It’s fast, cheap, safe, and eats up waste. What’s not to like?
A new molten salt reactor design can scale from just 50 Megawatts electric (MWe) to 1,200 MWe, its creators say, while burning up nuclear waste in the process.
☢️ You like nuclear. So do we. Let’s nerd out over nuclear together.
Continue reading “This Molten Salt Reactor Is the Next Big Thing in Nuclear” »
Fusion power is the technology that is thirty years away, and always will be – according to skeptics at least. Despite its difficult transition into a reliable power source, the nuclear reactions that power the sun have a wide variety of uses in other fields. The most obvious is in weapons, where hydrogen bombs are to this day the most powerful weapons we have ever produced. But there’s another use case that is much less destructive and could prove much more interesting – space drives.
The concept fusion drive, called a direct fusion drive (or DFD) is in development at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL). Scientists and Engineers there, led by Dr. Samuel Cohen, are currently working on the second iteration of it, known as the Princeton field reversed configuration-2 (PFRC-2). Eventually the system’s developers hope to launch it into space to test, and eventually become the primary drive system of spacecraft traveling throughout our solar system. There’s already one particularly interesting target in the outer solar system that is similar to Earth in many ways – Titan. Its liquid cycles and potential to harbor life have fascinated scientists since they first started collecting data on it.
I don’t know how long we’ll continue to have to wait.
Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) are collaborating on a new “compact” fusion reactor that could feasibly be built and go online much faster than existing fusion reactor concepts. Does that mean fusion’s Lucy will finally let an industry Charlie Brown kick the football? Maybe.
☢️You love nuclear. So do we. Let’s nerd out over nuclear together.
Continue reading “We’ve Long Waited for Fusion. This Reactor May Finally Deliver It—Fast” »
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A Milestone for Small Modular Reactors (SMR 2020)
Continue reading “A Milestone for Small Modular Reactors (SMR 2020)” »
O,.o.
Hours before his 13th birthday, Jackson Oswalt (USA) fused together two deuterium atoms using a reactor he had built in the playroom of his family home in Memphis, Tennessee.
Continue reading “Middle school student achieved nuclear fusion in his family playroom” »
(IMAGE 1) The superconducting coil consists of two pairs of helical coils and two sets of circular vertical magnetic field coils. In order to prevent the coil from moving or deforming due to the strong electromagnetic force acting on the superconducting coils, it is firmly supported by a supporting structure made of stainless steel with a high strength of 20 cm thick. These superconducting coils and supporting structures are cooled to cryogenic temperatures simultaneously.
Harworth Group plc has announced the completion of the UK Atomic Energy Authority’s (UKAEA’s) new nuclear fusion technology research facility at the Advanced Manufacturing Park in Rotherham, South Yorkshire. When it opens later this year, the 2500-square-metre facility will develop and test joining technologies for fusion materials and components, including novel metals and ceramics.
Property developer Harworth said completion of the GBP22 million (USD28 million) Fusion Technology facility triggers UKAEA’s 20-year lease with Harworth at a rent in line with other manufacturers at the Advanced Manufacturing Park. UKAEA will now prepare the building prior to taking formal occupation of it later this year.
The new facility is being funded as part of the government’s Nuclear Sector Deal delivered through the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy. An additional GBP2 million of investment came from Sheffield City Region’s Local Growth Fund.
At the end of 2015, Germany switched on a new type of massive nuclear fusion reactor for the first time, and it was successfully able to contain a scorching hot blob of helium plasma.
But since then, there’s been a big question — is the device working the way it’s supposed to? That’s pretty crucial when you’re talking about a machine that could potentially maintain controlled nuclear fusion reactions one day, and thankfully, the answer is yes.
Continue reading “Tests Confirm That Germany’s Massive Nuclear Fusion Machine Really Works” »
Three United States DOE national laboratories – SLAC, Fermilab and Jefferson Lab – have partnered to build an advanced particle accelerator that will power the LCLS-II X-ray laser. Thanks to technology developed for nuclear and high-energy physics, the new X-ray laser will produce a nearly continuous wave of electrons and allow scientists to peer more deeply than ever before into the building blocks of life and matter.
