Nuclear Nuggets

If you have any interesting or unusual nuclear facts, send them in and we will publish them. The sender of the best nugget each week will receive one of our keyrings Send your entries HERE

TODAY'S NUGGET

US nuclear officials investigate cause of fish killing

With thanks to Tristan J Schweiger, writing for the APP web pages. A total of 5,304 fish were killed as a result of the unplanned shutdown of the Oyster Creek nuclear power plant in Lacey, New Jersey, a company official confirmed recently.

Operators manually shut down Oyster Creek's reactor after one of the three pumps that feed water into the reactor tripped, according to a report on the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Web site.

A final root cause will likely take several weeks to determine. Elaine Makatura, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Environmental Protection, said the determination of whether to impose any fines on the operator would be made after the cause of the incident is known.

Images: Colin Archer/ENS Newswire

HOME

Australia's new research reactor has reached its full operating power of 20 MWt during commissioning. The reactor will supply radioisotopes for medical and industrial use. The Open Pool Australian Light-water Reactor (Opal) is owned and operated by the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (Ansto) at Lucas Heights about 30 km outside of Sydney

Engineers at the U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory, using an emerging sensing technology, have developed a suite of sensors for national security applications that can quickly and effectively detect chemical, biological, nuclear and explosive materials. This technology can also be used to detect if a country is using its nuclear reactors to produce material for nuclear weapons.

With apologies for the picture on the index page � well, we couldn�t resist � and staying in the UK, here is a nice little story from the pages of World Nuclear News. A team of underwater robots could scour the offshore next to the Dounreay nuclear site to remove radioactive particles from the seabed and reduce the number being washed onto the beach if proposals by the UK Atomic Energy Authority are approved.

Radioactive particles escaped into the environment, mainly during the period of reprocessing during the early years of the Dounreay site. The systems in place to minimise particulate release, including a diffuser, were not sufficiently effective to prevent the release of particles.

It is proposed that over the next seven years remotely operated vehicles will scour around 600,000 square metres of seabed.

Found on a recent trawl through the BBC�s web pages. A Canadian nuclear reactor producing two-thirds of the world's medical isotopes resumed operations recently after being shut down for a month.

The country's Atomic Energy Agency says that new supplies will be ready within days to meet a worldwide shortage.

The Chalk River nuclear plant in the province of Ontario, in Eastern Canada, produces isotopes used all over the world for medical imaging and diagnostic scans for fractures, cancer and heart conditions.

The 50-year old reactor was originally shut down for a week of routine maintenance but the country's nuclear regulator refused to allow it to resume production until a number of safety issues were resolved.

Back in 2003, the Japanese corporation Toshiba wanted to thrust the Alaskan community of Galena into the international limelight by donating a new, unconventional electricity-generating plant that would light and heat the Yukon River village, pollution-free, for 30 years. The catch? It was a nuclear reactor! The question? Was it ever built?

For 60 years, how Trinitite formed has been an unchanging part of Trinity Site lore. After the test, the ground-zero crater was coated with Trinitite, green due to the presence of iron in the sand.

The White Sands public-affairs staff had been telling it the same way until Los Alamos National Lab Scientists Robert Hermes and William Strickfaden published the results of their recent investigation.

Strickfaden said he ran the appropriate numbers through the appropriate formulas and could not get the atomic fireball to form glass in the thickness found on site. He said the fireball did not hover over the site long enough to account for glass that thick. After further research, they suggested that the desert sand was scooped up into the fireball instead of being baked on the ground underneath it.

Thorium Oxide could be the answer to many concerns about nuclear power. Reactors that use thorium, rather than uranium, produce radioactive waste that needs to be stored for only 500 years. They can also incinerate the much longer-lived radioactive products from conventional nuclear plants, making a Chernobyl-type meltdown virtually impossible: Okay�

The drive to harness the nuclear power that makes the Sun shine passed a milestone recently with the signing of an international treaty launching a �7 billion fusion energy research project. This latest step has been inspired by the thought that fusion could solve the world�s energy needs.

Researchers at MIT have developed technology they say will boost the power output of nuclear power plants by 50 per cent, and make them safer to run. Well, that�s okay then�

Making an atomic bomb isn�t for dummies - or for sissies. "It's not done in your basement or bathtub," said Robert Norris, a nuclear weapons expert at the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental group in Washington. Okay�

Back to �97, this time to Starkville, Miss.--A "drum-thunker" and a high-temperature electric torch were helping a Mississippi State laboratory develop ways for America and the world to reduce and safely store nuclear wastes..

SCIENCE STUFF

STUFF YOU DIDN'T KNOW

JUST PLAIN SILLY

LOST IN SPACE

NO PARTICULAR PLACE TO GO

All information on this web site is provided as is without warranty of any kind. Neither Rick Maybury Ltd nor its employees nor contributors are responsible for any loss, injury, or damage, direct or consequential, resulting from your choosing to use any of the information or products contained herein.