THE FATE OF BE-7 IN THE SUN

We reexamine the electron- and proton-capture rates of Be-7 important to the solar neutrino "problem." Although the assumptions implied by the traditional Debye approximation for plasma screening are not valid, a careful numerical study changes the electron capture rate by less than 2%. We extrapolate experimental data on the proton capture reaction to astrophysically relevant energies using an energy dependence that includes d-wave scattering and is shown to be relatively independent of the model space and interaction used. We find that the solar proton capture rate is lowered by approximately 7% from the currently accepted value.