Feature Channels: Nuclear Physics

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Nuclear scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory have developed an algorithm for estimating the capital cost of building advanced nuclear reactor designs.

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The U.S. Department of Energy has awarded more than $20 million to help national laboratories across the country collaborate with U.S. businesses to speed promising energy technologies to the marketplace. Argonne National Laboratory received $4.3 million from DOE to fund 12 projects across six divisions.

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Researchers from the Transportation Technology Center Inc. (TTCI) are using neutrons at DOE’s ORNL to study how rails used in railway tracks wear away over time. A better understanding will help TTCI develop improved rail simulation models and other applications to enhance rail durability for increased safety and performance.

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In magnetic confinement fusion devices known as tokamaks, the maximum operational density limits the efficiency and now we know how this limit may be overcome.

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Canada’s particle accelerator centre unveils top three contenders for the international 2018 Global Physics Photowalk competition

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A cross-disciplinary team of chemists and physicists from Washington University in St. Louis is building a better computer chip to improve detection and surveillance for the illegal transport of nuclear materials at U.S. borders. The work is part of a new, five-year, $10 million collaboration in low-energy nuclear science led by Texas A&M University.

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A new study carried out at the Department of Energy's Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility has confirmed that increasing the number of neutrons as compared to protons in the atom’s nucleus also increases the average momentum of its protons. The nuclear physics result, which has implications for the dynamics of neutron stars, has been published in the journal Nature.

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Blocking nuclear gateways that traffic cancer-promoting molecules to nucleus, could offer a new way to target aggressive cancer.

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The first-ever computation of an atomic nucleus, the deuteron, on a quantum chip demonstrates that even today’s rudimentary quantum computers can solve nuclear physics questions.

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Proton-irradiated thorium targets are successfully mined for therapeutic radium isotopes.

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In nature, the nuclear reactions that form stars are often accompanied by astronomically high amounts of energy, a challenge for nuclear astrophysicists trying to study these reactions; the chances of re-creating such a spark are unfathomably low. However, after recent renovations to its accelerator, one laboratory reported record-breaking performance. Following six years of upgrades to the Electron Cyclotron Resonance Ion Source at the Laboratory for Experimental Nuclear Astrophysics, researchers report improved results, discussed in Review of Scientific Instruments.

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The Electron-Ion Collider Center at the Department of Energy’s Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility (EIC Center at Jefferson Lab) has announced the winners of four fellowships to pursue research related to a proposed electron-ion collider over the next year.

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The following statement is being issued by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility and Brookhaven National Laboratory—along with the Electron-Ion Collider User Group—in response to a report issued today by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine on the scientific case for a U.S.-based Electron-Ion Collider (EIC). Jefferson Lab and Brookhaven scientists are part of the vibrant community that has come together to tackle the scientific and technological challenges of designing and building a U.S.-based EIC, drawing on the expertise and existing infrastructure at the two labs.

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Alessandro Baroni is helping demystify one of the most mysterious particles. His work is contributing to our understanding of neutrinos, and it has earned him the 2017 Jefferson Science Associates Thesis Prize for work performed on a thesis related to research at the Department of Energy’s Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility

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Competing in a fictitious high-stakes scenario, a group of scientists at Berkeley Lab bested two dozen other teams in a months-long, data-driven scavenger hunt for simulated radioactive materials in a virtual urban environment. The goal of this event was both to improve the detection methods that could be applied to actual threats involving nuclear materials, and to create a platform to virtually vet out these methods.

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On July 26th, 2018, TRIUMF will welcome twenty photographers on an exclusive, two-hour behind-the-scenes tour of its facility as part of the 2018 Global Physics Photowalk

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The program to extend the life of the W80 nuclear warhead recently passed a significant milestone when the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) gave passing grades to the plans to refurbish certain components and the proposed approach to developing component cost estimates.

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The ability to perfectly control the process of laying thin films of material onto the surface of an inexpensive metal may be all it takes to produce more efficient and cheaper particle accelerators for a wide range of applications.

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Supercomputers have the power to unlock the secrets of subatomic particles that are hidden deep inside everyday matter. But they can’t do it on their own: They require experts to use their knowledge of the theory subatomic to set up the problems to be calculated and provide insight into the results. Raul Briceño has been awarded a DOE Early Career Award to do just that, as he develops and implements a first-of-its-kind universal framework for these studies.

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The recent completion of the 12 GeV Upgrade of the Continuous Electron Beam Accelerator Facility has opened up a new realm for exploration of the particles and forces that give rise to our universe. Making the most of this opportunity takes collaborations of the best and brightest minds in nuclear physics applying a bit of intellectual elbow grease.

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Scientists obtain the first exclusive measurement of deeply virtual Compton scattering of electrons off helium-4, vital to obtaining an unambiguous 3-D view of quarks and gluons within nuclei.

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Elegant techniques of trapping and polarizing atoms open vistas for beta-decay tests of fundamental symmetries, key to understanding the most basic forces and particles constituting our universe.

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Three young scientists affiliated with Jefferson Lab win grants to support research for building better accelerators and for using Jefferson Lab’s recently upgraded accelerator and supercomputers to suss out new information about subatomic particles.

