Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
In contrast, the radioactive nuclide beryllium-7 falls into the same light element range but has a half-life too short for it to have been formed before the formation of the Solar System, so that it cannot be a primordial nuclide. Since the cosmic ray spallation route is the most likely source of beryllium-7 in the environment, that isotope is ...
The fission sail is a type of spacecraft propulsion proposed by Robert Forward that uses fission fragments to propel a large solar sail-like craft. It is similar in concept to the fission-fragment rocket in that the fission by-products are directly harnessed as working mass, and differs primarily in the way that the fragments are used for thrust.
Although this is a far more expensive way of producing neutron beams than by a chain reaction of nuclear fission in a nuclear reactor, it has the advantage that the beam can be pulsed with relative ease. Furthermore, the energetic cost of one spallation neutron is six times lower than that of a neutron gained via nuclear fission.
Nuclear Power in Space - Office of Nuclear Energy - U.S. Department of Energy(.pdf) SAFE-400 paper (fission reactor) Design Concept for a Nuclear Reactor-Powered Mars Rover; David Poston, "Space Nuclear Power: Fission Reactors" Design and Testing of Small Nuclear (.pdf file) Overview of NASA and nuclear power in space
LIFE, short for Laser Inertial Fusion Energy, was a fusion energy effort run at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory between 2008 and 2013. LIFE aimed to develop the technologies necessary to convert the laser-driven inertial confinement fusion concept being developed in the National Ignition Facility (NIF) into a practical commercial power ...
The Lockheed Martin Compact Fusion Reactor (CFR) was a fusion power project at Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works. [1] Its high-beta configuration, which implies that the ratio of plasma pressure to magnetic pressure is greater than or equal to 1 (compared to tokamak designs' 0.05), allows a compact design and expedited development.
Tuning of the performance of a space vehicle is also possible. Rocket efficiency is strongly related to the mass of the working mass used, which in this case is the nuclear fuel. The energy released by a given mass of fusion fuel is several times larger than that released by the same mass of a fission fuel.
Most of the energy released by a fission bomb is in the form of x-rays. The spectrum is approximately that of a black body at a temperature of 50,000,000 kelvins (a little more than three times the temperature of the Sun's core). The amplitude can be modeled as a trapezoidal pulse with a one microsecond rise time, one microsecond plateau, and ...