Nuclear energy amplifier

Pooley, D. (chairman) (1997). Opinion of the scientific and technical committee on a nuclear energy amplifier. European Commission, Nuclear Science and Technology Report EUR 17616 EN 1996 UKAEA Government Division, Harwell, UK, assessed 1997 at http //itumagill.fzk.de/ADS/pooley.html. 

Figure 5.41. The energy amplifier fuel chain concept. The fraction of the generated electricity that has to be used for powering the accelerator is indicated. The reprocessing step is essential for the resource viability of the system. (From C. Rubbia and J. Rubio (1996). A tentative programme towards a full scale energy amplifier. European Organisation for Nuclear Research. Used with permission).

Having now determined to total amount of nuclear electricity required, the thorium fuel input to the energy amplifiers can be calculated from the design data of Rubbia and Rubio (1996). The thermal output from the prototype design reactor is 1500 MW, with a fuel amount of 27.6 t in the reactor (Fig. 5.42). The fuel will sit in the reactor heat-generating unit for 5 years, after which the "spent" fuel will be reprocessed to allow for manufacture of a new fuel load with only 2.9 t of fresh thorium oxide supply. This means that 2.6/5 t y of thorium fuel is required for delivery of 5 x 1500 MWy of thermal power over 5 years, or 675 MWy of electric power, of which the 75 MWy is used for powering the accelerator and other in-plant loads. The bottom line is that 1 kg of thorium fuel produces very close to 1 MWy of electric power, and 1 kt thorium produces close to 1 TWh. ... 

SEFIDVASH, F., SEIFRITZ, W., An energy amplifier fluidized bed nuclear reactor concept, Kemtechnik 66, 1-2, pp 59-61 (2001). 

Many detectors have been developed to collect and amplify the primary ionization created by nuclear particles. In principle, the careful measurement of this ionization provides the most information about the particle and its energy. The devices with the highest resolution are these detectors based upon ionization. Broadly speaking, ionization-based detectors have the common feature that the incident radiation creates ion pahs in an active volume of the device. An electric field is applied to the active volume to separate the charge pairs and sweep the ions to the electrodes. 

Figure 20. Energy dependence of total cross section for He (2 5) + He calculated from potentials of Fig. 14 and Table 111. Oscillations at low energies attributable to nuclear-symmetry. Glory effect is amplified in curve I, in which difference between cross sections for identical and distinguishable particles is plotted on an expanded scale. 

Common spectroscopic techniques test small portions of the ground and/or excited state PES either around the gs minimum (IR and non-resonant Raman spectra, electronic absorption spectra.) or in the proximity of the excited state minimum (steady-state fluorescence). These spectra are then satisfactorily described in the best harmonic approximation, a local harmonic approach that approximates the PES with parabolas whose curvatures match the exact curvatures calculated at the specific position of interest [78]. Anharmonicity in this approach manifests itself with the dependence of harmonic frequencies and relaxation energies on the actual nuclear configuration [79]. Along these lines we predicted softened (hardened) vibrational frequencies for the ground (excited) state [74], amplified and p-dependent infrared and Raman intensities [68, 74], different Frank-Condon... 

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