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Improving task performance, system reliability, system and personnel safety, efficiency, and effectiveness are the division's main objectives. Its major areas of interest include task design, procedures, training, instrument and control layout and placement, stress control, anthropometrics, psychological input, and motivation.
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Latest News
Proving DRACO will deliver
The United States is now closer than it has been in over five decades to launching the first nuclear thermal rocket into space, thanks to DRACO—the Demonstration Rocket for Agile Cislunar Orbit.
G. L. Kulcinski, R. R. Peterson, G. A. Moses, D. Bruggink, P. Cousseau, R. L. Engelstad, Y.-M. Lee, H. Y. Khater, E. G. Lovell, J. J. MacFarlane, E. A. Mogahed, S. Rutledge, M. E. Sawan, I. N. Sviatoslavsky, P. Wang, L. J. Wittenberg
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 26 | Number 3 | November 1994 | Pages 849-856
Inertial Confinement Fusion Reactor, Reactor Target, and Driver | Proceedings of the Eleventh Topical Meeting on the Technology of Fusion Energy New Orleans, Louisiana June 19-23, 1994 | doi.org/10.13182/FST94-A40261
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The use of light ion or electron beams to compress matter to the densities required for fusion has been proposed for more than 20 years. In the past ten years, a series of light ion beam power plant conceptual designs have been published under the generic name LIBRA. Considerable advances in both physics and technology have allowed major improvements from the design performance of the earliest LIBRA 330 MWe power plant to the more recent 979 MWe LIBRA-LiTE, and the 1000 MWe LIBRA-SP reactors. The recent declassification of target designs allows more realistic target spectra, gains, and injection parameters to be analyzed. The pulsed power driver technology has matured to the point that Helia induction technology can be tested in the laboratory under single pulse conditions and confidently extrapolated to LIBRA repetition rates. New concepts for protecting the first structural wall of the reactor have been developed; the use of flexible INPORT (INhibited Flow in PORous Tube) and rigid PERIT (PErforated RIgid Tube) units allow the reflector and first wall to last the lifetime of the power plant. The use of PbLi eutectic alloy has greatly improved the safety features of these reactors and the economics of all three compare very favorably to the tokamak, laser, and heavy ion beam reactors.