ºÚÁÏÉçapp

In ºÚÁÏÉçapp, beryllium will enter the plasma because it is one of the constituent materials of the fusion chamber walls. The walls get eroded on contact with hot hydrogen plasma leading to the formation of beryllium in gaseous form and beryllium hydrides, BeH and BeH2, present in various forms of electric charge and state.

An international team of physicists has calculated the efficiency of a reaction involving an incoming electron kicking out an electron from the metal beryllium (Be) or its hydrogen compound molecules, in an article about to be published in EPJ D.

?

Fields Medal Cedric Villani, who visited the ºÚÁÏÉçapp site on Thursday 20 December, was the guest of national public radio France Inter "Interactiv" morning program. Asked about "his position on ºÚÁÏÉçapp," he described the project as "a decisive advance towards the decades-old dream of harnessing fusion energy," and "a great human endeavour for which I have great respect."

Susana Reyes, a former ºÚÁÏÉçapp staff member now working at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), has been selected to receive the "2012 Mary Jane Oestmann Professional Women's Achievement Award" by the American Nuclear Society (ANS). The award, established in 1990 to recognize outstanding technical achievement by a woman in the nuclear industry, recognizes Reyes' leadership in developing detailed hazard and safety analyses for both inertial and magnetic fusion facilities, including the National Ignition Facility (NIF) and ºÚÁÏÉçapp, and future power reactors.

What if you could help solve the nuclear waste problem and at the same time give fusion research a new raison d'¨ºtre? A trio of physicists at the University of Texas at Austin have dreamed up a trick to pair nuclear fusion and fission in a way they think could open more promising futures for both technologies.

Their idea is to surround a compact, circular tokamak fusion reactor they have devised with a ring containing the most noxious waste products from nuclear power plants. Neutrons emanating from the fusion reactor would break down long-lived transuranic radio active waste from spent fuel and turn them into much shorter-lived elements.

The net effect would be to convert high-level radio active wastes containing elements like americium and curium, which need to be stored safely for 100,000 years or more¡ªa problem that has derailed big storage projects like Yucca Mountain¡ªinto fission products, such as barium, that fully decay in hundreds of years.

According to a World Resources Institute  study by Ailun Yang and Yiyun Cui, 1,199 new coal-fired plants, with a total installed capacity of 1,401,278 megawatts (MW), are being proposed globally. These projects are spread across 59 countries. China and India together account for 76 percent of the proposed
new coal power capacities.

Coal-fired power plants are the largest contributor to the greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change. In 2010, 61 countries produced coal and 104 countries consumed it. Global coal production reached 7,228.712 million tonnes that year and coal consumption reached 7,238.028 million tonnes. More than 60 percent of the coal consumed was used to generate power.

The massive expansion of Germany's electricity networks to cope with the country's transition away from nuclear to a high share of renewable energy will require investments of up to EUR 42.5 billion (USD 55.4 billion) by 2030, according to a newly released study.

Germany embarked on a path to low-carbon generation with high reliance on renewable energy following political decisions to phase out nuclear power, on which it had hitherto relied for around a quarter of its electricity, in the wake of the 2011 Fukushima nuclear accident in Japan.

However, the country's existing grid is not up to the task of accepting a large share of electricity from solar and wind plants. According to the report by the German Energy Agency (Deutsche Energie-Agentur GmbH, or Dena), the country can expect to invest at least EUR 27.5 billion (USD 35.8 billion) and up to as much as EUR 42.5 billion (USD 55.4 billion) in the massive expansion and rebuilding program that its electricity distribution network will need.

Twenty years ago, EPFL (Ecole Polytechnique F¨¦d¨¦rale de Lausanne) President B. Vittoz clicked on a virtual button that started the first real plasma in the TCV Tokamak. Since then, the counter never stopped increasing; more than 45,000 discharges have now been produced.

Convinced that the ºÚÁÏÉçapp installation is safe, the French government recently granted the fusion project the necessary permission to start construction in Cadarache. There are many firsts to the project. Maintaining transparency has been one of ºÚÁÏÉçapp's most significant features and organizing an enquiry to give the public an opportunity to formulate its opinion has set a new benchmark for openness.

Independent experts assessed the safety of the fusion project and the public was not just taken into confidence but made an integral part of the project construction approval process.

In effect, the two-and-a-half-year effort fully met the requirements set forth by France's own 2006 Nuclear Transparency and Security legislation. If the French government took a bold decision to bring about more transparency and public engagement before nuclear projects are cleared, the clearance given to ºÚÁÏÉçapp tells us that it is indeed possible to meet the stringent requirements laid down by the law.

By Matthew Hole, Plasma Research Laboratory, Australian National University

In the search for new energy sources, one area with potential uses the same process that powers the sun. In part three of the Drum's series on energy, Matthew Hole examines the prospects for fusion power.

To limit the extent of anthropogenic climate change we need to change our energy-intensive behaviour, translate existing technology to non-fossil fuel and commit to developing sustainable and long-term solutions.

There are a few long-term transformative energy options with the capacity to address global energy demand.

