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MIT professor develops method to verify compliance with Outer Space Treaty
Danagoulian
Areg Danagoulian of the Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is proposing a mechanism for verifying that Earth-orbiting satellites are in compliance with the Outer Space Treaty, which prohibits the placement of nuclear weapons in space. Danagoulian’s “concept and feasibility study,” titled “Verification of the Outer Space Treaty with cosmic protons,” was published recently in the journal Nature.
Axel Laureau, Thibault Le Meute, Thomas Ligonnet, Elsa Merle
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 199 | Number 1 | April 2025 | Pages S342-S354
Research Article | doi.org/10.1080/00295639.2024.2357422
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
This article outlines the advancements made in broadening the application scope of the OpenMC neutron transport code to include thermohydraulic coupling and nuclear data uncertainty propagation. These developments primarily involve the incorporation of the correlated sampling (CS) technique, facilitating the propagation of thermal feedback or cross-section sampling on neutronic calculations through neutron weight adjustments. The CS technique is integrated with computer-aided-design (CAD)–based meshing and the Transient Fission Matrix (TFM) approach. Together, these components enable comprehensive handling of neutronics-thermohydraulic coupling: The TFM approach addresses neutron kinetics via precalculated neutron transport matrices, the CS technique accounts for thermal feedback impacts on the matrices, and CAD meshing defines volumes corresponding to each matrix bin to align results with computational fluid dynamics codes, specifically OpenFOAM. Implementation details and verification procedures are elaborated, alongside an analysis on existing limitations and possible perspectives.