At the stage of the antiproton-nucleon annihilation chain of events relevant to propulsion the annihilation produces energetic charged pions and gamma rays. If annihilation occurs in a complex nucleus, protons, neutrons, and other nuclear fragments are also produced. The charge, number, and energy of the annihilation products are such that annihilation rocket engine concepts involving relatively low specific impulse (I/sub sp/ approx. = 1000 to 2000 s) and very high I/sub sp/ (3 x 10/sup 7/ s) appear feasible and have efficiencies on the order of 50% for annihilation energy to propulsion energy conversion. At I/sub sp/'s of around 15,000 s, however, it may be that only the kinetic energy of the charged nuclear fragments can be utilized for propulsion in engines of ordinary size. An estimate of this kinetic energy was made from known pieces of experimental and theoretical information. Its value is about 10% of the annihilation energy. Control over the mean penetration depth of protons into matter prior to annihilation is necessary so that annihilation occurs in the proper region within the engine. Control is possible by varying the antiproton kinetic energy to obtain a suitable annihilation cross section. The annihilation cross section at low energies is …

This paper covers Maxwell's approach to developing energy storage capacitors. Based on previous capacitor designs of 3 KJ, 5 KJ and 10 KJ, the final Nova 12.5 KJ capacitor evolved. At the outset of the Nova capacitor development program, a relatively new dielectric system, polypropylene-paper-DOP, seemed to show superiority in volumetric efficiency, life, and more importantly cost. However, as a result of studies performed at Maxwell, a high-density, energy-storage capacitor was developed utilizing new high-quality, high-density paper and caster oil as the dielectric. Test data have demonstrated that the Maxwell 12.5 KJ capacitor exceeds all LLNL's qualification requirements.

Currently, direct fuel rho r measurements on Inertial Confinement Fusion (ICF) targets by neutron activation of the argon tracer gas mixed with the DT fuel would require a 100 fold increase in neutron yield. Bromine, on the other hand, has excellent properties for neutron activation analysis at neutron yields of 10two' to 10/sup 8/, when present at an internal pressure of from 0.1 to 0.2 atmospheres. Bromine addition is accomplished in a 2 furnace system using the dried-gel method of microsphere production. An upper furnace operated at 1500/sup 0/C is separated from a lower furnace by a cooled zone. The lower furnace is filled with bromine gas and operated at approximately 1250/sup 0/C. The upper furnace is the glass production furnace. The cooled zone in between the upper and lower furnace is to prevent the hot bromine gas from rising into the upper furnace. The microspheres pass through the cooled zone and immediately into the 1250/sup 0/C bromine furnace where the bromine permeates into the spheres.

The injection beamline runs over the last magnet before a long straight section and is then displaced downward 55.88 cm to the accelerator beamline. The displacement is magnetic and the final deflection onto the synchrotron orbit is by an electric kicker. The first component, the reverse septum magnet, bends the injection beam 25)degree) downward. This is followed by the injection septum (20)degree) bend upward) and the final injection kicker (5)degree) bend upward). The septum magnets produce a peak field of 3.4 K gauss at a current of 28,000 amperes within a 0.1 msec long pulse. The electric kicker produces a field of 7.3 KV/cm with a pulse length of 0.0011 msec. The septum magnets are similar to each other in construction with a bending radium of 72.7 cm. The curvature is required to increase the effective aperture. Each magnet has a single-turn copper coil bonded to a stainless steel plate for reinforcement. This eliminates insulating material, which could be subject to radiation damage, at the septum. The stainless steel plate is welded to the magnet laminations. The current is confined to the septum by the insulation between the laminations, which are a standard core material. The total septum thickness with …

The High Field Test Facility (HFTF), presently under construction at LLNL, is a set of superconducting coils that will be used to test 1-m-o.d. coils of prototype conductors for fusion magnets in fields up to 12 T. The facility consists of two concentric sets of coils; the outer set is a stack of Nb-Ti solenoids, and the inner set is a pair of solenoids made of cryogenically-stabilized, multifilamentary Nb/sub 3/Sn superconductor, developed for use in mirror-fusion magnets. The HFTF system is designed to be parted along the midplane to allow high-field conductors, under development for Tokamak fusion machines, to be inserted and tested. The background field coils were wound pancake-fashion, with cold-welded joints at both the inner and outer diameters. Turn-to-turn insulation was fabricated at LLNL from epoxy-fiberglass strip. The coils were assembled and tested in our 2-m-diam cryostat to verify their operation.

