Archive for the ‘nuclear energy’ category: Page 58
It’s a big ask to tell countries with very little access to electricity to accept the same level of responsibility as electricity-rich nations in striving to achieve the net-zero 2050 emissions target set by the United Nations. And nuclear energy has to be in the mix.
Is the IPCC goal of getting to net-zero by 2050 aspirational or legitimate? A Foreign Policy Review panel tackles the question.
Mar 22, 2022
Nuclear Energy Company Proposes a New Reactor to Take Care of the Waste Problem
Posted by Len Rosen in categories: nuclear energy, particle physics
Transmutex is reinventing nuclear energy from first principles using a process that uses radioactive waste as a fuel source.
Transmutex, a Swiss company, states on its website that it is “reinventing nuclear energy from first principles” by using a process that uses radioactive waste as a fuel source.
Its transmitter is a particle accelerator that produces nuclear energy with fewer contaminants than any reactor on the market today. The technology represents a valuable tool in the transition to intermittent renewables by providing baseload energy-producing alternatives to fossil-fuel thermal power stations.
Continue reading “Nuclear Energy Company Proposes a New Reactor to Take Care of the Waste Problem” »
Mar 20, 2022
Finland Will Store Nuclear Waste in an Underground Tomb for 100,000 Years
Posted by Shubham Ghosh Roy in categories: futurism, nuclear energy
Finland is building a nuclear waste disposal site deep under the tiny city of Eurajoki. Called Onkalo, meaning “deep pit” in Finnish, the nuclear waste repository is slated to open in 2024. If all goes to plan, copper casks will safely store spent uranium fuel rods for at least the next 100,000 years. But what happens when we bury nuclear waste, and how does this fit into Finland’s nuclear future?
Finland is a Scandinavian country about the size of Montana with about five times the population at 5.5 million residents. (That said, Finland is the 216th nation in the world by population density, showing just how sparse Montana really is.) The population is concentrated in the south, with just 200,000 people living around and above the Arctic Circle in northern Finland.
Mar 17, 2022
China’s Artificial Sun Creates a New Record!
Posted by Alberto Lao in category: nuclear energy
Mar 14, 2022
New record temperature for spherical tokamak
Posted by Future Timeline in categories: government, nuclear energy
Tokamak Energy, based near Oxford, UK, has demonstrated a world-first with its privately-funded ST40 spherical tokamak. The reactor achieved a plasma temperature of 100 million degrees Celsius, the threshold required for commercial fusion energy.
At nearly seven times hotter than the centre of the Sun, this is by far the highest temperature ever generated within a spherical tokamak and also by any privately-funded tokamak. The ST40 had previously achieved a temperature of 15 million degrees in June 2018. While several government laboratories have reported plasma temperatures above 100 million degrees in conventional tokamaks, this milestone has been achieved in just five years, for a cost of less than £50m ($70m) and in a much more compact fusion device. This provides further proof that spherical tokamaks are a viable route to the delivery of clean, secure, low cost, scalable fusion energy.
Mar 14, 2022
Using pump lasers to create plasma lenses that focus at very high intensity levels
Posted by Saúl Morales Rodriguéz in categories: nuclear energy, particle physics
A team of researchers from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, the University of California at Berkeley and Princeton University has developed plasma-based techniques to build a lens for laser beams with petawatt-scale power. In their paper published in the journal Physical Review Letters, the group describes the two techniques they developed.
Physicists conducting work with particle accelerators and fusion research efforts are hopeful that other researchers will build lasers that are more powerful than those currently available. Such work has been held up by the solid-state optics technology used to create lasers—giving them more power would damage the parts used to generate the laser, making them useless. In this new effort, the researchers noted that other researchers have found that plasma can be used to create optic components such as amplifiers and mirrors. They wondered if the same might be true for the kind of lens needed to produce extremely powerful laser beams. They came up with a concept that involved inducing patterns of high and low density in a given plasma. Light moving through it, they note, would experience a phase shift based on the density of the plasma.
The researchers did not actually build such a laser, but instead, proposed two ways that it might be built. The first method involved firing two pump lasers at a gas sample. The first laser ionized the gas into a plasma, while the second did not. The result was a plasma with a bulls-eye configuration of high and low-density plasma rings, which could be used as a laser lens.
Mar 13, 2022
Tokamak Energy achieves record-breaking plasma temperature of 100M degrees
Posted by Shubham Ghosh Roy in categories: government, nuclear energy
If nuclear fusion reaction – the process that powers the Sun and other stars – could be used on a consistent basis on Earth, it would be a source of virtually unlimited clean energy. But there are still a lot of obstacles to overcome.
U.K.-based nuclear fusion firm Tokamak Energy has demonstrated a world-first with its privately-funded ST40 spherical tokamak, achieving a plasma temperature of 100 million degrees Celsius. This threshold is necessary for the future deployment of commercially successful fusion power. According to the company, this is by far the highest temperature ever achieved in a spherical tokamak and by any privately funded tokamak.
Several government laboratories have reported plasma temperatures above 100 million degrees in conventional tokamaks, including South Korea’s KSTAR reactor and China’s “artificial sun” EAST tokamak reactor. However, Tokamak Energy highlights that its milestone has been achieved in just five years, or a cost of less than £50m ($70m), in a much more compact fusion device. This achievement further substantiates spherical tokamaks as the optimal route to the delivery of clean, secure, low-cost, scalable, and globally deployable commercial fusion energy.
Mar 11, 2022
Tokamak Energy moves closer to commercial fusion: 100M degree plasma a world record for a spherical tokamak
Posted by Kelvin Dafiaghor in categories: government, nuclear energy
OXFORD, England 0, March 10, 2022 /PRNewswire/ — Tokamak Energy has demonstrated a world-first with its privately-funded ST40 spherical tokamak, achieving a plasma temperature of 100 million degrees Celsius, the threshold required for commercial fusion energy.
This is by far the highest temperature ever achieved in a spherical tokamak and by any privately funded tokamak. While several government laboratories have reported plasma temperatures above 100M degrees in conventional tokamaks, this milestone has been achieved in just five years, for a cost of less than £50m ($70m), in a much more compact fusion device. This achievement further substantiates spherical tokamaks as the optimal route to the delivery of clean, secure, low cost, scalable and globally deployable commercial fusion energy.
Mar 7, 2022
Scientists confirm thermonuclear fusion in a sheared-flow Z-pinch device
Posted by Shubham Ghosh Roy in categories: computing, nuclear energy, physics
In findings that could help advance another “viable pathway” to fusion energy, research led by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) physicists has proven the existence of neutrons produced through thermonuclear reactions from a sheared-flow stabilized Z-pinch device.
The researchers used advanced computer modeling techniques and diagnostic measurement devices honed at LLNL to solve a decades-old problem of distinguishing neutrons produced by thermonuclear reactions from ones produced by ion beam-driven instabilities for plasmas in the magneto-inertial fusion regime.
While the team’s previous research showed neutrons measured from sheared-flow stabilized Z-pinch devices were “consistent with thermonuclear production, we hadn’t completely proven it yet,” said LLNL physicist Drew Higginson, one of the co-authors of a paper recently published in Physics of Plasmas.