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In transition: Commercializing fusion power
Commercial fusion power is closer than ever. There are now around 30 U.S. fusion companies, several of which claim to be on track to connect to the grid as early as the 2030s.
Tokamak and laser inertial confinement approaches benefit from decades of research at facilities such as the National Ignition Facility (NIF) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and ITER, with alternative concepts including stellarator, magnetic mirror, and Z-pinch confinement also making notable progress as private and government funding for fusion increases.
M. G. Silbert
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 51 | Number 4 | August 1973 | Pages 376-384
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE73-A23273
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The neutron-induced fission cross section of 249Cf was measured from 13 eV to 3 MeV. Neutrons from the Physics-8 underground nuclear explosion traversed a 240-m vertical evacuated flight path and interacted at ground level with a 249Cf sample and with neutron flux monitors. Abundant fission was observed throughout the neutron energy region studied, although the several-MeV cross section was lower than expected on the basis of systematics. Forty-three resonances between 15 and 70 eV were parameterized using a multilevel R-matrix formalism. In this energy region, the average level spacing, corrected for five postulated unobserved levels, was 1.07 ± 0.14 eV, both spin states of the compound nucleus being taken together. Assuming both spin states to have the same properties, the s-wave neutron strength function per spin state 〈〉/〈D〉 was (1.5 ± 0.3) × The average reduced neutron width 〈〉 was 0.31 ± 0.08 meV. For 35 well-defined resonances between 15 and 70 eV, the average fission width 〈Γƒ〉 was 180 meV.