The operation of a laser with direct nuclear pumping is based on a fundamental phenomenon of nature --the excitation and relaxation of a nuclear-excited plasma, arising when the charged products of nuclear reactions stop in matter. The recombination-nonequilibrium plasma formed in the process consists of an almost "ready" laser-active medium. Therefore one can say that a nuclear-pumped laser is an apparatus in which the nuclear energy is converted directly into laser radiation. If energy from a chain fission reaction is used to pump the laser, then the corresponding class of lasers is said to be reactorpumped lasers.Lasers of this type are of interest because of the unique properties of the reactor as a pump source: high energy intensiveness, aatonomy, compactness, possibility of pumping a large volume of active media on account of the high penetrability of neutrons in multiplying systems, and so on. The use of these properties makes it possible to create powerful reactor-laser systems that could f'md wide applications in science and technology [1]. The development of such systems is of interest as a new direction in nuclear power that is promising on account of the possibility of obtaining the "highest sort" of energy --laser radiation --on industrial scales.Substantial success has been achieved in recent years in this field of research. Lasing has been obtained with pumping of 30 different gaseous media with fission fragments, and the understanding of the mechanisms of elementary processes occurring in nuclear-pumped lasers and in the technology used to manufacture them has been substantially deepened [2, 3]. However, the radiation energy of such lasers, which have been investigated in laboratory experiments, is still low and does not exceed several Joules.Our aim in the present work is to discuss the apparatus and the characteristics of a power model intended for experimental demonstration of the unique properties of reactor-pumped lasers.Model Layout. In the optical scheme of the model, shown in Fig. 1, the principle of a driving oscillator --double-pass amplifier is used. The model is based on an optical nuclear-pumped quantum amplifier, consisting of two units: reactor (ignition) and laser (Fig. 2). The reactor unit employs a double-core pulsed, self-extinguishing, fast reactor of the type "Bars-5" [4] with 5.1017 fissions in the two cores and a pulse width of 40 ~sec at half-height. In the neutron-physical respect, the laser unit is a deeply subcritical, booster zone with Keff < 0.9. The main elements are a laser-active element, its simulator, and neutron moderator and reflector elements.The laser-active element consists of a thin-walled stainless steel tube 50 mm in diameter and 2500 mm long with a 5 /~m thick inner coating of 235U metal; the tube is filled with a laser-active medium and sealed at the ends with optical windows that are transparent to laser radiation (Fig. 3). The laser-active medium consists of an argon-xenon mixture (200: I) under normal conditions. This choice is associated with the" fa...

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In review, general results obtained by Institute of Physics and Power Engineering (IPPE) during 1981-1992 are presented in the field of physics of nuclear-induced plasmas in the following directions: processes of primary ionization of different media by nuclear reaction products; function of electron distribution in nuclear-induced plasmas; processes of excitation and relaxation; track structure of nuclear-induced plasmas. Prospects of study progress are discussed with a view to improve the current concepts of physics of elementary processes occurring in nuclear-induced plasmas and obtain experimental and theoretical data on process constants needed to calculate the nuclear-pumped lasers.