As the world is leaving 2021 behind, Germany announced that it will shut down three of its remaining nuclear power plants.
Physicists optimized a nuclear fusion reactor to overcome a problem that causes heat loss and prevents the device from sustaining fusion.
Magnets could be the ‘secret sauce’ required for viable nuclear fusion.
Tokamak Energy, a company working on nuclear fusion technology, has recently announced a major breakthrough in its research and development. Testing of its cryogenic power electronic technology for its superconducting magnet’s high-efficiency operation was, by all accounts, a big success.
The company’s bid to provide the world with near-limitless energy uses a combination of spherical tokamaks and high-temperature superconducting (HTS) magnets. According to reports, tests of the new power electronics showed twice the efficiency of previous systems.
Continue reading “Tokamak Energy Has Just Made a Breakthrough in Nuclear Fusion” »
The idea of a tritium power cell is pretty straightforward: stick enough of the tiny glowing tubes to a photovoltaic panel and your DIY “nuclear battery” will generate energy for the next decade or so. Only problem is that the power produced, measured in a few microwatts, isn’t enough to do much with. But as [Ian Charnas] demonstrates in his latest video, you can eke some real-world use out of such a cell by storing up its power over a long enough period.
As with previous projects we’ve seen, [Ian] builds his cell by sandwiching an array of keychain-sized tritium tubes between two solar panels. Isolated from any outside light, power produced by the panels is the result of the weak green glow given off by the tube’s phosphorus coating as it gets bombarded with electrons. The panels are then used to charge a bank of thin-film solid state batteries, which are notable for their exceptionally low self-discharge rate.
Continue reading “Tetris Handheld Powered By Tritium Cell, Eventually” »
(betavoltaic cell or betavoltaic battery) is a type of nuclear battery which generates electric current from beta particles (electrons) emitted from a radioactive source, using semiconductor junctions. A common source used is the hydrogen isotope tritium. Unlike most nuclear power sources which use nuclear radiation to generate heat which then is used to generate electricity, betavoltaic devices use a non-thermal conversion process, converting the electron-hole pairs produced by the ionization trail of beta particles traversing a semiconductor.[1]
Betavoltaic power sources (and the related technology of alphavoltaic power sources[2]) are particularly well-suited to low-power electrical applications where long life of the energy source is needed, such as implantable medical devices or military and space applications.[1].
A team of theoretical physicists at Griffiths University in Australia are investigating a radical quantum theory of time which posits that there is a asymmetry between time and space.
To explain why time points from the past to the future, scientists have proposed that under the second law of thermodynamics, time itself moves towards increased entropy, a measurement of disorder in a system.
Continue reading “Scientists Are Investigating If Time Warps Near a Nuclear Reactor” »
Let’s nuke our way to the stars!
What is required to get us to other planets? A lot of things but mainly energy. Our current rockets simply can’t produce enough energy to get us that far.
American aerospace engineer, author, and advocate for human exploration of Mars Robert Zubrin has one idea for getting us to space and it’s a rather interesting one. It’s called Nuclear Salt Water Rocket (NSWR) and it replaces traditional chemical propellant with salts of plutonium or 20 p… See more.
Tokamak Energy has announced a more efficient design for the cryogenic electronics in fusion reactors. This provides a 50% reduction in the power needed for the cooling of high-temperature superconducting magnets.
In science fiction stories about contact with extraterrestrial civilisations, there is a problem: What kind of propulsion system could make it possible to bridge the enormous distances between the stars? It cannot be done with ordinary rockets like those used to travel to the moon or Mars. Many more or less speculative ideas about this have been put forward—one of them is the “Bussard collector” or “Ramjet propulsion”. It involves capturing protons in interstellar space and then using them for a nuclear fusion reactor.
Peter Schattschneider, physicist and science fiction author, has now analyzed this concept in more detail together with his colleague Albert Jackson from the USA. The result is unfortunately disappointing for fans of interstellar travel: it cannot work the way Robert Bussard, the inventor of this propulsion system, thought it up in 1960. The analysis has now been published in the scientific journal Acta Astronautica.
