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Stories about: nuclear fusion


ITER Fire-Up Delayed Again

Scientists assessing the difficulties related to the construction of the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) facility in southern France have recently revealed that it may be unfeasible to fire up the reactor as soon as 2018, as current plans have it. The multi-billion-euro nuclear fusion test rea...

20 November 2009
15:31 GMT

Global Uranium Reserves Are Running Low

Over the past few years, governments around the world have started turning their attention to nuclear energy again, mostly because other energetic sectors are becoming increasingly susceptible to price fluctuations on the international market. With global warming and climate change, using fossil fuels becomes an incr...

17 November 2009
10:00 GMT

How to Make Helical Plasma Self-Organize

Learning how to control a plasma flow is something that is absolutely essential in the field of nuclear-fusion research. At this point, physicists keep the stuff in place using magnetic confinement fields, but the method is worthless if the experts don't know what plasma can and cannot do, and also how it behave...

3 November 2009
04:05 GMT

Non-Linear Physics Modeled with the Roadrunner

Scientists at the US Department of Energy's (DOE) Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) are currently using the world's most advanced supercomputer to assist colleague physicists in determining the best way to go about obtaining nuclear fusion. The first machine to break the petaflop barrier is now being us...

29 October 2009
03:59 GMT

ITER Construction Phase Begins 2010

The Construction Phase of the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) facility will not begin until spring 2010, roughly one year after preliminary work at the construction site has been finished, officials have announced. The delay was caused by the fact that the participants in the project had not y...

14 October 2009
05:36 GMT

How to Keep Nuclear Fusion Plasma Contained

The US Department of Energy (DOE) has recently awarded a $7-million research grant to a scientific group, made up of experts from the University of California in San Diego (UCSD), the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and the University of California in Berkeley (UCB), for research related to advancing nuc...

15 September 2009
06:34 GMT

Nuclear Fusion Switch: Tungsten Ions to Replace Sodium

While advocates of healthy eating look for options of substituting sodium in salt, nuclear physicists working on making nuclear fusion a reality are also looking for substitutes of their own. They have thus far discovered that sodium-like tungsten ions could successfully replace the troublesome element, and that they...

11 September 2009
06:01 GMT

Startup Shows New Method of Obtaining Nuclear Fusion

The Vancouver, Canada-based start-up General Fusion has recently announced that it will begin work on a new type of nuclear fusion reactor as soon as it can pull enough funds together to do so. Experts from the company believe that they could have a working prototype within the next ten years, and that the entire pro...

31 July 2009
01:09 GMT

The NIF Will Create a Star in the Lab

The National Ignition Facility in California is the largest laser instrument in the world, and it's scheduled to come online later this year. The beginning of scientific experiments at the laboratory will also mean that the first artificial star will be created on the planet, BBC News reports. That is to say, ex...

24 May 2009
15:01 GMT

High-Density Deuterium Could Become Nuclear Fusion Fuel

A few years ago, if someone would have told a scientist that humans will end up producing materials that are more dense than the core of the Sun, they wouldn't have believed it. Still, this is true now. Researchers at the University of Gothenburg are working on creating ultra-dense deuterium (more commonly known...

13 May 2009
05:34 GMT

NIF Ready to Prove Nuclear Fusion Sustainable

Recreating the conditions that exist within the Sun has been a long-term desire for physicists, and it would appear that scientists in the US are very close to finally fulfilling this dream. The country's National Ignition Facility (NIF) is, according to officials, operational and ready for action. The device is...

31 March 2009
06:19 GMT

Bringing Nuclear Fusion One Step Closer

The dream of developing a method of obtaining nuclear fusion has been a long-standing one for physicists, ever since the idea was first proposed. Basically, cold fusion is the opposite process of nuclear fission, the method that is currently used in atomic power plants to produce electricity. These facilities split a...

