MAE-118C:  Twenty-first Century Energy Technologies-II

Introduction to Nuclear Fission and Fusion

 

Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering

University of California San Diego

Spring-2008

 

Instructor

 

       Professor George R. Tynan

       Office:  457 EBU-II

       Telephone: 534-9724

       Email: gtynan@ucsd.edu

       Office Hours:  Fridays 930am-1130am

 

Teaching Assistant: 

 

Mr. Min Xu

           Office: EBU-II Room L-309

Phone:  534 4971

           E-mail: m2xu@ucsd.edu

Office Hours:  Monday 3:00pm-5:00pm, Wed:  3:00-4:00pm

 

VERY IMPORTANT: For email contact with the instructor or TA please put ÒMAE 118CÓ first in the subject of the email.  We receive many emails each day, and this helps to avoid us not seeing or reading your messages.

 

Course Objective:  Introduce the science and technology of nuclear fission and fusion for primary energy generation.  Composition of atomic nucleus.  Fundamentals of radiation and nuclear reactions.  Fission chain reaction and conditions for criticality in a fission reactor.  Nuclear fuel cycle and nuclear waste.  Conditions for fusion.  Energy breakeven requirements for fusion.  Elements of magnetic confinement fusion and inertial confinement fusion.  Status and prospects for fusion energy.

 

Suggested background:  Upper level fluid dynamics, thermodynamics, and/or vector calculus and ordinary differential equations.  Familiarity with classical electromagnetism and MaxwellÕs equations would also help, but is not essential.

 

Course Grading:  Homework assignments will be made but will not be graded.  Solutions will be posted.  Quizes based upon the homeworks will be given during 4th hour on selected Fridays; these quizzes will be 10% of the final grade.  There will be a  mid-term and a final exam that will each count for 45% of the grade. 

 

Exams:  We will have a mid-term exam and a final exam.  Both will be closed book/closed notes; no electronic devices (e.g. calculators) are permitted nor needed to solve the problems.  I will hand out pertinent information (e.g. tables, graphs, conversion factors, etcÉ) with the exam so that students need not memorize detailed information.  Students should bring blue books for the exams to reduce the risk of lost sheets of papers.

 

Texts:

ÒIntroduction to Nuclear Engineering 3rd Edition, J.R. Lamarch and A.J. Baratta, Addison-Weley 2001

 

ÒPrinciples of Fusion Energy:  An Introduction to Fusion Energy for Science and Engineering StudentsÓ, Harms, Schoepf, Miley, & Kingdon, World Scientific, 2000

 

 

Remark on Office Hours: 

You are welcome to go over anything from class during office hours, including general ideas and methods for solving particular problems.  You should come prepared - that means that you have reviewed the relevant notes, you have done the assigned reading, and you have gone over any example problems that were provided.  If you need help with a specific problem, you should bring the work you have been able to do.

 

Regrades:

If you believe that there is a mistake in the grading of an assignment or an exam, describe the error in writing and give the whole assignment or exam back to the instructor or a TA.  Regrades are accepted for one week after graded assignments are returned to you, so, for example, if you receive a graded homework back on a Thursday, the last day to request a regrade is on the following Thursday.

 

Academic Integrity:

The instructor takes the principles of academic honesty very seriously, and expect you to read and understand the campus policy on Integrity of Scholarship, which is linked electronically here:

 

http://www-senate.ucsd.edu/manual/appendices/app2.htm#AP14. 

 

You are free to discuss assignments with the instructors, the TAs, and your fellow students – in fact talking about ideas and approaches is a good way to learn the material.  However, plagiarism and other forms of neglecting to give credit for other peoplesÕ ideas are strictly prohibited. Homework solutions which you turn in should be your own work and should not merely be copies of the work of other students.  Please speak with the instructor if you have any questions about academic honesty or if you observe any questionable behaviors in class.  Any violation of the UCSD Policy on Integrity of Scholarship is grounds for submission of the matter to appropriate UCSD review procedures.