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Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.
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Topics covered include: Defining Deterrence, And Why it Matters; Deterrence Today - Challenges of Great Power, Competition and Multi-Polar Nuclear Interaction; Deterrence and Our Mission -- Science underpins Deterrence; and, Questions and Answers.
Topics include: 2018 Nuclear Posture Review (NPR): Examples of Threats as Described in the NPR; Stockpile Stewardship Management Plan (SSMP); Group Project (Not Applicable in an Online Presentation Venue); References; Questions and Answers;
Nuclear instrumentation in space
Nuclear densitometer utilizing gamma radiation attenuation to measure liquid oxygen and hydrogen densities
Uranium 233 critical mass requirements, neutron kinetic behavior, and neutron and gamma ray heating rates for nuclear light bulb rocket engine
Symmetry energy of infinite nuclear matter calculated for cases of constant density and minimum saturation energy by density variation, considering finite compressibility effects
Aerospace nuclear applications - Conference, Huntsville, Alabama, April 1970
Space nuclear power system design and operation related to safety, discussing SNAP flights
Nuclear science and power systems - IEEE Conference, New York, November 1970
The Reference Design Document, of the Preliminary Safety Analysis Report (PSAR) - Reactor System provides the basic design and operations data used in the nuclear safety analysis of the Rector Power Module as applied to a Space Base program. A description of the power module systems, facilities, launch vehicle and mission operations, as defined in NASA Phase A Space Base studies is included. Each of two Zirconium Hydride Reactor Brayton power modules provides 50 kWe for the nominal 50 man Space Base. The INT-21 is the prime launch vehicle. Resupply to the 500 km orbit over the ten year mission is provided by the Space Shuttle. At the end of the power module lifetime (nominally five years), a reactor disposal system is deployed for boost into a 990 km high altitude (long decay time) earth orbit.
The Accident Model Document is one of three documents of the Preliminary Safety Analysis Report (PSAR) - Reactor System as applied to a Space Base Program. Potential terrestrial nuclear hazards involving the zirconium hydride reactor-Brayton power module are identified for all phases of the Space Base program. The accidents/events that give rise to the hazards are defined and abort sequence trees are developed to determine the sequence of events leading to the hazard and the associated probabilities of occurence. Source terms are calculated to determine the magnitude of the hazards. The above data is used in the mission accident analysis to determine the most probable and significant accidents/events in each mission phase. The only significant hazards during the prelaunch and launch ascent phases of the mission are those which arise form criticality accidents. Fission product inventories during this time period were found to be very low due to very limited low power acceptance testing.
A qualitative identification of the steps required to assure the incorporation of radiological system safety principles and objectives into all phases of a manned space base program are presented. Specific areas of emphasis include: (1) radiological program management, (2) nuclear system safety plan implementation, (3) impact on program, and (4) summary of the key operation and design guidelines and requirements. The plan clearly indicates the necessity of considering and implementing radiological system safety recommendations as early as possible in the development cycle to assure maximum safety and minimize the impact on design and mission plans.
Papers are presented dealing with latest advances in the design of scintillation counters, semiconductor radiation detectors, gas and position sensitive radiation detectors, and the application of these detectors in biomedicine, satellite instrumentation, and environmental and reactor instrumentation. Some of the topics covered include entopistic scintillators, neutron spectrometry by diamond detector for nuclear radiation, the spherical drift chamber for X-ray imaging applications, CdTe detectors in radioimmunoassay analysis, CAMAC and NIM systems in the space program, a closed loop threshold calibrator for pulse height discriminators, an oriented graphite X-ray diffraction telescope, design of a continuous digital-output environmental radon monitor, and the optimization of nanosecond fission ion chambers for reactor physics. Individual items are announced in this issue.
Advances in instrumentation for use in nuclear-science studies are described. Consideration is given to medical instrumentation, computerized fluoroscopy, environmental instrumentation, data acquisition techniques, semiconductor detectors, microchannel plates and photomultiplier tubes, reactor instrumentation, neutron detectors and proportional counters, and space instrumentation.
A computational fluid dynamics model with porosity and permeability formulations in the transport equations has been developed to study the concept of nuclear thermal propulsion through the analysis of a pulsed irradiation of a particle bed element (PIPE). The numerical model is a time-accurate pressure-based formulation. An adaptive upwind scheme is employed for spatial discretization. The upwind scheme is based on second- and fourth-order central differencing with adaptive artificial dissipation. Multiblocked porosity regions have been formulated to model the cold frit, particle bed, and hot frit. Multiblocked permeability regions have been formulated to describe the flow shaping effect from the thickness-varying cold frit. Computational results for several zero-power density PIPEs and an elevated-particle-temperature PIPE are presented. The implications of the computational results are discussed.
The authors of this paper have provided a set of ready-to-run FORTRAN programs that should be useful in the field of theoretical nuclear physics. The purpose of this document is to provide a simple synopsis of the programs and their use. A separate section is devoted to each program set and includes: abstract; files; compiling, linking, and running; obtaining results; and a tutorial.
Here, we describe a new detector, called NuLat, to study electron anti-neutrinos a few meters from a nuclear reactor, and search for anomalous neutrino oscillations. Such os- cillations could be caused by sterile neutrinos, and might explain the "Reactor Antineu- trino Anomaly". NuLat, is made possible by a natural synergy between the miniTime- Cube and mini-LENS programs described in this paper. It features a "Raghavan Optical Lattice" (ROL) consisting of 3375 boron or 6 Li loaded plastic scintillator cubical cells 6.3 cm (2.500") on a side. Cell boundaries have a 0.127mm (0.005") air gap, resulting in total internal re ection guiding most of the light down the 3 cardinal directions. The ROL detector technology for NuLat gives excellent spatial and energy resolution and al- lows for in-depth event topology studies. These features allow us to discern inverse beta decay (IBD) signals and the putative oscillation pattern, even in the presence of other backgrounds. We discuss here test venues, e ciency, sensitivity and project status.
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