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A comment on DARPA wants to bypass the thermal middleman in nuclear power systems. Parent comment

Re:DARPA wants to bypass the thermal middleman in nuclear po... by drivebyhooting on Friday August 09, 2024 @07:10PM (#41206132)
That sounds very cool. Like a nuclear ion drive. Is there a technical paper about it?
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Re:DARPA wants to bypass the thermal middleman in nuclear po... by Intralexical on Friday August 09, 2024 @07:20PM (#41206202)
Sounds like what Wikipedia calls a "Fission-fragment rocket", I think?

So check the citations for papers:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fission-fragment_rocket

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Re:DARPA wants to bypass the thermal middleman in nuclear po... by mannykannot on Friday August 09, 2024 @11:24PM (#41207081)
Very interesting - I had not heard of this before. I see that the entry on the “dusty plasma” design says that the exhaust flow can be decelerated for power (presumably that applies to other designs as well.) It does not mention how the deceleration is performed (electrostatically, a bit like a reverse Van der Graaff particle accelerator?) or how efficient and compact this could be.
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Re:DARPA wants to bypass the thermal middleman in nuclear po... by db48x on Saturday August 10, 2024 @02:57AM (#41207812)
Wikipedia has a short list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_energy_conversion
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