Feasibility of a Fully Catalyzed D-D Fusion Reactor*

Previous studies have shown that a fully catalyzed deuterium-deuterium fusion reactor greatly improves the power balance over a pure D-D reactor, while removing the need for tritium breeding and reducing the average incident neutron energy found in a deuterium-tritium reactor. However, the greater temperatures required for sufficient fusion rates to obtain ignition require the consideration of relativistic effects and radiative loss mechanisms that are insignificant in a D-T reactor. A model is found for the Lawson criterion of a generalized reactor accounting for relativistic effects, e-e bremsstrahlung, synchrotron radiation, and first order corrections across a range of electron densities, temperatures, magnetic field strengths, and particle to energy confinement time ratios. The model is accurate in the temperature range ~10⁷-10⁹ K and can be extended considering an expansion of bremsstrahlung to a greater number of multipoles. The reactor parameters for a stellarator using ISSO 4 v 3 scaling law are found, and optimum operating parameters are calculated.