Take a read thats all I can say now:
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99993406
it sounds so amazing I find it hard to believe! We use these things as batteries in my time, flying unmanned plans what a joke!!!

It'll never fly though. The scaredy-cats will see to that.

Here's your nuclear engine, Sir. It only weighs 2lbs; shame about the
15 tons of lead radiation shielding you'll need to drag around with it.

:m: Peace.

ya how the hell are they going to get a gamma ray absorbing heat sink to fit or fly on that plane??? I guess they will just have the let it leak most of its gamma rays: would not want to be near the thing while it on! and Cesium is horrible shit, not to meantion how radioactive Ce137 is! But hey as long as they don't us the word "nuclear" and "radiation" people won't care.

Here are some more details on it:
http://www.rnw.nl/science/html/031020isomer.html

pointing the gamma rays up would help. Just make sure you don't fly over it.

pointing the gamma rays up would help. Just make sure you don't fly over it.ummmmm......

ummmmm ya how the fuck you do that?, Gamma rays are hard as hell to reflect in a controlled manner.

“ Originally Posted by Gifted
pointing the gamma rays up would help. Just make sure you don't fly over it. ”

ummmmm......

Extrapolate please?

What WCF said. How do you plan to only 'point them up'.

they plan to shoot the gamma rays into a heating chamber to heat the air. You put the source under the chamber, so that when they come out into the chamber, the rays that aren't absorbed keep going up.

Let me be clearer... how are you going to generate gamma rays in only one direction?

I guess that's a point. The angle the X-rays are hitting the halfnuim wouldn't have much of an effect, would it? Well, one less slab of lead needed. That hleps, doesn't it?

You are missing the point still. You do not want to subject the pilot or anybody else to the gamma rays. How do you limit the emission of these rays?

QNRs are absolutely the most kickass technology to be conceived as of late, and their potential is incredible. They're basically X-ray pumped batteries, albeit very powerful ones. I eagerly await some autonomous robotic planes that can fly for 3 months without landing.

How's about a tank?

A tank sounds good, sure could take the weight of all the gamma ray shielding. imagine that a tank that can drive for months without refueling! I have a problem with hafnium though: though it has the toxicology of gold aka no biological effect!, its as radioactive as cesium, this makes it very dangerous to be around, any place covered by this stuff will be horrible radioactive for decades!

If the power curve is right, you could get a tank with armor at least twice as thick as current with the same preformance.

The article said: "They found that by shining X-rays onto certain types of hafnium they could get it to release 60 times as much energy as they put in " then it seems that would be much better to use this Quantum Nucleonics Reactors instead of conventional fission reactors to generate electricity. You can use 1 part of their energy output for making it run and send the rest to the grid. An "autosustainable" reactor is everybody's dream!

But I guess the "green" concept of "sustainabibility" will not be applied to this technology, in the same way as "recycling" is not applied to nuclear wastes. What a shame!

Two problems that come to mind immediately: The hafnium isomer is notoriously difficult to produce in quantity, principally because there is no heavy industry established to manufacture it as there is for reactor and weapons fuels (both in the US and elsewhere).

The second is that the core geometry of a QNR does not lend itself to easy extraction of energy. The isomer in question is a monolithic segment rather than hundreds of segments seperated into a fuel rod matrix. There is no coolant going through the core that can be utilized to transport energy away from it and into a steam generator, as with a PWR.

This is the sort of thing that's probably (as far as I can tell at the moment) only going to be used for esoteric applications, like nuclear powered aircraft (http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99993406)*, and high yield explosives (http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99994049)*, for instance.

*Beware - it is my opinion that the tone of those articles is a bit too alarmist.

isn't the isomer formed from bombarding it with high energy neutrons in a nuclear reactor?

Merged from another thread.

Just out of curiosity, does anyone know what a quantum nucleonic reactor is? It's something like you fire x-rays at a chunk of Hafnium-178 and you'll get 60 times the output in the form of gamma rays. Government's trying to put one of these in a spy drone or something, they say it could stay aloft for months without refueling. I'm wondering if you could milk enough wattage out of this thing to, say, power an ion-thruster craft out of earth's gravity. Anybody know any more details? Just wondering! :D

There was a Popular science article a few months back. I'd imagine you could use it to power spacecraft. The question is, does the mass of a QNR beat that of a plutonium reactor like thsoe currently used.

i read it in popular mechanics, but can't find anything official on it! Northrop Grumman nor the Air Force have anything and they're the ones doing the experiment. But I'd imagine a QNR would be alot lighter than a plutonium reactor cause it only makes gamma radiation, no neutrons, needing a lot less shielding. But i wonder if you can get a lot of energy in a few minutes rather than a steady amount for a few months, and if it's even safe to try.

Well, the reactors I was talking about don't need much shielding anyway. The heat from the decay of the plutonium power thermocouple generators. Since the craft is unmanned, the only big worry is the radiation's effect on the instraments. Gamma rays require a good bit of shielding to block them. Someone correct me on this, but they don't make materials radioactive, so you don't have much to risk there. So, I suppose it would be a toss-up for unmanned missions. Definitely better for manned, since I think if scales well.

Yep. Gammas won't induce radioactivity. Just ionic transients in unshielded electronics. Neutrons will make other stuff radioactive, provided they're moving slowly enough to be easily captured. This is why the so-called neutron bombs were originally designed to kill tank crews that were otherwise well shielded from nuclear radiation.

Plutonium-240 oxide used in RTGs is a mediocre alpha emitter that produces a measurable amount of gammas due to spontaneous fissions within it. The same spontaneous fissions also release very small amounts of neutrons, but it's not really anything consequential in the context of what we're talking about here.

