Some Thermodynamic Features of Uranium–Plutonium Nitride Fuel in the Course of Burnup

Calculation studies on the effect of carbon and oxygen impurities on the chemical and phase compositions of nitride uranium–plutonium fuel in the course of burnup are performed using the IVTANTHERMO code. It is shown that the number of moles of UN decreases with increasing burnup level, whereas UN_1.466, UN_1.54, and UN_1.73 exhibit a considerable increase. The presence of oxygen and carbon impurities causes an increase in the content of the UN_1.466, UN_1.54 and UN_1.73 phases in the initial fuel by several orders of magnitude, in particular, at a relatively low temperature. At the same time, the presence of impurities abruptly reduces the content of free uranium in unburned fuel. Plutonium in the considered system is contained in form of Pu, PuC, PuC₂, Pu₂C₃, and PuN. Plutonium carbides, as well as uranium carbides, are formed in small amounts. Most of the plutonium remains in the form of nitride PuN, whereas unbound Pu is present only in the areas with a low burnup level and high temperatures.     

Transmutation of Minor Actinides in a Spherical Torus Tokamak Fusion Reactor

Fusion energy will be a long-term energy source. Great efforts have been devoted to fusion research in the past 50 years, and there is still a long way to go. Transmutation of high-level waste (HLW) utilizing D-T fusion neutrons is a good choice for an early application of fusion.     

Dynamics of the Spiral Tip in a Closed Belousov-Zhabotinsky Reaction

Dynamics of spiral tip rotating in a closed system of the light sensitive Belousov-Zhabotinsky reaction is studied under a homogeneous and steady illumination. The time dependence of the kinematical parameters of meandering spiral is presented and the experimental evidence is obtained for self-synchronization of the spiral tip in a closed B-Z system without external feedback.     

Atomistic Simulation of the Fission-Fragment-Induced Formation of Defects in a Uranium–Molybdenum Alloy

Journal of Experimental and Theoretical Physics - The formation of defects in a uranium–molybdenum alloy induced by xenon and zirconium ion irradiation with energies typical of fission...     

Existence and Asymptotic Stability of Periodic Solutions of the Reaction–Diffusion Equations in the Case of a Rapid Reaction

A singularly perturbed periodic in time problem for a parabolic reaction-diffusion equation in a two-dimensional domain is studied. The case of existence of an internal transition layer under the conditions of balanced and unbalanced rapid reaction is considered. An asymptotic expansion of a solution is constructed. To justify the asymptotic expansion thus constructed, the asymptotic method of differential inequalities is used. The Lyapunov asymptotic stability of a periodic solution is investigated.     

Shape Evolution of the Compound Nucleus in the Superheavy Element Synthesis Reaction via the BUU Model

By taking the BUU model, we simulate the superheavy element synthesis reaction. With the rotation effect being included in the BUU model, the effect of the non-centrality of the reaction ^48Ca＋^238U→^286 112 is studied. It is shown that the promising impact parameter in the synthesis process can be released from zero to a value little smaller than the radius of the smaller nucleus involved in the reaction. Meanwhile, the compound nucleus may involve rich shape phases.     

Measurement of the Angular Distributions of Fission Fragments from the Neutron-Induced Fission of 240Pu Nuclei in the Energy Range of 1–200 MeV and Their Model Analysis

JETP Letters - The measured angular distributions of fission fragments of 240Pu nuclei have been presented and theoretically analyzed. Measurements at energies above 10 MeV have been performed for...     

Investigation of the Three-Nucleon System Dynamics in the Deuteron–Proton Breakup Reaction

Precise and large sets of cross section, vector A _x , A _y and tensor A _xx , A _xy , A _yy analyzing power data for the ¹ H(d, pp)n breakup reactions were measured at 100 and 130 MeV deuteron beam energies with the SALAD and BINA detectors at KVI and the Germanium Wall setup at FZ-Jülich. Results are compared with various theoretical approaches which model the three-nucleon system dynamics. The cross section data reveal a sizable three-nucleon force (3NF) and Coulomb force influence. In case of the analyzing powers very low sensitivity to these effects was found and the data are well describe by 2N models only. For A _xy at 130 MeV, serious disagreements were observed when 3NF models are included in the calculations.     

