Nuclear Energy News

March 2, 2025

Top Headlines

Scientists Design Battery That Runs on Atomic Waste

Feb. 25, 2025 — Researchers have developed a battery that can convert nuclear energy into electricity via light emission, a study ...

Some Fuel Lodges in the Inner Walls of Fusion Vessels: Researchers Now Have a Better Idea of How Much

Feb. 26, 2025 — New research offers insights that could help reduce the amount of radioactive tritium embedded in the walls of fusion vessels to a ...

A Completely New Type of Microscopy Based on Quantum Sensors

Feb. 25, 2025 — Researchers have invented an entirely new field of microscopy -- nuclear spin microscopy. The team can visualize magnetic signals of nuclear magnetic resonance with a microscope. Quantum sensors convert the signals into light, enabling extremely ...

Illuminating the Proton's Inner Workings

Feb. 21, 2025 — Scientists have now mapped the forces acting inside a proton, showing in unprecedented detail how quarks -- the tiny particles within -- respond when hit by high-energy photons. The international team includes experts who are exploring the structure ...

Latest Headlines

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Breakthrough Study Challenges Long-Held Beliefs About the Shape of Atomic Nuclei

Feb. 20, 2025 — An international research collaboration has overturned the long-standing belief that the atomic nucleus of lead-208 is perfectly spherical. The ...

From Photons to Protons: Team Makes Breakthrough in High-Energy Particle Detection

Feb. 11, 2025 — Researchers have discovered that superconducting nanowire photon detectors can also be used as highly accurate particle detectors, and they have ...

Aging Reactors Need a Concrete Solution

Jan. 31, 2025 — It's been known for some time that radiation impacts the structural integrity of concrete. However, until now the details of this were unknown. Researchers can finally demonstrate what properties of ...

A New Feature Discovered in Radioactive Lanthanum Isotopes

Jan. 31, 2025 — Researchers measured very precisely atomic masses of radioactive lanthanum isotopes and found an interesting feature in their nuclear binding energies. The discovery provides essential data for ...

New Measurements of Solar Radiative Opacity Thanks to Helioseismology

Jan. 27, 2025 — Researchers have pioneered an innovative method using helioseismology to measure the solar radiative opacity under extreme conditions. This groundbreaking work not only reveals gaps in our ...

Method Can Detect Harmful Salts Forming in Nuclear Waste Melters

Jan. 7, 2025 — A new way to identify salts in nuclear waste melters could help improve clean-up technology, including at the Hanford Site, one of the largest, most complex nuclear waste clean-up sites in the world. ...

Step Forward in Generating Solar-Powered Hydrogen

Dec. 17, 2024 — Another advance has been made by experts in nano-scale chemistry to propel further development of sustainable and efficient generation of hydrogen from water using solar power. Experts have now ...

Plasma Heating Efficiency in Fusion Devices Boosted by Metal Screens

Dec. 19, 2024 — Scientists have performed computer simulations confirming a technique that prevents the production of unhelpful electromagnetic waves, boosting the heat put into fusion ...

Thorium Film Could Replace Crystals in Atomic Clocks of the Near Future

Dec. 18, 2024 — Atomic clocks that excite the nucleus of thorium-229 embedded in a transparent crystal when hit by a laser beam could yield the most accurate measurements ever of time and gravity, and even rewrite ...

Eyes on the Sun: Naked Thallium-205 Ion Decay Reveals History Over Millions of Years

Dec. 11, 2024 — The Sun generates its tremendous energy through the process of nuclear fusion. At the same time it releases a continuous stream of neutrinos -- ...

Particle Research Gets Closer to Answering Why We're Here

Dec. 5, 2024 — Physicists have outlined the next 10 years of global research into the behavior of neutrinos, particles so tiny that they pass through virtually everything by the trillions every second at nearly the ...

'Spooky Action' at a Very Short Distance: Scientists Map out Quantum Entanglement in Protons

Dec. 2, 2024 — Scientists have a new way to use data from high-energy particle smashups to peer inside protons. Their approach uses quantum information science to map out how particle tracks streaming from ...

ODS FeCrAl Alloys Endure Liquid Metal Flow at 600 °C Resembling a Fusion Blanket Environment

Nov. 25, 2024 — Researchers explored protective coatings to resist corrosion in fusion reactors. They tested -Al2O3 oxide layers on ODS alloys in a high-temperature, flowing lithium-lead environment. Even bare ODS ...