The percentage of adipose (fat) tissue in the chest wall must be known to accurately measure Pu in the human lung. Correction factors of 100% or more in x-ray detection efficiency are common. Methods using simple /sup 40/K and biometric measurement techniques were investigated to determine the adipose content in the human chest wall. These methods predict adipose content to within 15% of the absolute ultrasonic value. These new methods are discussed and compared with conventional ultrasonic measurement techniques. (ERB)

A loss-of-coolant accident (LOCA) in a boiling-water-reactor (BWR) power plant has never occurred. However, because this type of accident could be particularly severe, it is used as a principal theoretical basis for design. A series of consistent, versatile, and accurate air-water tests that simulate LOCA conditions has been completed on a /sup 1///sub 5/-scale Mark I BWR pressure-suppression system. Results from these tests are used to quantify the vertical-loading function and to study the associated fluid dynamics phenomena. Detailed histories of vertical loads on the wetwell are shown. In particular, variation of hydrodynamic-generated vertical loads with changes in drywell-pressurization rate, downcomer submergence, and the vent-line loss coefficient are established. Initial drywell overpressure, which partially preclears the downcomers of water, substantially reduces the peak vertical loads. Scaling relationships, developed from dimensional analysis and verified by bench-top experiments, allow the /sup 1///sub 5/-scale results to be applied to a full-scale BWR power plant. This analysis leads to dimensionless groupings that are invariant. These groupings show that, if water is used as the working fluid, the magnitude of the forces in a scaled facility is reduced by the cube of the scale factor and occurs in a time reduced by the square root …

Development of acceptable risk criteria for nuclear waste management requires the translation of publicly determined goals and objectives into definitive issues which, in turn, require resolution. Since these issues are largely of a subjective nature, they cannot be resolved by technological methods. Development of acceptable risk criteria might best be accomplished by application of a systematic methodology for the optimal implementation of subjective values. Multi-attribute decision analysis is well suited for this purpose.

A theory of exploding pusher laser pusher targets is compared to results of LASNEX calculations and to Livermore experiments. A scaling relationship is described which predicts the optimum target/pulse combinations as a function of the laser power.

Consideration is given to the stability of negative ion beams which are neutralized through ionization of a background gas. Two types of instabilities are examined. First, beam-plasma instabilities are analyzed with the dispersion relation showing that they are unimportant if the beam velocity is less than the electron thermal velocity. Second, results of a computer simulation on the flow of a cylindrical beam and the resulting background plasma show that when the background neutral gas density is less than or approximately equal to a critical density as instability occurs. This critical density is the density that would be needed to space-charge neutralize the beam if the positive ions were not retarded by the beam. An approximate dispersion relation indicates that the nature of the instability is a transverse positive-ion acoustic wave which couples to the beam.

An important advance in the computation of hadron and glueball masses has been the introduction of non-local operators. This talk summarizes the critical signal-to-noise ratio of glueball correlation functions in the continuum limit, and discusses the case of (q{bar q} and qqq) hadrons in the chiral limit. A new strategy for extracting the masses of excited states is outlined and tested. The lessons learned here suggest that gauge-fixed momentum-space operators might be a suitable choice of interpolating operators. 15 refs., 2 tabs.

