Lifeboat Foundation

Circa 2018

Based at the National Research Nuclear University MEPhI (Russia), a research team led by Prof. Yuri Rakovich has developed a tunable micro-resonator for hybrid energy states between light and matter using light to control the chemical and biological properties of molecules. The results have been published in the Review of Scientific Instruments.

The micro-resonator is a two-mirror trap for the light, with the mirrors facing each other within several hundred nanometers. A photon caught in the trap would form a localized state of an electromagnetic wave. By modifying the resonator’s form and size, operators can control the spatial distribution of the wave, as well as the duration of the photon’s life in the resonator.

Continue reading “Scientists develop unique trap for light” »

Small fusion is very possible as fusion is a nuclear process that scales elegantly.

Sometime in the not distant future that we may see the practical development of successful small fusion reactors. Even integrated circuit scale pure fusion reactors may be possible.

Layers a single atom thick are naturally lightweight, yet also surprisingly tough and flexible. This led to initial speculation for graphene being used as the ideal building material or protective body armor of the future. Yet it is the electrical properties of graphene, which arise from the unique behavior of electrons in such a thin layer, that have led to the first use cases for graphene in sensors and LEDs. Superconductivity, on top of everything else, is the icing on the cake for this remarkable material.

A Physicist’s Playground

Of course, twisted bilayer graphene (TBG) is not the first substance to exhibit superconducting properties. Superconductors, which can, amongst other things, generate extremely high magnetic fields without losing energy to electrical resistance, are already widely in use. Striking examples include the magnets at ITER, the world’s largest fusion device, currently under construction.

Continue reading “Graphene (With a Twist) Is Helping Scientists Understand Superconductors” »

Almost every day, news headlines announce another security breach and the theft of credit card numbers and other personal information. While having one’s credit card stolen can be annoying and unsettling, a far more significant, yet less recognized, concern is the security of physical infrastructure, including energy systems.

“With a credit card theft, you might have to pay $50 and get a new credit card,” says Stuart Madnick, the John Norris Maguire Professor of Information Technologies at the Sloan School of Management, a professor of engineering systems at the School of Engineering, and founding director of the Cybersecurity at MIT Sloan consortium. “But with infrastructure attacks, real physical damage can occur, and recovery can take weeks or months.”

A few examples demonstrate the threat. In 2008, an alleged cyberattack blew up an oil pipeline in Turkey, shutting it down for three weeks; in 2009, the malicious Stuxnet computer worm destroyed hundreds of Iranian centrifuges, disrupting that country’s nuclear fuel enrichment program; and in 2015, an attack brought down a section of the Ukrainian power grid—for just six hours, but substations on the grid had to be operated manually for months.

Continue reading “Protecting our energy infrastructure from cyberattack” »

A laser-driven technique for creating fusion that dispenses with the need for radioactive fuel elements and leaves no toxic radioactive waste is now within reach, say researchers.

Dramatic advances in powerful, high-intensity lasers are making it viable for scientists to pursue what was once thought impossible: creating fusion energy based on hydrogen-boron reactions. And an Australian physicist is in the lead, armed with a patented design and working with international collaborators on the remaining scientific challenges.

In a paper in the scientific journal Laser and Particle Beams today, lead author Heinrich Hora from the University of New South Wales in Sydney and international colleagues argue that the path to hydrogen-boron fusion is now viable, and may be closer to realization than other approaches, such as the deuterium-tritium fusion approach being pursued by U.S. National Ignition Facility (NIF) and the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor under construction in France.

Continue reading “Laser-driven technique for creating fusion is now within reach, say researchers” »

This week, Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station will power down for the last time.

Over the next few years, workers will move the radioactive fuel into storage, dismantle the plant, and clean up the site. The process is called decommissioning, and a lot of people are worried about safety, cost and where the nuclear waste will finally end up.

Continue reading “Pilgrim Is Closing. So Then What Happens To The Radioactive Waste?” »

Scientists from Ireland and France today [Thursday 23rd May] announced a major new finding about how matter behaves in the extreme conditions of the Sun’s atmosphere.

The scientists used large radio telescopes and ultraviolet cameras on a NASA spacecraft to better understand the exotic but poorly understood “fourth state of matter”. Known as plasma, this matter could hold the key to developing safe, clean and efficient nuclear energy generators on Earth. The scientists published their findings in the leading international journal Nature Communications.

Most of the matter we encounter in our everyday lives comes in the form of solid, liquid or gas, but the majority of the Universe is composed of plasma — a highly unstable and electrically charged fluid. The Sun is also made up of this plasma.

Continue reading “Scientists uncover exotic matter in the sun’s atmosphere” »

E=m c

Albert Einstein proposed the most famous formula in physics in a 1905 paper on Special Relativity titled Does the inertia of an object depend upon its energy content?

Essentially, the equation says that mass and energy are intimately related. Atom bombs and nuclear reactors are practical examples of the formula working in one direction, turning matter into energy.

Continue reading “‘Einstein Was Right: You Can Turn Energy Into Matter’” »

Gamma radiation is the most penetrating and energetic form of nuclear radiation. To absorb half the incoming Gamma you need two and a half inches of concrete or almost half an inch of lead. So my eyebrows went up when I saw a press release for an organization called Radiation Shielding Technologies, or RST, selling protective clothing with this startling claim:

“DemronTM not only protects against particle ionizing/nuclear radiation (such as Beta and Alpha), but does what NO OTHER full body radiation protection can do: shield against X-ray and low-energy Gamma emissions.”

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Continue reading “Can Miracle Material Stop Radiation?” »