Background : Large-scale fusion reactors using hydrogen isotopes as fuel are still under development at several places in the world. These types of fusion reactors use tritium as fuel for the T +D reaction. However, tritium is not a sustainable fuel, since it may require fission reactors for its production, and since it is a dangerous material due to its radioactivity with main risks of release to the environment during tritium production, transport and refuelling operations. Thus, widespread use of fusion relying on tritium fuel should be avoided. At least two better methods for producing the nuclear energy needed in the world using deuterium or ordinary hydrogen as fuel indeed already exist, and more need to be developed. It should be noted that the first experiments with sustained laser-driven fusion above break-even using deuterium as fuel were published already in 2015. Similar results for T+D fusion do not exist yet, which gives no confidence in this approach.
Results: The well-known muon-induced fusion (conventionally called muon-catalyzed fusion) can use deuterium as fuel. With the recent development of a high intensity (10 13 muons per laser shot) muon source (patented), this method is technically and economically feasible today. Due to the low energy cost of producing muons at < 1 MeV with this new source, the length of the so-called catalytic chain is not important. This circumvents the 60 year-old enigma with the alpha sticking process. The recently developed annihilation energy generation uses ordinary hydrogen in the form of ultradense hydrogen H(0) as fuel.
Conclusions: muon-induced fusion is able to directly replace most combustion-based power stations in the world, giving sustainable and environmentally harmless power (primarily heat), in this way eliminating most CO 2 emissions of human energy generation origin. Annihilation-based power generation has the potential to replace almost all other uses of fossil fuels within a few decades, also in mobile applications, including spaceflight where it is the only method able to give relativistic rocket propulsion (Acta Astronautica 2020).