The US has relied on computer simulations since 1992 for verifying the performance of its nuclear stockpile but will soon get more realistic estimates.
Three US national defense labs are engaged in the process of building a test site, one thousand feet under the ground in Albuquerque, New Mexico, that will send powerful X-rays and verify the reliability of the country's nuclear stockpile, a So, along with Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories, Sandia is building a $1.8 billion project, dubbed Scorpius, that will use X-rays to check plutonium compressed to levels just before it reaches criticality - the point where it would result in a nuclear explosion.
The 20 high-voltage connectors on an inductive voltage-adder cell are checked for assembly defects before moving the cell to electrical testing.Designed by SNL, the electron beam generator is approximately 46 feet long and generates 25,000-volt pulses. The Los Alamos lab team is responsible for the post-pulse acceleration, taking the beam from 1.7 megavolts to 22 megavolts and then turning it into X-rays. In comparison, the X-ray beam at a dentist uses electrons pulsed at 50,000 volts.
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Source: IntEngineering - 🏆 287. / 63 Read more »
Source: IntEngineering - 🏆 287. / 63 Read more »
Source: IntEngineering - 🏆 287. / 63 Read more »
Source: IntEngineering - 🏆 287. / 63 Read more »
Source: IntEngineering - 🏆 287. / 63 Read more »
Source: IntEngineering - 🏆 287. / 63 Read more »