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Katy Huff on the impact of loosening radiation regulations
Katy Huff, former assistant secretary of nuclear energy at the Department of Energy, recently wrote an op-ed that was published in Scientific American.
In the piece, Huff, who is an ANS member and an associate professor in the Department of Nuclear, Plasma, and Radiological Engineering at the University of Illinois–Urbana-Champaign, argues that weakening Nuclear Regulatory Commission radiation regulations without new research-based evidence will fail to speed up nuclear energy development and could have negative consequences.
Christopher G. Morrison
Nuclear Technology | Volume 206 | Number 8 | August 2020 | Pages 1224-1239
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2020.1738173
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The specific mass (or mass per unit power) is a fundamental performance metric in space power systems. For surface power, a low specific mass reduces launch costs and lander size. For nuclear electric propulsion, a low specific mass enables fast transit within the solar system. Studies on specific mass have typically focused on point designs and have not adequately explored the design space and scaling of specific mass. This research explores the design space for radiatively cooled closed nuclear Brayton systems. Specifically, the key innovation in this work is to determine the scaling according to the maximum temperature capability and total power system power. When these two factors are analyzed together, the resulting analyses show a clear scaling for specific mass.