Looking From Space for Nuclear Detonations
Sandia National LaboratoriesSandia National Laboratories, which has been in the business of nuclear detonation detection for more than 50 years, is working on the next generation system.
Sandia National Laboratories, which has been in the business of nuclear detonation detection for more than 50 years, is working on the next generation system.
A group of Texas Tech researchers report this week in Applied Physics Letters that they have developed an alternative material to the rare, expensive gas normally used for neutron detection. This material fulfills many key requirements for helium gas detector replacements and can serve as a low-cost alternative in the future.
The detonation of atomic bombs over the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 resulted in horrific casualties and devastation. The long-term effects of radiation exposure also increased cancer rates in the survivors. But public perception of the rates of cancer and birth defects among survivors and their children is in fact greatly exaggerated when compared to the reality revealed by comprehensive follow-up studies. The reasons for this mismatch and its implications are discussed in a Perspectives review of the Hiroshima/Nagasaki survivor studies published in the August issue of the journal GENETICS, a publication of the Genetics Society of America.
The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory will be working with four small businesses on nuclear technology projects under the auspices of DOE’s Gateway for Accelerated Innovation in Nuclear (GAIN). The projects will be funded through GAIN’s Nuclear Energy Voucher pilot program, which is providing up to $2 million to assist new entrants into the nuclear field as they build the collaborations necessary to accelerate the development and deployment of innovative nuclear technologies.
An international team of researchers has discovered a new synthetic compound that acts to adsorb Xenon, an element and volatile radioactive waste commonly released by nuclear energy plants.
Researchers are investigating a new material that might help in nuclear fuel recycling and waste reduction by capturing certain gases released during reprocessing more efficiently than today’s technology. The metal-organic framework captures gases at ambient temperature, eliminating an energy-intensive step.
Researchers are investigating a new material that might help in nuclear fuel recycling and waste reduction by capturing certain gases released during reprocessing. Conventional technologies to remove these radioactive gases operate at extremely low, energy-intensive temperatures. By working at ambient temperature, the new material has the potential to save energy, make reprocessing cleaner and less expensive. The reclaimed materials can also be reused commercially.
Article describes winners of the 2016 Landau-Spitzer Award and the nature of their research.
While it's possible to study explosives, sans explosives, new techniques involving high-speed, high-fidelity imaging with optical filtering and signal processing techniques have recently made setting off explosives and capturing the data in real-time a reasonable alternative to developing a new simulation. Researchers report their findings this week in the journal Review of Scientific Instruments.
DoseNet, a radiation-monitoring outreach project supported by Berkeley Lab and UC Berkeley, has a broad aim to inform and connect students and communities using science and data.
An Iowa State University political scientist says President Obama’s trip to Hiroshima is significant for the point it makes about the proliferation of nuclear weapons. Richard Mansbach also explains why this presidential election has him frightened about future U.S. foreign affairs.
Decommissioning the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant just got one step closer. Japanese researchers have mapped the distribution of boron compounds in a model control rod, paving the way for determining re-criticality risk within the reactor.
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Sandia National Laboratories has produced a half-hour video about those who spent years working on Sandia's above-ground and underground field tests.
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Los Alamos and Sandia National Laboratories have recently conducted plutonium experiments using Sandia's pulsed power Z Machine that have reached regions of pressure, temperature and density in plutonium never before explored in the laboratory.
Article describes successful test of liquid lithium limiter on China's EAST tokamak.
Scientists have developed a device that enables NMR spectroscopy, coupled with a powerful molecular sensor, to analyze molecular interactions in viscous solutions and fragile materials such as liquid crystals. In a first, their method allows the sensor, hyperpolarized xenon gas, to be dissolved into minute samples of substances without disrupting their molecular order.
Nuclear power is an important energy source and is essential as a clean energy to reduce current carbon emissions from fossil fuels. However, many people feel the risk of nuclear accidents does not outweigh the benefits associated with nuclear energy.
A re-analysis of nuclear fuel rods used improved radiochemical methods developed at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Modeling and simulation experts applied the more accurate experimental data to validate codes used by the nuclear research community.
'Four-Flavored' Tetraquark, Planets Born Like Cracking Paint, New 2D Materials, The World's Newest Atom-Smasher in the Physics News Source sponsored by AIP.
University of Saskatchewan researchers working to protect the environment from oil and mining contamination and improve nuclear power technology have received a $1.5 million boost from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC).
An international team that includes researchers from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) has captured the most precise—and puzzling—energy measurements yet of ghostly particles called reactor antineutrinos produced at a nuclear power complex in China.
