Feature Channels: Nuclear Power

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A years-long study that involved scientists and experiments at Berkeley Lab and UC Berkeley concluded that an odd assortment of particles found in beach sands in Japan are most likely fallout debris from the 1945 Hiroshima A-bomb blast.

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Researchers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and Washington State University teamed up to investigate the complex dynamics of low-water liquids that challenge nuclear waste processing at federal cleanup sites.

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In 2013, Timothy Koeth received an extraordinary gift: a heavy metal cube and a crumpled message that read, “Taken from Germany, from the nuclear reactor Hitler tried to build. Gift of Ninninger.” Koeth accepted the cube and its note as an invitation to the adventure of a lifetime. In Physics Today, Koeth and Miriam Hiebert describe what they’ve discovered while exploring the German quest and failure to build a working nuclear reactor during WWII.

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As a central player in a new collaboration that brings together U.S. Department of Energy national laboratories, General Electric and other commercial organizations and universities, Argonne is working to develop a new advanced nuclear reactor called the Versatile Test Reactor.

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Students from Wayzata High School in Plymouth, Minnesota, won the 2019 U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) National Science Bowl® (NSB) today in Washington, D.C. In the middle school competition, students from Jonas Clarke Middle School in Lexington, Massachusetts, took home first place.

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Oregon State University’s Radiation Detection Group, headed by Abi Farsoni, associate professor of nuclear science and engineering, is designing and building more efficient and affordable radiation detection devices used to monitor nuclear weapon tests.

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Three Boise State students in the Micron School of Materials Science and Engineering have been awarded financial support for their nuclear energy research through the Department of Energy Integrated University Program.

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An accident had occurred at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant on March 28, 1979 that led to a release of radioactivity into the atmosphere. This is how the National Atmospheric Release Advisory Center (NARAC) was born.

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ORNL used artificial intelligence to analyze data about bullying to reveal potential of broader impacts; flexible sensor wraps around power cables to monitor electrical loads from household appliances; ORNL is evaluating paths for licensing remotely operated microreactors; ORNL used carbon nanotubes to improve process that removes salt from water

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To accelerate the process of identifying novel uranium oxide phases, an ORNL team studied 4,600 different potential crystal structures of uranium oxide compositions on Metis, a CADES high-performance computing cluster. An improved understanding of uranium oxides, which fuel the vast majority of the U.S. nuclear power fleet, could lead to the development of improved fuels or waste storage materials.

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Forty years after the 1979 near-meltdown at Three Mile Island, thyroid cancer is on the upswing. Is radiation the culprit? Dr. David Goldenberg discusses his research and how to cure the disease.

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Profiled is Kevin Field at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, who synthesizes and scrutinizes materials for nuclear power systems that must perform safely and efficiently over decades of irradiation.

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Brookhaven Lab has published the second edition of Deterring Nuclear Proliferation: The Importance of IAEA Safeguards, a textbook that provides a history of the origins of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and introduces the ways in which IAEA verifies nation states’ nuclear nonproliferation commitments.

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An unassuming pulse of light illuminates a possible way to separate a troubling element, americium, from a soup of similar elements. The diverse team at the Center for Actinide Science & Technology Energy Frontier Research Center is finding fast, efficient, safe ways to separate compounds.

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Information on the 2019 American Physical Society April Meeting in Denver, which explores research from “Quarks to Cosmos.” It runs from Saturday, April 13 through Tuesday, April 16 at the Sheraton Denver Downtown Hotel. At the meeting, the latest breaking research in particle and astrophysics will be presented -- from long views of massive, ancient objects in the universe to short-lived, subatomic interactions. The meeting will also feature thoughtful presentations by experts in education, policy, the history of physics, and many other areas.

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U.S., Japanese scientists team together for solutions

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An intense, diverse group at the IDREAM Energy Frontier Research Center is providing answers around aluminum and other troublemakers in waste from Cold War-era nuclear arsenal production.

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Papers on nuclear receptor function in zebrafish; and whether PCB 95 and dendritic arborization effects are sex-dependent are featured in latest issue of Toxicological Sciences.

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Mar. 11 marks the 8th anniversary of Japan’s Tohuku earthquake. The tsunami that followed led to the meltdown of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, which spread radioactive materials throughout the area. The Soil Science Society of America (SSSA) Mar. 1 blog explores the impact this has had on the farming village of Iitate, Japan.

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DHS S&T and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) developed standard test methods for robots, which the Japanese government is now beginning to apply directly to their Fukushima cleanup efforts.

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Fully vested in advancing nuclear technology since its inception in 1946, the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory helped complete detailed analyses of what potential transitions to a new nuclear energy future might look like.

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The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) has approved Critical Decision-1 (CD-1) for the Advanced Sources and Detectors Project (ASD), a cornerstone of the Enhanced Capabilities for Subcritical Experiments portfolio (ECSE). ASD is a proposed 20-million electron volt (MeV) accelerator that will generate X-ray images, or radiographs, of subcritical implosion experiments for the nuclear weapons program.

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Using neutron characterization techniques a team of scientists have peered inside one of the most unique examples of wire gold, understanding for the first time the specimen's structure and possible formation process. The 263 gram, 12 centimeter tall specimen, known as the Ram's Horn, belongs to the collection of the Mineralogical and Geological Museum Harvard University (MGMH).