Systematic Study of Three-Nucleon Systems Dynamics in the Cross Section of the Deuteron–Proton Breakup Reaction

An experiment to investigate the ¹H(d, pp)n breakup reaction using a deuteron beam of 340, 380 and 400 MeV and the WASA detector has been performed at the Cooler Synchrotron COSY–Jülich. The main goal was the detailed study of various aspects of few-nucleon dynamics in the medium energy region, with particular emphasis on relativistic effects and their interplay with three nucleon forces. These effects become more important with increasing available energy in the three nucleon system. Therefore the investigations at high energies are crucial to understand their nature. The almost 4π geometry of the WASA detector gives an unique possibility to study various aspects of dynamics of processes in the three-nucleon reaction. Preliminary results obtained using the WASA detector are presented.     

Conceptual Design of a Hybrid Fusion–Fission Power Reactor with a Tokamak and a Depleted Uranium Blanket

Physics of Atomic Nuclei - We assess the viability of energy generation with depleted uranium irradiated with fast neutrons from the reaction of DT fusion driven by a tokamak reactor. Since...     

Cross Sections of Barium Isotopes in Interaction of 60 MeV／u ^18O with Natural Uranium

The reactions induced by heavy ions lower than 10 MeV/u have been studied widely. Their reaction mechanism has been also understood in more detail. The contribution to the reaction cross sections in the low energy reactions comes mainly from complex nuclei and deep inelastic process. Early studies mainly focused on the nuclear collisions of low and high energies. In the recent years, great attention has been paid on the intermediate energy heavy ion collisions. Among them measurements of the cross sections and recoiling properties for the target fragmentation products have been applied widely to study the mechanism of the nuclear reactions induced by the intermediate energy heavy ions. But there are a few papers on raodioehemieal studies in the intermediate energy region up to now.     

Entropy of the Dirac Field in Schwarzschild–de Sitter Space-Time via the Membrane Model

There are two event horizons in Schwarzschild–de Sitter space-time, a blackhole horizon and a cosmological horizon. They have different temperatures. Theradiation between them is of course not in thermal equilibrium. According to themembrane model suggested by us, the two horizons can be thought of as twoindependent thermodynamic systems in equilibrium. Their Dirac field entropiesare calculated via a membrane model. The result shows that the entropy of theDirac field is proportional to the sum of the areas of the two event horizons. Ifwe choose the same cutoff as that of Klein–Gordon field, the entropy of theDirac field is times that of Klein–Gordon field. This agrees with previousresults.     

Invariant Mass Spectroscopy of 23O via the (p, p′) Reaction in Inverse Kinematics

The neutron-rich oxygen isotope ²³O has been investigated via proton inelastic scattering on a liquid hydrogen target at 63.5 MeV/nucleon. The invariant mass method in inverse kinematics was employed to reconstruct the energy spectrum. A sharp resonance state was observed at 42(5) keV above the neutron threshold. A comparison of the differential cross section leading to this state with a microscopic DWBA calculation allowed a J ^π assignment of 5/2⁺ for this state.     

Production of Ξ−-Hypernuclei via the (K −, K +) Reaction in a Quark-Meson Coupling Model

We study the production of Ξ^?-hypernuclei, ${^{12}{_{\Xi^-}}}$ Be and ${^{28}{_{\Xi^-}}}$ Mg, via the (K ^?, K ⁺) reaction within a covariant effective Lagrangian model, employing the bound Ξ^? and proton spinors calculated by the latest quark-meson coupling model. The present treatment yields the 0° differential cross sections for the formation of simple s-state Ξ^? particle-hole states peak at a beam momentum around 1.0 GeV/c with a value in excess of 1 μb.     