At the heart of deuterium-tritium fusion is the neutron. Each fusion event produces neutrons with an enormous amount of energy¡ª14.1 megaelectron volts. This is a million times more energy than is produced by burning coal, and it manifests itself in the speed of the neutrons, which leave the reaction at about 50,000 kilometres per second.

All these lights!

Scientists unveiled last week an unprecedented new look at our planet at night. A global composite image, constructed using cloud-free night images from a new NASA and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) satellite, shows the glow of natural and human-built phenomena across the planet in greater detail than ever before.

Many satellites are equipped to look at Earth during the day, when they can observe our planet fully illuminated by the Sun. With a new sensor aboard the NASA-NOAA Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (NPP) satellite launched last year, scientists now can observe Earth's atmosphere and surface during nighttime hours.

The new sensor, the day-night band of the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS), is sensitive enough to detect the nocturnal glow produced by Earth's atmosphere and the light from a single ship in the sea. Satellites in the US Defense Meteorological Satellite Program have been making observations with low-light sensors for 40 years. But the VIIRS day-night band can better detect and resolve Earth's night lights.

The new, higher resolution composite image of Earth at night was released at a news conference at the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco. This and other VIIRS day-night band images are providing researchers with valuable data for a wide variety of previously unseen or poorly seen events.

Gazprom moves on helium demand

MOSCOW. Blimps long ago lost their value as a means of cargo transportation, military reconnaissance, or anti-aircraft defense; whilst the helium that fills them¡ªmore safely than the combustible hydrogen gas which brought down the Hindenburg in 1937¡ªis sharply increasing its value in other applications. But the United States, which is currently producing most of the world's helium, is short of fresh supplies and low on stocks.

Black hole jets might be molded by magnetism   Even though black holes¡ªby their definition and very nature¡ªare the ultimate hoarders of the Universe (gathering and gobbling up matter and energy to the extent that not even light can escape their gravitational grip), they also often exhibit the odd behavior of flinging vast amounts of material away in the form of jets that erupt hundreds of thousands¡ªif not millions¡ªof light-years out into space. These jets contain superheated plasma that didn't make it past the black hole's event horizon, but rather got "spun up" by its powerful gravity and intense rotation and ended up getting shot outwards as if from an enormous cosmic cannon.   Visible-light Hubble image of the jet emitted by the 3-billion-solar-mass black hole at the heart of galaxy M87 (Feb. 1998) Credit: NASA/ESA and John Biretta (STScI/JHU)

MIT team sees the very first stars   Researchers at MIT, the California Institute of Technology, and the University of California at San Diego have peered so far back in time that they've found matter that pre-dates the creation of heavy elements.   It's generally accepted that in the minutes following the Big Bang, protons and neutrons collided in nuclear fusion reactions to form hydrogen and helium. As the Universe cooled, fusion stopped generating these basic elements, leaving hydrogen as the main constituent of the Universe. Heavier elements, such as carbon and oxygen, formed when the first stars appeared.    

National Ignition Facility seeks new cash

The US Congress had set the end of this year as the deadline for "ignition" at Livermore's giant National Ignition Facility (NIF). Now, the National Nuclear Security Agency in charge of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory says an extension is needed for NIF scientists to consider two very different and untried technical approaches.

Cost of third-generation French nuclear plant rises again   French utility provider Electricit¨¦ de France announced on 3 December that the anticipated cost of the Third Generation European Pressurized Reactor (EPR), under construction in Flamanville, northern France, will be in the range of EUR 8.5 billion, up EUR 5.2 billion from the original 2005 estimate.  

A recruitment drive has been launched by a leading research centre to attract the next generation of hi-tech engineers and scientists. The Culham Centre for Fusion Energy needs to fill 70 vacancies, with successful applicants working on ground-breaking projects across a range of disciplines from electronic engineering to physics.   Today (29 November), the site near Didcot is holding a special open day in a bid to showcase the work available and identify candidates with the right skills.   Head of operations David Martin said: "We are struggling to recruit. Vacancies have built up over the last couple of years as we have moved from pure research to technology and there is lots of competition from the private sector.

Research to develop fusion energy has shown "significant progress" in many areas, according to a new report from the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), a think tank whose members represent some 90 percent of the electricity produced in the United States. At the same time, the report said that a commercial fusion power plant is at least 30 years away, and called for more research on the engineering challenges.

Fascinating images of fusion have captured the judges' hearts in the 2012 German Prize for Science Photography ¡ª two of the five prizes were awarded for images from EFDA Associates' fusion experiments.   Volker Steger's panoramic picture of the inside of the ASDEX-Upgrade tokamak at the Max-Planck Institute for Plasma Physics in Garching won the 4000 euro second prize in the single photo category.   The judges also awarded a special prize to Christian L¨¹nig for his series of 6 black and white images of the Textor tokamak at Forschungszentrum J¨¹lich and the Wendelstein 7-X stellarator at the Max-Planck Institute for Plasma Physics in Greifswald. The full series of images can be found on the Photography Prize's website.  

Forbes reports that at the recent Halifax International Security Forum, which brought together an impressive array of policymakers and thinkers from nearly forty nations, the show was stolen by Taylor Wilson, an 18-year-old nuclear energy entrepreneur from Nevada (US).