They miss the point, which is not that the virus is a nuclear furnace.
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The sun is a nuclear furnace, constantly shooting hot plasma -- mostly protons and electrons from overheated hydrogen atoms -- off into space.
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Previous attempts to guage the solar nebula's age range had produced figures ranging from one to 10 million years after the Sun's nuclear furnace first ignited.
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The lyrics of the first stanza of "Why Does the Sun Shine?" also appear verbatim in the book Stars: A Golden Guide, apart from the omission of "its core is" before "a gigantic nuclear furnace".
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Unlike the AEC work, which was intended to study the reactor design itself, NERVA's goal was to produce a real engine that could be deployed on space missions. The 75,000 lbf (334 kN) thrust baseline NERVA design was based on the KIWI B4 series. Tested engines included Kiwi, Phoebus, NRX/EST, NRX/XE, Pewee, Pewee 2 and the Nuclear Furnace. Progressively higher power densities culminated in the Pewee. Tests of the improved Pewee 2 design were cancelled in 1970 in favor of the lower-cost Nuclear Furnace (NF-1), and the U.S. nuclear rocket program officially ended in spring of 1973.
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SNPO believed that radioactive emissions were well within the guidelines, and would have no adverse environmental effects, but an environmental group claimed otherwise. SNPO prepared a full environmental impact study for the upcoming Nuclear Furnace tests. In the meantime, LASL planned a Pewee 3 test. This would be tested horizontally, with a scrubber to remove fission products from the exhaust plume.
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Gaseous hydrogen was used instead of liquid to save money. A scrubber was developed. The objectives of the Nuclear Furnace tests were to verify the design, and test the new composite fuels. Between 29 June and 27 July 1972, NF-1 was operated four times at full power (44 MW) and a fuel exit gas temperature of for a total of 108.8 minutes.
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Tests of the improved Pewee 2 design were cancelled in 1970 in favor of the lower-cost Nuclear Furnace (NF-1), and the U.S. nuclear rocket program officially ended in spring of 1973. Research into nuclear rockets has continued quietly since that time within NASA. Current (2010) 25,000 pound-thrust reference designs (NERVA-Derivative Rockets, or NDRs) are based on the Pewee, and have specific impulses of 925 seconds.
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Development of solid core NTRs started in 1955 under the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) as Project Rover, and ran to 1973. Work on a suitable reactor was conducted at Los Alamos National Laboratory and Area 25 in the Nevada Test Site. Four basic designs came from this project: KIWI, Phoebus, Pewee and the Nuclear Furnace. Twenty individual engines were tested, with a total of over 17 hours of engine run time.
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Jackass Flats Nuclear reactors for Project Rover were built at LASL Technical Area 18 (TA-18), also known as the Pajarito Site. Fuel and internal engine components were fabricated in the Sigma complex at Los Alamos. Testing of fuel elements and other materials science was done by the LASL N Division at TA-46 using various ovens and later a custom test reactor, the Nuclear Furnace. Staff from the LASL Test (J) and Chemical Metallurgy Baker (CMB) divisions also participated in Project Rover.
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Engine maintenance assembly and disassembly (E-MAD) facility Nuclear reactors for Project Rover were built at LASL Technical Area 18 (TA-18), also known as the Pajarito Site. The reactors were tested at very low power before being shipped to Jackass Flats in the Nevada Test Site. Testing of fuel elements and other materials science was done by the LASL N Division at TA-46 using various ovens and later the Nuclear Furnace. Work commenced on test facilities at Jackass Flats in mid-1957.
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The character is an expert roboticist and strategist. Ultron's outer armor is usually composed primarily of adamantium, which is almost completely impervious to damage (the first use of the term "adamantium" in Marvel Comics was made in reference to Ultron in Avengers #66, published in July 1969). Most Ultron units are powered by a small internal nuclear furnace and incorporate a "program transmitter" which can beam part or all of Ultron's memory/personality system into other computer systems or duplicate robotic bodies. Ultron can also control other machines remotely.
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A smaller version of KIWI, the Pewee was also built. It was fired several times at 500 MW in order to test coatings made of zirconium carbide (instead of niobium carbide) but Pewee also increased the power density of the system. A water-cooled system known as NF-1 (for Nuclear Furnace) used Pewee 2's fuel elements for future materials testing showing a factor of 3 reduction in fuel corrosion still further. Pewee 2 was never tested on the stand, and became the basis for current NTR designs being researched at NASA's Glenn and Marshall Research Centers.
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Project Rover became part of NASA's Nuclear Engine for Rocket Vehicle Application (NERVA) project and henceforth dealt with the research into nuclear rocket reactor design, while NERVA involved the overall development and deployment of nuclear rocket engines, and the planning for space missions. Nuclear reactors for Project Rover were built at LASL Technical Area 18 (TA-18), also known as the Pajarito Canyon Site. They were tested there at very low power and then shipped to Area 25 (known as Jackass Flats) at the AEC's Nevada Test Site. Testing of fuel elements and other materials science was done by the LASL N-Division at TA-46 using various ovens and later a custom test reactor, the Nuclear Furnace.
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A branch of physics, the study of controlled nuclear fusion, has tried since the 1950s to derive useful power from nuclear fusion reactions that combine small nuclei into bigger ones, typically to heat boilers, whose steam could turn turbines and produce electricity. Unfortunately, no earthly laboratory can match one feature of the solar powerhouse: the great mass of the Sun, whose weight keeps the hot plasma compressed and confines the nuclear furnace to the Sun's core. Instead, physicists use strong magnetic fields to confine the plasma, and for fuel they use heavy forms of hydrogen, which burn more easily. Magnetic traps can be rather unstable, and any plasma hot enough and dense enough to undergo nuclear fusion tends to slip out of them after a short time.
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Two of the fuel forms tested by Project Rover: pyrolytic carbon-coated uranium carbide fuel particles dispersed in a graphite substrate, and "composite" which consisted of a uranium carbide-zirconium carbide dispersion in the graphite substrate. The Nuclear Furnace was a small reactor only a tenth of the size of Pewee that was intended to provide an inexpensive means of conducting tests. Originally it was to be used at Los Alamos, but the cost of creating a suitable test site was greater than that of using Test Cell C. It had a tiny core long and in diameter that held 49 hexagonal fuel elements. Of these, 47 were uranium carbide-zirconium carbide "composite" fuel cells and two contained a seven- element cluster of single-hole pure uranium-zirconium carbide fuel cells.
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The NERVA NRX/XE, judged by SNPO to be the last "technology development" reactor necessary before proceeding to flight prototypes, accumulated over 2 hours of run time, including 28 minutes at full power.Dewar, James. "To The End Of The Solar System: The Story Of The Nuclear Rocket", Apogee, 2003 The Russian nuclear thermal rocket RD-0410 was also claimed by the Soviets to have gone through a series of tests at the nuclear test site near Semipalatinsk. The United States tested twenty different sizes and designs during Project Rover and NASA's NERVA program from 1959 through 1972 at the Nevada Test Site, designated Kiwi, Phoebus, NRX/EST, NRX/XE, Pewee, Pewee 2 and the Nuclear Furnace, with progressively higher power densities culminating in the Pewee (1970) and Pewee 2.
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