Original poster: "Gerry Reynolds" <gerryreynolds@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Hi Steve,
You may be interested to know that in order to get two interacting
particles to fuse, the nuclei need to approach within an order of
10^-14 m. This is about 1/10000 of the diameter of a hydrogen
atom. The nuclear radius of a particle is generally taken to be
1.5*10^(-15)*A^(1/3) where A is the atomic weight of the particle (A
needs to be less than 20 for fusion to occur). The obstacle to
having this occur is the coulomb barrier. In order to have enough
kinetic energy to over come this barrier and get to about 10^-14 m,
the kinetic energy needs to be:
Ue = 1.44 * 10^5 * Z1*Z2 ev
where Z1 and Z2 are the atomic numbers of the two interacting particles
The temperature needed to get great numbers of fusion reactions is
about 1 billion degrees Kelvin. The temperature needed to get some
reactions can be as low as 40 million degrees Kelvin but generally
it is thought that 100 million degrees Kelvin is needed for fusion.