The fusion breeder is a fusion reactor designed with special blankets to maximize the transmutation by 14 MeV neutrons of uranium-238 to plutonium or thorium to uranium-233 for use as a fuel for fission reactors. Breeding fissile fuels has not been a goal of the US fusion energy program. This paper suggests it is time for a policy change to make the fusion breeder a goal of the US fusion program and the US nuclear energy program. The purpose of this paper is to suggest this policy change be made and tell why it should be made, and to outline specific research and development goals so that the fusion breeder will be developed in time to meet fissile fuel needs.

The Nova laser system for Inertial Confinement Fusion studies at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is under construction and will be completed October 1984 with first operations scheduled for 1985. This system is the largest precision opto-mechanical engineering system ever built. Major engineering and subsystems are mechanical, optical, and electrical power. A series of system technologies include alignment, diagnostics, target, frequency conversion, and controls. This paper will only discuss the mechanical system.

''PIC'' simulation tracks particles through electromagnetic fields calculated self-consistently from the charge and current densities of the particles themselves, external sources, and boundaries. Already used extensively in plasma physics, such simulations have become useful in the design of accelerators and their r.f. sources. 5 refs.

Calculations suggest that experiments relating to disk heating, as well as beam deposition, focusing and transport can be performed within the context of current design proposals for accelerator test-facilities. Since the test-facilities have lower ion kinetic energy and beam pulse power as compared to reactor drivers, we achieve high-beam intensities at the focal spot by using short focal distance and properly designed beam optics. In this regard, the low beam emittance of suggested multi-beam designs are very useful. Possibly even higher focal spot brightness could be obtained by plasma lenses which involve external fields on the beam which is stripped to a higher charge state by passing through a plasma cell. Preliminary results suggest that intensities approx. 10/sup 13/ - 10/sup 14/ W/cm/sup 2/ are achievable. Given these intensities, deposition experiments with heating of disks to greater than a million degrees Kelvin (100 eV) are expected.

Experimental results on ion-cyclotron waves observed in the 2XIIB mirror machine are reviewed, and relevant theoretical work is discussed. The work reported generally substantiates the quasilinear diffusion model of mirror-plasma confinement, but also suggests alternatives. The end-loss current required by theory of the drift-cyclotron loss-cone (DCLC) instability agrees with measurements of this current. The experiment indicates that an increased ratio of plasma radius to ion gyroradius improves plasma confinement. However, measurements sometimes show a second ion-cyclotron mode, which is not the DCLC mode. Theoretical work on loss-cone instabilities has concentrated on linear, quasilinear, and fully nonlinear models of increased sophistication and experimental applicability.

For antiproton energies of several eV or less, annihilation in matter occurs through atomic rearrangement processes in which the antiproton becomes bound to a nucleus prior to annihilation. Existing calculations of the antiproton-hydrogen atom rearrangement cross section are semiclassical and employ the Born-Oppenheimer approximation. They also employ various arguments in regard to the behavior of the system when the Born-Oppenheimer approximation breaks down at small antiproton-proton separations. These arguments indicate that rearrangement is essentially irreversible. In the present study, a detailed investigation was made of the antiproton-hydrogen atom system when the Born-Oppenheimer approximation breaks down. The results of this study indicate that the previous arguments were approximately correct, but that there is a significant probability for rearrangement reversing prior to annihilation. This probability is estimated to be about 20%. 8 refs., 4 figs., 2 tabs.

A number of mechanical and electrical measurements were made on joints in typical conductors for the proposed mirror fusion test facility (MFTF) and high field test facility (HFTF). For such measurements, a commercially available cold-pressure-welding machine was used. For joints in the MFTF conductor, which has a large proportion of superconductor, joint strength approached conductor strength. For the HFTF conductor, where the Cu-to-superconductor ratio is 4.33/1, the joint is stronger than the conductor. Electrically, the joints were not superconducting.. While the resistance is higher than might be achieved by other forms of joining, we feel that the cold-weld joint has the advantages of simplicity, speed, reliability, and reproducibility. This makes the method attractive for MFTF, where resistance losses will be small compared with the total 4 K refrigeration requirements.

