Bulletin of the American Physical Society
Joint Fall 2011 Meeting of the Texas Sections of the APS, AAPT, and Zone 13 of the SPS
Volume 56, Number 7
Thursday–Saturday, October 6–8, 2011; Commerce, Texas
Session F4: General Physics & Applications I |
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Chair: Peter McIntyre, Texas A&M University Room: Sam Rayburn Center Second Floor, Room Vision |
Friday, October 7, 2011 3:40PM - 3:52PM |
F4.00001: Fluid dynamics and heat transfer in an accelerator-driven subcritical fission core Akhdiyor Sattarov, Karie Badgley, Thomas Mann, Peter McIntyre, Gwyn Rosaire Accelerator-driven subcritical fission in a molten salt core (ADSMS) is being developed as a technology for green nuclear power. ADSMS burns its fertile fuel to completion, it cannot melt down, and it destroys long-lived minor actinides. The ADSMS core consists of a vessel filled with a molten salt eutectic of UCl$_{3}$ and NaCl. Fission is driven by generating fast neutrons by spallation of energetic protons on spallation targets within the core. Fission heat is transferred from the molten salt to liquid Na in a primary heat exchanger located above the core. A conceptual design for the fluid dynamics and heat transfer in the core and in the heat exchanger will be presented. [Preview Abstract] |
Friday, October 7, 2011 3:52PM - 4:04PM |
F4.00002: Propagation of a constant velocity fission wave Mark Deinert The ideal nuclear fuel cycle would require no enrichment, minimize the need fresh uranium, and produce few, if any, transuranic elements. Importantly, the latter goal would be met without the reprocessing. For purely physical reasons, no reactor system or fuel cycle can meet all of these objectives. However, a traveling-wave reactor, if feasible, could come remarkably close. The concept is simple: a large cylinder of natural (or depleted) uranium is subjected to a fast neutron source at one end, the neutrons would transmute the uranium downstream and produce plutonium. If the conditions were right, a self-sustaining fission wave would form, producing yet more neutrons which would breed more plutonium and leave behind little more than short-lived fission products. Numerical studies have shown that fission waves of this type are also possible. We have derived an exact solution for the propagation velocity of a fission wave through fertile material. The results show that these waves fall into a class of traveling wave phenomena that have been encountered in other systems. The solution places a strict conditions on the shapes of the flux, diffusive, and reactive profiles that would be required for such a phenomenon to persist. The results are confirmed numerically. [Preview Abstract] |
Friday, October 7, 2011 4:04PM - 4:16PM |
F4.00003: High-Current Superconducting Cyclotron for Accelerator-Driven Subcritical Fission and for Medical Isotope Production Karie Badgley, Saeed Assadi, Peter McIntyre, Akhdiyor Sattarov A 50 MeV, 5mA proton cyclotron is being developed as the injector for a high-current driver for an accelerator-driven subcritical fission power system (ADSMS), and also for production of isotopes for medical physics. Two innovations have made it possible to design a cyclotron capable of $>$5 mA beam current: strong-focusing of the bunches by quadrupole focusing channels integrated on the pole faces of the sector magnets, and superconducting rf accelerating cavities to provide sufficient energy gain per turn to cleanly separate the orbits. Simulation results will be presented for the beam dynamics of the intense proton bunches during injection, acceleration, and extraction. Key features for both applications will be discussed. [Preview Abstract] |
Friday, October 7, 2011 4:16PM - 4:28PM |
F4.00004: Schr\"odinger Equation as Limit of Klein-Gordon Equation in an Electromagnetic Field Donald Kobe The gauge principle is used on the Klein-Gordon equation to minimally couple it to the electromagnetic (EM) field. A gauge transformation is made to cancel the term quadratic in the mass. Then we take the nonrelativistic limit for the particle, but not for the EM field. In this limit we obtain a nonrelativistic Schr\"odinger equation coupled to the relativistic EM field. The space- and time-dependent EM scalar potential (times the charge) has the dimension of energy, but it is not conservative because it can be changed by a gauge transformation. A conservative force is a nonrelativistic concept. If one is present its potential energy can be added to the EM scalar potential (times the charge) to give the usual Schr\"odinger equation. [Preview Abstract] |
Friday, October 7, 2011 4:28PM - 4:40PM |
F4.00005: Equations of state of a system of fermions in a uniform magnetic field at finite density Israel Portillo Vazquez, Efrain J. Ferrer The effects of magnetic fields in neutron stars and in quark stars have been studied for many years; however, all these studies did not follow a unique and consistent scheme when finding the field-dependent contributions to the energy density and pressures. Different authors have different stands on what should be the correct field contributions to the pressure and energy. Motivated by this fact, we develop a systematic and self- consistent functional method approach to treat the equation of state of a system of fermions in a uniform magnetic field at finite density and zero temperature. Following our method approach, we find the behavior of the system energy density and pressures, as well as the magnetization, as function of a magnetic field. We present a graphical representation of the field-dependent anisotropic equation of state of the fermion system. Finally, we show that the introduction of the magnetic field results in a pressure anisotropy, which leads to the distinction between longitudinal- and transverse-to-the-field pressures, and we analyze under what conditions this anisotropy becomes significant. [Preview Abstract] |
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