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With the need for a large supply of Cobalt 60 as a fuel for
a Cobalt 60 Gamma Ray Battery, mined resources of
Cobalt, used to make Cobalt 60 by neutron bombardment,
will be depleted quickly.
Using a High Density Plasma Fusion Reactor (its a thing),
create Iron/Deuterium plasma. Slowly Cobalt
60 will be
formed and can be extracted as fuel. This fuel essentially
stores the energy used to create Cobalt 60 from Iron 54 in
the strong nuclear forces of the nucleus of Cobalt. Similar
to a chemical bond, it is the stored energy in the unstable
Cobalt isotope that may make it a viable gamma ray
source for a gamma ray battery.
The energy used to make Iron into Cobalt can be sourced
from any power station - allowing one to store energy as
radioactive Cobalt. The process of fusion would be
tremendously inefficient, however I think that if the
Cobalt is used as a storage device for energy derived from
renewable resources, then using Cobalt 60 as an energy
storage mechanism may become viable.
The Cobalt created in the reactor begins as plasmarized
Iron 54. Upon entering the high density reactor, an
equivalently energetic deuterium plasma is introduced.The
reaction takes place using a very high voltage, perhaps a
million volts, the plasma mixture is zapped for a few
minutes, increasing temperature and pressure, hopefully
resulting in Cobalt 60 that can be chemically separated
from the substrate.
Iron is cheap and plentiful. If we can 'charge' iron to
become Cobalt 60, using renewable energy sources, this
allows very high density energy storage solution to
compete with other energy storage solutions such as
batteries.
cobalt 60
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobalt-60
there are some stories of people exposed to the istope. [travbm, Nov 24 2015]
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While it is quite possible to fuse Fe-58 with H-2 to make
Co-60, the reaction takes more energy to cause, than it
yields. There is thing known as "the curve of binding
energy" and the most stable place on the curve is Fe-56.
Other elemental isotopes can yield energy if they combine
or split apart to become closer to Fe-56. It takes energy to
move anywhere on the curve away from Fe-56. |
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//the reaction takes more energy to cause, than it
yields// |
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This is totally OK. The purpose of the reactor is to create
Co-60 to store energy. I am not concerned about creating
energy by using fusion, I am concerned about using fusion
to store energy in nuclear bonds, as opposed to chemical
bonds - allowing a much greater (by factor of millions?)
energy density. |
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The source of the 'fusion energy' would be from things
such as tidal, solar, geothermal and wind. The actual
energy from the Co-60 decay can then be used to
generate electricity and a Nickel by-product. |
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Co-60 is merely an energy storage medium, like
lead/acid in a lead acid battery - which also takes more
energy to charge than it can deliver. |
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Iron 56 is the most abundant form of iron on earth, using
a reaction of Deuterium may increase the yield of Cobalt
60. |
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Welcome to the HB! I now feel that I have been here long enough to say this. |
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It would be more economical to breed tritium and let it decay into helium 3 that could be used as a fusion reactor fuel. While the tritium decays it could be put in batteries lasting 10-15 years. Now the batteries could be recycled and helium 3 could be recovered for focus fusion reactors or Polywell reactors or some such thing as a pulse reaction base on magnetohydrodynamics. |
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Thank you for for the welcome. its nice to be here. The
problem with Tritium is that it is flammable and hard to
contain. |
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Indeed - welcome to the Halfbakery! |
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What's the overall energy conversion efficiency - low nano-percentages ? |
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How would one begin to calculate conversion efficiency?
What about data from nuclear reactors made from mostly
steel? What is most important is the how hot Cobalt 60 is
compared to how much energy it took to make it - not
necessarily how much Cobalt vs Iron atoms the process
might create/use. |
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Though, since the only fit that jumps out is something like making space batteries out of asteroids, how much asteroid it would take to make a battery would be useful, as well. |
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I wonder would it be based on the Busard Reactor or a focus fusion device or some sort of muon induced particle accelerator assisted fusion? |
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Muon induced particle accelerator assisted fusion was my
first thought about accelerating some magnetic iron ions
around. Then a parallel path in opposite direction for
Deuterium cycle. Once a suitable speed has been
reached,
the stream of particles is collided and zapped with
high voltage. The idea is to have a very thin stream of
particles, ideally one nucleus thick for each stream. The
collision then under the extreme pressure and
temperature of magnetic field induced by the million volt
zap, will hopefully yield an acceptable percentage of
Cobalt. I am not sure if Polywell or Bussard Reactors can
do the trick. I think it is definitely worth a try. |
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It appears that your "addition" is off. Iron has 26 protons
and cobalt has 27, and nickel has 58. If you add deuterium
(1 proton and 1 neutron) to Fe-56, you get Co-58, not Co-
60. If you add 2 deuteriums to Fe-56, you get Ni-60, not
Co-60. That's why, in my earlier anno, I specified starting
with Fe-58 (another stable natural isotope of iron),
because if you add one deuterium to that, you get Co-60. |
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IT seems easier to make colbalt 60 by bombarding cobalt 59 with neutrons from a fission reactor. This could extend use of current nuclear power plants. |
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[xenzag] //Welcome to the HB! I now feel that I have been here long enough to say this.// - hmph! - only just... |
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