Energy, features and articles | Educational Science

Nov 11, 2014

Traces of Fukushima Radiation Detected Off California Coast

Extremely low levels of radioactive cesium from Japan's 2011 Fukushima nuclear meltdown are present in ocean water offshore Northern California, researchers announced Monday (Nov. 10). In seawater collected about 100 miles (161 kilometers) offshore of Eureka, the amount of cesium-134 was 2 Becquerels per cubic meter of water (a unit...

Mar 27, 2015

Kitty Litter to Blame for Nuclear Waste Leak

If you're trying to stabilize nuclear waste, don't use organic kitty litter. That's the take-away of a 277-page report, just released by the Department of Energy (DOE), on a radioactive leak that occurred at the underground Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) east of Carlsbad, New Mexico, on Feb. 14, 2014....

Sep 19, 2016

How Much Fuel Is Inside Earth?

The searing heat deep inside Earth is what keeps the planet churning — creeping tectonic plates, erupting volcanoes and a working magnetic field — but how much of this sizzling energy does the planet have in its tank? Scientists have long wondered how much energy remains in the planet today,...

Mar 11, 2017

6 Years After Fukushima: Has Japan Lost Faith in Nuclear Power?

Six years have passed since the Fukushima nuclear disaster on March 11, 2011, but Japan is still dealing with its impacts. Decommissioning the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant poses unprecedented technical challenges. More than 100,000 people were evacuated but only about 13 percent have returned home, although the government has...

May 10, 2017

Hanford Disaster: What Happens to Someone Who's Exposed to Plutonium?

Workers at a nuclear-waste site in Washington state were recently told to hunker down in place after a tunnel in the nuclear finishing plant collapsed, news sources reported yesterday (May 9). Workers at the Hanford nuclear site were told to either evacuate or shelter in place, and to avoid eating...

Nov 21, 2017

Radioactive Cloud Originated in Russia: What Might Have Caused It?

A mysterious cloud of radioactive material that hovered over Europe last month came from Russia, Russian weather monitoring data released today (Nov. 21) suggests. The spike in radioactivity was caused by a substance called ruthenium-106. But what, exactly, is ruthenium-106, does it pose risks to human health and how did...

Dec 2, 2017

Physicists Proved Controlled Nuclear Chain Fission Was Possible, 75 Years Ago

This article was originally published at The Conversation. The publication contributed the article to Live Science's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights. Over Christmas vacation in 1938, physicists Lise Meitner and Otto Frisch received puzzling scientific news in a private letter from nuclear chemist Otto Hahn. When bombarding uranium with neutrons,...

Dec 7, 2017

Is the World's First Nuclear Fusion Plant Finally on Track?

The world's first nuclear fusion plant has now reached 50 percent completion, the project's director-general announced Wednesday (Dec. 6). When it is operational, the experimental fusion plant, called the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), will circulate plasma in its core that is 10 times hotter than the sun, surrounded by...

Dec 28, 2017

Nuclear Sphere: Weird Globe Could Revolutionize Fusion Energy

A team of researchers has a plan to achieve nuclear fusion that actually produces energy, and their proposal looks very different from the fusion projects the world has already seen. If the team is right, its strange, spherical hydrogen-boron reactor could be built in useful form before any ongoing conventional...

Feb 15, 2018

Enriched Uranium Particle Appears Over Alaska — and No One Knows Why

There's a whiff of something radioactive in the air. A research plane flying over the Aleutian Islands on Aug. 3, 2016 detected a single speck of enriched uranium floating about 4.3 miles (7 kilometers) above Alaska's far-western island chain, according to a new research paper that will be published in...

May 21, 2018

Why Radioactive Waste Is Being Melted into Glass

Dangerous radioactive waste has been trapped inside solid glass in a first-of-its-kind demonstration, according to a statement from the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) in southeastern Washington. In the demonstration, scientists at PNNL, a part of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), mixed low-activity radioactive waste — that is, waste...

May 21, 2018

Russia's Floating Nuclear Power Plant Heads for the Bering Strait

Russia's got a floating nuclear plant on a barge, and it's heading for the Bering Strait — just a short hop from Alaska. The Akademik Lomonosov, according to a statement from Russian nuclear energy company Rosatom, docked in the Russian port of Murmansk on Saturday (May 19). There it will...

Jun 28, 2018

Nuclear Fusion Power Could Be Here by 2030, One Company Says

A private nuclear-fusion company has heated a plasma of hydrogen to 27 million degrees Fahrenheit (15 million degrees Celsius) in a new reactor for the first time — hotter than the core of the sun. UK-based Tokamak Energy says the plasma test is a milestone on its quest to be...

Feb 28, 2019

Here's the Science Behind Finding North Korea's Nuclear Weapons

Negotiations over denuclearization of North Korea collapsed this morning after North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un insisted the United States lift all economic sanctions in return for any nuclear disarmament. U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said that talks with North Korea will soon resume, according to the Associated Press....

Jun 3, 2019

There Are Still 10 Chernobyl-Style Reactors Operating Across Russia. How Do We Know They're Safe?

Editor's Note: This story was updated on Monday, June 10 at 4:45 p.m. E.D.T. In the new HBO miniseries Chernobyl, Russian scientists uncover the reason for an explosion in Reactor 4 at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, which spewed radioactive material across northern Europe. That reactor, a design called the...