UW Dynomak fusion reactor concept cheaper than coal

The UW's current fusion experiment, HIT-SI3. 

It is about one-tenth the size of the power-producing dynomak concept. 

Credit: U of Washington

Fusion energy almost sounds too good to be true – zero greenhouse gas emissions, no long-lived radioactive waste, a nearly unlimited fuel supply.

Perhaps the biggest roadblock to adopting fusion energy is that the economics haven't penciled out.

Fusion power designs aren't cheap enough to outperform systems that use fossil fuels such as coal and natural gas.

University of Washington engineers hope to change that. They have designed a concept for a fusion reactor that, when scaled up to the size of a large electrical power plant, would rival costs for a new coal-fired plant with similar electrical output.

The team published its reactor design and cost-analysis findings last spring and will present results Oct. 17 at the International Atomic Energy Agency's Fusion Energy Conference in St. Petersburg, Russia.

"Right now, this design has the greatest potential of producing economical fusion power of any current concept," said Thomas Jarboe, a UW professor of aeronautics and astronautics and an adjunct professor in physics.

The UW's reactor, called the dynomak, started as a class project taught by Jarboe two years ago.

After the class ended, Jarboe and doctoral student Derek Sutherland, who previously worked on a reactor design at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), continued to develop and refine the concept.

UW's dynomak

The design builds on existing technology and creates a magnetic field within a closed space to hold plasma in place long enough for fusion to occur, allowing the hot plasma to react and burn.

The reactor itself would be largely self-sustaining, meaning it would continuously heat the plasma to maintain thermonuclear conditions.

Heat generated from the reactor would heat up a coolant that is used to spin a turbine and generate electricity, similar to how a typical power reactor works.

"This is a much more elegant solution because the medium in which you generate fusion is the medium in which you're also driving all the current required to confine it," Sutherland said.

There are several ways to create a magnetic field, which is crucial to keeping a fusion reactor going.

The UW's design is known as a spheromak, meaning it generates the majority of magnetic fields by driving electrical currents into the plasma itself.

This reduces the amount of required materials and actually allows researchers to shrink the overall size of the reactor.

Other designs, such as the experimental fusion reactor project (tokamak) that's currently being built in France, called Iter, have to be much larger than the UW's because they rely on superconducting coils that circle around the outside of the device to provide a similar magnetic field.

When compared with the fusion reactor concept in France, the UW's is much less expensive, roughly one-tenth the cost of Iter, while producing five times the amount of energy.

Iter's Tokamak

The UW researchers factored the cost of building a fusion reactor power plant using their design and compared that with building a coal power plant.

They used a metric called "overnight capital costs," which includes all costs, particularly startup infrastructure fees.

A fusion power plant producing 1 gigawatt (1 billion watts) of power would cost $2.7 billion, while a coal plant of the same output would cost $2.8 billion, according to their analysis.

"If we do invest in this type of fusion, we could be rewarded because the commercial reactor unit already looks economical," Sutherland said. "It's very exciting."

Right now, the UW's concept is about one-tenth the size and power output of a final product, which is still years away.

The researchers have successfully tested the prototype's ability to sustain a plasma efficiently, and as they further develop and expand the size of the device they can ramp up to higher-temperature plasma and get significant fusion power output.

The team has filed patents on the reactor concept with the UW's Center for Commercialization and plans to continue developing and scaling up its prototypes.

Satellite Data reveals North Korea has viable Satellite Launch Capability

Recent commercial satellite imagery indicates that North Korea has completed a yearlong project to upgrade its main satellite launching station, which is widely believed to be a test site for its intercontinental ballistic missile program, a United States research institute said on Wednesday.

Construction has been underway at the Sohae Satellite Launching Station in Tongchang-ri in northwestern North Korea since late last year.

It includes modifying the gantry tower and launchpad there, which analysts said would give North Korea a facility to launch a longer-range rocket that can carry a heavier payload.

North Korea successfully launched its Unha-3 space launch vehicle from the Sohae facility in December 2012, putting a small satellite into orbit.

The launch increased fears that the country was inching toward acquiring the ability to build an intercontinental ballistic missile with a nuclear warhead.

