This paper investigates potential shielding options for surface power fission reactors. The majority of work is focused on a lunar shield that uses a combination of water in stainless‐steel cans and lunar regolith. The major advantage of a water‐based shield is that development, testing, and deployment should be relatively inexpensive. This shielding approach is used for three surface reactor concepts: (1) a moderated spectrum, NaK cooled, Hastalloy/UZrH reactor, (2) a fast‐spectrum, NaK‐cooled, SS/UO2 reactor, and (3) a fast‐spectrum, K‐heat‐pipe‐cooled, SS/UO2 reactor. For this study, each of these reactors is coupled to a 25‐kWt Stirling power system, designed for 5 year life. The shields are designed to limit the dose both to the Stirling alternators and potential astronauts on the surface. The general configuration used is to bury the reactor, but several other options exist as well. Dose calculations are presented as a function of distance from reactor, depth of buried hole, water boron concentration (if any), and regolith repacked density.
Water and Regolith Shielding for Surface Reactor Missions
SPACE TECH.& APPLIC.INT.FORUM-STAIF 2006: 10th Conf Thermophys Applic Microgravity; 23rd Symp Space Nucl Pwr & Propulsion; 4th Conf Human/Robotic Tech & Nat'l Vision for Space Explor.; 4th Symp Space Coloniz.; 3rd Symp on New Frontiers & Future Concepts ; 2006 ; Albuquerque, New Mexico (USA)
AIP Conference Proceedings ; 813 , 1 ; 953-966
2006-01-20
14 pages
Conference paper
Electronic Resource
English
Water and Regolith Shielding for Surface Reactor Missions
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