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Latest News
Seconds Matter: Rethinking Nuclear Facility Security for the Modern Threat Landscape
In today’s rapidly evolving threat environment, nuclear facilities must prioritize speed and precision in their security responses—because in critical moments, every second counts. An early warning system serves as a vital layer of defense, enabling real-time detection of potential intrusions or anomalies before they escalate into full-blown incidents. By providing immediate alerts and actionable intelligence, these systems empower security personnel to respond decisively, minimizing risk to infrastructure, personnel, and the public. The ability to anticipate and intercept threats at the earliest possible stage not only enhances operational resilience but also reinforces public trust in the safety of nuclear operations. Investing in such proactive technologies is no longer optional—it’s essential for modern nuclear security.
Larry R. Grisham
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 43 | Number 2 | March 2003 | Pages 191-199
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/FST03-A260
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The feasibility of producing and using atomically neutral heavy ion beams produced from negative ions as drivers for an inertial confinement fusion reactor is evaluated. Bromine and iodine appear to be the most attractive elements for the driver beams. Fluorine and chlorine appear to be the most appropriate feedstocks for initial tests of extractable negative-ion current densities. With regard to ion sources, photodetachment neutralizers, and vacuum requirements for accelerators and beam transport, this approach appears feasible within existing technology, and the vacuum requirements are essentially identical to those for positive-ion drivers except in the target chamber. The principal constraint is that this approach requires harder vacuums in the target chamber than do space-charge-neutralized positive-ion drivers. With realistic (but perhaps pessimistic) estimates of the total ionization cross section, limiting the ionization of a neutral beam to <5% while traversing a 3-m path would require a chamber pressure of no more than 1.3 × 10-5 torr. However, it appears that substantial improvements in the beam spot size on target might be achieved at pressures a factor of 10 or more higher than this. Alternatively, even at still higher chamber pressures that would strongly ionize atomically neutral beams, the negative-ion approach may still have significant appeal, since it precludes the possibly challenging problem of electron contamination of a positive-ion beam during acceleration, drift compression, and focusing.