“North Korea is now ready to move forward with another rocket launch,” the U.S.-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins University said in a report published on its website on Wednesday.

“Should a decision be made soon to do so in Pyongyang, and we have no evidence that one has, a rocket could be launched by the end of 2014.”

North Korea's Sohae satellite launch station. 

Credit: AFP/DigitalGlobe via Getty Images

If such a decision is made, the most likely candidate remains the existing Unha-3 rocket, it said, since “a much larger rocket, reportedly under development, is at least several years from becoming operational.”

The U.S.-Korea Institute is one of the American organizations that monitor North Korea’s nuclear and satellite launching sites using satellite images.

In its latest report, it said that imagery from mid-September showed tanks near the propellant storage buildings at the launchpad for the first time since the 2012 launch. The exact purpose of this activity remains unclear, it said.

A satellite photo of North Korea's Sohae missile launch site provided by 38 North, a website run by Johns Hopkins University. 

The photo shows that the North has carried out an engine test of its KN-08 intercontinental ballistic missile in mid-August. 

Credit: Yonhap

The institute said that technicians at the Sohae launch site had also been conducting a series of engine tests for North Korea’s KN-08 road-mobile intercontinental ballistic missile over the past couple years.

The KN-08 has never been test-launched, although it has been featured in military parades in Pyongyang.

The U.S.-Korea Institute said it had so far captured no sign of engine tests for a new rocket, bigger than the Unha-3, which North Korea was said to be developing.

North Korea’s launching of a rocket in 2012 and its third nuclear test in February last year prompted the United Nations to tighten sanctions against the country.

Under United Nations resolutions, North Korea was banned from testing technology used to develop ballistic missiles or nuclear weapons.

North Korea has vowed to build more powerful rockets and more sophisticated nuclear weapons as a deterrent against the United States.

Views of Punggye-ri. Images include material from Pleiades CNES 2014. 

Credit: EADS Airbus DS / Spot Image

Rocket tests at the Sohae site, coupled with nuclear tests in Punggye-ri in the northeast, are crucial parts of a North Korean effort to develop a long-range missile that is powerful enough to reach the United States mainland, as well as a nuclear warhead small and advanced enough to be fitted onto such a missile.

Nuclear Fusion: Simulation Shows Potential

Experimental nuclear fusion reactor is seen at a laboratory in the Southwest Institute of Physics in Chengdu, Sichuan Province April 15, 2011.

High-gain nuclear fusion could soon be a possibility according to new computer simulations.

A series of computer simulations performed at Sandia National Laboratories revealed that a fusion reactor can release an output of energy that is greater than the energy fed into the reactor.

The method being tested at Sandia appears to be 50 times more efficient to drive implosions of targeted materials to create the fusion reaction.

Nuclear fusion occurs when two atoms fuse together to form a heavier atom. This process releases a vast amount of energy. However nuclear fusion only occurs naturally at incredibly high temperatures like the center of a star.

Even though the process has been impossible to recreate in Earth, scientists have been studying ways to make nuclear fusion possible because nuclear fusion is a very attractive power source since the fuel is free and the process releases massive amounts of energy.

Scientists have looked at two competing approaches for the artificial creation of nuclear fusion: magnetic confinement and inertial confinement.

Magnetic confinement uses magnetic force to contain the fusing plasma within a device while inertial confinement uses lasers to trigger the fusion process.

Magnetic confinement is being used in the 500-megawatt ITER fusion reactor in France while inertial confinement is being used in California's National Ignition Facility.

Magnetic confinement is regarded as the better alternative and according to the computer simulations performed at Sandia the method is more efficient as well.

The researchers at Sandia are testing a method called magnetized inertial fusion in which two coils generate a magnetic field that confines the fusion reaction.

A metal cylinder lines the insides of each of the coils. The cylinder has a metal liner of deuterium and tritium which is then hit with a current of tens of millions of amperes. The current destroys the liner but it generates a strong magnetic field.

"People didn't think there was a high-gain option for magnetized inertial fusion but these numerical simulations show there is," said Sandia researcher Steve Slutz, the paper's lead author. "Now we have to see if nature will let us do it. In principle, we don't know why we can't."

