Controlled Extraction of Energy from Nuclear Isomers

Abstract

The Army must deploy increasingly powerful energy sources to support sustained operations anytime and anywhere in the world. Excited states of nuclei can store 5 orders of magnitude more energy than that stored in chemical bonds. Conventional nuclear storage systems such as radioisotopes cannot be turned on when the energy is required. This paper describes a switchable nuclear battery that may be formed from long-lived (ie. ^100 years) excited isomeric-states in the nucleus, which can then be triggered to release their energy on demand.

Open PDF

Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Dec 01, 2004
Accession Number
ADA433348

Entities

People

  • G. Merkel
  • M. S. Litz

Organizations

  • United States Army Research Laboratory

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Energy and Power Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Abstracts
  • Beta Decay
  • Detectors
  • Energy
  • Energy Storage
  • Gamma Decay
  • Ground State
  • Isotopes
  • Materials
  • Measurement
  • Nuclear Isomers
  • Power Supplies
  • Radioactive Decay
  • Radioisotope Batteries
  • Silicon Carbide
  • Storage
  • Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

Fields of Study

  • Physics

Readers

  • Electrical Engineering
  • Quantum spin resonance or Electron Paramagnetic Resonance spectroscopy.
  • Systems Analysis and Design