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International Conference on Mathematics and Computational Methods Applied to Nuclear Science and Engineering (M&C 2025)
April 27–30, 2025
Denver, CO|The Westin Denver Downtown
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Latest News
Dragonfly, a Pu-fueled drone heading to Titan, gets key NASA approval
Curiosity landed on Mars sporting a radioisotope thermoelectric generator (RTG) in 2012, and a second NASA rover, Perseverance, landed in 2021. Both are still rolling across the red planet in the name of science. Another exploratory craft with a similar plutonium-238–fueled RTG but a very different mission—to fly between multiple test sites on Titan, Saturn’s largest moon—recently got one step closer to deployment.
On April 25, NASA and the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) announced that the Dragonfly mission to Saturn’s icy moon passed its critical design review. “Passing this mission milestone means that Dragonfly’s mission design, fabrication, integration, and test plans are all approved, and the mission can now turn its attention to the construction of the spacecraft itself,” according to NASA.
The Working Group on KARIN-I, A. Mohri, Y. Fujii-E, K. Ikuta, H. Momota, H. Naitou, Y. Nomura, Y. Tomita, M. Ohnishi, K. Yoshikawa, S. Inoue, M. Nishikawa, S.-Inoue Itoh, K. Kitamura, S. Nagao, H. Nakashima, M. Iwamoto, Y. Gomay, M. Kumagai, Y. Kawakita, Y. Suzuki, K. Okamoto, H. Matsunaga, H. Yoshizawa
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 9 | Number 3 | May 1986 | Pages 422-451
Technical Paper | Fusion Reactor | doi.org/10.13182/FST86-A24730
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A 650-MW(electric) deuterium-tritium fusion reactor, KARIN-I, has ten moving plasma rings, which are produced by relativistic electron beam injection, heated by a major radius compression, and transported into a linear cylindrical burning section by annularly flowing liquid lithium outside the silicon carbide first wall The liquid lithium not only stabilizes the tilting motion of the rings but also works as the tritium breeder and the main coolant. Energy from the ash-accumulated rings is efficiently recovered at the exit during the major radius expansion. The linear alignment of reactor components ensures easy assembly and disassembly, and also provides for easy maintenance. These features of the reactor result in a net electric output power of 650 MW(electric) with overall plant efficiency of 30%.