The computer simulations showed that the output was 100 times that of 60 million amperes put into the system. Actual tests are necessary to validate the computer simulations and they are already under way at Sandia. A laboratory result is expected by late 2013.

The work was reported in the January 13 issue of Physical Review Letters and was supported by Sandia's Laboratory Directed Research and Development office and by the National Nuclear Security Administration.

NuStar: The Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array

NuSTAR, The Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array, will image the sky for the first time in the high energy X-ray (6-79 keV) region of the electromagnetic spectrum.

Our view of the universe in this spectral window has been limited previously. NuSTAR is scheduled to launch March 14, 2012, from an aircraft operating out of Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands.

Here, NuSTAR is seen undergoing a solar array illumination test.

Credit: NASA

Reliable nuclear device to heat, power Mars Science Lab

The Mars Science Laboratory's radioisotope power system was fueled and tested at Idaho National Laboratory. 

Here, magnetic testing ensures that the electric field generated by the system is small enough that it won't interfere with the rover's scientific instruments. Credit: Idaho National Laboratory.

NASA's Mars Science Laboratory mission, which is scheduled to launch this week, has the potential to be the most productive Mars surface mission in history. That's due in part to its nuclear heat and power source.

When the rover Curiosity heads to space as early as Saturday, it will carry the most advanced payload of scientific gear ever used on Mars' surface. Those instruments will get their lifeblood from a radioisotope power system assembled and tested at Idaho National Laboratory. The Multi-Mission Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator is the latest "space battery" that can reliably power a deep space mission for many years.

The device provides a continuous source of heat and power for the rover's instruments. NASA has used nuclear generators to safely and reliably power 26 missions over the past 50 years. New generators like the one destined for Mars are painstakingly assembled and extensively tested at INL before heading to space.

"This power system will enable Curiosity to complete its ambitious expedition in Mars' extreme temperatures and seasons," said Stephen Johnson, director of INL's Space Nuclear Systems and Technology Division. "When the unit leaves here, we've verified every aspect of its performance and made sure it's in good shape when it gets to Kennedy Space Center."

The power system provides about 110 watts of electricity and can run continuously for many years. The nuclear fuel is protected by multiple layers of safety features that have each undergone rigorous testing under varied accident scenarios.

The INL team began assembling the mission's power source in summer 2008. By December of that year, the power system was fully fueled, assembled and ready for testing. INL performs a series of tests to verify that such systems will perform as designed during their missions. These tests include:

+ Vibrational testing to simulate rocket launch conditions.

+ Magnetic testing to ensure the system's electrical field won't affect the rover's sensitive scientific equipment.

+ Mass properties tests to determine the center of gravity, which impacts thruster calculations for moving the rover.

+ Thermal vacuum testing to verify operation on a planet's surface or in the cold vacuum of space.

INL completed its tests in May 2009, but by then the planned September 2009 launch had been delayed until this month because of hurdles with other parts of the mission. So INL stored the power system until earlier this summer, when it was shipped to Kennedy Space Center and mated up with the rover to ensure everything fit and worked as designed.

The system will supply warmth and electricity to Curiosity and its scientific instruments using heat from nuclear decay. The generator is fueled with a ceramic form of plutonium dioxide encased in multiple layers of protective materials including iridium capsules and high-strength graphite blocks.

The first nuclear power plants for settlements on the moon and Mars

"The biggest difference between solar and nuclear reactors is that nuclear reactors can produce power in any environment," Werner explained.

"Fission power technology doesn't rely on sunlight, making it able to produce large, steady amounts of power at night or in harsh environments like those found on the Moon or Mars.

A fission power system on the Moon could generate 40 kilowatts or more of electric power, approximately the same amount of energy needed to power eight houses on Earth."

Japan's Fukushima's Damaged Reactor plants

An aerial view taken from a Japanese Self-Defence Force helicopter shows damage sustained to the reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power complex. Reactors No. 1 to 4 are seen from right to left.

Picture: REUTERS / TEPCO

Explanation of the explosion at the Japan, Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant and radiation leaks

To read more follow this link

Japanese Nuclear Plant explosion after Earthquake and tsunami

Explosion at Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant on the North East coast of Japan. The reactor core is being exposed due to a failure in the coolant pumping system.



