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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.
Micheal A. Smith, Richard M. Lell, Gerardo Aliberti, Zhaopeng Zhong, Florent Heidet
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 196 | Number 1 | October 2022 | Pages S71-S82
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295639.2022.2058845
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The Versatile Test Reactor (VTR) that is being designed today is heavily reliant upon the Argonne Reactor Codes (ARC) modeling software for predicting the operational performance of the VTR. Given its usage in the VTR, a set of validation cases appropriate for the VTR must be assembled. The measurements taken in ZPPR-15, Experimental Breeder Reactor II (EBR-II), and Fast Flux Test Facility were chosen and analyzed with the ARC software as part of creating the necessary validation basis. The results of the ARC software on the measured data are discussed here, and they demonstrate the accuracy of the ARC software on fast spectrum reactors.