Special Features of the Correlation between the Uranium–Oxygen Interatomic Distances and the Frequencies of the Valence Vibrations of the UO2 2+ Group in Complex Compounds of Uranyl

We considered the factors due to which the dependences between the uranium–oxygen distances R ₀ and the frequencies of valence vibrations _as for complex compounds of uranyl are described by two independent expressions generally represented by equations of the type R ₀ = a + b_as ^–2/3 (b > 0) with the coefficients a and b differing in the regions R ₀ < 0.178 nm and R ₀ > 0.178 nm. It is shown that the reason is that there is a mutual effect of the ligands in the uranyl complex responsible for different partial contributions of the uranium orbitals and of the atoms of the first coordination sphere to the chemical bonding.     

Detailed Investigation of Neutron–Neutron Angular Correlations in the Spontaneous Fission of $${}^{{252}}$$ Cf

Physics of Atomic Nuclei - New precise measurements of angular neutron–neutron ( $$nn$$ ) correlations in the spontaneous fission of $${}^{252}$$ Cf were performed with the aim of studying...     

Emergence of Classicality in Stern–Gerlach Experiment via Self-Gravity

Emergence of classicality from quantum mechanics, a hotly debated topic, has had no satisfactory resolution so far. Various approaches including decoherence and gravitational interactions have been suggested. In the present work, the Schrödinger–Newton model is used to study the role of semi-classical self-gravity in the evolution of massive spin-1/2 particles in a Stern-Gerlach experiment. For small mass, evolution of the initial wavepacket in a spin superposition shows a splitting in the magnetic field gradient into two trajectories as in the standard Stern–Gerlach experiment. For larger mass, the deviations from the central path are less than in the standard Stern–Gerlach case, while for high enough mass, the wavepacket does not split, and instead follows the classical trajectory for a magnetic moment in inhomogeneous magnetic field. This indicates the emergence of classicality due to self-gravitational interaction when the mass is increased. In contrast, decoherence which is a strong contender for emergence of classicality, leads to a mixed state of two trajectories corresponding to the spin-up and spin-down states, and not the classically expected path. The classically expected path of the particle probably cannot be explained even in the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics. Stern–Gerlach experiments in the macroscopic domain are needed to settle this question.     

Study of Different Forms of Density Distributions in Proton–Nucleus Total Reaction Cross Section and the Effect of Phase in NN Amplitude

Proton total-reaction cross-section (σR), measurements for about five nuclei in the range ¹²C to ²⁰⁸Pb at beam energies spanning 40–800 MeV have been analyzed in a systematic way by using the optical limit approximation of the Coulomb-modified Glauber multiple scattering theory. Two different phenomenological nuclear density distributions of the target nucleus in addition to the realistic one have been used in the present analysis. By applying the energy dependence in the slope parameter of nucleon–nucleon (NN) scattering amplitude, it is found that in general, the predictions of σ _R with the phenomenological Gambhir and Patil density distribution agree fairly well with the experimental data. The inclusion of phase in the NN amplitude improves the theoretical results. Our analysis shows that the calculated total reaction cross sections closely reproduce the measured data over the whole range of energy considered in this work. To validate our analyses, we have also obtained a fairly good representation of elastic p-nucleus differential scattering cross section data. The effect of a Coulomb energy shift in the proton beam has also been studied.     

Proposal for the Simultaneous Measurement of the Neutron–Neutron and Neutron–Proton Quasi-Free Scattering Cross Section via the Neutron–Deuteron Breakup Reaction at E n = 19 MeV

In order to confirm or refute the present discrepancy between data and calculation for the neutron–neutron quasi-free scattering cross section in the neutron–deuteron breakup reaction, we describe a new experimental approach currently being pursued at TUNL.