The explosion is likely to be caused by hydrogen and oxygen mixing but it will disperse nuclear particles into the atmosphere surrounding the plant.

The local community is being evacuated and told to stay indoors until that can be accomplished

'Cold fusion' moves closer to mainstream acceptance

'Cold fusion' moves closer to mainstream acceptance ScienceBlog.com

"Years ago, many scientists were afraid to speak about 'cold fusion' to a mainstream audience," said Jan Marwan, Ph.D., the internationally known expert who has organised the 'New Energy Technology' symposium.

Marwan heads the research firm, Dr. Marwan Chemie in Berlin, Germany. The symposium will include nearly 50 presentations describing the latest discoveries on the topic, including cold fusion.

The presentations describe invention of an inexpensive new measuring device that could enable more labs to begin cold fusion research; indications that cold fusion may occur naturally in certain bacteria; progress toward a battery based on cold fusion; and a range of other topics.

Marwan noted that many of the presentations suggest that cold fusion is real, with the potential to positively contribute to alternative energy supplies in the 21st Century.

"Now most of the scientists are no longer afraid and most of the cold fusion researchers are attracted to the ACS meeting," Marwan said. "I've also noticed that the field is gaining new researchers from universities that had previously not pursued cold fusion research. More and more people are becoming interested in it.

Clearly, there's still some resistance to this field but we just have to keep on as we have done so far, exploring cold fusion step by step, and that will make it a successful alternative energy source. With time and patience, I'm really optimistic we can do this!"

The term "cold fusion" originated in 1989 when Martin Fleishmann and Stanley Pons claimed achieving nuclear fusion at room temperature with a simple, inexpensive tabletop device.

That claim created an international sensation, because nuclear fusion holds the potential for providing our world with a virtually limitless and arguably, clean, new source of energy.

Fuel for fusion comes from ordinary seawater, and estimates indicate that 1 gallon of seawater packs the energy equivalent of 16 gallons of gasoline at 100 percent efficiency for energy production.

The claim also ignited scepticism, because conventional wisdom said that achieving fusion required multi-billion-dollar fusion reactors that operate at tens of millions of degrees Fahrenheit.

When other scientists could not reproduce the Pons-Fleishmann results, research on cold fusion fell into disrepute.

To read the full article, click here.

Nuclear fission algorithm is created

Nuclear fission algorithm is created

U.S. Department of Energy scientists say they've created a computer algorithm that allows a substantially enhanced view of nuclear fission.

The Argonne National Laboratory scientists said the algorithm, known as the neutron transport code, enables researchers for the first time to obtain a highly detailed description of a nuclear reactor core.

"The code could prove crucial in the development of nuclear reactors that are safe, affordable and environmentally friendly," laboratory officials said in a statement.

To model the complex geometry of a reactor core currently requires billions of spatial elements, hundreds of angles and thousands of energy groups -- all of which lead to problem sizes with quadrillions of possible solutions, the researchers said. Such calculations exhaust computer memory of the largest machines, they said, and therefore reactor modeling codes typically rely on various approximations.

"The (neutron transport code) is intended to reduce the uncertainties and biases in reactor design calculations by progressively replacing existing multilevel averaging techniques with more direct solution methods based on explicit reactor geometries," said Andrew Siegel, leader of Argonne's reactor simulation group.

Officials said the code has run successfully in some of the world's fastest supercomputers, including the IBM Blue Gene at Argonne and the Cray XT5 at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

French Nuclear Power Station closed following coolant leakage

One of four reactors at the Cruas nuclear power station in southern France was shut down late on Tuesday following a lapse in the cooling system, France's nuclear safety agency said.

French energy company EDF reported the incident at 2250 GMT and followed its emergency procedures to shut down the reactor, it added.

The cooling system for the reactors use water from the Rhone river and the incident was due to a high level of plant debris in the river blocking intake, it added.

Intake of water into the cooling system was restored by 0400 GMT.

The agency rated the incident as a two on the seven-level international scale of nuclear incidents, adding control over the reactor was maintained at all times and there was no release of radioactivity to the environment.

