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Archive for the ‘nuclear energy’ category: Page 78

Nov 14, 2020

Federal utility fined $900K for nuclear violations, coverup

Posted by in categories: nuclear energy, security

Federal regulators have fined the nation’s largest public utility more than $900,000 for violating procedures during the startup of a Tennessee nuclear reactor and subsequently misleading investigators. Two managers and a plant operator who worked at the Tennessee Valley Authority’s Watts Barr Nuclear Plant in Spring City were also issued violations by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

Howard Hall, director of the University of Tennessee’s Institute for Nuclear Security, said the notice of violation to TVA points to “a systemic problem in management.”

“As someone who has worked in this field essentially my entire life, I would have been appalled to receive such a letter,” Hall said.

Nov 9, 2020

Nuclear Technology Abandoned Decades Ago Might Give Us Safer, Smaller Reactors

Posted by in category: nuclear energy

Circa 2019


Could molten salt reactors might just turn nuclear power into the greenest energy source on the planet?

Nov 9, 2020

The ‘Sun machine’ that could provide the world with clean energy

Posted by in category: nuclear energy

Leo Cendrowicz reports from Provence on a technological marvel 35 years and counting in the making that could provide the world with clean power… for ever.

Nov 8, 2020

MAST Upgrade achieves first plasma

Posted by in category: nuclear energy

The UK Atomic Energy Authority’s fusion energy experiment — the Mega Amp Spherical Tokamak Upgrade tokamak at Culham Science Centre — has achieved first plasma for the first time. MAST Upgrade will be the forerunner of the UK’s prototype fusion power plant — Spherical Tokamak for Energy Production -…

Nov 4, 2020

A Huge Fusion Experiment in The UK Just Achieved The Much Anticipated ‘First Plasma’

Posted by in category: nuclear energy

After a long, seven-year development, an experimental fusion reactor in the UK has been successfully powered on for the time, achieving ‘first plasma’: confirmation that all its components can work together to heat hydrogen gas into the plasma phase of matter.

This transition – achieved last week by a machine called MAST Upgrade in Culham, Oxfordshire – is the fundamental ingredient of a working nuclear fusion reactor, a dream scientists have been trying to realise for decades.

Continue reading “A Huge Fusion Experiment in The UK Just Achieved The Much Anticipated ‘First Plasma’” »

Nov 4, 2020

Building a star in a smaller jar

Posted by in categories: nuclear energy, physics

Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) have gained a better understanding of a promising method for improving the confinement of superhot fusion plasma using magnetic fields. Improved plasma confinement could enable a fusion reactor called a spherical tokamak to be built smaller and less expensively, moving the world closer to reproducing on Earth the fusion energy that powers the sun and stars.

The improved confinement is made possible by the so-called enhanced pedestal (EP) H-mode, a variety of the high performance, or H-mode, that has been observed for decades in tokamaks around the world. When a enters H-mode, it requires less heating to get to the superhot temperatures necessary for fusion reactions.

The new understanding reveals some of the underlying mechanics of EP H-mode, a condition that researchers discovered more than a decade ago. Scientists led by physicists at PPPL have now found that the EP H-mode improves upon H-mode in spherical tokamaks by lowering the density of the plasma edge.

Nov 4, 2020

ITER: Assembly of world’s largest nuclear fusion reactor begins | DW News

Posted by in categories: nuclear energy, particle physics

Nuclear fusion is the great hope for generating clean power. Scientists in France have started assembling an enormous international fusion reactor known by the acronym ITER. It has already taken ten years and a global scientific effort to get this far. And now the main construction at the huge complex in southern France will begin, with components sent from all over the world. The idea is to create energy not by splitting atoms like nuclear power stations do now, but by fusing them together.

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Continue reading “ITER: Assembly of world’s largest nuclear fusion reactor begins | DW News” »

Nov 1, 2020

$70 Million Nuclear Fusion Machine Is Turned on in the U.K

Posted by in category: nuclear energy

A new spherical tokamak in the U.K. could overcome one of the biggest hurdles to nuclear fusion power: the “exhaust problem”.

Oct 30, 2020

United Kingdom lights up its unusual fusion reactor

Posted by in categories: nuclear energy, particle physics

The United Kingdom’s revamped fusion reactor, known as the Mega Amp Spherical Tokamak (MAST) Upgrade, powered up for the first time yesterday after a 7-year build. The £55 million device will be a testbed for technologies critical to all future fusion reactors, and may provide a stepping stone to a new design of energy-producing facility.

Tokamaks are the frontrunners in the decadeslong effort to generate energy by fusing light elements together. These doughnut-shaped vessels contain a superhot ionized gas—or plasma—of hydrogen isotopes that is constrained with powerful magnets and heated by microwaves and particle beams. (ITER, a gigantic tokamak under construction in France, is a major focus of global efforts to realize fusion power.)

MAST is a variation on the standard tokamak; it is shaped more like a cored apple than a doughnut. Researchers believe that shape can confer greater stability in the roiling plasma than a doughnut-shaped tokamak, but it is less well understood than the traditional design. MAST first tested the concept on a large scale starting in 1999 and has now been upgraded with extra heating power, new technology for extracting heat from the plasma, and other improvements. A parallel effort at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, called the National Spherical Torus Experiment (NSTX), was similarly upgraded. Soon after restarting in 2016, however, NSTX suffered a magnet failure and is now being rebuilt.

Oct 28, 2020

Russia Hacks Into U.S. Power Plants, But Nuclear Reactors Should Be Impervious

Posted by in categories: cybercrime/malcode, internet, nuclear energy

But what about nuclear? Are we at risk of cyber-induced meltdowns or releases of radiation?

No.

Fortunately, while the Russians may be able to disrupt electricity transmission in general, and electricity generation from many power plants like natural gas and wind farms, they can’t hack into nuclear power plant operations. Nuclear plants are still mostly analog and not connected to the Internet.

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