My Life Playing with Radiation

[thenuclearblog]

How the Starfish Prime Nuclear Bomb Worked – blowing up the radiation belts for science

How Stuff Works > Brain Stuff

by Marshall Brain | July 2, 2010

Imagine you are a scientist. In 1958 there is a big discovery – some of the very first satellites launched by the United States discover the Van Allen radiation belts. Over the next couple of years they are further studied and characterized by more satellites.

So imagine that you are a scientist, and there are no nuclear proliferation or testing bans in place yet. What’s the next thing you would do? Perhaps you would launch a nuclear bomb into space and try blowing up the belts, just to see what would happen. That, in essence, was the Starfish Prime project, which is described in vivid detail in this video.

read more…

[thenuclearblog]

27th Anniversary Of Chernobyl Nuclear Disaster Marked

By Newsroom America Staff April 26th, 2013 at 3:29 pm Eastern

(Newsroom America) -- UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today marked the 27th anniversary of the worst nuclear power plant accident in history by stressing that the impact of the Chernobyl disaster must never be forgotten and calling for continued international assistance for the people and regions affected.

“As we today mark 27 years after the Chernobyl disaster, we honour the emergency workers who risked their lives responding to the accident, the more than 330,000 people uprooted from their homes and the millions of people living in contaminated areas who have long been traumatized by lingering fears about their health and livelihoods,” said a Mr Ban in a statement.

“The countless women, men and children affected by radioactive contamination must never be forgotten.”

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[thenuclearblog]

The Past Is Present at Three Mile Island Nuclear Power Plant

By Kasia Klimasinka Oct 20, 2012 12:18 PM CT

photo: Exelon Corp.’s Three Mile Island nuclear power plant, in 2011.

Beyond the cabbage patch and rows of pre-cut Christmas trees, past fruit stands filled with pumpkins and apples, along the bank of the Susquehanna River, sits the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant.

It’s by far the most robust and majestic structure in the neighborhood, an unlikely blend of the Loire Valley Castles in France and Eastern Europe’s Communist-era architecture. Events here three decades ago left the plant half-dead, and with it, U.S. nuclear energy policy.

The worst-ever U.S. nuclear energy accident occurred on March 28, 1979, when the core in Three Mile Island’s Unit 2 overheated and partially melted. The facility had come online just three months earlier. Lacking appropriate real-time monitors and training, operators didn’t realize they had a cooling problem and failed to prevent the accident, according to an accident summary posted on U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission website. Most of the radiation was contained and whatever was released had “a negligible effect” on people outside the plant, who suffered mainly from “mental stress” related to speculation about how serious the accident was, according to the presidential commission report released in Oct. 1979.

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[unassassinofischiettava]

The Tsar Bomba: 57 megatons of TNT 

In the First photo the Tsar Bomba mushroom cloud seen from a distance of 160 km (99.4 miles). The crown of the cloud is 56 km (34.8 miles) high at the time of the picture. In the second one the Tsar Bomba’s fireball, about 8 kilometres (5.0 mi) in diameter, was prevented from touching the ground by the shock wave, but nearly reached the 10.5 kilometres (6.5 mi) altitude of the deployingTu-95 bomber.

[thenuclearblog]

The First Hydrogen Bomb

[scishow]

The Manhattan Project

Some of the greatest advances in science have come from humanity’s more destructive impulses. This is not the fault of science - when we discover powerful truths about the universe it’s up to us to decide how to use them because they can either be boons or banes to the world. There may be no better example of this than the work done by the Manhattan Project - the years long, multinational effort to develop an atomic bomb during World War II. The project created unfathomably destructive weapons and led to a 50 year Cold War with the USSR, but is also the source of a lot of information about the atom we didn’t have before, which has led to advances in many beneficial fields, like energy production and medicine. Science, like history, is always complicated.

[designocalm-blog]

Abyss - Abandoned Construction of Nuclear Power Plant

http://500px.com/photo/1062367

[thenuclearblog]

South Korea makes billion-dollar bet on fusion power

Reactor to be built in 2030s represents a step towards commercial use.