Indian nuclear workers deliberately poisoned by radiation in water supply

Workers at a nuclear power plant in southern India were treated for poisoning after drinking water was deliberately spiked with radiation, senior government officials said Sunday.

Routine tests showed 55 employees from the plant in Kaiga in the state of Karnataka had increased levels of the radioactive element tritium, which is used in nuclear reactors.

B. Bhattacharjee, a member of the National Disaster Management Authority, said someone had inserted contaminated water into a water cooler, according to the Press Trust of India.

The employees had not suffered any ill effects and had returned to work, plant officials told AFP.
Atomic Energy Commission chairman Anil Kakodkar, speaking on the Headlines Today television network, blamed the sabotage on "an insider who has played mischief".

Kakodkar said security was "fool-proof" and there was no chance of an outsider gaining access to the station.

The Nuclear Power Corporation of India, which operates the country's civil nuclear facilities, said in a statement that preliminary enquiries revealed no radioactive leak or security breach.

"It is possibly an act of mischief," the statement said.

State ministers assured local residents that their health was not at risk.

The Kaiga plant was shut down in October for annual maintenance and is due to reopen shortly.

British nuclear watchdog issues grave concerns on safety of French & Japanese reactors

nuclear safety watchdog has warned that French and US-Japanese reactors planned for construction in Britain could be rejected unless safety concerns were met.

The Health and Safety Executive said it has some concerns about features of both designs of the reactor technologies, proposed for use in a new generation of British nuclear power stations.

"We continue to believe that the UK EPR could be suitable for construction on licensed sites in the UK," it said in a report released Thursday.

"However, we have identified a significant number of issues with the safety features of the design that would first have to be progressed.

"If these are not progressed satisfactorily then we would not issue a design acceptance confirmation," the report said.

The executive conducted a safety review of the AP-1000 reactor put forward by US nuclear firm Westinghouse, now owned by Japan's Toshiba, and the European Pressurised Reactor (EPR) from French power giant Areva.

"As is normal for complex assessment projects of this type, we are identifying technical questions and issues that we are requesting Westinghouse to address," the report said.

Final approval of the designs is not due to be granted until 2011.

The British government decided to go ahead with a new generation of nuclear plants to replace the country's ageing nuclear infrastructure, most of which will be decommissioned by 2023. Ministers hope the first of a new generation of stations can come on stream as early as 2017.

IAEA: Nuclear science to fight Tse fly sleeping sickness

The International Atomic Energy Agency on Friday announced an agreement to help African nations battle the tsetse fly, the main carrier of parasites that causes sleeping sickness with its bites.

The IAEA, which has been working on the problem with African countries for 30 years, can make available a Sterile Insect Technique (SIT), a nuclear-based pest control technology that is often described as "biological birth control for insects", according to the agency's website.

The IAEA signed a memorandum of understanding on Wednesday with the African Union, extending cooperation in a range of domains. Work on sleeping sickness follows an effective trial in Zanzibar in the late 1990s.

Sleeping sickness, or trypanosomosis in animals, is a deadly disease found in 35 African countries, where it kills 400,000 people a year, along with some three million head of cattle.

Apart from the cost in lives, the disease is seen as a major obstacle to development, causing an estimated loss in earnings of about four billion dollars (2.7 billion euros) a year.

"In SIT-supported pest suppression and prevention campaigns, millions of sterilized male insects are released into targeted areas. They mate with wild females in the field, but no offspring are produced. Eventually, the pest population is suppressed and steadily reduced over time," the IAEA explained.

Medical cooperation is part of the brief of the IAEA, which is based in Vienna and is responsible for promoting peaceful uses of atomic energy.

Nuclear Clean up: Going through the motions

WASHINGTON — Anything that hops, burrows, buzzes, crawls or grazes near a nuclear weapons plant may be capable of setting off a Geiger counter and at the Hanford nuclear reservation, one of the dirtiest of them all, its droppings alone might be enough to trigger alarms.

A government contractor at Hanford, in south-central Washington State, just spent a week mapping radioactive rabbit feces with detectors mounted on a helicopter flying 50 feet over the desert scrub. An onboard computer used GPS technology to record each location so workers could return later to scoop up the droppings for disposal as low-level radioactive waste.

