Can someone explain why this is considered fusion? The reaction involves shooting a proton (hydrogen) at a boron nuclei and outputting 3 alpha particles. That seems more like the nuclei being split apart than fused together.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_binding_energy#Nuclear...
(TLDR version: proton-boron fusion is a less energetically efficient alternative to 3He fusion, but with the howlingly significant advantage that boron -- the fuel -- is lying around in heaps and drifts on Earth, rather than being so exotic a substance that annual global production is measured in single-digit kilograms and a significant energy economy would require mining it from the Lunar regolith. It's not as well-known as 3He fusion, though, because the space cadets don't see the point -- there are no Moon colonies required. Advantages of 3He or B + p fusion over D-T fusion: it doesn't produce a surplus of neutrons, so there's less radioactive waste created as a by-product of the process.)
After that there is radioactive decay (the splitting).
To be fission you have to actually [actively] break the atom apart, which isn't happening here.