Results from the new Tandem Mirror Experiment (TMX) are described. Tandem-mirror density and potential profiles are produced using end-plug neutral-beam injection and central-cell gas-fueling. TMX parameters are near those predicted theoretically. The end-plug electron temperature is higher than in the comparably sized single-mirror 2XIIB. Axial confinement of the finite-beta central-cell plasma is improved by the end plugs by as much as a factor of 9. In TMX, end-plug microinstability limits central-cell confinement in agreement with theory.

In this paper, we present a broad comparison of studies for a selected set of parameters for different nuclear reactor types including the next generation. This serves as an overview of key parameters which provide a semi-quantitative decision basis for selecting nuclear strategies. Out of a number of advanced reactor designs of the LWR type, gas cooled type, and FBR type, currently on the drawing board, the Advanced Light Water Reactors (ALWR) seem to have some edge over other types of the next generation of reactors for the near-term application. This is based on a number of attributes related to the benefit of the vast operating experience with LWRs coupled with an estimated low risk profile, economics of scale, degree of utilization of passive systems, simplification in the plant design and layout, modular fabrication and manufacturing. 32 refs., 1 fig., 3 tabs.

There are substantial production rates of heavy quarks from ep collisions at HERA. The center of mass energy of about 300 GeV is well above any b-quark threshold effects, and for b/bar b/ production, the cross section is estimated to be 3.3 nb per event, leading to rates approaching 10/sup 6/ b mesons per year. The rates for c/bar c/ production are about two orders of magnitude greater. Two major detectors are under construction and a program of heavy quark physics will start in 1990. 3 refs., 4 figs.

We report results of simulations of stimulated Brillouin backscatter in which we see the second spatial harmonic of the ion density fluctuation and compare with linear, fluid theory. We also describe examples of the competition between Raman and Brillouin backscatter. 21 refs., 3 figs.

Experimental and theoretical studies of field reversal in a mirror machine are reported. Plasma-gun experiments demonstrate that reversed-field plasma layers are formed. Low energy plasma flowing behind the initially produced plasma front prevents tearing of the layer from the gun muzzle. MHD simulation shows that tearing can be obtained by impeding the slow plasma flow with a plasma divider. It is demonstrated theoretically that a field-reversed mirror imbedded in a multipole field can be sustained in steady state with neutral-beam injection even in the absence of impurities. MHD stability analysis shows that growth rates of elongated reversed-field theta-pinch configurations decrease with axial extension, which indicates the importance of including finite Larmor radius in the analysis. Tilting-mode criteria are dramatically improved by proper shaping, and a problimak shape is proposed. Tearing mode stability of reversed-field theta-pinches is greatly enhanced by flux exclusion. Self-consistent, 1-1/2-dimensional transport codes have been developed, and initial results are presented.

As a result of the accident on March 28, 1979, fuel debris was dispersed into the primary coolant system of the Three Mile Island Unit 2 (TMI-2) reactor. Location and quantification of fuel debris is essential for TMI-2 recovery. TMI-2 fuel debris assessments can be carried out nondestructively by neutron and gamma-ray dosimetry. Efforts to date have been directed toward fuel debris characterization of the makeup and purification demineralizers, will maintain reactor coolant water purity. Two highly specialized dosimetry methods were applied: solid state track recorder (SSTR) neutron dosimetry and continuous gamma-ray spectrometry. The most recent dosimetry results are reviewed and compared. To reduce the intense background radiation from /sup 137/Cs, the Si(Li) detector was surrounded by a 5.5 diameter lead shield 8'' shield in length. The spectral data were used to determine the intensity of the 2.18 MeV gamma ray from the fission product /sup 144/Ce. Assuming this fission product does not migrate out of the fuel, the quantity of /sup 144/Ce is directly related to the quantity of fuel present. Based on the observed source geometry and the measured flux of the /sup 144/Ce 2.18 MeV gamma rays, the fuel content of the A demineralizer was calculated to …