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The spark of the Super: Teller–Ulam and the birth of the H-bomb—rivalry, credit, and legacy at 75 years
In early 1951, Los Alamos scientists Edward Teller and Stanislaw Ulam devised a breakthrough that would lead to the hydrogen bomb [1]. Their design gave the United States an initial advantage in the Cold War, though comparable progress was soon achieved independently in the Soviet Union and the United Kingdom.
Kazuki Kuwagaki, Jun Nishiyama, Toru Obara
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 194 | Number 5 | May 2020 | Pages 405-413
Technical Note | doi.org/10.1080/00295639.2019.1706322
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The purpose of this technical note is to evaluate the discharged fuel of breed-and-burn (B&B) reactors. The discharged burnup in a B&B core can be high, and there is a concern that as decay heat increases, handling after a shutdown might be difficult. Because discharged fuels contain a number of plutonium nuclides, the potential for proliferation is also a concern. Moreover, radiotoxicity levels are an issue for geological disposal. As reference cores, two stationary wave reactor (SWR) cores proposed in our previous studies were used. The SWR is a special type of B&B reactor. Discharged fuels of the two SWR cores were evaluated by comparing them to a pressurized water reactor (PWR) and a fast breeder reactor. The discharged fuels of both SWR cores were not significantly worse than the reference PWR, even though the burnup was about 2.6 to 7.0 times higher.