Liviu Popa-Simil

Most of the exothermic nuclear reactions transfer the mass defect, or binding and surplus energy from the incident particle into kinetic energy of the resulting particles. These particles are traveling through material lattices, interacting by ionization and nuclear collisions. Placing an assembly of alternated electron density and electric conductivity (conductive-insulating) layers in the path of such radiation, the ionization energy is transformed into charge accumulation by polarization. The result is a capacitor like structure charged by the moving particles and discharged electrically. Compared to actual nuclear reactors, where the power density is about 200-500 W/cm(3) due to the fact that power is removed by heat conduction, the new system has a tremendous advantage allowing a power density to be up to 1,000 times higher because it uses electric current to move the power out.

Nuclear transmutation reactions are based on the absorption of a smaller particle such as a neutron, proton, deuteron, alpha, etc. The resulting compound nucleus gets out of its initial lattice mainly by taking the recoil, also with help from its sudden change in chemical properties. The recoil implantation is used in correlation with thin and ultra thin materials mainly for producing radiopharmaceuticals and ultra-thin layer radioactive tracers. In nuclear reactors, the use of nano-particulate pellets could facilitate the recoil implantation for breeding, transmutation, and partitioning purposes. Using enriched U-238 or Th-232 leads to Pu-239 and U-233 production while using other actinides such as Pu-240, Am-241 etc. leads to actinide burning. When such a lattice is immersed into a radiation resistant fluid (water, methanol, etc.), the recoiled product is transferred into the flowing fluid and removed from the hot area using a concentrator/purifier, thus preventing the occurrence of secondary transmutation reactions.

The direct energy conversion of nuclear energy requires nano-structured nuclear fuel The principle of the radiation energy direct conversion is the usage of the knock-on electrons produced by the moving particle interaction with the lattice. These electrons transfer their energy to other electrons creating a shower of low energy and high current. A structure created of independent nanowires of two different materials insulated in a thin dielectric coating may use as electron showers energy harvesting device. The dimensions of the conductors are in the range of few tens of nm while the insulators are of several nm, offering a breakdown voltage of few milivolts. When the mowing particles interacts with them it generates consistent e-showers when riches the high electron density conductor which are passing through insulators and stops in the low electron density conductor polarizing it negatively. These two types of conductors are connected to an external load transferring the accumulated charge. To obtain a higher voltage, in a uniform radiation field bimetal nanobeads insulated together and self-organizing have to be created around the radiation source. The advantages consist in transforming the actual nuclear reactors into high power solid-state batteries with no heat exchangers and turbines.