Week 36 of 2023
Three nuclear energy innovation news!
🤖 Boston Dynamics' Spot robot performs a capability demonstration in the Fuel Cycle Area of the Dounreay site, in Scotland UK. It navigated in the facility, which had been shut off for 25 years, in pitch-black conditions and through flights of stairs, to map its surroundings and take radiological measurements. The demonstration was orchestrated by Createc.
🌭 The Federal Ministry of Education and Research (Germany) commits to invest over €1 billion in fusion research over the next 5 years. This additional funding strenghtens the position of entities such as the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics, the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology.
☀ In parallel, the UK goverment plans to invest close to £800 million to support its fusion strategy. This follows the decsion to not associate to the Euratom R&T initiatives. The funds are meant for new facilities, a new fusion skills package, and support international collaborative project.
👨🎓 Paper of the week: "First Observation of the β3αp Decay of O13 via β -Delayed Charged-Particle Spectroscopy", Physical Review Letters (2023). https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.130.222501
👉 First observation of a nucleus decaying into four particles after beta decay - rare but not entirely unexpected.
👇 Did you spot anything else? Let me know!
PS: I'm working on a book, provisionally entitled "Atomic Hope" - a positive outlook on the marvel that is nuclear energy. Any writing tips of contacts with publishers would be highly appreciated! 📖 🙏
