CHAPTER I

                      INTRODUCTION


        This study presents the identification and analysis of some of the prominent physical effects which must be examined in order to develop a coherent understanding of a fissioning uranium plasma. For the benefit of those who (like this writer) have had more experience in the area of nuclear engineering than in plasma physics, it will be helpful to have a basic definition of a fissioning uranium plasma. In the most general sense, a fissioning uranium plasma is a mass of ionized uranium gas which is undergoing nuclear fission. From this definition, it is immediately seen that the analysis of such a system must be built upon a combination of two areas of physics which are ordinarily treated separately. The first is nuclear physics, which forms the basis for the disciplines of reactor physics and nuclear engineering. The second is plasma physics, which treats the static and dynamic behavior of high temperature ionized gases.

        In terms of reactor technology, a fissioning uranium plasma can be considered as another member of the large collection of reactor types that have been conceived over the past two decades as successors to present-day operating


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