(energy7)Materials and Nuclear Physics Design of a Readily Deployable Space Reactor
EMSL Project ID
2376
Abstract
The project objective is to develop a concept for a small space reactor based on existing tested technology. This project will focus on the fuel materials and nuclear physics designs. This will provide the DOE client an initial design of a space reactor, a test plan, and a development program that will be used budget and plan a space reactor deployment program. The project objective is to develop an alternate shielding concept for a small Mars surface reactor based on technology being developed for NASA. This will provide the DOE client an alternate shield design that will be used budget and plan a space reactor deployment program. This LDRD project goal is to identify alternative shielding options that provide better dose protection for a fixed launch weight. The objective of the LDRD project is to position Battelle to take on a significant role in the design, test and fabrication of a new space reactor. A secondary objective is to team with Oregon State University for technical expertise and access to qualified students that could be hired in the future. The technical outcome of this project will be to develop the nuclear components required for an alternate shield design of a new small space reactor. The materials analysis will consider the materials that have been demonstrated to meet the requirements of a space reactor for the defined mission of interest. The shielding analysis will identify methods to adequately protect the remainder of the space vessel. The key results from this LDRD proposal will be a conceptual design and a development program that will facilitate fabrication and launch of a new space reactor. The shielding analysis for the LDRD project that is focusing on optimizing the neutron shielding for a reactor on Mars. Due to size and mass considerations, we need to find an optimal shield configuration. We are using the Monte Carlo N-Particle (MCNP) code to do the calculations. On a 900 Mhz machine it takes about 20 hours per run and even then the results are not as reliable as we would like. MCNP is a scalar code and does very little input/output and typically will take as much CPU as it can find. Versions of MCNP exist that run well on a parallel processor machine,
Project Details
Project type
Capability Research
Start Date
2001-11-26
End Date
2002-09-30
Status
Closed
Released Data Link
Team
Principal Investigator
Team Members