At what eV will electrons induce Be-10 decay?

  • Thread starter Thread starter RaymondKennethPetry
  • Start date Start date
  • Tags Tags
    Decay Electrons Ev
AI Thread Summary
Nuclear-powered spaceflight is considered a promising option for the future, but there is limited experimental documentation on safe fuels like Be-10, which has a half-life of 1.51 million years and a decay energy of 556 keV. The discussion raises questions about the feasibility of using accelerated electrons to induce decay in Be-10 nuclei, particularly regarding the energy required for such processes. Concerns are noted about the impracticality of electron accelerators due to their mass and the energy loss from interactions with atomic electrons. The energy output from beta decay is significantly lower than that from fission, making the approach less viable. Overall, the challenges of using electron-induced decay highlight the complexities of advancing nuclear propulsion technology.
RaymondKennethPetry
Messages
12
Reaction score
0
Nuclear-powered spaceflight is the obvious choice for this century, but the few safe-choice fuels have little experimental documentation ...

Be-10 might be the best at 556KeV and half-life of 1.51Myr ... β-chaining if possible ...

At what eV will accelerated electrons induce Be-10 nuclei to decay ... Is there an eV-vs.-emission rate plot?

Ray.
 
Last edited:
Engineering news on Phys.org
It would be impractical to have an electron accelerator to induce beta decay of any radionuclide. Simply the mass of the accelerator would be a significant detriment. Secondly, the 556 keV per 10 amu represents much less energy than fission 200 MeV / 236 amu.

Another problem with electron scattering of a nucleus is the fact that the accelerated electrons will interact (scatter and lose energy) with the atomic electrons, so basically one would have to put more energy in that would be obtained from the beta decay.
 
Hello everyone, I am currently working on a burnup calculation for a fuel assembly with repeated geometric structures using MCNP6. I have defined two materials (Material 1 and Material 2) which are actually the same material but located in different positions. However, after running the calculation with the BURN card, I am encountering an issue where all burnup information(power fraction(Initial input is 1,but output file is 0), burnup, mass, etc.) for Material 2 is zero, while Material 1...
Back
Top