Menu

Blog

Archive for the ‘nuclear energy’ category: Page 117

Jul 9, 2018

X-SpaceX Raptor designer has ready for development designs for nuclear rocket that will be up to 7 times better than BFR

Posted by in categories: nuclear energy, solar power, space travel, sustainability

John Bucknell created the pre-conceptual design for the SpaceX Raptor engine. It will be the advanced full-flow staged combustion rocket engine for the SpaceX BFR. He designed and built the subscale Raptor rocket for proof of concept testing able to test eighty-one configurations of main injector.

John Bucknell says the nuclear turbo rocket technology and his designs are ready for development. The air-breathing nuclear thermal rocket will enable 7 times more payload fraction to be delivered to low-earth orbit and it will have 6 times the ISP (rocket fuel efficiency) as chemical rockets. The rocket will have two to three times the speed and performance of chemical rockets for missions outside of the atmosphere.

The fully reusable nuclear rocket will be a single stage to orbit system which will be able to make space-based solar power several times cheaper than coal power. Using the 11-meter diameter version of this rocket to build space-based solar power will enable solar power at less than 2 cents per kilowatt-hour.

Continue reading “X-SpaceX Raptor designer has ready for development designs for nuclear rocket that will be up to 7 times better than BFR” »

Jul 6, 2018

A Double First in China for Advanced Nuclear Reactors

Posted by in category: nuclear energy

Safer reactors designed in the US and Europe have achieved their power grid debuts in China. It is a long-awaited milestone for their now-troubled designers, but may be too little too late for buyers.

Read more

Jul 3, 2018

Aneutronic Fusion Reactor

Posted by in category: nuclear energy

Nuclear fusion reactor — clean, safe, and environmentally friendly atomic energy.

Read more

Jun 29, 2018

Tokomak Energy UK high temperature superconductors and better magnet path to commercial nuclear fusion

Posted by in categories: materials, nuclear energy

Tokamak Energy of the UK has built the ST40 prototype fusion reactor and they aim to reach 100 million degrees celsius by the end of 2018. They have already reached 15 million degrees.

Read more

Jun 29, 2018

Electricity from germs could be the next big thing, say Israeli researchers

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, engineering, habitats, nanotechnology, nuclear energy, solar power, sustainability

You can generate electricity from oil, you can produce it from natural gas, you can make it from nuclear energy, and you can channel it from the sun, via solar energy conversion systems. You can even generate electricity from photosynthetic bacteria, also known as cyanobacteria, based on a new innovation developed at the Technion. As published in a study in the journal, Nature Communications, the Technion researchers have developed an energy-producing system that exploits both the photosynthesis and respiratory processes that cyanobacteria undergo, with the harvested energy leveraged to generate electricity based on hydrogen.

The study was conducted by three Technion faculty members: Professor Noam Adir from the Schulich Faculty of Chemistry, Professor Gadi Schuster from the Faculty of Biology, and Professor Avner Rothschild, from the Faculty of Materials Science and Engineering. The work involved collaboration between Dr. Gadiel Saper and Dr. Dan Kallmann, as well as colleagues from Bochum, Germany and the Weizmann Institute of Science. It was supported by various bodies, including the Nancy and Stephen Grand Technion Energy Program (GTEP), the Russell Berrie Nanotechnology Institute (RBNI), the Technion Hydrogen Technologies Research Lab (HTRL), the Adelis Foundation, the Planning and Budgeting Committee’s I-CORE program, the Israel Science Foundation, the USA-Israel Binational Science Fund (BSF) and the German research fund (DFG-DIP).

Scientists have long considered cyanobacteria a possible energy source. Cyanobacteria belong to a family of bacteria common to lakes, seas, and many other habitats. The bacteria use photosynthetic mechanisms that enable them to generate energy from sunlight. They also generate energy in the dark, via respiratory mechanisms based on digestion and degradation of sugar.

Continue reading “Electricity from germs could be the next big thing, say Israeli researchers” »

Jun 27, 2018

The Quest to Find a Trillion-Dollar Nuclear Fuel on the Moon

Posted by in categories: nuclear energy, space

India’s space program wants to go where no nation has gone before -– to the south side of the moon. And once it gets there, it will study the potential for mining a source of waste-free nuclear energy that could be worth trillions of dollars.

Read more

Jun 25, 2018

Has This Startup Cracked the Secret to Fusion Energy?

Posted by in categories: nuclear energy, particle physics

A new startup hopes that orienting the spins of hydrogen atoms could finally crack the puzzle of commercially viable fusion energy, but some experts are skeptical.

Read more

Jun 19, 2018

Washington firm could create nuclear fusion power within decades

Posted by in category: nuclear energy

Olympia, Washington, firm Agni Energy has designed a nuclear fusion reactor that borrows elements from existing designs and could lead it to be the first to crack the Holy Grail of energy production.

Read more

Jun 10, 2018

Researchers Have Invented an Awesome And Scary Nuclear Battery Pack

Posted by in categories: materials, nuclear energy

Are we ready?


Batteries powered by radioactive materials have been around for more than a century, but what they promise in power they usually lose in bulk.

Not so with a new kind of power source, which combines a novel structure with a nickel isotope to pack ten times more power than an electrochemical cell of the same size. The only question is, are we ready to go nuclear?

Continue reading “Researchers Have Invented an Awesome And Scary Nuclear Battery Pack” »

Jun 10, 2018

What would solar system travel be like with scaled Mach effect propellantless propulsion?

Posted by in categories: nuclear energy, space travel

James Woodward and the Space Studies Institute has a Phase 2 NASA Innovative Advanced funded study. They are looking at the implementation of an innovative thrust producing technology for use in NASA missions involving in space main propulsion.

Dr. Heidi Fearn explained in a video made in 2017 how just scaling the power and size of the Mach effect propulsion causes problems. (heat, arcing and other problems). They currently believe they can scale the device to one newton of propulsion and then create large arrays of the devices for more thrust. The constant thrust could last for years or decades by using a nuclear power source.

For Mach effect propellantless propulsion it will be better to go to an array of smaller devices.

Continue reading “What would solar system travel be like with scaled Mach effect propellantless propulsion?” »