Reactors

The insides of nuclear fusion reactors are violent and chaotic places. A new cold-spray coating can take the heat and also trap some rogue hydrogen particles at the same time, potentially making for smaller, better plasma chambers.

They say that 'small is beautiful,' and the Westinghouse Electric Company seems to have embraced this with the unveiling of its AP300 Small Nuclear Reactor (SMR), which combines Gen III+ reactor technology with a more compact, economical size.

Greenhouse gases and plastic waste are two of the biggest environmental problems the world faces today. A new reactor from Cambridge tackles both at once, converting CO2 and used plastic bottles into useful materials, powered entirely by sunlight.

The US Department of Defense has announced that its Strategic Capabilities Office will go ahead with its plan to build and test a small nuclear reactor capable of being moved, and delivering between 1 - 5 MW of power for a minimum of three years.

MIT scientists have demonstrated how some of the biggest advances in nuclear fusion might come via projects that are smaller in stature, with the team revealing a record-setting superconductive magnet set for testing in a compact reactor in 2025.

The US Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) and Kairos Power have announced a new agreement to build Kairos' Hermes low-power demonstration molten-salt cooled, pebble-bed reactor at the East Tennessee Technology Park (ETTP) in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.

For nearly a century, scientists have been tantalized by the prospect of attaining an inexhaustible source of energy through nuclear fusion. Achieving this goal is not so easy, as it turns out, but that doesn't mean exciting advances aren't being made.

We’re all familiar with the march of time, but why it does so is a mystery. In 2016 Australian physicist Joan Vaccaro proposed a new quantum theory of time, and now a team will test the hypothesis by searching for time dilation in a nuclear reactor.

A new reactor converts carbon monoxide into acetic acid, using tiny copper cubes as a catalyst. The device is relatively simple and can operate for long periods, allowing the unwanted waste gas to be turned into an industrially useful product.

Radiation is famously damaging to materials, but now engineers at MIT have been surprised to discover that radiation may actually help certain alloys to self-heal, extending their useful lifetime. This could help inform future power plant designs.

The Netherlands' NRG has completed a major milestone irradiation test of molten nuclear fuel salts in its High Flux Reactor north of Amsterdam.

Nuclear fusion could be an essentially unlimited energy source, but large eruptions in the plasma can damage reactors. But now physicists have found a way to prevent those large eruptions, by triggering lots of small ones through the injection of tiny pellets of beryllium.