Soo Bin Park

21 January 2013

image: The K-STAR nuclear fusion reactor, in Daejeon, South Korea, will be succeeded by a larger, more ambitious project. EPA/Corbis

South Korea has embarked on the development of a preliminary concept design for a fusion power demonstration reactor in collaboration with the US Department of Energy’s Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) in New Jersey.

The project is provisionally named K-DEMO (Korean Demonstration Fusion Power Plant), and its goal is to develop the design for a facility that could be completed in the 2030s in Daejeon, under the leadership of the country’s National Fusion Research Institute (NFRI).

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[davezumbekphotography]

#first #nuclear #reactor #chicago #radioactive #illinois #atomic #atom #fusion

[thenuclearblog]

“The World’s First Nuclear Reactor was rebuilt at this site in 1943, after initial operation at the University of Chicago. This reactor (CP-2) and the first heavy water moderated reactor (CP-3) were major facilities, around which developed The Arconne National Laboratory. This site was released by the laboratory in 1956 and the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission then buried the reactor here.”

[thenuclearblog]

Scientists: Seawater minerals could help create nuclear power

Science Recorder | Julie Capuano | Friday, January 04, 2013

Seawater contains huge amounts of dissolved metals and other substances which could potentially be useful, but which have remained too expensive to extract in large amounts. Now, scientists with the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) in Tennessee say they have developed a new material which could lead the way to the efficient extraction of dissolved uranium from seawater, providing a huge source of uranium to power nuclear reactors.

“We have shown that our adsorbents can extract five to seven times more uranium at uptake rates seven times faster than the world’s best adsorbents,” said Chris Janke, of the ORNL’s Materials Science and Technology Division.

The material, called HiCap, is produced by combining adsorbent materials produced by the ORNL with high surface area polyethylene fibers. The fibers are able to quickly and selectively pull dissolved metals from the water. The new adsorbent materials are more economical than any previously developed technology to extract substances from seawater, according to the ORNL.

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[fyeahnuclearpower-blog]

1972 ad for the nuclear power industry. Still valid

[roadrunnerkf]

That is a little disturbing, at least for the people working there.

[fyeahnuclearpower-blog]

Not it is not. The sun produces tons and tons more, but people continue to enjoy themselves outside. Nuclear power plants just happen to allow very, very little release of radiation to the public.

[fyeahnuclearpower-blog]

The pro-nuclear Liberal Democrats have won back the parliament in Japan! This is fantastic news for nuclear power!

[haphazardbrooding]

This would be the detonation radius of the “Tsar Bomba”, a 100 megaton nuclear bomb, if if were to be dropped on Los Angeles, California.

Yellow is the fireball radius. Everything is incinerated almost instantaneously.

Green is the radiation radius. Fatality is almost guaranteed from the acute effects of radiation alone. That is, if you survived the blast.

 Red is 20 PSI overpressure. Large buildings are demolished. Concrete buildings are leveled. Fatalities 100%

Gray is 4.6 PSI overpressure. Buildings collapse and injuries are guaranteed.

Orange is the thermal radiation radius. If you weren’t lucky enough to die instantly, then you will suffer 3rd degree burns to all exposed skin. Flammable materials will ignite and forest fires are likely to occur. 

source: NUKEMAP by Alex Wellerstein

[brokenbruised4gottensore-deacti]

Chernobyl

I want to go here so bad!!!!!!!!

[theonlyscout-blog]

I would love to go there. Most of the footage is, in fact, taken in Pripyat; Chernobyl is just the name of the plant.

[fyeahnuclearpower-blog]

Today is the 70th anniversary of the first self-sustained chain reaction. The day that we truly entered the Atomic Age. Celebrate it by supporting nuclear power.

[thenuclearblog]

GIZMODO Eric Limer Dec 1, 2012

The U.S. Dept. of Energy has big plans. They want batteries that are five times more powerful than what we’ve got today, and they want them to be five times cheaper. All that in just five years. It’s a tall order, but they’ve got a plan: recreate the...