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OSTP memo guides space nuclear plan
A White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) memorandum released on Tuesday guides NASA, the Department of Energy, and the Department of Defense on their roles in deploying near-term space nuclear power.
This follows a series of NASA announcements last month—driven by the executive order “Ensuring American Space Superiority,” issued by Trump in December—including an ambitious timeline for establishing a moon base, which would rely on fission surface power (FSP) to survive the long lunar night at the moon’s south pole, and plans for a nuclear electric propulsion (NEP) rocket to be launched in 2028.
A. M. Alshamy, M. M. Musthafa
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 199 | Number 4 | April 2025 | Pages 578-585
Research Article | doi.org/10.1080/00295639.2024.2381397
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
We study the effect of the angular momentum dependence of the optical potential transparency on the neutron-nucleus cross section. In this work, we derive a functional form of the neutron-nucleus cross section with respect to spherical optical potential using the collision matrix and modify it. We also apply an analytical model (Ramsauer) to the square optical potential and the optical model using the TALYS 1.96 code to get the angular momentum–independent transparency and demonstrate the effect of the angular momentum dependence via comparison of two models. In this work, we calculate the neutron cross sections for 40 90 nuclei, with energies 100200MeV theoretically, the for 0 case. We find that the angular momentum dependence of the transparency treats good calculations of the neutron-nucleus cross section; a finite number of angular momentums will contribute appreciably to the nuclear reaction. The present study on smooth optical potential leads to useful insight into the mechanisms of neutron-induced reactions, particularly for medium nuclei at high energies.