The US government is planning to buy a small Soviet nuclear reactor
that was built to power satellites in space. 女生小视频s from four laboratories
near Albuquerque, New Mexico, will test the reactor, which is known as Topaz
II.
The US has been trying to build its own space reactor, called the SP-100,
which would be much more powerful than the Topaz reactor. But the SP-100鈥檚
鈥榞reat disadvantage is that it doesn鈥檛 exist鈥�, says Steve Aftergood of the
Federation of American 女生小视频s.
The US has no plans to use a small nuclear reactor in space, but scientists
want to study the reactor鈥檚 construction. Last May, American scientists
visited the laboratories in the Soviet Union where the Topaz II was designed.
They reported that Soviet scientists had made remarkable progress in constructing
materials that are capable of withstanding the extreme temperatures inside
the reactor. 鈥業t is clear that the Soviets are far ahead of us in the space
nuclear power technical area,鈥� said one of the visiting Americans.
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The Soviet reactor turns its heat into electricity using a 鈥榯hermionic鈥�
process. In this process, an extremely hot metal surface is held close to
a much colder one, and electrons effectively boil off the hot surface onto
the cold one. This design involves subjecting metals to temperatures of
up to 1800 kelvin.
