Nuclear pumped laser

A nuclear pumped laser is a laser pumped with the energy of fission fragments. The lasing medium is enclosed in a tube lined with uranium-235 and subjected to high neutron flux in a nuclear reactor core. The fission fragments of the uranium create excited plasma with inverse population of energy levels, which then lases. Other methods, e.g. the He-Ar laser, can use the He(n,p)H reaction, the transmutation of helium-3 in a neutron flux, as the energy source, or employing the energy of the alpha particles.

This technology may achieve high excitation rates with small laser volumes.

Some example lasing media:

Research in nuclear pumped lasers started in the early 1970s when researchers were unable to produce a laser with a wavelength shorter than 110 nm with the end goal of creating an x-ray laser. When laser wavelengths become that short the laser requires a huge amount of energy which must also be delivered in an extremely short period of time. In 1975 it was estimated, by George Chapline and Lowell Wood from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, that “pumping a 10-keV (0.12-nm) laser would require around a watt per atom” in a pulse that was “10⁻¹⁵ seconds x the square of the wavelength in angstroms.” As this problem was unsolvable with the materials at hand and a laser oscillator was not working, research moved to creating pumps that used excited plasma. Early attempts used high-powered lasers to excite the plasma to create an even more highly powered laser. Results using this method were unsatisfying, and fell short of the goal. Livermore scientists first suggested using a nuclear reaction as a power source in 1975. By 1980 Livermore considered both nuclear bombs and nuclear reactors as viable energy sources for an x-ray laser. On November 14, 1980, the first successful test of the bomb-powered x-ray laser was conducted. The use of a bomb was initially supported over that of the reactor driven laser because it delivered a more intense beam. Livermore’s research was almost entirely devoted to missile defense using x-ray lasers. The idea was to mount a system of nuclear bombs in space where these bombs would each power approximately 50 lasers. Upon detonation these lasers would fire and theoretically destroy several dozen incoming nuclear missiles at once. Opponents of this plan found many faults in such an approach and questioned aspects such as the power, range, accuracy, politics, and cost of such deployments. In 1985 a test titled ‘Goldstone’ revealed the delivered power to be less than believed. Efforts to focus the laser also failed.

...
Wikipedia