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Category: nuclear energy – Page 103

Chernobyl fungus could shield astronauts from cosmic radiation

Will astronauts have fungi shields as protection against radiation in the future? 😃

When astronauts return to the moon or travel to Mars, how will they shield themselves against high levels of cosmic radiation? A recent experiment aboard the International Space Station suggests a surprising solution: a radiation-eating fungus, which could be used as a self-replicating shield against gamma radiation in space.

The fungus is called Cladosporium sphaerospermum, an extremophile species that thrives in high-radiation areas like the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. For C. sphaerospermum, radiation isn’t a threat — it’s food. That’s because the fungus is able to convert gamma radiation into chemical energy through a process called radiosynthesis. (Think of it like photosynthesis, but swap out sunlight for radiation.)

The radiotrophic fungus performs radiosynthesis by using melanin — the same pigment that gives color to our skin, hair and eyes — to convert X- and gamma rays into chemical energy. Scientists don’t fully understand this process yet. But the study notes that it’s “believed that large amounts of melanin in the cell walls of these fungi mediate electron-transfer and thus allow for a net energy gain.”

AL_A reveals plans for world’s first magnetised fusion power plant

Amanda Levete’s firm AL_A is partnering with Canadian energy company General Fusion to design a pioneering power plant that will use nuclear fusion.

The prototype plant will act as a demonstration facility for the technology, which uses hydrogen as fuel, with onsite facilities for experts and the general public to visit.

“General Fusion wants to transform how the world is energised by replicating the process that powers the sun and the stars,” said AL_A.

Impatient? A Spacecraft Could Get to Titan in Only 2 Years Using a Direct Fusion Drive

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.

We’ve Long Waited for Fusion. This Reactor May Finally Deliver It—Fast

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.

â˜ąïžYou love nuclear. So do we. Let’s nerd out over nuclear together.

A Milestone for Small Modular Reactors (SMR 2020)

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A Milestone for Small Modular Reactors (SMR 2020)

In a time where we need to lower our carbon footprint, all nuclear power problems are outweighed by its benefits, such as; low pollution, high output power, stable base load energy, low operating costs, cheap electricity and reliability.

Nevertheless, the construction of new powerplants is on decline, with only one new plant being activated in the past 20 years in the united states.

High construction cost is one of the main reasons that makes it difficult to compete with other energy options.

This is why we don’t see new nuclear facilities being built and those that are, have significant construction delays. The average time it takes to build a power plant is about 7.5 years, and total costs could reach 10s of billions of dollars.

Continue reading “A Milestone for Small Modular Reactors (SMR 2020)” | >

Middle school student achieved nuclear fusion in his family playroom

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.

This could only mean one thing. Jackson officially became the world’s youngest person to achieve nuclear fusion.

His impressive achievement was verified by Fusor.net, The Open Source Fusor Research Consortium, and confirmed by fusion researcher Richard Hull, who maintains a list of amateur scientists who have achieved fusion at home.

Schematic of a Helical Fusion Reactor

(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.