Related papers: Improvised Nuclear Weapons with 60%-Enriched Urani…
It was recently argued by Kemp et al. that HALEU (high-assay low-enriched uranium, or uranium enriched up to 19.75\%) can conceivably be used to produce a nuclear weapon and on this basis civilian enrichment limits should be lowered to 10%…
During 2009 nuclear power plants, with a capacity of 370 GWe, will produce roughly 14% of the worldwide electric energy. About 65000 tons of natural uranium equivalent are required to operate these reactors. For 15 years on average only 2/3…
Historic data from many countries demonstrate that on average no more than 50-70% of the uranium in a deposit could be mined. An analysis of more recent data from Canada and Australia leads to a mining model with an average deposit…
The possibility to produce superheavy elements in the course of low-yield nuclear explosions is analyzed within a simple kinetic model which includes neutron capture, gamma-emission, fission and particle evaporation from excited nuclei. We…
It is shown that the radiological burden due to the battlefield use of circa 400 tons of depleted-uranium munitions in Iraq (and of about 40 tons in Yugoslavia) is comparable to that arising from the hypothetical battle-field use of more…
For more than 40 years, the Nuclear Energy Agency of the OECD countries and the International Atomic Energy Administration of the United Nations have published a biannual document with the title "Uranium Resources, Production and Demand".…
The only military application in which depleted-uranium (DU) alloys out-perform present-day tungsten alloys is long-rod penetration into a main battle-tank's armor. However, this advantage is only on the order of 10%, and it disappears when…
Graphene hydrogels were created and loaded with uranyl nitrate or thorium nitrate and freeze-dried to produce graphene aerogel nuclear fuels. These aerogels had densities between 0.018-0.035 g/cm3 and consisted of ~7.3 +- 0.5%…
Mathematical model of heavy and superheavy nuclei production in intensive pulsed neutron fluxes of explosive process is developed. The pulse character of the process allows dividing it in time into two stages: very short rapid process of…
Might a nuclear-armed terrorist group or state use ordinary commerce to deliver a nuclear weapon by smuggling it in a cargo container or vehicle? This delivery method would be the only one available to a sub-state actor, and it might enable…
Every country that has made nuclear weapons has used uranium enrichment. Despite the centrality of this technology to international security, there is still no reliable physical marker of past enrichment that can be used to perform forensic…
Neutron sources can play a variety of roles in warhead verification. For transmission radiography, a source of directed high energy neutrons is required, while for applications to detect fissile isotopes, sub-MeV neutrons are preferred. The…
The production cross sections for primary and residual fragments with charge number from $Z$=70 to 120 produced in the collision of $^{238}$U+$^{238}$U at 7.0 MeV/nucleon are calculated by the improved quantum molecular dynamics (ImQMD)…
The multinucleon transfer reactions in collisions of $^{136}$Xe+$^{198}$Pt at incident energies $E_{\textrm{lab}}=$5.25, 6.20, 7.98, 10.0, and 15.0 MeV/nucleon are investigated by using the improved quantum molecular dynamics model. It is…
Nuclear batteries require radioisotopes with specific combinations of half-life, decay mode, and radiation properties, yet most candidate fuels lack scalable production routes. We show how the future availability of deuterium-tritium (D-T)…
Railguns can convert large quantities of electrical energy into kinetic energy of the projectile. This was demon- strated by the 33 MJ muzzle energy shot performed in 2010 in the framework of the Office of Naval Research (ONR) electromag-…
Uranium mononitride (UN) is a promising accident-tolerant fuel because of its high fissile density and high thermal conductivity. In this study, we developed the first machine learning interatomic potentials for reliable atomic-scale…
We studied the production of neutron-rich nuclides in multinucleon transfer collisions of stable and radioactive beams in the mass range A=40-60. We first presented our experimental cross section data of projectile fragments from the…
We investigate the possibilities of producing neutron-rich nuclides in projectile fission of heavy beams in the energy range of 20 MeV/nucleon expected from low-energy facilities. We report our efforts to theoretically describe the reaction…
The multi-MW target proposed for the EURISOL facility will be based on fission of uranium (or thorium) compounds to produce rare isotopes far from stability. A two-step process is used for the isotope production. First, neutrons are…