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There was some discussion in Dewars book "To the End of the Solar System"[1] about the different cultures at the national labs related to the development of nuc

There was some discussion in Dewars book "To the End of the Solar System"[1] about the different cultures at the national labs related to the development of nuclear thermal rockets. Something about the Los Alamos guys being all about experimentation, and blowing radioactive material out of the tail of the rocket, until an Oak Ridge director was brought in and mandating more modelling of internal behavoir. I may have those labs mixed up, it's been a long time since I've read the book. [1]http://books.google.com/books/about/To_the_End_of_the_Solar_System.html?id=zmpxV1ygjvsC http://books.google.com/books/about/To_the_End_of_the_Solar_...

elektronjunge 12y ago
The nuclear rocket stuff was in the 50s and 60s. With the shift to stock-pile stewardship at the end of the cold war all of the labs became fairly focused on modeling. It also depends on what group you work for. I worked for one of the modeling groups so we were obviously talking about it all the time. Many other groups did to. Some were more experiment focused. Most the physicists treated it as a third branch to the classic experimental, theoretical split in physics.
- ganzuul 12y ago
  Why do nuclear stockpiles require HPC?
  - icegreentea 12y ago
    Since actually testing nuclear weapons is banned, the only way to verify (ha! verify with simulation) that the current nuclear stockpile is reliable is with simulation. In brief, the idea is to model degradation of current warheads and how that effects their performance/reliability. For example, the National Ignition Facility (the warp core in Into Darkness) was created partly too provide a source of fusion that could be used to verify the computer models used to simulate nuclear weapon stability. Ie, write a general enough model to see what happens in the fusion bit of a nuke, then apply the model to something like what the NIF does, and then actually test it in the NIF. If the NIF experimental outcomes are in agreement with the model predictions, then we now have higher confidence that the model predictions with regards to the actual nukes are useful. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockpile_stewardship http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockpile_stewardship

elektronjunge 12y ago

The nuclear rocket stuff was in the 50s and 60s. With the shift to stock-pile stewardship at the end of the cold war all of the labs became fairly focused on modeling. It also depends on what group you work for. I worked for one of the modeling groups so we were obviously talking about it all the time. Many other groups did to. Some were more experiment focused. Most the physicists treated it as a third branch to the classic experimental, theoretical split in physics.

ganzuul 12y ago
Why do nuclear stockpiles require HPC?
- icegreentea 12y ago
  Since actually testing nuclear weapons is banned, the only way to verify (ha! verify with simulation) that the current nuclear stockpile is reliable is with simulation. In brief, the idea is to model degradation of current warheads and how that effects their performance/reliability. For example, the National Ignition Facility (the warp core in Into Darkness) was created partly too provide a source of fusion that could be used to verify the computer models used to simulate nuclear weapon stability. Ie, write a general enough model to see what happens in the fusion bit of a nuke, then apply the model to something like what the NIF does, and then actually test it in the NIF. If the NIF experimental outcomes are in agreement with the model predictions, then we now have higher confidence that the model predictions with regards to the actual nukes are useful. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockpile_stewardship http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockpile_stewardship