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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.
Jeffrey A. Favorite
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 152 | Number 2 | February 2006 | Pages 180-196
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE06-A2574
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Variational perturbation theory is applied to internal interface perturbations in neutral-particle inhomogeneous transport problems. The leakage from a radioactive system is the quantity of interest. The Schwinger and Roussopolos variational functionals are used with volume- and surface-integral formulations of the integrals of perturbed quantities. In numerical one-dimensional spherical tests of source radius perturbations, the Roussopolos functional in the surface-integral formulation worked better when the source was large, and the Schwinger functional in the volume-integral formulation worked better when the source was small. A new variational functional is presented that formally allows a combination of the Schwinger and Roussopolos functionals; the contribution of each to the total estimate is adjusted with a parameter introduced in one of the trial functions. When the parameter is correctly chosen, the new functional is generally more accurate than either the Schwinger or Roussopolos functional alone. An analytic monodirectional slab transport problem is also considered.