Nuclear Combustion: Energy Generation Through Fusion-Induced Nuclear Relaxation

Nuclear Combustion investigates whether fusion-induced destabilization can accelerate the progression of heavy nuclei toward shorter-lived or more stable configurations while recovering useful energy from the resulting transformation pathways. Nuclear energy generation is traditionally divided into two categories: fission and fusion. Fission extracts energy from the fragmentation of heavy nuclei, while fusion extracts energy from the merger of light nuclei. This paper proposes a third conceptual framework: Nuclear Combustion. In this model, fusion is not treated as the primary energy source. Instead, fusion-capable environments are used as ignition furnaces that induce unstable, metastable, or excited nuclear configurations. Energy is subsequently harvested from the decay, transmutation, and relaxation pathways followed by these nuclei as they migrate toward stable configurations.