A Safer, Smaller, Cleaner Subcritical Thorium Fission - Deuteron Fusion Hybrid Reactor: DD Collider Instead of Muonic Fusion

Abstract

Fossil fuels, which meet most of humanity's energy needs, cause climate change due to their high carbon emissions. There are two types of energy sources that can replace fossil fuels: renewable and nuclear. Nuclear energy sources are more advantageous in terms of efficiency and sustainability. 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 R&D phase. In this respect, hybrid fusion-fission reactors seem more promising and the recently proposed combination of muon-catalyzed DD fusion with a cascade thorium reactor is worthy of appreciation. In this study, we show that using the DD collider instead of muonic fusion has significant advantages.