NuclearCraft

NuclearCraft

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default fusion power of H-T fuel too low ?

ToserBan opened this issue ยท 1 comments

commented

Just a question,
In the nuclearcraft.cfg has the H-T fuel combo just 0.3 base power. Shouldnt it have power similar to H-He3 , which has 3036, more than 10000 times more than H-T ? Helium 3 is similar to tritium, so the differences shouldnt be so big and tritium has only one proton so we need not so high temperatures to overcome the electromagnetic force.

commented

The reason it's significantly different is because H-T produces Helium-3, while H-He3 produces Helium-4. The difference in mass between the initial and final particles in the former is much lower, mainly because Helium-3's binding energy is nowhere near as large as Helium-4's, so the energy released is much lower also ;)

Similarly, although the strength of the electric repulsion does contribute to the variation of the reaction rate with temperature, what's also important is the cross-section for fusion, which is much lower for H-T.