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up vote 6 down vote favorite

In reviewing some problems in an elementary book, I ran across a reference to the reaction $p+n\rightarrow d$ + "energy".

Is that possible? I don't see any reason why not, but I don't find any mention of this reaction at all using Google. It seems to me that the "energy" would have to be a combination of deuteron kinetic energy and a gamma.

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It's probably possible - but keep in mind that free neutrons are unstable, and they decay into a $p^+e^-\bar\nu_e$ triplet within about fifteen minutes, so your problem is going to be getting hold of the neutron to begin with. That's what makes this reaction so rare w.r.t. $pp→de^+$ fusion in the Google results. – Emilio Pisanty 10 hours ago
    
have a look at en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronology_of_the_universe#Hadron_epoc‌​h , at that time the energies and densities are such that neutrons can meet protons :) – anna v 10 hours ago
    
@annav Thanks. I recalled being aware of that reaction in the early universe, but I couldn't find a reference to it. – garyp 10 hours ago
    
Kind of a silly question, but: What is "$d$"? – ACuriousMind♦ 1 hour ago
up vote 13 down vote accepted

Of course the reaction is possible. It doesn't even require special environmental conditions. Having no charge the neutrons don't need to overcome a strong Coulomb barrier to interact with atomic nuclei and will happily find any nuclei that can capture them at thermal energies. KamLAND (for instance) relies on this reaction as the delayed part of the delay-coincidence in detecting anti-neutrino events in the detector. In the mineral oil environment of KamLAND the free neutrons have a mean lifetime around $200 \,\mathrm{\mu s}$.

Neutron capture even on a proton releases 2.2 MeV. Chlorine, boron and gadolinium are all better neutron capture agents than hydrogen bearing molecules like water and oils, and captures to those absorbers release even more energy per event.

So why isn't everyone jumping around cheering for room temperature fusion and prognosticating a beautiful future full of safe and abundant energy?

Because there is no adequate supply of free neutrons. With their roughly 15 minute beta-decay lifetime there is no naturally occurring reserve and you can't store them in any case.

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