New Video Nuclear Powered Submarine Link https://youtu.be/J0lb46Zi5-s.
What is Implosion?
Implosion is a process of destruction by collapsing inwards the object itself.
Where explosion expands, implosion contracts.
Category: nuclear energy – Page 33
FUTABA, Japan (AP) — At Japan’s tsunami-wrecked Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, giant blue pipes have been constructed to bring in torrents of seawater to dilute treated, radioactive water under a plan to discharge it gradually into the Pacific Ocean.
Workers were making final preparations as Associated Press journalists received a rare opportunity Friday to get a look at key equipment and facilities for the release, expected in coming weeks or months.
The International Atomic Energy Agency has looked at Japan’s wastewater-release plan and said it would cause negligible radioactivity in the sea and no effect on neighboring countries. But the plans continue to draw strong protest and no starting date has been set.
Nuclear fusion propulsion technology has the potential to revolutionize space travel in terms of both speeds and fuel usage. The same kinds of reactions that power the Sun could halve travel times to Mars, or make a journey to Saturn and its moons take just two years rather than eight.
It’s incredibly exciting, but not everyone is convinced this is going to work: the tech needs ultra-high temperatures and pressures to function.
To help prove the viability of the technology, the largest ever fusion rocket engine is now being built by Pulsar Fusion in Bletchley, in the UK.
A trio of astrophysicists, two from Colgate University and the third from the University of Texas, has found evidence of dark stars courtesy of data from the James Webb Space Telescope. In their study, reported in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Cosmin Ilie, Jillian Paulin and Katherine Freese, analyzed three galaxies spotted by the JWST and how they might relate to dark stars.
Back in 2007, Freese, along with Douglas Spolyar and Paolo Gondolo, proposed the idea of a dark star —rather than nuclear fusion, these theorized dark stars are powered by dark matter. Since that time, researchers have continued to study the idea of such a star, built models to show what they might look like and derived a list of characteristics that such a star might have. In the current study, Ilie, Paulin and Freese have found three candidates in Webb data that fit the bill.
Dark stars, the team suggests, likely could have been born during the early days of the universe—like other stars, they would have been made mostly of helium and hydrogen. But they would also contain dark matter—enough to provide a heat source. Such stars would not then be lit by nuclear fusion. If such stars did exist, they would be much larger than other types of stars that have been observed—so large that they might look like galaxies from Earth-based telescopes.
Scientists achieved ignition at the National Ignition Facility at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in December 2022. However, there are still many obstacles to overcome before fusion energy is technically and economically feasible for widespread production and use.
Researchers at the University of Rochester’s Laboratory for Laser Energetics (LLE) have, for the first time, experimentally demonstrated a method called dynamic shell formation, which may help achieve the goal of creating a fusion power plant.
Abundant carbon-free energy from nuclear fusion has long been considered a holy grail. Recent technological advances and the emergence of startup companies have led to new optimism, but experts caution that the production of fusion power is still a long way off.
LOS ANGELES – Artificial intelligence, quantum computing and nuclear power are among the key technologies Lockheed Martin sees as important for future space missions.
Through a project called Destination: Space 2050, Lockheed Martin executives are exploring, for example, how AI could assist scientific exploration of locations where communications with remote sensors would be disrupted by high latency.
In that type of environment, “you really can’t interact with the robotic sensors,” David Lackner, Lockheed Martin senior manager strategy and business development, said during a June 28 webinar. “You have to have something that is super autonomous that can deal with unknown unknowns. We’ve got some really interesting causal autonomy tools that … allow the AI to be super smart about running into something that it hasn’t encountered before.”
Russia has successfully conducted tests on parts of its next-generation “Poseidon” nuclear-capable torpedo, according to reports.
Testing of reactors for the Poseidon unmanned nuclear-powered underwater drones shows “their operability and safety have been confirmed,” Russian state news agency RIA Novosti reported on June 23. The report was also shared on Russian-language social media channels.
“They are ready to work as intended,” the Kremlin-backed outlet quoted an unnamed source “in the military-industrial complex.” The first “sea tests” are scheduled for this summer.
It will also reduce travel time to Saturn’s moon Titan to just two years.
Pulsar Fusion, a UK-based space firm, is building a nuclear fusion-based rocket engine that could exceed temperatures on the Sun. The construction of the largest-ever fusion rocket engine has begun, and its exhaust speeds could exceed 500,000 miles per hour.
Nuclear fusion has long been proposed to answer our energy and climate change woes as it promises a cleaner power source. Inspired by the Sun, scientists have been working to build nuclear fusion reactors and have succeeded in generating record-high temperatures but not more energy than they have put in.
Space propulsion company Pulsar Fusion has started construction on a large nuclear fusion chamber in England, as it races to become the first firm to fire a nuclear fusion-powered propulsion system in space.
Nuclear fusion propulsion tech, arguably a golden goose of the space industry, could reduce the travel time to Mars by half and cut the travel time to Titan, Saturn’s moon, to two years instead of 10. It sounds like science fiction, but Pulsar CEO Richard Dinan told TechCrunch in a recent interview that fusion propulsion was “inevitable.”
“You’ve got to ask yourself, can humanity do fusion?” he said. “If we can’t, then all of this is irrelevant. If we can — and we can — then fusion propulsion is totally inevitable. It’s irresistible to the human evolution of space. This is happening, because the application is irresistible.”