After several years at full power the core of a standard power reactor will also contain certain amounts of Plutonium-240 oxide because when Uranium-238 is bombarded with thermal neutrons, it gets transmuted into Plutonium-239, which then absorbs another neutron, and bang, Pu-240 in tha hizzy. Because we use it in RTGs, and it has a presence in spent reactor fuel that would be waste otherwise, this provides a conservation-conscious solution for both RTG manufacture and spent reactor fuel disposal.

Oh, and weed eater guy, check out my post on the end of the first page for the QNR-powered aircraft. I linked an article or two.

Looks like the threads were merged.

Gifted,

Ya I got that to be done,

weed_eater_guy,

next time use the search tool. We had a thread just like yours with same exact title (except for "!!!") from sometime ;) ago. So your thread was merged with it.

Myabe I'm missing something, but isn't this aircraft supposed to be 'unmanned,' hence, there will be no pilot to which exposition of the gamma radiation will be a concern?

Myabe I'm missing something, but isn't this aircraft supposed to be 'unmanned,' hence, there will be no pilot to which exposition of the gamma radiation will be a concern?
Yeah, it'd be used for UAVs. The main benefit is endurance, and that pretty much means no human will be accompanying the aircraft on its month-long flights.

electronics are still vulnerable to gamma rays

radiation harden electronics are not hard to come by.

Actually Cs137 isn't really that radioactive. 102.0uSv/hr per gram at 1 meter is actually quite easy to deal with. If you look at the atomic safety data sheet about this isotope you will see that it requires only 0.65cm of lead sheilding legally. This sheilding is easily made and not that heavy. So Cs137 emmits a low energy gamma. 102uSv/hr or 10.2mR/hr is the same activity you will find in feista ware cooking (dishes) made in Mexico and South America. By the way the old neon green glassware from the 30's also has a reading of 100uSv/hr due to its Uranium content.

I was talking about areas of contamination rather then functional shielding.

how you mean about contamination? There woulden't be any it is contained within the reactor! My understanding is that this setting Sr90 is used and bombarded with X-rays not Cs137.
Radioisotopes are strange things!!

Yes but if your fueling military tanks and planes with it there sure will be when these vehicles are destroyed in combat. My example of Cs137 was some something of relatively similar radioactivity.

1) you don't fill any tanks when you use Cs137 or Sr90.
2) The entire reactor is sealed with lead and titanium alloy and cannot be cracked open even under the most extreme stress, like anti-aircraft fire or missile. It has been proven durable against a tank shell and survived intact
3) So far no problems with this type of reactor!

1. I thought we were using Hafnium-178? and its "tanks" as in drives on treads has big gun on turret, ect.
2. Armor pericing shells can perice anything, sorry but modern armor is also no match for a 2000lb bomb.
3. This type of reactor has yet to be used ouside of a lab, and have yet to be combat tested.

Not sure which article you are referring to. The popular mechanics mag article had said that Sr90 was being used on drone aircraft since last year to power them. The reactor uses an x-ray machine to bombard the Sr90 with x-rays which in turn produce useable energy for the plane for long flights.

All the articles posted here refer to Hafnium-178.

If the article said the reactor was fueled with Strontium it is wrong. Only a few specific isomers of a few specific elements will undergo this sort of de facto stimulated emission when pumped with X-rays, and Hf-178 is one of them.

Allright, I must have the wrong article in mind. :-(

Stokes Pennwalt,

I'm sorry to be a bit ignorant....I do not understand why the energy form a Quantum Nucleonic Reactor (Gama Rays) can be used to super heat air for a gas turbine (Global Hawk) but can NOT be used to super heat steam for a steam turbine?

Can you please explain?

I'm rehashing this thread cause I had me a idea...
instead of heating plain air to power a jet, why not use it it seriously amp up a rocket? Take the exhaust gases, expose them to ultra-high amounts of gamma radiation from a QNR to where they're heated up significantly more, and voila, rocket exhaust on steroids. Hotter, faster expansion makes for a better ISP. but I don't even know if this would work seeing as this idea would rely on the ability to orient gamma radiation as not to melt the engine walls, and to heat gasses very quickly in less than a microsecond (with air flying through in the order of a few mach).

I am not sure you could do enough heating to justify the extra weight.

p.s. a friend asked me last weak about project Orion, (I know this would be a big can of worms if I started a thread on it) and he asked why you could not just use a nuclear reactor to heat air to propel you into space. I basically told him that pushing air would not be enough force, especially in the upper atmosphere/space, to overcome the weight of a fission reactor. was that a good answer?

Take a read thats all I can say now:
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99993406
it sounds so amazing I find it hard to believe! We use these things as batteries in my time, flying unmanned plans what a joke!!!


It will fly, the us airforce attempted the nuclear powered aircraft idea in the 60s-70s ,only reason it was canceled was because the pilots got radiation sickness... with a well sheilded CPU compartment i dont see that problem affecting a non manned aircraft.

as for tanks, if this new engine is based on its predosesors , it wont have enough torque to shift a 100 ton tank.

nuclear emmits netron and gamma radiation, neutron radiation being the really nasty kind that needs crazy-thick shielding. Something emitting only gamma rays can be stopped with much less, making a reactor that only makes gamma rays, a Quantum Nucleonic Reactor to be precise, much much lighter. Apparently, the Air Force is trying to fit one of these things in a global hawk drone plane, power it for MONTHS on end. If it can superheat air in a jet on a drone plane, and power it for months on end with a device that occupies a conventional fuel tank's space, energy density of the system is freakishly greater than any liquid or solid chemical fuel in use today. Thus, putting one in a rocket (small rocket, since that would be the idea: smaller, commercial transportation rocketry) should, theoredically, add a small amount of weight for a huge amount of thrust gain.