An international team performed the world's first measurement of how the size of the radium nucleus modifies the structure of molecules containing different radium isotopes. The research used a combination of lasers and ion ...
Impurities in the plasmas in fusion tokamaks can reduce performance. These impurities are created by interactions between the hot plasma and the metal tokamak walls. These walls are often armored with tungsten. This material ...
Fusion power plants use magnetic fields to hold a ball of current-carrying gas (called a plasma). This creates a miniature sun that generates energy through nuclear fusion. The Compact Advanced Tokamak (CAT) concept uses ...
When compounds in spent nuclear fuel break down, they can release radioactive elements and contaminate the ground and water. Scientists know that one spent fuel compound, neptunium dioxide, reacts with water, but they do ...
Teams working on two continents have marked similar milestones in their respective efforts to tap an energy source key to the fight against climate change: They've each produced very impressive magnets.
New evidence suggests that protons and neutrons go through a "first-order" phase transition—a kind of stop-and-go change in temperature—when they "melt." This is similar to how ice melts: Energy first increases the temperature, ...
Tokamak devices use strong magnetic fields to confine and to shape the plasma that contains the fuel that achieves fusion. The shape of the plasma affects the ease or difficulty of achieving a viable fusion power source. ...
Over the past few years, scientists have demonstrated how cage-like, porous structures made of silicon and oxygen and measuring only billionths of a meter in size can trap noble gasses like argon, krypton, and xenon. However, ...
Think of light bulb filaments that glow when you flip a switch. That glow also occurs in magnetic fusion facilities known as tokamaks that are designed to harness the energy that powers the sun and stars. Understanding how ...
Physicists are like bees—they can cross-pollinate, taking ideas from one area and using them to develop breakthroughs in other areas. Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory ...
