Breakthough in nuclear-reactor technology?

Outside The Beltway
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"[The missile’s reactor] is comparable in output with a reactor of a nuclear-propelled submarine, but it’s 1,000 times smaller. But the key thing is that where a regular reactor needs hours, days or weeks to go online, this one launches in minutes or seconds.”–Vladimir Putin
Putin reveals details about Burevestnik missile’s nuclear engine — RT Russia & Former Soviet Union

The claimed performance is far beyond anything currently available in the west, which may indicate a radical departure from conventional designs.

Is the reactor design based on a new understanding of physics? For decades Low Energy Nuclear Reaction (aka LENR or “cold fusion”) has been treated as heresy by mainstream western physics journals and research institutions. Any investigation into this subject has been a sure way to destroy a career in physics. Meanwhile Russian researchers have been in the lead in investigating how electrical discharges can generate neutrons.

Is the reported breakthrough in reactor technology based on “heretical physics”?

In the 1930s, Germany promoted “German physics” as opposed to “Jewish physics” developed by Einstein that eventually resulted in the atomic bomb.

Is something similar happening today?

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it’s interesting that lightening generates neutrons. but the flux needed for sustained chain reactions will likely be a factor. plus they will need to be of a certain spectrum. or energy, to be useful. (slower neutrons, or “thermal” neutrons are the ones which take part in chain reactions of most modern fission reactors vs high energy ones)

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Electron capture is one way to initiate a nuclear reaction, and it is plausible that electric currents could affect the output. There was originally a lot of excitement about the possibilities based on early experiments in 1989. There were problems with reproducing the results, and the physics journals rapidly banned any further discussion.

A basic problem for nuclear physics is that any new development can be pre-emptively classified as a national-security secret. Similar effects involving nuclear reactions and electrical currents may have been known for many decades, but they have been classified because there could be military applications.

Layers of Secrecy in Physics and Nuclear Programs

Weinstein highlights the extraordinary secrecy surrounding physics, particularly when it intersects with national security. According to him, physics is the only profession in America that does not enjoy full free speech rights, due to doctrines like “restricted data” and the Espionage Act of 1917. He describes a multi-layered secrecy system:

Restricted Data Doctrine – Any work related to nuclear physics may be classified as “born secret,” even if independently discovered by civilians .

Q-Clearance Data – Information requiring special government clearance, with severe penalties for unauthorized handling.

Special Access Programs (SAPs) – Highly classified government projects.

Unacknowledged Special Access Programs (USAPs) – SAPs that are not publicly known or even acknowledged to exist.

Waived and Bigoted Programs – Ultra-secret compartments with only a tiny circle of officials aware of them.
Eric Weinstein: Physics, Secrecy, and the Shadow of Epstein - Alternative Press

Meanwhile, there continues to be research, but it is outside of the physics establishment and has been generally dismissed as pseudo-science.

Several companies have attempted to market products based on these ideas. Here is a website for one of them that proposed to make heating systems for buildings, but the last posts are from 2018. The catch-22 is that a technically successful product may be quietly shut down as a national-security risk, while the ones that don’t work are allowed to fail on their own merits.

Perhaps the Russians have been quietly working on similar ideas and have refined them into a revolutionary reactor design. This could be a Sputnik moment.

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although “cold fusion” is basically a contradiction in terms, still interesting stuff

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If Russia has really achieved a breakthrough in reactor design, then it could revolutionize propulsion for deep-space missions.

Here is a report from last year:

Manned flights to Mars may begin in the next 50 years, while Russia will begin to use “nuclear tugs” for deep space exploration within a few decades, Roscosmos Director General Yuri Borisov said in an interview with Solovyov Live. “I think that maybe even faster, in the next 50 years… Appropriate technologies will be accumulated, worked out, new carriers will be created, which will make it possible to get to this distant planet much faster. And, of course, then the mission becomes more realistic. But, at least, [American entrepreneur Elon] Musk will visit Mars in the coming decades,” Borisov said, answering a question about the timing of flights to Mars. The head of Roscosmos also said that it is planned to use the Zeus nuclear tug, which is being developed in Russia, for deep space exploration. It is planned to create its prototype in 2030. “We are doing this project on our own, it is going quite successfully. The corresponding reactor capacity has been achieved. And I think that we will not stop work in this direction, and somewhere in the 2030s and 40s, the product will be practically used for deep space exploration, for scientific programs,” Borisov said.
Reminiscence of the Future... : How This And Burevestnik ...

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This is why I am a republican. Technology, free enterprise and innovation will solve our issues. Not government issued regulation and restrictions. I don’t think that we need Jasmine and AOC getting in the way of progress.

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The policies that severely restrict private research into physics have been in place with both Republicans and Democrats the White House. Similar issues have stifled physics research throughout the West.

It is doubtful that physics journals could have published Einstein’s papers if they had operated under the modern policies of peer reviews and censorship based on security concerns. Most research is funded by the US government, and there are huge vested interests to keep funding more research on such non-productive areas as “string theory” and “dark matter”. Meanwhile investigations into how electric discharges can produce neutrons have been largely ignored.

For background, here are recent comments from a well-known critic, Dr. Sabine Hossenfelder, a German physicist and YouTube commentator:

Russian scientists may well be operating in an alternate universe when it comes to scientific investigations.