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Task force charts growing interest in civilian maritime nuclear applications
Readers of Nuclear News will have heard of historical applications of civilian maritime nuclear power, like the merchant ship NS Savannah and the USS Sturgis floating power plant. With a few exceptions there has been little action in this area for over 50 years, and there are plenty of reasons and opinions as to why, but over the last few years the dramatic increase in interest from the maritime industry and its stakeholders has been undeniable.
David R. Boris, Zhenqiang Ma, Hao-Chih Yuan, Robert P. Ashley, John F. Santarius, Gerald L. Kulcinski, Clayton Dickerson, Todd Allen
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 52 | Number 4 | November 2007 | Pages 1066-1069
Technical Paper | Plasma Engineering and Diagnostics | doi.org/10.13182/FST07-A1637
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Using a single junction PIN (p-type, intrinsic, n-type) diode, made of silicon, and doped with boron and phosphorus, high energy protons have been converted to electricity, through ionization from electronic stopping in the silicon, at an efficiency of 0.2%. A simulation of 3.02 MeV D-D protons has been performed, using a 3 MeV linear accelerator. Proton fluxes of ~3 × 1010 protonscm-2×s-1 were incident on a PIN diode with 0.7 cm2 of surface area facing the incident protons. Losses in efficiency as a function of proton fluence are compared with dpa (displacements per atom) rates calculated using the Monte Carlo ion transport code TRIM (Transport and Ranges of Ions in Matter).