FLUX DEPRESSION AND FISSION-FRAGMENT ESCAPE IN A GASEOUS CORE REACTOR

Technical Report · Tue Jul 31 04:00:00 EDT 1962

OSTI ID:4765177

Spencer, D F

sionable gaseous core is determined to provide information for fission- fragment heating and exhaust-contamination calculations. A principal factor is the thermal neutron flux depression in the core, which can bc determined by use of a probability-of-capture approach for the thermal neutrons in the core but cannot be estimated accurately by diffusion theory. The effect of an external magnetic field on the fission-fragment escape is shown to be insignificant for magnetic fields less than 20,000 to 50,000 gauss for fuel concentrations greater than 10/sup 18/ particles/cm/sup 3/. Fission-fragment heating of the propellant is approximately 10% of the total for fuel concentrations of interest in the plasma core reactor. Furthermore, it is very difficult to reduce the fraction of fission fragments lost below 4%; thus, the minimum amount of contamination in the exhaust is limited. (auth)

• Research Organization: California Inst. of Tech., Pasadena. Jet Propulsion Lab.
• NSA Number: NSA-16-031259
• OSTI ID: 4765177
• Report Number(s): JPL-TR-32-278
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

CAPTURE
CONTAMINATION
DIFFUSION
DISTRIBUTION
EQUATIONS
FISSION PRODUCTS
GAS FLOW
GAS FUEL
HEATING
LEAKS
LOSSES
MAGNETIC FIELDS
NEUTRON FLUX
PLASMA
QUANTITY RATIO
REACTOR CORE
REACTOR TECHNOLOGY
REACTORS
THERMAL NEUTRONS