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A Rutgers-led team has discovered two genes that make some strains of harmful Staphyloccocus bacteria resistant to treatment by copper, a potent and frequently used antibacterial agent. The discovery shows that Staphyloccocus aureus can acquire additional genes that promote infections and antibacterial resistance and may open new paths for the development of antibacterial drugs, according to a study in the Journal of Biological Chemistry.

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A scavenger study that used fish carcasses as bait provides additional evidence that wildlife is abundant in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone.

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The proposed, multimillion-dollar offshore wind farms industry may benefit from a Rutgers-led study that used sophisticated forecasting to understand sea breezes and make them a more predictable source of energy.

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A team of researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute has developed a new microfluidics-assisted technique for developing high-performance macroscopic graphene fibers. Graphene fiber, a recently discovered member of the carbon fiber family, has potential applications in diverse technological areas, from energy storage, electronics and optics, electro-magnetics, thermal conductor and thermal management, to structural applications.

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Feature summarizes and links to discoveries and breakthroughs at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory in 2018, plus a profile of the knight who leads the laboratory.

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Scientists and engineers at Brookhaven Lab just completed the production and assembly of 216 exceptional quality magnets for an innovative accelerator under construction at Cornell University.

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The Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory is collaborating with industry on six new projects focused on advancing commercial nuclear energy technologies that offer potential improvements to current nuclear reactors and move new reactor designs closer to deployment.

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Documenting the reactions that take place inside an active nuclear reactor is incredibly tough – high temperatures, corrosion, pressure, fission gas production, microstructure and cracks (among other things) make accurate data collection difficult.

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Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory researchers have introduced a new class of metamaterials that can nearly instantly respond and stiffen 3D-printed structures when exposed to a magnetic field, a development that could be applied to next-generation helmets, wearable armor and a host of other innovations.

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A "friendly" electromagnetic pulse (EMP) at Sandia National Laboratories enables military users and others to better insulate their product against an energy pulse that could be set off by a nuclear weapon exploded high above the United States.

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New Mexico contains hundreds of historic uranium mines. Although active uranium mining in the state has ceased, rates of cardiovascular and metabolic disease remain high in the population residing close to mines within the Navajo Nation. According to a new study in ACS’ journal Environmental Science & Technology Letters, inhaled uranium in dusts from the mines could be a factor.

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Decades ago, technical experts from the national labs responded in an ad hoc manner to accidents involving nuclear weapons, called “broken arrows.” Thirty-two such accidents have occurred since the 1950s, so the Accident Response Group was created about five decades ago to provide technical expertise in assessing and safely resolving nuclear weapons accidents.

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New, easily prepared starting material opens access to learning more about a difficult-to-control element in nuclear waste.

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Justin Schwartz, the Harold and Inge Marcus Dean of Engineering, said separating the programs will allow each to grow, as well as focus on their individual strengths.

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A new high-resolution gamma-ray detector system – designed to reveal new details about atomic nuclei – has passed an important project milestone.

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LOS ALAMOS, N.M., November 1, 2018 -- Los Alamos National Laboratory begins operations today under a new management and operating (M&O) contract between Triad National Security, LLC (Triad) and the U.S. Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA). The NNSA awarded the M&O contract to Triad on June 8, 2018.

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Either exorbitantly expensive fuel or insanely hot temperatures have made fuel cells a boutique proposition, but now there's one that runs on cheap methane and at much lower temperatures. This is a practical, affordable fuel cell and a "sensation in our world," the engineers say.

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A dormant volcano in Antarctica helped researchers at Sandia National Laboratories improve sensor data readings to better detect earthquakes and explosions and tune out everyday sounds such as traffic and footsteps. Finding the ideal settings for each sensor in a network to detect vibrations in the ground, or seismic activity, can be a painstaking and manual process. Researchers at Sandia are working to change that by using software that automatically adjusts the seismic activity detection levels for each sensor. Sandia tested the new software with seismic data from the Mt. Erebus volcano in Antarctica and achieved 18 percent fewer false detections and 11 percent fewer missed detections than the original performance of the sensors on Mt. Erebus.

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Led by Oregon State University College of Engineering professor emeritus Jose Reyes, NuScale Power intends to become the first company to introduce Small Modular Reactor (SMR) technology to the world. NuScale's unconventional SMR design is unlike anything status quo. SMRs are economic, factory built, shippable, scalable, and they are capable of providing power to areas with limited infrastructure or access to water. Most importantly, they provide something we must have — a reactor that cannot melt down.

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Fuel cell efficiency of hydrogen fuel cells decreases as the Nafion membrane, used to separate the anode and cathode within a fuel cell, swells as it interacts with water. Russian and Australian researchers have now shown that this Nafion separator membrane partially unwinds some of its constituent fibers, which then protrude away from the surface into the bulk water phase for hundreds of microns. Their results were published in this week’s Journal of Chemical Physics.

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A new rocket program could help cut research and development time for new weapons systems from as many as 15 years to less than five. Sandia National Laboratories developed the new program, called the High Operational Tempo Sounding Rocket Program, or HOT SHOT, and integrated it for its first launch earlier this year under the National Nuclear Security Administration's direction.

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ORNL story tips: Recycled hard drives give magnets new life in motors; new organ-on-a-chip design to test radiation effects on cells that mimic breathing; supercomputers analyze molecules that could increase yield of certain rare earth elements important for energy applications