Swiss nuclear reactor shuts down due to defect

Switzerland's Beznau nuclear plant will soon boast the "dubious record" of being the oldest nuclear plant in the world and should be shut down, a group of environmental organisations said Thursday.

A 1,000-megawatt reactor at Bulgaria's Kozloduy nuclear plant was temporarily shut down early Saturday due to a turbogenerator problem, but no rise in radioactivity was recorded, a statement said.

A reactor at a nuclear power station in Ukraine has been disconnected from the grid following an electrical failure but radiation levels were not elevated, authorities said on Tuesday.

A small fire in a turbine hall shut down a Swedish nuclear reactor overnight but the blaze was swiftly extinguished, nuclear power plant officials said Sunday.

A reactor at the San Onofre nuclear power plant near San Diego has been shut down after a radiation leak which was not big enough to cause public harm, the US atomic safety agency said Wednesday.

The operator of Japan's crippled Fukushima atomic plant Thursday played down fears of an uncontrolled chain reaction at the site, despite the discovery of evidence of recent nuclear fission.

Buildings can be air-conditioned using entirely natural means, without mechanical ventilation systems. This is the claim made by 78-year-old Benjamin Bronsema, who will be awarded his PhD for his thesis on the subject at ...

(Phys.org) —Grant Schmitz, eyes inches from a 6.5-by-12-foot panel of ultra-high performance concrete, studied the smooth surface for tiny cracks. He and other research engineers carefully marked every ...

Physicist Ernest Moniz won unanimous Senate confirmation Thursday to be the new U.S. energy secretary.

(Phys.org) —The printer has allowed researchers from the Victorian Organic Solar Cell Consortium (VICOSC) – a collaboration between CSIRO, The University of Melbourne, Monash University and industry partners ...

Norwegian research scientists will contribute to realising the concept of storing electricity at the bottom of the sea. The energy will be stored with the help of high water pressure.

A researcher with the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) has developed a novel light-trapping structure to enhance optical absorption inside thin-film silicon solar cells. ...