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Category: nuclear energy – Page 4

When Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) achieved fusion ignition at the National Ignition Facility (NIF) in December 2022, the world’s attention turned to the prospect of how that breakthrough experiment — designed to secure the nation’s nuclear weapons stockpile — might also pave the way for virtually limitless, safe and carbon-free fusion energy.

Advanced 3D printing offers one potential solution to bridging the science and technology gaps presented by current efforts to make inertial fusion energy (IFE) power plants a reality.

“Now that we have achieved and repeated fusion ignition,” said Tammy Ma, lead for LLNL’s inertial fusion energy institutional initiative, “the Lab is rapidly applying our decades of know-how into solving the core physics and engineering challenges that come with the monumental task of building the fusion ecosystem necessary for a laser fusion power plant. The mass production of ignition-grade targets is one of these, and cutting-edge 3D printing could help get us there.”

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As energy-hungry computer data centers and artificial intelligence programs place ever greater demands on the U.S. power grid, tech companies are looking to a technology that just a few years ago appeared ready to be phased out: nuclear energy.

After several decades in which investment in new nuclear facilities in the U.S. had slowed to a crawl, tech giants Microsoft and Google have recently announced investments in the technology, aimed at securing a reliable source of emissions-free power for years into the future.

Earlier this year, online retailer Amazon, which has an expansive cloud computing business, announced it had reached an agreement to purchase a nuclear energy-fueled data center in Pennsylvania and that it had plans to buy more in the future.

Amazon’s plan, by contrast, does not require either new technology or the resurrection of an older nuclear facility.

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Photons, electrons, and other particles can propagate as wave packets with helical wave fronts that carry an orbital angular momentum. These vortex states can be used to probe the dynamics of atomic, nuclear, and hadronic systems. Recently, researchers demonstrated vortex states of x-ray photons and proposed ways to realize such states for particles at higher energies (MeV to GeV). But verifying high-energy vortex states will be challenging, because characterization techniques used at lower energies would perform poorly. Zhengjiang Li of Sun Yat-sen University in China and his colleagues at Shanghai Institute of Optics and Fine Mechanics propose a new diagnostic method for high-energy vortex states. Their approach would reveal such states through an exotic scattering phenomenon called a superkick.

A superkick is a theorized effect occurring when an atom placed near the axis of a vortex light beam absorbs a photon. Under such conditions, the atom may get kicked to the side with a transverse momentum greater than that carried by the photon. Li and his colleagues considered a similar superkick involving electrons. They analyzed the elastic head-on collision of two electron wave packets at 10 MeV, one in a vortex state and the other in a nonvortex one. According to their calculations, two electrons in the beam, upon scattering, would acquire a nonzero total transverse momentum that could be detectable. The researchers predict an unmistakable signature of the vortex state: The momentum imbalance increases as the collision point gets closer to the vortex axis.

The researchers expect the superkick effect—which has never been observed—to be detectable with realistic experimental settings. They say the idea could be extended to high-energy vortices of photons, ions, and even hadrons.

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Commonwealth Fusion Systems, a startup that was spun out of a project at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s research labs, announced plans this week to break ground on what it calls “the world’s first grid-scale fusion power plant.” The plant which is expected to come online sometime in the early 2030s, according to the company, will be built in Chesterfield County, Virginia.

The plan is certainly an ambitious one, starting with how the energy will be generated. Nuclear fusion is a notoriously difficult process that involves fusing together two light atomic nuclei into a single heavier one, resulting in the release of a massive amount of energy—it’s estimated to produce four times as much energy as nuclear fission reactions. The reaction that nuclear fusion generates is the same kind of reaction that powers the sun.

It’s not hard to imagine why one would want to be able to harness the energy of the sun. It is hard to actually, ya know, do that, though. To date, nuclear fusion has proven elusive—at least in a way that would produce usable energy. In 2022, scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California reached nuclear fusion “ignition” for the first time, meaning they successfully produced an excess of energy from the reactions. Prior to that breakthrough, which has since been replicated, it took more energy to produce the reaction than energy that came from it.

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Heating plasma to the ultra-high temperatures needed for fusion reactions requires more than turning the dial on a thermostat. Scientists consider multiple methods, one of which involves injecting electromagnetic waves into the plasma, the same process that heats food in microwave ovens. But when they produce one type of heating wave, they can sometimes simultaneously create another type of wave that does not heat the plasma, in effect wasting energy.

In response to the problem, scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) have performed computer simulations confirming a technique that prevents the production of the unhelpful waves, known as slow modes, boosting the heat put into the and increasing the efficiency of the fusion reactions.

