Week 1 of 2024
Three nuclear energy innovation news!
🍩 Scientists at the Budker Institute of Nuclear Physics (Russia) conduct experiments with boron carbide as a coating to protect reactor walls from thermal damage during plasma burning. Boron carbide, similar to light beryllium, is explored as an easier-to-procure alternative to tungsten and beryllium. Initial testing indicates threshold values of collapse similar to tungsten.
🐉 China establishes a state-owned company, China Fusion Energy Inc, to bring together fusion energy R&D efforts scattered among various institutes and private firms across the country. The objective is to build an industrial prototype reactor by 2035 and achieving large-scale commercial use by 2050. China has filed more patents in nuclear fusion technology than any other country or region between 2011 and 2022
🤖 Researchers from the Idaho State University and Idaho National Laboratory successfully develop an advance digital twin based of the AGN-201 research reactor (aka “the plastic reactor"). It receives real-time data from the operational reactor, employing machine learning to predict its performance. The AGN-201 reactor, operational since 1965, is a 5 Wth reactor.
👨🎓 Paper of the week: "Search for particle-stable tetraneutrons in thermal fission of 235U", Physical Review C (2023).
👉 Using nuclear reactors for extremely cool particle physics.
👇 Did you spot anything else? Let me me know!