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Nuclear engineering expert George Xu, the Edward E. Hood Jr. Endowed Chair of Engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, has been selected to receive the Distinguished Scientific Achievement Award of the Health Physics Society. The award will be given during the 2018 Annual Meeting in Cleveland, Ohio, July 15-19 at the Huntington Cleveland Convention Center.

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Three talented young researchers at Los Alamos National Laboratory are among the recipients of the highly valued Early Career Research Program Funding awards from the US Department of Energy’s Office of Science. This is the ninth year DOE has provided the awards, designed to bolster the nation’s scientific workforce with support to exceptional researchers during their early careers.

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A new measurement using a beam of aluminum-26 prepared in a metastable state allows researchers to better understand the creation of the elements in our galaxy.

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Steven Cowley, newly named director of the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) effective July 1, has received a knighthood from Queen Elizabeth “for services to science and the development of nuclear fusion.”

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Physicists on the MicroBooNE collaboration at the Department of Energy’s Fermilab have produced their first collection of science results. The measurements are of three independent quantities that describe neutrino interactions with argon atoms.

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The size of a nucleus appears to influence the direction of certain particles emitted from collisions with spinning protons.

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With a better understanding of bubbly flows, researchers can improve the safety and operation of our nuclear reactors.

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Today two experiments at the Large Hadron Collider announced a discovery that finally links the two heaviest known particles: the top quark and the Higgs boson. The CMS and ATLAS experiments have seen simultaneous production of both particles during a rare subatomic process.

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As TRIUMF looks to the next 50 years, a new operations leader will help further enable and enhance the laboratory’s world-class research programs and services

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A library of nuclear reaction information first published in 1968 undergoes its eighth major update, which will be used by scientists and engineers worldwide in applications including nuclear physics, astrophysics, energy, medicine, and nonproliferation and safety.

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Supercomputer simulations of neutrons' inner turmoil and a new method that filters out "noise" yield the highest-ever precision calculation of nucleon axial coupling, a property crucial to predicting neutron lifetime.

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A team led by Berkeley Lab researchers has enlisted powerful supercomputers to calculate a quantity, known as the “nucleon axial coupling” or gA, that is central to our understanding of a neutron’s lifetime.

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The latest in space and astronomy in the Space News Source

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Scientists are developing better models that describe both neutrino and antineutrino data, which can offer insights into the nature of the universe.

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Inside every proton in every atom in the universe is a pressure cooker environment that surpasses the atom-crushing heart of a neutron star. That’s according to the first measurement of a mechanical property of subatomic particles, the pressure distribution inside the proton, which was carried out by scientists at the Department of Energy's Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility.

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Being repulsive can have its advantages. In the case of an experiment at Los Alamos National Laboratory’s linear accelerator, a repulsive magnetic field and a clever detector system are allowing ultracold neutrons to be levitated so their actual lifetimes can be more accurately measured.

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When whistler waves are present in a fusion plasma, runaway electrons pay attention. A research team led by the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory is the first to directly observe the elusive waves inside a highly energized magnetic field as electrons zoom around the plasma.

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DOE and MURR partner to ensure scientists have access to essential research isotopes.

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Scientists obtain the first exclusive measurement of deeply virtual Compton scattering of electrons off helium-4, vital to obtaining an unambiguous 3-D view of quarks and gluons within nuclei.

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Earlier today, April 16, 2018, U.S. Secretary of Energy Rick Perry and India’s Atomic Energy Secretary Dr. Sekhar Basu signed an agreement in New Delhi to expand the two countries’ collaboration on world-leading science and technology projects. It opens the way for jointly advancing cutting-edge neutrino science projects under way in both countries: the Long-Baseline Neutrino Facility (LBNF) with the international Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE) hosted at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Fermilab and the India-based Neutrino Observatory (INO).

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Special report details serious concerns that medical community would be able to do much, if anything, to assist people in event of major nuclear event. Prevention is best option as well as carefully conceived, long-term plan within the public education system to provide lessons on radiation biology

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A team at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory has designed and synthesized a selective molecular trap that can separate the minor actinide element americium from a mixture of americium and the lanthanide elements.

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Harnessing the unusual characteristics of elusive subatomic particles known as antineutrinos, the University of California, Irvine will play a key role in a nuclear nonproliferation research collaboration between U.S. and U.K. laboratories and universities.

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While the international nonproliferation community inspects known nuclear power reactors, a major concern is that nations could build smaller, secret reactors to produce materials for weapons. Now, University of Michigan researchers are involved in an effort to build a prototype of a detector that may one day identify undeclared sites from a neighboring country. The initiative, known as the Advanced Instrumentation Testbed (AIT), seeks to detect nearly-massless particles produced when a nuclear reactor is running. In addition to revealing the presence of secret reactors, these particles can signal when nuclear reactors are running or shut down. The on/off cycle can indicate whether reactors are being used to produce energy or plutonium, a metal that provides explosive power in nuclear weapons.

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TRIUMF welcomed Her Excellency the Right Honourable Julie Payette, Governor General of Canada, as part of her first official visit to British Columbia. 

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A team of researchers has compiled a database of information from five fusion machines and found that halo currents could damage the walls of fusion devices like ITER, the international experiment under construction in France to demonstrate the feasibility of fusion power.

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The first smashups of two new types of particles at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider will offer fresh insight into the effects of magnetism on the fireball of matter created in these collisions.