. Introduction into thermonuclear reactors
After a brief layman review of the theory of thermonuclear fusion let me get more practical and discuss a bit how thermonuclear reactors are supposed to work.
Basically, we want the energy release of the thermonuclear reactor to be larger than the energy we pump into the reactor. Depending on a particular scenario of the energy pumping, we will distinguish two types of thermonuclear reactors.
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346. Thermonuclear fusion. Nuclear reaction rates – second part
Last time we have figured out that two factors determine effective rates of nuclear reactions – the probability of quantum mechanical tunnelling through the Coulomb barrier and the probability of nuclear transformation. Let us talk today about the second factor a bit.
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344. Thermonuclear fusion. Coulomb barrier and reaction rates
This post is the next in the series devoted to the discussion of our main energy source in the 22 century – thermonuclear fusion
Today let us talk a bit about reaction rates. Somehow, it is accustomed that we estimate these rates in terms of the maximal effective cross-section of the reaction. Here are some important and most common reactions that happen in Sun (as well as their cross-sections):
Read more on 344. Thermonuclear fusion. Coulomb barrier and reaction rates…
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