Lifeboat Foundation

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.

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.

The superconducting magnet seen here could be the key ingredient in finally producing a commercial fusion reactor.

The magnet will be deployed in the SPARC tokamak developed by MIT which is currently under construction with a 2025 completion date.

A nuclear reactor at an Illinois energy plant is helping University of Chicago scientists learn how to catch and understand the tiny, elusive particles known as neutrinos.

At Constellation’s (formerly Exelon) Dresden Generating Station in Morris, Illinois, the team took the first measurements of neutrinos coming off a nuclear reactor with a tiny detector. These particles are extremely hard to catch because they interact so rarely with matter, but power reactors are one of the few places on Earth with a high concentration of them.

“This was an exciting opportunity to benefit from the enormous neutrino production from a reactor, but also a challenge in the noisy industrial environment right next to a reactor,” said Prof. Juan Collar, a particle physicist who led the research. “This is the closest that neutrino physicists have been able to get to a commercial reactor core. We gained unique experience in operating a detector under these conditions, thanks to Constellation’s generosity in accommodating our experiment.”

Do two promising structural materials corrode at very high temperatures when in contact with “liquid metal fuel breeders” in fusion reactors? Researchers of Tokyo Institute of Technology (Tokyo Tech), National Institutes for Quantum Science and Technology (QST), and Yokohama National University (YNU) now have the answer. This high-temperature compatibility of reactor structural materials with the liquid breeder—a lining around the reactor core that absorbs and traps the high energy neutrons produced in the plasma inside the reactor—is key to the success of a fusion reactor design.

Fusion reactors could be a powerful means of generating clean electricity, and currently, several potential designs are being explored. In a fusion reactor, the fusion of two nuclei releases massive amounts of energy. This energy is trapped as heat in a “breeding blanket” (BB), typically a liquid lithium alloy, surrounding the reactor core. This heat is then used to run a turbine and generate electricity. The BB also has an essential function of fusion fuel breeding, creating a closed fuel cycle for the endless operation of the reactors without fuel depletion.

The operation of a BB at extremely high temperatures over 1,173 K serves the attractive function of producing hydrogen from water, which is a promising technology for realizing a carbon-neutral society. This is possible because the BB heats up to over 1,173 K by absorbing the energy from the fusion reaction. At such temperatures, there is the risk of structural materials in contact with the BB becoming corroded, compromising the safety and stability of the reactors. It is thus necessary to find structural materials that are chemically compatible with the BB material at these temperatures.

😀 😍 circa 2018.

You know Chernobyl, right? The place of the biggest nuclear accident in the world? The are is so radioactive nobody lives in the vicinity anymore, and nearby plants are suffering major amounts of radiation. However, not everybody is sad about this event; a type of fungi (mushrooms) possess an ability beyond imagination: they can take the lethal radiation and use it as a source of energy to feed and grow. Researchers have called them radiotrophic fungus.

For some 500 million years, fungi have been inhabiting this planet, feeding on whatever they could finding, filling every biological niche they could find. But who could have actually guessed that they could feed on nuclear radiation? Researchers from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine (AEC) had a hunch, and they investigated it to test. They first got the idea after reading that samples brought from Chernobyl were filled with some black fungi growing on it.

MIT’s startup Commonwealth has a new powerful magnet that could finally make fusion power a reality.

Russian forces have seized control of the Chernobyl power plant in northern Ukraine, the site of the world’s worst nuclear disaster, according to the agency that manages the area.

Troops overran the plant on the first day of Russia’s multi-pronged invasion of Ukraine, a spokesperson for the State Agency of Ukraine on Exclusion Zone Management, Yevgeniya Kuznetsovа, told CNN.

“When I came to the office today in the morning (in Kyiv), it turned out that the (Chernobyl nuclear power plant) management had left. So there was no one to give instructions or defend,” she said.