Standard drilling has limits as at some depth the pressures and temperatures force the drilled opening tight when the drill is lifted.This paper proposes a reliable and rapid method of penetration of rock masses by melting all or part of the rock face and penetrate therein, cool the resulting glassy tube to be a stabilized liner. The methods proposed to heat the tip of the melting element inclu...

Thermonuclear runaways driven by accretion into degenerate white dwarf cores are the source that power classical nova outbursts. In this paper, we identify the dominant nuclear paths involved in the synthesis of intermediate-mass elements, from Si to Ca, during such violent events. New evolutionary sequences of 1.35 M ONe novae have been computed, using updated nuclear reaction rates. The main ...

A deflagration-to-detonation transition (DDT) can occur in environments ranging from experimental and industrial systems to astrophysical thermonuclear (type Ia) supernovae explosions. Substantial progress has been made in explaining the nature of DDT in confined systems with walls, internal obstacles, or preexisting shocks. It remains unclear, however, whether DDT can occur in unconfined media...

(0.8 mg of DT at 400 g/cm) has been derived from the energy balance of an hypothetical power plant [2]. Secondly, self-consistent 2D radiation hydrodynamic simulations with MULTI [3, 4] allows us to define and optimize a HIB-driven hohlraum target, as well as to determine the minimum PB energy ( 33 kJ) needed to ignite the asymmetrically compressed fuel. Thermonuclear ignition and burn is now i...

Atomic nuclei are transformed into each other in the cosmos by nuclear reactions inside stars: – the process of nucleosynthesis. The basic concepts of determining nuclear reaction rates inside stars and how they manage to burn their fuel so slowly most of the time are discussed. Thermonuclear reactions involving protons in the hydrostatic burning of hydrogen in stars are discussed first. This i...

The fusion of deuterium (D) with tritium (T) is the most promising of the reactions that could power the thermonuclear reactors of the future. Already favored for its low activation energy and high yield, it may lead to even more efficient energy generation if obtained in a polarized state, i.e. with the spin of the reactants aligned. While the DT fusion rate has been measured extensively, very...

The extent of nucleosynthesis in models of type I X-ray bursts and the associated impact on the energy released in these explosive events are sensitive to nuclear masses and reaction rates around the Ge waiting point. Using the well known mass of Ge, the recently measured As mass, and largescale shell model calculations, we have determined new thermonuclear rates of the Ge(p,γ)As and As(p,γ)Se ...