Arbitrarily large neutron amplification in subcritical nuclear reactors

Abstract: In a subcritical reactor, each neutron produces only keff < 1 neutron per generation (asymptotically and on average), and thus the neutron population decreases exponentially in the absence of external source. The chain reaction is thus easy to stop, making such reactors inherently stable. Interestingly, and contrary to common wisdom, there is no relation between keff, the external source intensity, and the output power of the reactor. In this paper, I present various possible strategies to exploit this fact, and apply them to the design of a rudimentary multi-layer system that allows to reach an arbitrarily large number of fissions per source neutron, while keeping keff < 1 fixed (I used keff=0.97). The behavior of the amplifier is verified with simple Monte-Carlo transport simulations. The proposal admittedly brings complications and subtleties that need to be studied further, but, if developed, could allow to drive subcritical reactors with faint neutron sources, e.g. radioisotope based.