Lifeboat Foundation

On July 27, the assembly of the world’s largest nuclear fusion reactor began in France. It is known as the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor or ITER. The ITER project is a joint effort by countries such as Japan, India, the European Union, the United States, Russia, China, and South Korea. The project was launched in 2006, has a five-year assembly phase, and plans to reach its maximum power output by 2035.

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The earth’s atmosphere and magnetic field protect humans from harmful radiation. However, it is a known fact that astronauts are exposed to radiation levels that are 20-fold higher than those found on planet earth. NASA recently did an experiment on the International Space Station after realizing that a fungus growing near the Chernobyl site was thriving on nuclear radiation because of radiosynthesis. The fungus was using melanin to convert gamma radiation into chemical energy. Therefore, space scientists grew the fungus inside the ISS for a month and analyzed its ability to block radiation.

The experiment showed that the Chernobyl fungus, now identified as “Cladosporium sphaerospermum,” was able to block some of the incoming radiation. This finding has implications for future space missions. Scientists are thinking of shielding astronauts and space objects with a layer of this radiation-absorbing protective fungus. Meanwhile, let’s await further updates from NASA. Please share your thoughts with us in the comments section.

On March 11, 2011, a 9.1-magnitude earthquake triggered a powerful tsunami, generating waves higher than 125 feet that ravaged the coast of Japan, particularly the Tohoku region of Honshu, the largest and most populous island in the country.nnNearly 16,000 people were killed, hundreds of thousands displaced, and millions left without electricity and water. Railways and roads were destroyed, and 383,000 buildings damaged—including a nuclear power plant that suffered a meltdown of three reactors, prompting widespread evacuations.nnIn lessons for today’s businesses deeply hit by pandemic and seismic culture shifts, it’s important to recognize that many of the Japanese companies in the Tohoku region continue to operate today, despite facing serious financial setbacks from the disaster. How did these businesses manage not only to survive, but thrive?nnOne reason, says Harvard Business School professor Hirotaka Takeuchi, was their dedication to responding to the needs of employees and the community first, all with the moral purpose of serving the common good. Less important for these companies, he says, was pursuing layoffs and other cost-cutting measures in the face of a crippled economy.nn

As demonstrated after the 2011 earthquake and tsunami, Japanese businesses have a unique capability for long-term survival. Hirotaka Takeuchi explains their strategy of investing in community over profits during turbulent times.

Nuclear batteries can last for over a century without recharging!

Scientists have found a novel way to prevent pesky magnetic bubbles in plasma from interfering with fusion reactions—delivering a potential way to improve the performance of fusion energy devices. And it comes from managing radio frequency (RF) waves to stabilize the magnetic bubbles, which can expand and create disruptions that can limit the performance of ITER, the international facility under construction in France to demonstrate the feasibility of fusion power.

Magnetic islands

Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) have developed the new model for controlling these magnetic bubbles, or islands. The novel method modifies the standard technique of steadily depositing radio (RF) rays into the plasma to stabilize the islands—a technique that proves inefficient when the width of an island is small compared with the characteristic size of the region over which the RF ray deposits its power.

To advance his vision, last week EIC launched the OPEN100 project, which Kugelmass says will provide open-source blueprints for the design, construction, and financing of a 100-megawatt nuclear reactor. He claims the reactor can be built for $300 million in less than two years, significantly decreasing the per-kilowatt cost of nuclear power.

“Nuclear power isn’t just part of the solution to addressing climate change; it is the solution,” Kugelmass said in a press release. “OPEN100 will radically change the way we deploy nuclear power plants going forward, offering a substantially less expensive and less complicated solution.”

The logic behind the idea is that the biggest barrier to the widespread use of nuclear is the cost of building reactors, which most experts would agree is a major problem for the industry. Kugelmass thinks that’s because we’ve been focused on large, overly complicated reactors that take far too long to build. His solution is to go back to tried and tested pressurized water reactors from the previous century, and bring their cost down even further through standardization and a focus on speedy construction.

Over the past five years factories, universities, and national laboratories all over the world have been working to build the components for the plant, some of which weigh several hundred tons, including a magnet powerful enough to lift an aircraft carrier. It will take another five years to piece all the parts together and get the reactor ready for its first test run.

“Constructing the machine piece by piece will be like assembling a three-dimensional puzzle on an intricate timeline,” director-general of ITER Bernard Bigot said in a press release. “Every aspect of project management, systems engineering, risk management, and logistics of the machine assembly must perform together with the precision of a Swiss watch.”

The hope is that by 2025 the plant will be able to produce “first plasma,” a test designed to make sure the reactor works; the test will produce roughly 500 megawatts of thermal power. It will be another decade until the plant is expected to produce enough energy to be commercially viable, though. That will involve building an even larger plasma chamber to provide 10–15 times more electrical power.

Barakah, which was originally scheduled to open in 2017, has been dogged by delays and is billions of dollars over budget. It has also raised myriad concerns among nuclear energy veterans who are concerned about the potential risks Barakah could visit upon the Arabian Peninsula, from an environmental catastrophe to a nuclear arms race.

Experts have raised concerns about potential risks Barakah plant could pose to the environment and regional security.

Continue reading “UAE starts first nuclear reactor at controversial Barakah plant” »

face_with_colon_three circa 2010.

Admittedly, the project is a little dangerous—not because of a few little fusion reactions but because of the very flammable gas and voltages high enough to instantly kill you.