The goal of enabling extended deep-space exploration is driving NASA, space agencies, and private players to explore nuclear power solutions.
Recently, two Southern California-based startups, Exlabs and Antares Nuclear, announced a partnership to advance deep-space missions with nuclear-powered spacecraft.
SpaceNews reported that the Exlabs’ Science Exploration and Resource Vehicle (SERV) spacecraft will be equipped with Antares microreactors.
Lithium-6 is essential for producing nuclear fusion fuel, but isolating it from the much more common isotope, lithium-7, usually requires liquid mercury, which is extremely toxic. Now, researchers have developed a mercury-free method to isolate lithium-6 that is as effective as the conventional method. The new method is presented in the journal Chem.
“This is a step towards addressing a major roadblock to nuclear energy,” says chemist and senior author Sarbajit Banerjee of ETH Zürich and Texas A&M University. “Lithium-6 is a critical material for the renaissance of nuclear energy, and this method could represent a viable approach to isotope separation.”
The conventional method used to isolate lithium-6, called the COLEX process, involves liquid mercury and has been banned in the United States since 1963 due to pollution concerns.
Posted in cybercrime/malcode, nuclear energy | Leave a Comment on France’s Nuclear Power Industry Makes Its Presence Felt During the Ukraine Crisis ― Energy Cooperation with Europe and the United States and the Future of the Procurement of Uranium from Niger
IINA provides ongoing analysis of international affairs both by region—such as North America, China, and Europe—and by such topics as human security, nontraditional security threats, and cyber security. The articles on this site, written by experts at the Sasakawa Peace Foundation and guest contributors, are carefully selected for their objectivity, accuracy, timeliness, and relevance for Japan.
Since it was first synthesized in a post-WW2 American lab in 1949, berkelium has been a rebel of the periodic table, defying quantum mechanics and taking on an extra positive charge that its relatives would never.
Now, a team of scientists from berkelium’s alma mater, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, has wrangled the elusive element into a rare partnership with carbon that will enable them to study it in more detail.
Thanks to challenges involved in producing and safely containing the heavy element, few chemists have had the privilege of dealing with berkelium. Just one gram of the stuff can cost a boggling US$27 million. For this experiment, just 0.3 milligrams of berkelium-249 was required.
Posted in nanotechnology, nuclear energy, particle physics, space | Leave a Comment on Nanomaterials used to measure first nuclear reaction on radioactive nuclei produced in neutron star collisions
Physicists have measured a nuclear reaction that can occur in neutron star collisions, providing direct experimental data for a process that had previously only been theorized. The study, led by the University of Surrey, provides new insight into how the universe’s heaviest elements are forged—and could even drive advancements in nuclear reactor physics.
Working in collaboration with the University of York, the University of Seville, and TRIUMF, Canada’s national particle accelerator center, the breakthrough marks the first-ever measurement of a weak r-process reaction cross-section using a radioactive ion beam, in this case studying the 94 Sr(α, n)97 Zr reaction. This is where a radioactive form of strontium (strontium-94) absorbs an alpha particle (a helium nucleus), then emits a neutron and transforms into zirconium-97.
The study has been published in Physical Review Letters.
After five years of trying to find the right ingredients, scientists at the Idaho National Laboratory (INL) believe they have created the perfect recipe to fuel the world’s first critical fast-spectrum molten salt reactor.
The Molten Chloride Reactor Experiment (MCRE) at INL will test a new type of nuclear reactor that uses a mixture of molten chloride salt and uranium as fuel and coolant. This experiment allows researchers and scientists to evaluate the safety and physics of a molten chloride fast reactor that Southern Company and TerraPower plan to build.
This type of advanced reactor is an attractive option to provide electricity and heat for communities and industry. They operate at higher temperatures for improved efficiency, potentially reduced waste generation and inherent safety features due to the liquid fuel design.
For the first time, scientists have acquired direct evidence of rare, pulsing pear-shaped structures within atomic nuclei of the rare-earth element gadolinium, thanks to new research led by the University of Surrey, the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) and the IFIN-HH research institute in Bucharest, Romania.
The study, published in Physical Review Letters, provides definitive proof of a strong collective “octupole excitation” in the nucleus of gadolinium-150, a long-lived radioactive isotope of this rare-earth element, which is used in applications such as superconductors, nuclear power operations and MRI contrast materials.
The experimental signature is interpreted as the protons and neutrons inside the atomic nucleus vibrating in a coordinated pattern, resulting in a pulsing, asymmetric, pear-shaped structure.
In a comprehensive experimental study, an international team of researchers has confirmed the calculations of a leading turbulence simulation code to an unprecedented degree. This marks a major breakthrough in understanding turbulent transport processes in nuclear fusion devices.
The study has now been published in the journal Nature Communications and lays a crucial foundation for predicting the performance of fusion power plants.
Future fusion power plants aim to generate usable energy efficiently by fusing light atomic nuclei. The most advanced approach—magnetic confinement fusion—confines a plasma, a gas heated to millions of degrees Celsius, within a magnetic field. This plasma is suspended without wall contact inside a donut-shaped vacuum chamber.
For decades, atomic clocks have been the pinnacle of precision timekeeping, enabling GPS navigation, cutting-edge physics research, and tests of fundamental theories. But researchers at JILA, led by JILA and NIST Fellow and University of Colorado Boulder physics professor Jun Ye, in collaboration with the Technical University of Vienna, are pushing beyond atomic transitions to something potentially even more stable: a nuclear clock.
This clock could revolutionize timekeeping by using a uniquely low-energy transition within the nucleus of a thorium-229 atom. This transition is less sensitive to environmental disturbances than modern atomic clocks and has been proposed for tests of fundamental physics beyond the Standard Model.
This idea isn’t new in Ye’s laboratory. In fact, work in the lab on nuclear clocks began with a landmark experiment, the results of which were published as a cover article of Nature last year, where the team made the first frequency-based, quantum-state-resolved measurement of the thorium-229 nuclear transition in a thorium-doped host crystal. This achievement confirmed that thorium’s nuclear transition could be measured with enough precision to be used as a timekeeping reference.
A multi-institutional team of physicists and engineers has developed a laser-based radiation detection system that operates from as far away as 10 meters and perhaps farther. Their research is published in the journal Physical Review Applied.
Working with nuclear material, whether in creating weapons or energy, requires monitoring radiation levels to ensure the safety of workers. However, most detectors only allow for testing in close proximity to the source, which means a worker can be in danger of overexposure before they know it has happened. In this new study, the team assigned themselves the goal of developing a new type of system or device that could be used to test from much farther away.
The team started by noting that radiation interacts with molecules in the air around it, resulting in the creation of free electrons, so it should be possible to measure the energy of those electrons using a laser beam. In testing their ideas, they found that firing a laser into irradiated air did lead to molecule collisions, which produced free electrons.
