Word: fueled
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...escape into outer space, Lewis pointed out, requires an initial speed of 6.95 miles a second (25,020 m.p.h.). This requirement cannot be dodged by running the rocket motor slowly over a long period; that would only waste energy by forcing the ship to carry heavy fuel to a greater height...
...reach "escape velocity," the space ship's fuel must be used as economically as possible, and the efficiency of a rocket motor depends on the speed of the exhaust gases. Lewis calculated that a space ship carrying half its total weight in fuel would have to shoot out its exhaust gases at 9.95 miles a second...
Experts called it the biggest atomic news since the end of World War II. The Atomic Energy Commission revealed last week that it is now considered practical to build a nuclear reactor which will "breed" more atomic fuel than it consumes...
Burn-Out. Plutonium is fissionable and a fine nuclear fuel, but the first reactors did not produce enough of it to replace the U-235 consumed. So their nuclear fuel gradually "burned out," leaving U-238 as a sort of ash. Thus, the reactors of the early atomic age could utilize only a very small part of the uranium fed into them...
...breeders, or converters, will lessen the waste, presumably by causing more neutrons to be absorbed byU-238. If the amount of plutonium or other nuclear fuel thus produced is larger than the U-235 consumed, the pile could continue in operation for a very long time. First the original U-235 would be consumed, yielding energy and plutonium made out of 11-238. Then some of the plutonium would fission, yielding energy and creating more atomic fuel. Theoretically, the process might continue until all the 11-238 is consumed. Natural uranium could yield something like 140 times as much energy...