Archive for the ‘nuclear energy’ category: Page 116
Mar 25, 2018
Work halted for 10 days when loose bolt is found in San Onofre radioactive waste canister
Posted by Genevieve Klien in category: nuclear energy
Works crews transferring spent fuel at the San Onofre nuclear plant from cooling pools into dry storage discovered a loose bolt inside one of the canisters, prompting Southern California Edison to temporarily halt the relocation effort. The job resumed earlier this week.
Mar 18, 2018
Russian Scientists Are Devising a Plan to Nuke Asteroids
Posted by Genevieve Klien in categories: nuclear energy, physics, space
You may have thought, “Hey, if we’re threatened by an incoming asteroid, we should just nuke it!” You’re not alone: a team of Russian scientists are working on a plot to do so, by detonating miniature asteroids in a lab.
In fact, several groups of researchers are now toying with the idea of asteroid nuking for the sake of planetary defense. The Russian team has even calculated about how much firepower they’d need to perform such a feat.
According to the translated paper published in the Journal of Experimental and Theoretical Physics: “Given the scale factor and the results of laboratory experiments, the undeniable destruction of a chondritic asteroid 200 m in diameter by a nuclear explosion with an energy above 3 Mt was shown to be possible.”
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Mar 17, 2018
Scientists zap tiny wires with lasers to create mini-nuclear fusion
Posted by Carse Peel in categories: nanotechnology, nuclear energy
A step towards limitless energy? reactions at record efficiency…
Researchers from Colorado State University’s (CSU) Advanced Beam Laboratory used a compact but powerful laser they built from scratch to heat tiny, invisible wires, known as nanowires.
These contained a source of deuterium, one of two stable isotopes of hydrogen and a common source of fuel for nuclear fusion reactions.
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Mar 15, 2018
Nanowire-zapping lasers unlock micro-scale nuclear fusion efficiency record
Posted by Genevieve Klien in categories: nanotechnology, nuclear energy, particle physics
Researchers at Colorado State University (CSU) have broken the efficiency record for nuclear fusion on the micro-scale. Using an ultra-fast, high-powered tabletop laser, the team’s results were about 500 times more efficient than previous experiments. The key to that success is the target material: instead of a flat piece of polymer, the researchers blasted arrays of nanowires to create incredibly hot, dense plasmas.
We have nuclear fusion to thank for our very existence – without it, the Sun wouldn’t have fired up in the first place. Inside that inferno, hydrogen atoms are crushed and through a series of chain reactions, eventually form helium. In the process, tremendous amounts of energy are released. Theoretically, if we can harness that phenomenon we could produce an essentially unlimited supply of clean energy, and although breakthroughs have been made in recent years, nuclear fusion energy remains tantalizingly out of reach.
Mar 13, 2018
View on Nuclear Fusion: a Moment of Truth
Posted by Derick Lee in categories: nuclear energy, physics
Fusion technology promises an inexhaustible supply of clean, safe power. If it all sounds too good to be true, that’s because it is. For decades scientists struggled to recreate a working sun in their laboratories – little surprise perhaps as they were attempting to fuse atomic nuclei in a superheated soup. Commercial fusion remains a dream. Yet in recent years the impossible became merely improbable and then, it felt almost overnight, technically feasible. For the last decade there has been a flurry of interest –and not a little incredulity –about claims, often made by companies backed by billionaires and run by bold physicists, that market-ready fusion reactors were just around the corner.
Until recently the attractions and drawbacks of nuclear fusion reactors were largely theoretical. Within a decade this will not be the case.
Mon 12 Mar 2018 14.24 EDT Last modified on Mon 12 Mar 2018 19.15 EDT.
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Mar 9, 2018
Nuclear energy scientists think they’ve solved the mystery of building efficient fusion power plants
Posted by Sean Brazell in category: nuclear energy
Nuclear fusion isn’t very efficient without the incredibly hot temperatures found on the sun.
Mar 9, 2018
Eni backs U.S. nuclear fusion firm formed by ex-MIT researchers
Posted by Genevieve Klien in category: nuclear energy
MILAN (Reuters) — Italian energy company Eni will conduct research with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and invest in a company created by former MIT scientists to produce energy from nuclear fusion.
FILE PHOTO: Eni’s logo is seen in front of its headquarters in San Donato Milanese, near Milan, Italy, April 27, 2016. REUTERS/Stefano Rellandini/File Photo.
Mar 9, 2018
Nuclear fusion on brink of being realised, say MIT scientists
Posted by Klaus Baldauf in category: nuclear energy
Carbon-free fusion power could be ‘on the grid in 15 years’
Hannah Devlin Science correspondent.
Mar 5, 2018
This Strange Species That Lives Off Nuclear Energy Is Like Alien Life on Earth
Posted by Shailesh Prasad in categories: alien life, nuclear energy
When you’re trying to figure out what alien life might look like, it makes sense to be looking in the most extreme environments Earth has available.
One such place where life has been found to thrive is three kilometres (1.86 miles) beneath the ground, the home of one of the strangest lifeforms we know: the bacterium Desulforudis audaxviator.
It lives in complete dark, in groundwater up to 60 degrees Celsius (140 Fahrenheit) — an environment devoid of sunlight, oxygen or organic compounds.
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