Collaborate Disseminate
If you’ve ever wanted to operate your own nuclear reactor, you probably aren’t going to get one in your backyard shop. However, thanks to the University of Manchester, you can …read more Continue reading Operate Your Own Nuclear Reactor, Virtually
The idea of sending robots into conditions that humans would not survive is a very old concept. Robot’s don’t heed oxygen, food, or any other myriad of human requirements. They …read more Continue reading The Robots Of Fukushima: Going Where No Human Has Gone Before (And Lived)
We think of electric cars as a new invention, but even Thomas Edison had one. It isn’t so much that the idea is new, but the practical realization for normal …read more Continue reading The Nuclear Powered Car from Ford
Steve Martin was ahead of his time when he told us “Let’s get small!” While you usually think of a nuclear reactor as a big affair, there’s a new trend …read more Continue reading Nuclear Reactors Get Small
A nuclear power plant is large and complex, and one of the biggest reasons is safety. Splitting radioactive atoms is inherently dangerous, but the energy unleashed by the chain reaction that ensues is the entire point. It’s a delicate balance to stay in the sweet spot, and it requires constant …read more
Continue reading No-Melt Nuclear ‘Power Balls’ Might Win a Few Hearts and Minds
When was the first nuclear reactor created? You probably think it was Enrico Fermi’s CP-1 pile built under the bleachers at the University of Chicago in 1942. However, you’d be off by — oh — about 2 billion years.
The first reactors formed naturally about 2 billion years ago in …read more
Continue reading The Oldest Nuclear Reactor? Nature’s 2 Billion Year Old Experiment
Here on Earth, the ability to generate electricity is something we take for granted. We can count on the sun to illuminate solar panels, and the movement of air and water to spin turbines. Fossil fuels, for all their downsides, have provided cheap and reliable power for centuries. No matter …read more
On August 8th, an experimental nuclear device exploded at a military test facility in Nyonoksa, Russia. Thirty kilometers away, radiation levels in the city of Severodvinsk reportedly peaked at twenty times normal levels for the span of a few hours. Rumors began circulating about the severity of the event, and …read more
Continue reading Echos of the Cold War: Nuclear-Powered Missiles Have Been Tried Before
Have you been watching Chernobyl? Well, so has everyone else. Right now it seems the whole Internet is comprised of armchair dosimetrists counting roentgens in their sleep, but [Mark Wright] doesn’t need a high-budget TV show to tell him about the challenges of wrangling the atom with 1980s technology. …read more
Continue reading Nuclear Reactor Simulator Is The Project Of A Lifetime
By pretty much any metric you care to use, the last couple of decades has been very good for the open source movement. There was plenty of pushback in the early days, back when the only people passionate about the idea were the Graybeards in the IT department. But as …read more
Continue reading You Wouldn’t Download a Nuclear Reactor, But Could You?