24 March 2009
05:02 GMT

Giant Lasers to Scout Exoplanets

The National Ignition Facility (NIF) now boasts a brand new laser facility, designed primarily to assist the military with fusion data related to various experimental information. The “mega-laser” is one of the most powerful on Earth, and only recently have scientists come to see that the device could...

28 February 2009
04:53 GMT

Hydrogen Compounds Can Be Turned Into Metal

Extremely high temperatures and pressures are all it takes to transform various compounds of hydrogen into substances that exhibit metal-like properties. As they lose electrons, germane, methane and silane, just a few of hydrogen's compounds, behave very differently than they do in their natural state, and may e...

12 January 2009
11:13 GMT

Nuclear Fusion Plasma Movement Method Devised at MIT

Keeping the flow of plasma – an electrically-charged stream of gas heated at millions of degrees – has been a major obstacle in the path of developing a sustainable nuclear fusion reaction, as turbulences and drops in temperature interfered with the difficult process of merging the similarly-charged nucle...

4 December 2008
02:43 GMT

Nuclear Fusion Will Become Reality by 2011

The concept of nuclear fusion is something that scientists dream about ever since the mid 1940s, after the fission reaction was first obtained, and the first atom bomb was created. Since then, nuclear energy became a part of our daily lives, with plants being built all across the globe, from Korea to India, the US, C...

14 November 2008
11:03 GMT

One Step Closer to Bringing the Sun on Earth

An important step towards the creation of the first commercial nuclear fusion reactor has been taken last week as the South Korean authorities revealed that the KSTAR reactor, short for Korea Superconducting Tokamak Advanced Reactor, conducted its first experiment by producing a sustained field of super-hot plasma. T...

15 July 2008
07:04 GMT

Stellarator Type Nuclear Fusion Reactor Beginning to Take Shape

The first phase of the build of the world's largest nuclear fusion reactor experiment, Wendelstein 7-X, has been completed with the installation of the first two half-modules, thus achieving 20 percent of the assembly of the inner core. All essential components of the reactor are ready for assembly, but even so,...

14 March 2008
07:01 GMT

Astronomers Predict the Existence of Strange Supernova Type

Supernova explosions are generally triggered by a unbalance between the gravitational force produced by the star and the thermonuclear fusion reactions. Nonetheless, astronomers argue that such explosions could be determined through more stronger interactions, like those between a white dwarf and a medium size black ...

30 January 2008
04:49 GMT

White Dwarfs Stay Young by Eating Planets

Imagine staying younger and fit for a longer time just by eating, instead of getting older and fat... if only this process would be available for all of us. Last week took place the annual American Astronomical Society meeting in Austin, Texas, where astronomers presented the results of some of the latest studies con...

18 January 2008
08:54 GMT

Old Stars can Form Planets too!

That's like having an 80 year old woman giving birth to a baby. The natural process of planetary formation, as astronomical observations proved in multiple situations, usually takes place in the first 10 to 100 million years of the star's life. However, it seems that this is not always the case. Old stars, ...

10 January 2008
06:31 GMT

Nuclear Fusion Gets $1.4 Billion Boost

There is only one word on everyone's lips today: energy. And how to produce it more efficiently, without polluting the planet. The International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, or ITER for short, has recently received a contribution of 1.4 billion dollars from the Republic of China, which covers about 10 pe...

8 January 2008
10:16 GMT

No Helium, No More Funny Voices and Balloons!

Incredible as it may seem, the second most abundant element in the universe after hydrogen will soon be unavailable for Earth. Helium gas represents 8 percent of the total mass observed in the universe, but the reserves of the largest helium mining facility located in Texas are predicted to deplete in about eight ye...

7 January 2008
03:47 GMT

Global Warming Announces Nuclear Power Comeback

Though nuclear power was at first viewed as a great source of alternative energy, in the last three decades many countries turned their back on it. Now under the threat of global warming, the nuclear industry seems to be in vogue again. Nuclear power produces great quantities of electric energy, without emitting sign...

20 November 2007
07:03 GMT


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