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Fission fragment rockets use the charged fission fragments that have
very high kinetic energy as the fuel of a rocket to achieve very high isp. However, in order to allow the fission fragments to escape the critical reaction area, the fuel must be in the form of nano-particles held in suspension as a dusty plasma. This also allows for cooling of the very hot nano-particles. Fission fragment rockets have also been proposed using radioactive materials without criticality although the energy density is much lower. I propose a fission fragment rocket that operates at low temperature but also achieves high isp using a non-critical fuel nearly non- radoiactive fuel, Thorium. A thorium energy amplifier uses an accelerator to produce protons that produce neutrons by impacting a suitable target. Each fissioned thorium atom produces more neutrons than a conventional uranium reactor so can be very efficient. However, as the thorium is not naturally fissile, the reaction will stop without the input of neutrons. The reactor produces far more power than is input. Fission fragments exiting the reactor are used the same way as in a normal fission fragment rocket, as fuel and to produce power except in this case more of the power is used to produce the proton beam. Unlike a conventional fission fragment rocket, heating of the fuel is not a huge problem because the thorium cools faster than the fissile uranium of a conventional fission fragment reactor. Furthermore, a thorium fission fragment rocket can be more easily throttled by varying the proton beam current. Placing such a fission fraqment rocket into space from earth would not be the same problem as a uranium fueled reactor because the thorium is not naturally fissile as is uranium so that the destruction of the rocket in an accident is not a major environmental issue. |
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Thread | Thread Starter | Forum | Replies | Last Post |
Thorium fission fragment rocket | Frogwatch[_2_] | Policy | 1 | October 14th 09 06:18 AM |
Thorium Energy Amplifier | manofsanATyahoo.com | Technology | 2 | November 30th 05 09:33 PM |
Fission product rocket and GCNR | [email protected] | Policy | 0 | October 22nd 05 10:13 PM |
Magnetic energy storage for a thermal rocket | Andrew Nowicki | Technology | 3 | June 14th 04 03:50 PM |