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Category: nuclear energy

Molecular simulations uncover how graphite emerges where diamond should form, challenging old assumptions

The graphite found in your favorite pencil could have instead been the diamond your mother always wears. What made the difference? Researchers are finding out.

How molten crystallizes into either graphite or diamond is relevant to , materials manufacturing and nuclear fusion research. However, this moment of crystallization is difficult to study experimentally because it happens very rapidly and under extreme conditions.

In a new study published July 9 in Nature Communications, researchers from the University of California, Davis and George Washington University use to study how molten carbon crystallizes into either graphite or diamond at temperatures and pressures similar to Earth’s interior. The team’s findings challenge conventional understanding of diamond formation and reveal why experimental results studying carbon’s phase behavior have been so inconsistent.

Measuring individual radioactive decays enables faster detection method for nuclear applications

Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have demonstrated a new and faster method for detecting and measuring the radioactivity of minuscule amounts of radioactive material. The innovative technique, known as cryogenic decay energy spectrometry (DES), could have far-reaching impacts, from improving cancer treatments to ensuring the safety of nuclear waste cleanup.

The NIST team has published its results in Metrologia.

The key to this novel technique is a transition-edge sensor (TES), a high-tech device widely used to measure radiation signatures. TES provides a revolutionary capability to record individual radioactive decay events, in which an unstable atom releases one or more particles. By building up data from many individual decays, researchers can then identify which unstable atoms, known as radionuclides, produce the events.

Understanding the impact of radiation on silicon carbide devices for space applications

The first results of the ETH Zurich and ANSTO collaboration focused on silicon carbide (SiC) devices have been reported in two publications.

Dr. Corinna Martinella, formerly a senior scientist at ETH Zurich, said in a LinkedIn post that the research advances an understanding of the basic mechanisms of damage in SiC power devices exposed to .

An article in IEEE Transactions on Nuclear Science describes the testing of how commercial (SiC) power devices, including MOSFETs and Junction Barrier Schottky (JBS) diodes, respond to space-like radiation at a .

AI helps discover optimal new material for removing radioactive iodine contamination

Managing radioactive waste is one of the core challenges in the use of nuclear energy. In particular, radioactive iodine poses serious environmental and health risks due to its long half-life (15.7 million years in the case of I-129), high mobility, and toxicity to living organisms.

A Korean research team has successfully used artificial intelligence to discover a new material that can remove iodine for nuclear environmental remediation. The team plans to push forward with commercialization through various industry–academia collaborations, from iodine-adsorbing powders to contaminated water treatment filters.

Professor Ho Jin Ryu’s research team from the Department of Nuclear and Quantum Engineering, in collaboration with Dr. Juhwan Noh of the Digital Chemistry Research Center at the Korea Research Institute of Chemical Technology, developed a technique using AI to discover new materials that effectively remove contaminants. Their research is published in the Journal of Hazardous Materials.

Google just bought 200 megawatts of fusion energy that doesn’t even exist yet

Tech giant Google is investing money into a futuristic nuclear fusion plant that hasn’t been built yet but someday will replicate the energy of the stars. It’s a sign of how hungry big tech companies are for a virtually unlimited source of clean power that is still years away.

Google and Massachusetts-based Commonwealth Fusion Systems announced a deal Monday in which the tech company bought 200 megawatts of power from Commonwealth’s first commercial fusion plant, the same amount of energy that could power roughly 200,000 average American homes.

Commonwealth aims to build the plant in Virginia by the early 2030s. When it starts generating usable fusion energy is still TBD, though the company believes they can do it in the same timeframe.

Ocean model simulations shed light on long-term tritium distribution in released Fukushima water

Operators have pumped water to cool the nuclear reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant (FDNPP) since the accident in 2011 and treated this cooling water with the Advanced Liquid Processing System (ALPS), which is a state-of-the-art purification system that removes radioactive materials, except tritium.

As part of the water molecule, tritium radionuclide, with a half-life of 12.32 years, is very costly and difficult to remove. The ALPS-treated water was accumulating and stored at the FDNPP site and there is limited space to store this water. Therefore, in 2021, the Government of Japan announced a policy that included discharging the ALPS-treated water via an approximately one-kilometer-long tunnel into the ocean. Planned releases of the ALPS-treated water diluted with began in August 2023 and will be completed by 2050.

In a new numerical modeling study, researchers have revealed that the simulated increase in tritium concentration in the Pacific Ocean due to the tritium originating from the ALPS-treated water is about 0.1% or less than the tritium background concentration of 0.03−0.2 Bq/L in the vicinity of the site (within 25 km) and beyond.

Scientists develop new technique for capturing ultra-intense laser pulses in a single shot

Scientists at the University of Oxford have unveiled a pioneering method for capturing the full structure of ultra-intense laser pulses in a single measurement. The breakthrough, published in close collaboration with Ludwig-Maximilian University of Munich and the Max Planck Institute for Quantum Optics, could revolutionize our ability to control light-matter interactions.

This would have transformative applications in many areas, including research into new forms of physics and realizing the extreme intensities required for fusion energy research. The results have been published in Nature Photonics.

Ultra-intense lasers can accelerate electrons to near-light speeds within a single oscillation (or ‘wave cycle’) of the , making them a powerful tool for studying extreme physics. However, their rapid fluctuations and complex structure make real-time measurements of their properties challenging.