The Sylvia Fedoruk Canadian Centre for Nuclear Innovation will invest $2-million to support research at the Johnson Shoyama Graduate School of Public Policy (JSGS) at the University of Regina (U of R) and the University of Saskatchewan (U of S).
Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL), who collaborate with the Max Planck Institute in Germany on the Wendelstein 7-X (W7-X) fusion energy reactor, congratulated the team for starting its scientific investigations on fusion energy by producing its first hydrogen plasma on Feb. 3.
The world remains perilously close to a nuclear disaster or catastrophic climate change that could devastate humanity, according to Stanford experts and California Governor Jerry Brown, who were on hand to unveil the latest update to the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists’ “doomsday clock” on Tuesday.
A group of nuclear detectives at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory takes on tough challenges, from detecting illicit uranium using isotopic “fingerprints” to investigating Presidential assassination conspiracies.
In just a little over a year of operation, the U.S. Department of Energy Ames Laboratory’s dynamic nuclear polarization (DNP) solid-state nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectrometer has successfully characterized materials at the atomic scale level with more speed and precision than ever possible before.
Researchers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory will support two new DOE-funded projects to explore, develop and demonstrate advanced nuclear reactor technologies.
Eight scientists have shared the 2015 John Dawson Award for Excellence in Plasma Physics Research for an experiment that used the world’s most powerful X-ray laser to create and probe 3.6-million-degree matter in a controlled way for the first time.
Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) have produced self-consistent computer simulations that capture the evolution of an electric current inside fusion plasma without using a central electromagnet, or solenoid.
With the production of 50 grams of plutonium-238, researchers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory have restored a U.S. capability dormant for nearly 30 years and set the course to provide power for NASA and other missions.
An ultra-high-resolution technique used for the first time to study polymer fibers that trap uranium in seawater may cause researchers to rethink the best methods to harvest this potential fuel for nuclear reactors.
Article about a proposed plasma-based method for treating nuclear waste.
This article describes the discovery of two new sources of turbulence in compact spherical tokamaks.
Peering at the debris from particle collisions that recreate the conditions of the very early universe, scientists have for the first time measured the force of interaction between pairs of antiprotons. Like the force that holds ordinary protons together within the nuclei of atoms, the force between antiprotons is attractive and strong. The experiments were conducted at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider at Brookhaven National Laboratory and will publish in Nature.
Researchers in an Energy Frontier Research Center led by the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory are investigating ways to design structural materials that develop fewer, smaller flaws under irradiation.
In March 2011 at Fukushima, the fuel’s cladding, a zirconium alloy used to contain the fuel and radioactive fission products, reacted with boiling coolant water to form hydrogen gas, which then exploded, resulting in the biggest nuclear power-related disaster since Chernobyl. Challenged by this event, two research teams have made progress in developing fuel claddings that are capable of withstanding the high temperatures resulting from a Loss of Coolant Accident (LOCA), like that at Fukushima. Both teams will present their results at the AVS 62nd International Symposium and Exhibition, held Oct. 18-23 in San Jose, Calif.
The effect of radiation exposure related to the nuclear accidents that took place in Fukushima, Japan, and Chernobyl, Ukraine on thyroid cancer risk, whether dietary habits influence the risk of developing thyroid cancer, and recent study results with a triiodothyronine (T3) analog in an uncommon form of thyroid disease are all topics featured in oral presentations delivered at the 15th International Thyroid Congress, hosted by the American Thyroid Association, October 18-23, 2015, in Orlando (Lake Buena Vista), Florida.
Sandia National Laboratories is performing a Life Extension Program on the W80-4 nuclear weapon. The Life Extension Program is refurbishing the W80 warhead with replacement components for aging technology and components that have limited lifespans. Much of the work is being done at Sandia's California site.
A team of international researchers, including James Beasley, assistant professor of wildlife ecology at the University of Georgia Savannah River Ecology Laboratory and the Warnell School Forestry and Natural Resources, has discovered abundant populations of wildlife at Chernobyl, the site of the 1986 nuclear accident.
Through an allocation by the DOE Office of Advanced Scientific Computing Research Leadership Computing Challenge, a team of condensed matter theorists at Rutgers University, led by Professors Gabriel Kotliar and Kristjan Haule, used nearly 10 million Titan core hours to calculate the electronic and magnetic structure of plutonium using a combination of density functional theory calculations and the leading-edge dynamical mean field theory technique.