Physics Buzz

Poignant and bleak, the critically acclaimed HBO series Chernobyl revisits a difficult chapter in history to tell an important story about the role of science in society. While portions of the plot and characters have been embellished for TV, its an exceptional portrayal of what can happen when a community ignores the signs of an impending disaster (i.e. climate change) and includes surprisingly accurate and accessible explanations of nuclear physics.  On twitter , the show has also reignited an important discussion on nuclear power and its associated hazards. It is necessary to acknowledge that while some risks will always be there, nuclear power is actually safer than ever, and importantly, it could help curb our insatiable appetite for fossil fuels. To learn more about this funky world of radioactive physics, we’re going to answer some questions about how our nuclear landscape has changed since 1986 (I’d say spoiler alert, but that’s not really applicable to historical events

Would you believe it if I told you that nuclear power saves thousands of lives every year? You will—there's math to back it up.

Sharon from Pittsburgh, PA wants to know: Would it be a bad thing to shoot our nuclear waste into the sun? It's a fun idea, and at first blush you might think it'd be a great way to get rid of something toxic—after all, what's more "gone" than something incinerated in a giant fusion reactor, ninety million miles away? But let's dig a little into how such a proposal could work, along with some potential pitfalls.

The N.S. Savannah is the only nuclear powered civilian ship the United States built. Born out of Eisenhower's Atoms for Peace program in the 1950s, its builders hoped it to be the harbinger of the nuclear powered future. Instead, it's now mostly idle, an artifact of another era . Today, the N.S. Savannah is docked in Baltimore Harbor. Walking up to it, there's no immediate indication that it's powered by an atomic reactor at its heart.

The derelict Westinghouse Atom Smasher,  one of the oldest (and biggest) artifacts from the dawn of the Nuclear Age, awaits its fate atop a hill outside Pittsburgh.  The world’s first industrial particle accelerator sits rusting away in the Pittsburgh suburb of Forest Hills, its future unclear. It was cutting edge technology when it was built in 1937, but when the company retired it in 1958, it was a relic of an obsolete technology. Six months ago, a D.C. real estate developer with a penchant for history bought the site and has been doing what he can to preserve the giant silver teardrop. If all goes according to plan, he’ll convert the old atom smasher into an education center while turning the rest of the property into rental units.

A schematic of the  Molten Salt Reactor Experiment Image: Oak Ridge National Lab On this week's podcast, we looked at the benefits of a particular kind of nuclear reactor, the thorium molten salt reactor. It's a kind of reactor that uses thorium and uranium suspended in liquified solution that generates heat to boil water and turn turbines. There's a debate in the United States as to whether to fund research into them. Proponents say that the technology could power the world with cheap clean energy, while critics say that it's untested and like all nuclear power has serious downsides. Here's a quick rundown of the main pros and cons: PRO: Thorium reactors can produce plentiful, cheap power. CON: Nuclear power industries have been promising that for decades, but the costs have yet to drop dramatically. PRO: Thorium is plentiful. It's about as common as lead in the Earth's crust, making for cheaper fuel than traditional uranium reactors. CO

During the early days of the Atomic Age , it seemed like a healthy dose of nuclear power could make everything better. From 1945 until the late sixties, a bold new world powered by the unlimited cheap energy of the atom seemed perpetually just around the corner. Image: A is for Atom , Sutherland Productions Of course, reality fell a bit short of expectations, but it wasn't for a lack of trying. There were some pretty outlandish experiments that went on, often at secret labs in far-away places. In the middle of it all was the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission , now the Department of Energy . They were in charge of the country's nuclear materials, and played a central role in all of the big atomic experiments of the time. Some of the experiments got pretty extreme.

On March 11, 2011 a wave almost 100 feet high rose out of a magnitude 9 earthquake centered close to the coast of Japan. As the ground shook in one of the wost earthquakes of the century, the nuclear reactors at the Fukushima Dai-ichi Nuclear Power Plant initiated emergency shutdown: stop fission, turn on backup generators to cool reactors as the heat of radioactive decay gradually abates. And then the water hit. The generators were destroyed as the tsunami's flood of 40 foot waves washed over the plant. Without the cool water pumped by the generators, heat and pressure inside the reactors continued to build to a series of hydrogen explosions and a nuclear meltdown that damaged three of the plant's six reactors. Los Alamos National Laboratory Muon Radiography team members on-site at the Fukushima Dai-ichi Nuclear Power Plant. Courtesy of Los Alamos National Laboratory. For the past two years, Japan has been trudging through the environmental, health, and safety cleanup

Countless Facebook posts, Tweets and comments have bemoaned the "scab" NFL referees who have taken over for the regular refs who have stopped working amidst a labor dispute. The new refs have blown calls, unnecessarily prolonged games and even cost some teams a win depending upon who you ask. Today, the regular referees settled on an agreement with the NFL that boosts their salaries and benefits (they will now make $173,000 annual salaries in 2013). Everybody seems pretty happy, especially fed up fans. Meanwhile, the massive teachers' strike in Chicago ended recently, and another strike among hundreds of Canadian nuclear scientists ended earlier this month. Strikes this big among teachers and scientists are quite rare. With all three of these two strikes and referee lockout resolved, let's take a glance at the final deals and reactions individually. Together, these labor disputes may reveal a little bit about our society's general view of these varied car

Sixty six years ago today, Louis Slotin saw a flash of blue light in the depths of Los Alamos National Laboratory. Seconds before, all that separated the young scientist from a lethal dose of radiation was a thin screwdriver. The screwdriver supported a reflective covering that encased a sphere of plutonium, and if the reflector fell into place, a nuclear chain reaction would commence. When Slotin's hand slipped, a lethal burst of radiation hit him, and he died nine days later. One year later, the U.S. military detonated this plutonium "demon core" at the Bikini Atoll in the Pacific Ocean. But the legacy of the demon core -- and its victims -- has endured. The underwater "Baker" explosion (not the demon core) at Bikini Atoll in July of 1946.

Correction: This blog post originally stated that Kodak's nuclear device was a nuclear reactor as was widely reported. This can be misleading. The device increased the output of neutrons from a radioactive source, but there was not enough material to initiate a chain reaction. The device was used in a very similar way to many research reactors found on university campuses. The post has been edited to reflect this. This week, the Internet has been buzzing with news that Kodak had a nuclear facility housed in a basement at its Rochester, NY industrial park for over thirty years. Until 2007, Kodak used the device to check for impurities in samples, but the device wasn't widely known until the local Democrat and Chronicle newspaper ran an article late last week. Many have questioned why the company known for its photography products would need a nuclear device, and some alarmist articles have surfaced. Gizmodo, for instance, began their article with extreme hyperbole while not

Let me preface this with: DON'T TRY THIS AT HOME! Let me add also: NO SERIOUSLY, DON'T TRY THIS AT HOME! And this: WHAT PART OF DON'T TRY THIS AT HOME DON'T YOU UNDERSTAND!? Last week, Richard Handl , a resident of Ängelholm, Sweeden was arrested for attempting to build his own nuclear breeder reactor in his kitchen. He said he wanted to split atoms as a hobby , but now realizes that in retrospect it may not have been a good idea. But don't worry! He had a Geiger counter to measure the radiation.