Small modular reactors could play key role in rebuilding a clean economy in post-war Ukraine. Argonne scientists will assess the emerging technology in new research.
The American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) has been selected as one of four implementers to support the Clean Steel Program in Ukraine, a key effort under the Foundational Infrastructure for the Responsible Use of Small Modular Reactor Technology (FIRST) Program launched in 2019.
Since 1945 the world has lived under the threat of nuclear weapons. So far, we have thankfully managed to avoid the disaster caused by a nuclear war. Have we been lucky? As the world faces an increasingly uncertain global security environment, Open Nuclear Network (ONN), a Programme of PAX sapiens, and the Forecasting Research Institute (FRI) have produced a study, with the largest number of nuclear weapons policy experts ever asked to forecast the likelihood of and strategies for preventing nuclear catastrophes.
Dr. Ho-Il Ji from the Hydrogen Energy Materials Research Center at the Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST) announced that they have developed a new synthesis method that can significantly reduce the sintering temperature required for the densification process of the electrolyte in next-generation high-efficiency protonic ceramic cells.
Discerning whether a nuclear reactor is being used to also create material for nuclear weapons is difficult, but capturing and analyzing antimatter particles has shown promise for monitoring what specific nuclear reactor operations are occurring, even from hundreds of miles away. Researchers have developed a detector that exploits Cherenkov radiation, sensing antineutrinos and characterizing their energy profiles from miles away as a way of monitoring activity at nuclear reactors. They proposed to assemble their device in northeast England and detect antineutrinos from reactors from all over the U.K. as well as in northern France.
Three Mile Island, the nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania that’s been shuttered since 2019, could come back to life to meet Microsoft’s energy needs. ...
An international collaboration to protect the world from nuclear threats got a boost in 2023 when a visiting researcher brought an understudied plutonium processing chemistry method to Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) for hands-on research. “It’s not trivial to bring an outside researcher to PNNL and get them working in a glove box,” said PNNL nuclear forensics scientist and technical group leader Dave Meier.
Ensuring that scientific funding goes to states and territories that have typically received smaller fractions of federal research dollars in the past, the Department of Energy (DOE) today announced $36 million in funding for 39 research projects in 19 states via the Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR). The grants connect innovative ideas from scientists at eligible institutions with leading-edge capabilities at the DOE national laboratories.
Testing weapons and components in a lab-controlled environment has always been at the center of Sandia National Laboratories’ mission. A newly developed method is getting better results, with fewer tests, in less time.
The fusion of two nuclei is a complex process influenced by the relative energy and angular momentum of the nuclei and how their structures evolve as they collide. In this study, the researchers performed the most comprehensive computation to date of fusion reaction processes.
An assessment ranks the feasibility of converting 245 operational coal power plants in the U.S. into advanced nuclear reactors, providing valuable insights for policymakers and utilities to meet decarbonization goals, according to a new study by University of Michigan researchers.
The safety and efficiency of a large, complex nuclear reactor can be enhanced by hardware as simple as a tiny sensor that monitors a cooling system. That’s why researchers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory are working to make those basic sensors more accurate by pairing them with electronics that can withstand the intense radiation inside a reactor.