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Safe affordable fission engine

Experimental fission reactors for use in space

Safe affordable fission engine

Experimental fission reactors for use in space

SAFE-30 small experimental reactor

Safe affordable fission engine (SAFE) were NASA's small experimental nuclear fission reactors for electricity production in space. Most known was the SAFE-400 reactor concept intended to produce 400 kW thermal and 100 kW electrical using a Brayton cycle closed-cycle gas turbine. The fuel was uranium nitride in a core of 381 pins clad with rhenium. Three fuel pins surround a molybdenum–sodium heatpipe that transports the heat to a heatpipe-gas heat exchanger. This was called a heatpipe power system.{{cite conference | book-title = Space Technology and Applications International Forum – STAIF 2002

The working fluid used in the reactor was a helium–xenon gas mixture.

The project was funded with discretionary money in the lab's budget and done mostly outside the researchers' normal work.

As of 2019, this project appears to have been superseded by Nasa's Kilopower.

References

References

  1. (January 4, 2002). "End-to-End demonstrator of the Safe Affordable Fission Engine (SAFE) 30: Power conversion and ion engine operation". [[American Institute of Physics]].
  2. (2002). "Design and analysis of the SAFE-400 space fission reactor". AIP.
  3. Blanchard, James P.. (2003). "Stretching the Boundaries of Nuclear Technology". [[National Academies Press]].
  4. Poonawala, Qurratulain. (July 24, 2004). "Nuclear adventure: the next evolutionary step in space exploration". [[Dawn (newspaper).
  5. Poston, David. (2001). "The Safe Affordable Fission Engine (SAFE) Test Series". NASA/JPL/MSFC/UAH 12th Annual Advanced Space Propulsion Workshop April 3–5, 2001.
  6. Harty, R.B.. (1994). "Application of Brayton Cycle Technology to Space Power". IEEE Aerospace and Electronic Systems Magazine.
  7. Spotts, Peter N.. (February 28, 2002). "NASA eyes nuclear rockets to reach deep space". [[The Christian Science Monitor]].
  8. (2017-12-12). "Kilopower - NASA".
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