The Half-Life Report #2

Golden nuggets in nuclear.

July 29, 2024

Golden nuggets in nuclear

Welcome to The Half-Life Report, the weekly nuclear newsletter that gets right to the point and gives you golden nuggets from the world of nuclear.

Here’s last week’s biggest news from the nuclear industry.

#1: A new reactor, impervious to meltdowns

World’s first ‘meltdown-proof’ nuclear reactor aces safety test

China's Tsinghua University has scored a world first by demonstrating the inherent safety of the first operating commercial pebble-bed nuclear reactor by shutting off the power and letting the passive systems maintain control of the reactor core.

newatlas.com/energy/meltdown-proof-nuclear-reactor-first-safety-tests-china

  • China’s Tsinghua University successfully tested the world's first commercial "meltdown-proof" nuclear reactor at Shidao Bay.

  • The reactor, called a high-temperature gas-cooled pebble-bed reactor (HTR-PM), uses spherical fuel elements and helium coolant, which prevents meltdowns and ensures self-regulation

  • The test: Power was cut off, and passive safety systems maintained safe core temperatures without active intervention.

  • The result? The reactor safely shut down, stabilizing temperatures and nuclear reactions, demonstrating inherent safety

In other words, these reactors literally can’t melt down. Pretty crazy.

#2: A new element?

The research group at LBNL leading the study.

Lawrence Berkeley National Lab is about to expand the periodic table with an experiment to create element 120. Here are the key points:

  • Method: They fired a beam of titanium-50 at a plutonium target for 22 days straight in their Cyclotron facility. This produced 2 atoms of element 116 (aka livermorium), proving the approach works.

  • Next Steps: Change the target from plutonium to californium-249, fire the beam for longer and at higher energies, and by the end, hopefully create element 120.

Now you may be thinking…

  • Impact: Discovering a new element would expand our understanding of nuclear physics in general, and of “superheavy” elements specifically.

  • This could mean advancements in computing, nuclear medicine, materials science

  • Not to mention, we would be expanding our knowledge of physics at a fundamental level; this is a new element we’re talking about here!

Pretty exciting stuff. You can read the full paper here.

That’s it for this week! Oh, one more thing:

#3: New IG just dropped

The Half-Life Report is now on Instagram, and we dropped a pretty ️‍🔥 reel:

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