“This is the first time scientists have used 2D computer simulations to explore how to reduce slow modes,” said Eun-Hwa Kim, a PPPL principal research physicist and lead author of the paper reporting the results in Physics of Plasmas. “The results could lead to more efficient plasma heating and possibly an easier path to fusion energy.”

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How do you find and measure nuclear particles, like antineutrinos, that travel near the speed of light?

Antineutrinos are the antimatter partner of a neutrino, one of nature’s most elusive and least understood subatomic particles. They are commonly observed near nuclear reactors, which emit copious amounts of antineutrinos, but they also are found abundantly throughout the universe as a result of Earth’s natural radioactivity, with most of them originating from the decay of potassium-40, thorium-232 and uranium-238 isotopes.

When an antineutrino collides with a proton, a positron and a neutron are produced—a process known as inverse beta decay (IBD). This event causes scintillating materials to light up, making it possible to detect these antineutrinos; and if they can be detected, they can be used to study the properties of a reactor’s core or Earth’s interior.

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Imagine if we could take the energy of the sun, put it in a container, and use it to provide green, sustainable power for the world. Creating commercial fusion power plants would essentially make this idea a reality. However, there are several scientific challenges to overcome before we can successfully harness fusion power in this way.

Researchers from the U. S. Department of Energy (DOE) Ames National Laboratory and Iowa State University are leading efforts to overcome material challenges that could make commercial fusion power a reality. The research teams are part of a DOE Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) program called Creating Hardened And Durable fusion first Wall Incorporating Centralized Knowledge (CHADWICK). They will investigate materials for the first wall of a fusion reactor. The first wall is the structure that surrounds the fusion reaction, so it bears the brunt of the extreme environment in the fusion reactor core.

ARPA-E recently selected 13 projects under the CHADWICK program. Of those 13, Ames Lab leads one of the projects and is collaborating alongside Iowa State on another project, which is led by Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL).

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Atomic simulations deepen the mystery of how engineered materials known as refractory high-entropy alloys can suffer so little damage by radiation.

Refractory high-entropy alloys are materials made from multiple high-melting-point metals in roughly equal proportions. Those containing tungsten exhibit minimal changes in mechanical properties when exposed to continuous radiation and could be used to shield the crucial components of future nuclear reactors. Now Jesper Byggmästar and his colleagues at the University of Helsinki have performed atomic simulations that explore the uncertain origins of this radiation resistance [1]. The findings could help scientists design novel materials that are even more robust than these alloys in extreme environments.

The researchers studied a tungsten-based refractory high-entropy alloy using state-of-the-art simulations guided by machine learning. In particular, they modeled the main mechanism by which radiation can disrupt such an alloy’s atomic structure. In this mechanism, the incoming radiation causes one atom in the alloy to displace another atom, forming one or more structural defects. The team determined the threshold energy needed to induce such displacements and its dependence on the masses of the two involved atoms.

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Through its commitment to international nuclear nonproliferation — a mission focused on limiting the spread of nuclear weapons and sensitive technology while working to promote peaceful use of nuclear science and technology — the United States maintains a constant vigilance aimed at reducing the threat of nuclear and radiological terrorism worldwide.

With extensive research into both basic and applied uranium science, as well as internationally deployed operational solutions, the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory is uniquely positioned to contribute its comprehensive capabilities toward advancing the U.S. nonproliferation mission.

In 1943, seemingly overnight, ORNL emerged from a rural Tennessee valley as the site of the world’s first continuously operating nuclear reactor, in support of U.S. efforts to end World War II. ORNL’s mission soon shifted into peacetime applications, harnessing nuclear science for medical treatments, power generation and breakthroughs in materials, biological and computational sciences.

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The LOREX experiment utilizes lorandite ore to gauge historical solar neutrino flux, revealing insights about the Sun’s development and climatic effects through advanced decay rate measurements.

The Sun, Earth’s life-sustaining powerhouse, generates immense energy through nuclear fusion while emitting a steady stream of neutrinos — subatomic particles that reveal its inner workings. While modern neutrino detectors shed light on the Sun’s current behavior, key questions remain about its stability over millions of years — a timeframe encompassing human evolution and major climate changes.

Addressing these questions is the mission of the LORandite EXperiment (LOREX), which depends on accurately determining the solar neutrino cross-section for thallium. An international team of scientists has now achieved this crucial measurement using the unique Experimental Storage Ring (ESR) at GSI/FAIR in Darmstadt. Their groundbreaking results, advancing our understanding of the Sun’s long-term stability, have been published in the journal Physical Review Letters.

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