Re: Small Nuclear Power Reactors

[Jones Beene]

Fred's comment is serious, and few today realize that 50 years ago, when nuclear-powered rockets were being conceived and tested, borane was given consideration as a fuel - both conventional, and as pumped through a high flux reactor.   The High Energy Fuels - HEF Program was began in 1956 - a year before the launch of Sputnik (we knew the Russians were coming) and it was the last of several secret military programs to use boron-hydride fuels for rockets.   Boranes are toxic - similar to cyanide - and if not completely combusted (or nuked to Li) then you will risk poisoning the ground crew and/or the sheep and armadillos downwind ...   ...however?? if you can go fully robotic, and blast-off from a specially redesigned aircraft carrier, in the middle of nowhere, and with every human safely below deck... hmmm...   Hey if you are going to use a minimally shielded nuclear reactor anyway - it is pretty senseless to pump liquid hydrogen through it, for then you get only a few eV gain per molecule... when borane will cut down on the fuel requirement by a huge margin. It will not be the several million-to-one margin, as it appears on paper - as you need to buffer the borane, but still...  I can imagine a carrier launched rocket-plane (detachable wings) capable of inter-planetary distances... a lot further than the "Twenty-Mule Team" but say, that is a catchy name for it.   After a few weeks, the un-nuked boranes and lithium compounds are decomposed in the ocean (causing an alga bloom?) and no one is the wiser?  ...we may see this technology come around again in the future (heck, it may already be in progress to launch really big spy satellites on the cheap) but it will probably be (or intended to be) as "black" if not even more secret, than the HEF.     You left out using the neutrons bled off through a Beryllium pipe and fed to a Liquid Boron -10 Hydride (Borane) thrust nozzle for "Fission Drive" spacecraft propulsion.   Neutron + Boron-10  (~ 10,500 Barns) + Hx  ----> He4 + Li-7 + Hx =3.4 MeV (Propellents)   Specific Impulse from the reaction nozzle. Better than an Ion Drive for the long haul.   Fred