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Diversification and the common ground
Craig Piercycpiercy@ans.org
Who would have thought, just a few years ago, that we would see so many long-standing barriers to new nuclear development falling like dominoes? Public opinion, policy, regulatory reform, finance and investment, design maturity, nuclear fuel enrichment, and fuel fabrication capacity have all advanced with remarkable speed in the United States.
Conventional wisdom holds that the most effective way to scale up the nuclear supply chain is to do so strategically, matching investments to the needs of reactor developers.
K. Brandenburg, G. Hamad, Z. Meisel, C. R. Brune, D. E. Carter, J. Derkin, D. C. Ingram, Y. Jones-Alberty, B. Kenady, T. N. Massey, M. Saxena, D. Soltesz, S. K. Subedi, J. Warren
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 197 | Number 4 | April 2023 | Pages 510-516
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295639.2022.2118483
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
We present results from direct measurements of the thick-target yield from laboratory incident energies 3 to 5 MeV, performed with the 3HeBF3 Giant Barrel (HeBGB) neutron detector at the Edwards Accelerator Laboratory. Our measurements have a small energy cadence in order to address discrepancies and sparseness of thick-target-yield data sets existing for this energy region. We find general agreement with existing data sets, including yields derived from cross-section data, while resolving a discrepancy between existing thick-target-yield data sets for MeV. However, for MeV, our results are substantially lower than previous thick-target-yield data and somewhat larger than yields calculated from existing cross-section data. Our data complete the energy range needed for estimates of the contribution to neutrino and dark matter detector backgrounds and result in increased viability of as a plasma diagnostic tool at fusion facilities such as the National Ignition Facility.