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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.
Tyler Sumner, Anton Moisseytsev, Daniel O’Grady, Lander Ibarra, Christopher Keckler, Justin Thomas, Thomas Fanning, Carlo Parisi, Nolan Anderson, Frederick Gleicher, SuJong Yoon
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 196 | Number 1 | October 2022 | Pages S289-S308
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295639.2022.2053487
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The Versatile Test Reactor (VTR) is a fast spectrum test reactor currently being developed in the United States under the direction of the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Nuclear Energy. Safety analysis of the conceptual VTR design is being performed using the SAS4A/SASSYS-1 fast reactor safety analysis code with a model representing the reactor core, primary and secondary heat transport systems, reactor vessel auxiliary cooling system, and reactor protection system. The system’s response and safety performance are being evaluated for a wide spectrum of event initiators and accident sequences. This paper presents an overview of the activities that are ongoing in support of the modeling and analysis of safety basis events (SBEs) in the VTR, including the VTR SAS4A/SASSYS-1 model development, an overview of the SAS4A/SASSYS-1 verification and validation efforts, and a summary of key model development activities to improve the predictive capability of the code. A summary of the results and an analysis of several key SBEs are also presented. VTR authorization from the U.S. Department of Energy will require transient simulations that are demonstrated to be accurate.