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Design Concepts for Stationary Reactor Lasers

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Abstract

Chapter 6 gives a brief overview of designs for nuclear laser setups with a pulse duration of ~10 ms (OKUYAN and LIRA setups). Their operation is based on the “initiating reactor–subcritical laser block” scheme. The literature has repeatedly suggested different design schemes for stationary nuclear laser facilities or reactor-laser (RL) based on gas laser media. The term RL was apparently first proposed in article [1], where the potential of removing energy in the form of laser radiation from the reactor core during the relaxation stage was noted in principle. The most interesting version of the RL is a device where, as a consequence of spatial overlapping of the nuclear fuel and laser medium, a significant portion of the nuclear energy is converted into laser radiation bypassing the intermediate thermal energy stage.

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Melnikov, S.P., Sizov, A.N., Sinyanskii, A.A., Miley, G.H. (2015). Design Concepts for Stationary Reactor Lasers. In: Lasers with Nuclear Pumping. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-08882-2_10

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