Laboratory Equipment

Fusion Reactor Experiments Reveal Details of Cooling Process

A longstanding joke holds that practical fusion power is about 20 years away — and always will be.

One simple phenomenon explains why practical, self-sustaining fusion reactions have proved difficult to achieve: turbulence in the superhot, electrically charged gas, called plasma, that circulates inside a fusion reactor can cause the plasma to lose much of its heat. This prevents the plasma from reaching the temperatures needed to overcome the electrical repulsion between atomic nuclei — which, in turn, prevents those nuclei from fusing together. But in order to tame that turbulence, scientists first must understand it.

Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/videos/2013/04/fusion-reactor-experiments-reveal-details-cooling-process

Invention Repurposes Spent Nuclear Fuel

A researcher at Oregon State Univ. has invented a way to use spent nuclear fuel to produce the gamma rays needed to irradiate medical supplies, food and other products – an advance that could change what is now a costly waste disposal concern into a valued commodity.

The technology, if widely implemented, might allow each of the 104 nuclear reactors in the U.S. to create a revenue stream of $10 million a year while providing thousands of new jobs. And by lowering the cost of irradiation, it could become commercially feasible for a wider range of uses.

Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news/2013/04/invention-repurposes-spent-nuclear-fuel

Google Offers Views of Japan Nuclear Zone

Concrete rubble litters streets lined with shuttered shops and dark windows. A collapsed roof juts from the ground. A ship sits stranded on a stretch of dirt flattened when the tsunami roared across the coastline. There isn’t a person in sight.

Google Street View is giving the world a rare glimpse into one of Japan’s eerie ghost towns, created when the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami sparked a nuclear disaster that has left the area uninhabitable.

Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news/2013/03/google-offers-views-japan-nuclear-zone

Nuclear Waste is a Problem for South Korea

North Korea’s weapons program is not the only nuclear headache for South Korea. The country’s radioactive waste storage is filling up as its nuclear power industry burgeons, but what South Korea sees as its best solution — reprocessing the spent fuel so it can be used again — faces stiff opposition from its U.S. ally.

South Korea fired up its first reactor in 1978 and since then the resource poor nation’s reliance on atomic energy has steadily grown. It is now the world’s fifth-largest nuclear energy producer, operating 23 reactors. But unlike the rapid growth of its nuclear industry, its nuclear waste management plan has been moving at a snail’s pace.

Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news/2013/03/nuclear-waste-problem-south-korea

N. Korea Says Nuke Tests Are Aimed at U.S.

North Korea’s top governing body warned that the regime will conduct its third nuclear test in defiance of UN punishment, and made clear that its long-range rockets are designed to carry not only satellites but also warheads aimed at striking the U.S.

The National Defense Commission, headed by the country’s young leader, Kim Jong Un, rejected the UN Security Council resolution condemning North Korea’s long-range rocket launch in December as a banned missile activity and expanding sanctions against the regime. The commission reaffirmed in its declaration that the launch was a peaceful bid to send a satellite into space, but also said the country’s rocket launches have a military purpose: to strike and attack the U.S.

Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news/2013/01/n-korea-says-nuke-tests-are-aimed-us

Bad Math at Idle Nuke Plant Prompts More Questions

A nuclear reactor in Nebraska, idled for almost two years by a laundry list of problems, is coming under increased regulatory scrutiny due to some bad math in its 40-year-old design and the use of Teflon even though it tends to disintegrate when exposed to high radiation.

The new issues revealed at recent public meetings could further delay the resumption of operations at Fort Calhoun that critics assert is already costing too much to fix and should remain shuttered forever. The Omaha Public Power District imposed a 6.9 percent increase in electricity rates this month for customers across southeast Nebraska, largely to finance a $143 million bill to fix some 450 problems and rehabilitate the nuclear plant that was closed in April 2011.

Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news/2013/01/bad-math-idle-nuke-plant-prompts-more-questions

Neon Makes Exploding Stars Visible

An international team of nuclear astrophysicists has shed new light on the explosive stellar events known as novae. These dramatic explosions are driven by nuclear processes and make previously unseen stars visible for a short time. The team of scientists measured the nuclear structure of the radioactive neon produced through this process in unprecedented detail.

Their findings, reported in the US journal Physical Review Letters, show there is much less uncertainty in how quickly one of the key nuclear reactions will occur as well as in the final abundance of radioactive isotopes than has previously been suggested.

Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news/2013/01/neon-makes-exploding-stars-visible

Graphene Oxide Absorbs Radioactive Waste

Graphene oxide has a remarkable ability to quickly remove radioactive material from contaminated water, researchers at Rice Univ. and Lomonosov Moscow State Univ. have found.

A collaborative effort by the Rice lab of chemist James Tour and the Moscow lab of chemist Stepan Kalmykov determined that microscopic, atom-thick flakes of graphene oxide bind quickly to natural and human-made radionuclides and condense them into solids. The flakes are soluble in liquids and easily produced in bulk.

Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news/2013/01/graphene-oxide-absorbs-radioactive-waste

Small Nuclear Reactors Could Power Space Flights

A team of researchers, including engineers from Los Alamos National Laboratory, has demonstrated a new concept for a reliable nuclear reactor that could be used on space flights.

The research team recently demonstrated the first use of a heat pipe to cool a small nuclear reactor and power a Stirling engine at the Nevada National Security Site’s Device Assembly Facility near Las Vegas. The Demonstration Using Flattop Fissions (DUFF) experiment produced 24 watts of electricity. A team of engineers from Los Alamos, the NASA Glenn Research Center and National Security Technologies LLC (NSTec) conducted the experiment.

Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/videos/2012/11/small-nuclear-reactors-could-power-space-flights

Cosmic Rays Take a Peek into Fukushima’s Damaged Nuclear Reactors

Researchers from Los Alamos National Laboratory have devised a method to use cosmic rays to gather detailed information from inside the cores of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactors, which were heavily damaged in March 2011 by a tsunami that followed a great earthquake.

In a paper in Physical Review Letters, researchers compared two methods for using cosmic-ray radiography to gather images of nuclear material within the core of a reactor similar to Fukushima Daiichi Reactor No. 1. The team found that Los Alamos’ scattering method for cosmic-ray radiography was far superior to the traditional transmission method for capturing high-resolution image data of potentially damaged nuclear material.

Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news/2012/10/cosmic-rays-take-peek-fukushima%E2%80%99s-damaged-nuclear-reactors