The Hanford site, overseen by the federal Department of Energy, produced roughly two-thirds of the plutonium used in the nation’s nuclear weapons arsenal, beginning in World War II and ending in the 1980s. Today it is the focus of the nation’s largest environmental cleanup, an effort that has cost tens of billions of dollars and is expected to continue for decades.

Yet the helicopter flights, which covered 13.7 square miles and were paid for with $300,000 in federal stimulus money, took place in an area that had never been used by the bomb makers.

The area had, however, been used by rabbits that had also burrowed into other areas that were contaminated. Many of the contaminants were in the form of salts, which attract wildlife. The rabbits carried strontium and cesium, which emit gamma rays, back out of the area in their digestive tracts.

Iran's Hidden Nuclear Facility - Interactive MAP Feature - NYTimes.com

Iran?s Hidden Nuclear Facility - Interactive Feature - NYTimes.com

Iran's Hidden Nuclear Facility

Images show the details of a hidden facility in Iran that experts say is the nuclear site recently disclosed by the Obama administration. Information about the plant is from an analysis by IHS Jane's.

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Iran's newly disclosed nuclear fuel facility near Qom

Iran's newly disclosed nuclear fuel facility near Qom, Iran, is pictured in this GeoEye satellite photograph

Picture: REUTERS

Everything You Wanted to Know: Physics of Nuclear Explosions

Barack Obama may have instructed the Pentagon to prepare for massive cuts to the US nuclear arsenal, but a book published in Brazil has sparked fresh worries about nuclear proliferation.

Unbelievably, the book, by physicist Dalton Barroso, is called The Physics of Nuclear Explosions (translation from the Portuguese "A Física dos Explosivos Nucleares") and explains some of the physics required to engineer both fission and fusion bombs, from the dynamics of detonation to the plasma physics of the core.

The publication of is said by Brazilian media to have alarmed the International Atomic Energy Agency and the Pentagon because it may mean Brazil has a fresh interest in developing such nuclear weapons - despite being a signatory to the nuclear nonproliferation treaty.

Barroso has responded to his critics.

He told the Federation of American Scientists - whose excellent Secrecy News blog has the full story - that the book's information is deducible from public domain information in any case and represents no novel threat. It's actually a subset of his PhD thesis from the Military Institute of Engineering in Rio de Janiero.

Perspective is indeed called for here. A similar furore blew up in March 2008 over the release by the whistleblowing website Wikileaks of a Manhattan Project fission bomb design from 1947. Much of the information had been in the public domain since 2002 if anyone had cared to seek it out.

And as Wikileaks points out (scroll down its page), the British government cared so little about the "leak" it wouldn't field an official to deal with its own proposed take-down of the info. The reason? It was an Easter bank holiday weekend.

Decaying Reactors (RTG)s

Developed in the 1950s, radioisotope thermal generators, or RTGs, power spacecraft such as Cassini (illustrated) as well as historic spacecraft including Pioneer 10 and 11, the Viking and Voyager missions, and experiment 'packages' on the Apollo moon landers. Reliable RTG power allowed some missions to continue for decades (Illustration: NASA/JPL)"

We owe the wonderful images of the outer solar system taken by the Galileo and Cassini spacecraft to the power generated by Cold War surplus nuclear isotopes. But those leftovers are expected to run out in 2018, and no good alternatives are ready, warns a new report by the US National Research Council.

The crucial isotope is plutonium-238. It can't be used in weapons or reactors, but as the atoms decay, they emit alpha particles, or helium nuclei, that easily convert their energy to heat.

Nearly half a century ago, NASA developed radioisotope thermal generators (RTGs) that convert the heat from radioactive decay into electricity. That makes them the only long-term source of power available when sunlight is too weak to use solar cells.

Plutonium 238 production

But the weapons-production reactors that produced plutonium-238 were shuttered two decades ago. The existing inventory is running out, and most of it is needed for pending missions including the Mars Science Laboratory and the planned Europa orbiter.

With eight years needed to start producing 5 kilograms of plutonium-238 per year, the report argues that funding be added to the 2010 budget for the project. Existing reactors could produce the isotope but at least $150 million in new equipment would be needed to process it into a usable form.