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A year in orbit: ISS deployment tests radiation detectors for future space missions
The predawn darkness on a cool Florida night was shattered by the ignition of nine Merlin engines on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. The thrust of the engines shook the ground miles away. From a distance, the rocket appeared to slowly rise above the horizon. For the cargo onboard, the launch was anything but gentle, as the ignition of liquid oxygen generated more than 1.5 million pounds of force. After the rocket had been out of sight for several minutes, the booster dramatically returned to Earth with several sonic booms in a captivating show of engineering designed to make space travel less expensive and more sustainable.
Adam G. Nelson, Nicolas Martin, Alisha Kasam-Griffith, Zhiwen Xu, Florent Heidet
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 196 | Number 1 | October 2022 | Pages S63-S70
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295639.2022.2035181
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The Versatile Test Reactor (VTR) is being developed to provide a flexible source of neutrons for the accelerated testing of materials. To support this flexibility, the design must be informed by uncertainty assessment that defensibly provides the needed margin. This paper provides an overview of the VTR Program’s approach to the generation and application of uncertainties in the reactor core design process as it relates to this goal. As the uncertainty assessment is still in progress, this paper not only provides an example of how uncertainty has been factored into the early stages of design but also provides findings from sensitivity studies that will form the basis of future uncertainty work.