Methods and systems for producing fissile material from fertile feedstock
AssigneeThe Boeing Company
InventorJohn Wilson Benac
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A method for generating a fissile material is described. The method includes positioning a fertile, non-fissile material within outer space, the position within an area of proton or other high energy particle radiation, rather naturally or artificially occurring, allowing the high energy particle radiation to impinge the fertile but non-fissile material over a time, the time based on amount of high energy particle radiation at the position, such that the non-fissile material gradually transmutes into a fissile material due to the impingement, and deploying the fissile material within a spacecraft.
Claims14
A method for breeding radioactive fuel stock aboard a spacecraft, located in a micro-gravity, vacuum environment, the method comprising:
- initiating an electromagnetic thruster, configured to exhaust a particle stream, comprising at least one of protons or alpha particles;
- forming a neutron source by directing a portion of the particle stream onto a target material, comprising a light element, selected from the group consisting of beryllium, lithium, boron, nitrogen, fluorine, sodium, magnesium, aluminum, phosphorus, and chlorine;
- locating a rod, comprising 238U, proximate to the neutron source;
- removing the rod from the neutron source after a fraction of 238U has been transmuted into a fraction of 239Pu;
- and
- locating the rod in a neutron-reflecting device, which reflects essentially all neutrons, originating from the rod, back to the rod;
- and
- wherein the fraction of 239Pu is defined by a minimum number of atoms necessary for criticality when the rod is located in the neutron-reflecting device.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.