Deciphering the Anomalous Properties of Water

Nov. 14, 2024 — Water, a molecule essential for life, has unusual properties -- known as anomalies -- that define its behavior. However, there are still many enigmas about the molecular mechanisms that would explain ...

Fermium Studied at GSI/FAIR: Researchers Investigate Nuclear Properties of Element 100 With Laser Light

Nov. 11, 2024 — Where does the periodic table of chemical elements end and which processes lead to the existence of heavy elements? Researchers report on experiments to come closer to an answer. They gained insight ...

Scientists Calculate Predictions for Meson Measurements

Nov. 6, 2024 — Calculations of charge distribution in mesons provide benchmark for experimental measurements and validate widely used 'factorization' method for imaging the building blocks of ...

Imaging Nuclear Shapes by Smashing Them to Smithereens

Nov. 6, 2024 — Scientists have demonstrated a new way to use high-energy particle smashups at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) to reveal subtle details about the shapes of atomic nuclei. The method is ...

Successful Experiment Paves the Way for New Element

Oct. 24, 2024 — Scientists have found an alternative way to produce atoms of the superheavy element livermorium. The new method opens up the possibility of creating another element that could be the heaviest in the ...

Molecule 'Handedness' Determines the Strength of a Coupling Between Nuclear Spins

Oct. 9, 2024 — Chirality -- a geometric property that allows molecules to exist in two distinct forms that are chemically identical but are 3D mirror images of each other, like a right and left hand -- has a ...

New AI Models of Plasma Heating Lead to Important Corrections in Computer Code Used for Fusion Research

Oct. 9, 2024 — New artificial intelligence models for plasma heating can do more than was previously thought possible, not only increasing the prediction speed 10 million times while preserving accuracy but also ...

Stopping Off-the-Wall Behavior in Fusion Reactors

Oct. 7, 2024 — New experimental results suggest that sprinkling boron into a tokamak could shield the wall of the fusion vessel and prevent atoms from the wall from getting into the plasma. A new computer modeling ...

Nanopillars Create Tiny Openings in the Nucleus Without Damaging Cells

Oct. 2, 2024 — Researchers have created an array of nanopillars that can breach the nucleus of a cell -- the compartment that houses our DNA -- without damaging the cell's outer membrane. This new ...

Using Antimatter to Detect Nuclear Radiation

Oct. 1, 2024 — Discerning whether a nuclear reactor is being used to also create material for nuclear weapons is difficult, but capturing and analyzing antimatter particles has shown promise for monitoring what ...

A New and Unique Fusion Reactor

Sep. 30, 2024 — As part of the global effort to harness power from fusing plasma, scientists worked on the computer codes, engineering and physics for a new and unique fusion reactor: the SMall Aspect Ratio ...

Researchers Measure More Detailed Data on the 'Magic' N=50 Neutron Shell Closure

Sep. 27, 2024 — Researchers have found new information about the strength of the so-called magic neutron number 50 shell closure in the silver isotope chain. The new more detailed information on the properties of ...

Breakthrough in Hydrogen Research

Sep. 19, 2024 — Hydrogen is in great demand due to its promising role as a sustainable resource in the energy transition. Researchers have made an important breakthrough in the efficient and cost-effective provision ...

Shedding Light on Superconducting Disorder

Sep. 16, 2024 — The importance of disorder in physics is only matched by the difficulty to study it. For example, the remarkable properties of high-temperature superconductors are greatly affected by variations in ...

Towards the Realization of Compact and Portable Nuclear Clocks

Sep. 13, 2024 — The low-energy excited state of thorium-229 (229Th) isotope nucleus has recently gained much attention owing to it being an ideal candidate for ultra-precise nuclear clocks. Building such ...

Hair-Thin Wire to Help Simulate Cosmic Conditions

Sep. 12, 2024 — Extreme conditions prevail inside stars and planets. The pressure reaches millions of bars, and it can be several million degrees hot. Sophisticated methods make it possible to create such states of ...

Quantum Researchers Cause Controlled 'Wobble' in the Nucleus of a Single Atom

Sep. 12, 2024 — Researchers have been able to initiate a controlled movement in the very heart of an atom. They caused the atomic nucleus to interact with one of the electrons in the outermost shells of the atom. ...