Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
Toggle light / dark theme

Blog

Category: nuclear energy – Page 23

Launching rockets into space with atomic bombs is a crazy idea that was thankfully discarded many decades ago. But as Richard Corfield discovers, the potential of using the energy from nuclear-powered engines to drive space travel is back on NASA’s agenda.

In 1914 H G Wells published The World Set Free, a novel based on the notion that radium might one day power spaceships. Wells, who was familiar with the work of physicists such as Ernest Rutherford, knew that radium could produce heat and envisaged it being used to turn a turbine. The book might have been a work of fiction, but The World Set Free correctly foresaw the potential of what one might call “atomic spaceships”

The idea of using nuclear energy for space travel took hold in the 1950s when the public – having witnessed the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki – gradually became convinced of the utility of nuclear power for peaceful purposes. Thanks to programmes such as America’s Atoms for Peace, people began to see that nuclear power could be used for energy and transport. But perhaps the most radical application lay in spaceflight.

Read more | >

Collisions of high energy particles produce “jets” of quarks, anti-quarks, or gluons. Due to the phenomenon called confinement, scientists cannot directly detect quarks. Instead, the quarks from these collisions fragment into many secondary particles that can be detected.

Scientists recently addressed jet production using quantum simulations. They found that the propagating jets strongly modify the quantum vacuum—the with the lowest possible energy. In addition, the produced quarks retain quantum entanglement, the linkage between particles across distances. This finding, published in Physical Review Letters, means that scientists can now study this entanglement in experiments.

This research performed that have detected the modification of the vacuum by the propagating jets. The simulations have also revealed quantum entanglement among the jets. This entanglement can be detected in nuclear experiments. The work is also a step forward in quantum-inspired classical computing. It may result in the creation of new application-specific integrated circuits.

Read more | >

Nakamura, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for his pioneering work on the development of blue light-emitting diodes (LEDs), believes that his company can harness their semiconductor expertise to create a secure pathway for achieving nuclear fusion and transforming it into a commercially viable venture.

The precise details of the approach remain undisclosed as Blue Laser Fusion currently has a pending patent.

However, Nakamura is confident in the feasibility of constructing rapid-fire lasers and envisions the establishment of a one-gigawatt generating reactor in either Japan or the US by the end of the decade. Prior to that milestone, the company intends to construct a small-scale experimental plant in Japan before the conclusion of the next year, as reported by Nikkei.

Read more | >

Emerging research suggests it may be easier to use fusion as a power source if liquid lithium is applied to the internal walls of the device housing the fusion plasma.

Plasma, the fourth state of matter, is a hot gas made of electrically charged particles. Scientists at the Department of Energy’s Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) are working on solutions to efficiently harness the power of fusion to offer a cleaner alternative to fossil fuels, often using devices called tokamaks, which confine plasma using magnetic fields.

“The purpose of these devices is to confine the energy,” said Dennis Boyle, a staff research physicist at PPPL. “If you had much better energy confinement, you could make the machines smaller and less expensive. That would make the whole thing a lot more practical, and cost-effective so that governments and industry want to invest more in it.”

Read more | >

New observations at the DIII-D National Fusion Facility offer vital insights into energetic ions in fusion plasmas, key for fusion power development and space plasma understanding, with implications for satellite technology.

In a burning plasma, maintaining confinement of fusion-produced energetic ions is essential to producing energy. These fusion plasmas host a wide array of electromagnetic waves that can push energetic ions out of the plasma. This reduces the heating of the plasma from fusion reaction products and ends the burning plasma state.

Recent measurements at the DIII-D National Fusion Facility provide the first direct observations of energetic ions moving through space and energy in a tokamak. Researchers combined these measurements with advanced computer models of electromagnetic waves and how they interact with energetic ions. The results provide an improved understanding of the interplay between plasma waves and energetic ions in fusion plasmas.

Read more | >

Large, low-background detectors using xenon as a target medium are widely used in fundamental physics, particularly in experiments searching for dark matter or studying rare decays of atomic nuclei. In these detectors, the weak interaction of a neutral particle—such as a neutrino—with a xenon-136 nucleus can transform it into a cesium-136 nucleus in a high-energy excited state.

The gamma rays emitted as the cesium-136 relaxes from this could allow scientists to separate rare signals from background radioactivity. This can enable new measurements of solar neutrinos and more powerful searches for certain models of dark matter. However, searching for these events has been difficult due to a lack of reliable nuclear data for cesium-136. Researchers need to know the properties of cesium-136’s , which have never been measured for this isotope.

This research, appearing in Physical Review Letters, provides direct determination of the relevant data by measuring from cesium-136 produced in at a . Importantly, this research reveals the existence of so-called “isomeric states”—excited states that exist for approximately 100ns before relaxing to the ground state.

Read more | >

They’re working on it.

A Chinese company has announced they’re planning to mass-produce tiny nuclear batteries that can last up to 50 years, possibly beating both a British and an American company who have tried to put those on the market for several years. What does that mean? Will we soon all power our phones with nuclear power? Let’s have a look.

🤓 Check out our new quiz app ➜ http://quizwithit.com/

Continue reading “This New Nuclear Battery Could Soon Go On the Market” | >

Betavolt wants to create batteries that will last a lifetime by 2025.

A Chinese startup called Betavolt has cooked up this itty-bitty nuclear battery — about the size of a little coin — which they claim can crank out electricity for 50 years straight, with no charging pit stops needed.

As the company leaps from development to the pilot stage, they’re gearing up for full-scale production and a grand entrance into the market pretty soon.

How did they create it?

Continue reading “China’s nuclear battery powers your smartphone for 50 years straight” | >