Move aside, boy-sized submarines. Now we have boy-sized reactors.
Category: nuclear energy – Page 99
The DOE says that radioactive leakage from Runit Dome, a respository for U.S. atomic waste, is insignificant. Marshall Islands leaders are skeptical.
Dr. Charles Forsberg observes technological overlap between Molten-Salt Reactor (fission) development and Fusion Reactors due to manufacturing breakthrough of Rare-Earth Barium Copper Oxide (REBCO) Superconducting Magnets onto steel tape.
REBCO superconducting tape enables doubling magnetic fields.
Size of magnetic fusion system for any given power output varies as one over the fourth power of the magnetic field. Higher magnetic fields can shrink fusion system size by an order of magnitude, power density in the fusion blanket increases by an order of magnitude.
Higher power densities in the blanket make it difficult to cool solid blankets. High magnetic fields create large incentives to have a coolant with low electrical conductivity to avoid coolant/magnetic field interactions.
Staging Area
The engineers say four reactors could give enough energy for a six-person crew to live on Mars, and they’re hoping to use the Moon as a testing ground.
“On the moon, you’re close to home,” NASA engineer Michelle Rucker told C&EN, “so if something fails, it’s a fairly close trip to get back home, whereas on Mars, your system better be working.”
The National Weather Service in Melbourne has issued a severe thunderstorm warning for southeastern St. Lucie County and northeastern Martin County until 10 p.m.
At 9:18 p.m., a severe thunderstorm was located 7 miles north of Indiantown, moving northeast at 15 mph.
Locations impacted include Port Saint Lucie, Walton, Stuart, Palm City and Saint Lucie Nuclear Power Plant.
The waste will reportedly be moved by sea and rail to a plant in the Urals.
Urenco told the BBC its uranium would be further enriched in Russia and the process met environmental standards.
But environmental activists have long been concerned that Russia may become a “dumping ground” for radioactive waste from power plants.
Build a Nuclear Fusor | Make
Posted in nuclear energy
Learn how to build a nuclear fusor that has an eerie purple-blue glow emanating from the reactor. Careful, as the project uses high voltages.
The Madison, Wisconsin-based startup Phoenix has scouted a team of nuclear elites for a new frontier: small reactors that can revolutionize medical imaging, munitions scanning, and even non-destructive testing for quality assurance.
And in the longer term, scientists say training people to run neutron generators helps to familiarize and speed up the future of nuclear fusion.
A team of scientists, including Chief Investigator Ilya Mandel from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Gravitational Wave Discovery (OzGrav) at Monash University, recently studied what happens to rotating massive stars when they reach the end of their lives.
Stars produce energy by fusing lighter elements into heavier ones in their core: hydrogen into helium, then helium into carbon, oxygen, and so on, up to iron. The energy produced by this nuclear fusion also provides pressure support inside the star, which balances the force of gravity and allows the star to remain in equilibrium.
This process stops at iron. Beyond iron, energy is required to sustain fusion rather than being released by fusion. A heavy iron star core contracts under gravity, creating a neutron star, or if it is heavy enough, a black hole. Meanwhile, the outer layers of the star explode in a brilliant flash, observable as a supernova. However, some massive stars seem to completely disappear without any explosion. Theories suggest that these massive stars completely collapse into black holes, but is that possible?