From: Hal Finney (hal@finney.org)
Date: Thu Feb 20 2003 - 00:35:41 MST
> http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99993406
> http://www.utdallas.edu/research/quantum/Tutorial.htm
>
> Quantum Nuclear Reactions for permanently flying unmanned air vehicles UAV's
>
> The AFRL now has other ideas, though. Instead of a conventional fission
> reactor, it is focusing on a type of power generator called a quantum
> nucleonic reactor. This obtains energy by using X-rays to encourage
> particles in the nuclei of radioactive hafnium-178 to jump down several
> energy levels, liberating energy in the form of gamma rays. A nuclear
> UAV would generate thrust by using the energy of these gamma rays to
> produce a jet of heated air.
I think this is not a new energy source, but rather a sort of nuclear
storage battery. You use X-rays to pump up the nuclear energy levels,
and then they are stable for a very long time (years). Then you later
shine X-rays at the hafnium which couple to the excited states and force
the nuclei to drop to lower energy levels, extracting the energy.
I wasn't able to deduce specific numbers for energy storage per gram of
matter but presumably the values are much higher than for conventional
chemical or mechanical methods. So it might well be of interest for
airborne applications. The main problem they mention is that the hafnium
is radioactive, so in case the plane crashes or is shot down you could
have some contamination problems.
Hal
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