Evaluations of radiation properties of gas media used in nuclear-pumped lasers

Abstract

One of the principles at nuclear pumping of lasers is the excitation of active media by uranium fission fragments. So it means that these lasers doesn't contain such a traditional for nuclear energetics safety barrier as keeping of fission products inside the solid state fuel matrix, The absence of this barrier leads to accumulation of radioactive products in the active laser volume, so the activity of these products may be quite significant. The feature of nuclear pumped laser gas media is the absence of aerosols, so the fission products are existing there only in forms of single atoms and molecules. To develop the necessary methods of protection from radiation for works on researching of nuclear pumped laser and for development of design of powerful nuclear pumped laser for fusion energetics it was needed to understand physicochemical and radiation properties of laser gas media. So there were carried out series of experiments the results of which are given.