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Nuclear power accounted for 10% of global electricity generated in 2020. Here’s a look at the largest nuclear power producers.

MIT team develops steerable soft thread-like robot capable of navigating tiny blood vessels

Snake robots are among the most familiar type of mechanical device for working in confined spaces. Flexible, tubular robots have been used for applications such as working in the interior of nuclear reactors, water distribution systems and inside the human body to aid surgery. The MIT team, mechanical engineers affiliated to the institution’s Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies, have downsized the snake paradigm to the scale of a thread half a millimetre in diameter, which can be remotely controlled by magnetic fields to worm its way through the convoluted blood vessels of the brain to deliver clot-busting drugs or devices to break up and remove the blockage. Such robots have the potential to quickly treat a stroke and prevent damage to the brain, the team claims.

👽 Many experts, for years, believe that the scientific community no longer has a way to hide it. Life outside the earth exists. 🛸VIDEO 🛸

O’Connell reveals that life is capable of surviving in environments inhospitable to humans. For this reason, he believes that life can be found in a lake of sulfuric acid, inside barrels of nuclear waste, in water superheated to 122 degrees Celsius and even in Antarctica.

Furthermore, he adds that Mars was once an ideal place for life. He believes that the presence of methane in its atmosphere is proof that extraterrestrial life existed there.

Continue reading “‘Extraterrestrial contact is imminent’, according to several scientists (Video)” »

To make fusion energy a viable resource for the world’s energy grid, researchers need to understand the turbulent motion of plasmas: a mix of ions and electrons swirling around in reactor vessels. The plasma particles, following magnetic field lines in toroidal chambers known as tokamaks, must be confined long enough for fusion devices to produce significant gains in net energy, a challenge when the hot edge of the plasma (over 1 million degrees Celsius) is just centimeters away from the much cooler solid walls of the vessel.

Abhilash Mathews, a PhD candidate in the Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering working at MIT’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center (PSFC), believes this plasma edge to be a particularly rich source of unanswered questions. A turbulent boundary, it is central to understanding plasma confinement, fueling, and the potentially damaging heat fluxes that can strike material surfaces — factors that impact fusion reactor designs.

To better understand edge conditions, scientists focus on modeling turbulence at this boundary using numerical simulations that will help predict the plasma’s behavior. However, “first principles” simulations of this region are among the most challenging and time-consuming computations in fusion research. Progress could be accelerated if researchers could develop “reduced” computer models that run much faster, but with quantified levels of accuracy.

When scientists discovered DNA

DNA, or deoxyribonucleic acid, is a molecule composed of two long strands of nucleotides that coil around each other to form a double helix. It is the hereditary material in humans and almost all other organisms that carries genetic instructions for development, functioning, growth, and reproduction. Nearly every cell in a person’s body has the same DNA. Most DNA is located in the cell nucleus (where it is called nuclear DNA), but a small amount of DNA can also be found in the mitochondria (where it is called mitochondrial DNA or mtDNA).

Anhui research facility expected to provide plasma physics insights crucial to setting up industrial-size reactors to generate clean energy.

For a few brief moments, the high-powered lasers generated 1.3 megajoules of fusion energy.

A breakthrough experiment last month at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s (LLNL) National Ignition Facility (NIF) in California has turned up a whopping 1.3 megajoules of energy, or about three percent of the energy contained in one kilogram of crude oil. The work, as outlined in the journal Physical Review E, puts physicists “at the threshold of fusion ignition,” according to the lab’s press release.

Nuclear fusion, in the simplest terms, is a reaction in which atoms are smashed together to generate an abundance of energy. In some ways, it’s less dangerous than nuclear fission —a process that involves splitting heavy, unstable atoms into two lighter ones—and has the potential to create a lot more energy.

Continue reading “Powerful Lasers Have Put Us at the ‘Threshold’ of Nuclear Fusion Ignition” »

Just seven months after it announced a milestone record for plasma fusion, the Chinese Academy of Sciences has absolutely smashed it.

Their ‘artificial Sun’ tokomak reactor is has maintained a roiling loop of plasma superheated to 120 million degrees Celsius (216 million degrees Fahrenheit) for a gobsmacking 1,056 seconds, the Institute of Plasma Physics reports.

This also beats the previous record for plasma confinement of 390 seconds, set by the Tore Supra tokamak in France in 2003.

The Chinese experimental nuclear fusion reactor smashed the previous record, set by France’s Tore Supra tokamak in 2003, where plasma in a coiling loop remained at similar temperatures for 390 seconds. EAST had previously set another record in May 2021 by running for 101 seconds at an unprecedented 216 million F (120 million C). The core of the actual sun, by contrast, reaches temperatures of around 27 million F (15 million C).

Related: 5 sci-fi concepts that are possible (in theory)

“The recent operation lays a solid scientific and experimental foundation towards the running of a fusion reactor,” experiment leader Gong Xianzu, a researcher at the Institute of Plasma Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said in a statement.