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Commercial nuclear innovation "new space" age
In early 2006, a start-up company launched a small rocket from a tiny island in the Pacific. It exploded, showering the island with debris. A year later, a second launch attempt sent a rocket to space but failed to make orbit, burning up in the atmosphere. Another year brought a third attempt—and a third failure. The following month, in September 2008, the company used the last of its funds to launch a fourth rocket. It reached orbit, making history as the first privately funded liquid-fueled rocket to do so.
Vladimir A. Babenko, Laszlo L. Jenkovszky, Volodymyr A. Romanov, Volodymyr N. Pavlovych, Oleg Ya. Vertsimakha
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 133 | Number 3 | November 1999 | Pages 301-313
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE99-A2090
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The results are presented of an investigation of the multiplying properties of lava-formed fuel-containing masses (LFCM); also, the possibility of developing ignition and dynamics of a self-sustaining chain reaction (SCR) in the LFCM of the destroyed Unit 4 of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant (the so-called Shelter) is discussed. The SCALE 4.3 computer code was used to calculate the multiplication factor, the neutron energy spectrum, the spatial distribution of the neutron flux density, etc., as functions of the water content in the LFCM for different system models. These results can help to determine the optimum placement of detectors in the rooms under the reactor. In addition, the dynamic of an SCR under the hypothetical condition that the filling of the LFCM by water leads to an excess multiplication factor over unity was considered. Such a treatment was performed for a simple model that takes into account the evaporation of water and an increase in temperature due to an energy release in the LFCM. The different modes of the LFCM behavior depending on the velocity of water filling are discussed.
