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Nuclear-powered
Mars Curiosity set to launch in November!!! this awesome news!
"Curiosity’s generator is built to withstand launch explosions or the
extreme heat — up to 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit — that would be
encountered during an inadvertent atmospheric re-entry after an
upper-stage engine failure.
The plutonium dioxide fuel is protected by several layers of safety. Fuel pellets the size of marshmallows
are sheathed in a dense, iridium heat shield. The pellets are bundled
in pairs in high-strength graphite shells designed to absorb the most
powerful possible impacts. And those shells are wrapped with ablative
sleeves made of carbon-bonded fiber." read more:
http://www.floridatoday.com/article/20110929/NEWS02/309290002/Safety-team-finalizes-plan-nuke-powered-rover-launch
A
great article about the target station at ESS in the Oct issue of the
Physics World: "Handling 100 °C temperature changes that occur in less
than 3 ms is a key task for those designing the European Spallation
Source, as Michael Banks reports... When complete in 2019, the €1.48bn
European Spallation Source (ESS) will be the most powerful source of
neutrons in the world. With construction expected to start in 2013, and
the facility fully open by 2025, the ESS will produce neutrons by
accelerating protons in a linac to 2.5 GeV before smashing them into a
seven-tonne target. The neutrons will then be cooled by a moderator and
sent to 22 experimental stations to be used by researchers to probe the
structure and physical properties of a wide range of solids, liquids and
gases. The ESS will specialize in long wavelength, or "cold", neutrons
that suit experiments on large-scale structures such as polymers and
biological molecules.". See http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/indepth/47369
to read about technical challenges of building the target station...
The full issue dealing with also other types of large scale facilities
could be downloaded here: http://images.iop.org/dl/physicsweb/2011/PW-big-science-web.pdf
Did
you know 25 years ago, on Oct. 3, 1986, the world's first Tandem
Accelerator Superconducting Cyclotron (able to accelerate most elements
to 10 MeV per nucleon) was officially opened at Chalk River
Laboratories? using superconducting technology for the first time in
building accelerators, they were able to create a more powerful yet
smaller and cheaper accelerator http://media.cns-snc.ca/history/fifty_years/hanna.html ... also see http://epaper.kek.jp/p85/PDF/PAC1985_2643.PDF
for a pdf file of the paper describing its commissioning (IEEE
Transaction on Nuclear Science, October 1985, Volume NS-32, Number 5,
p.2643)... more historical highlights could be found here: http://www.candu.org/candu_reactors.html
This
is a great read on why the US is now behind 5 nations in overall
innovation and competitiveness and continues to fall further behind, a
national innovation strategy is needed to reverse this course... perhaps
there are lessons to be learned here in Canada as well... see www.uic.edu/index.html/Chancellor/risingabove.pdf
for the report Rising Above the Gathering Storm. "Each of the five
nations ranked by the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation
as “out-competing” the U.S. has implemented a national competitiveness
or innovation strategy: that is, a unified plan to marshal their
governmental and private resources to support new technologies and
ideas. Worldwide, at least 30 countries have established their own
competitiveness plans. Yet the U.S.– alone among the world’s
technological leaders–has failed to draw up a roadmap for innovation. Is
it any wonder that, with no clear view of our destination, America has
failed to make strides in the right direction?"... "Now is not the time
to be slashing federal investment in research and development in
science. Investments in our federal science agencies and our national
innovation infrastructure are minimal down-payments on our country’s
security, public health, and economic vitality that we cannot afford to
postpone."... read more: http://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/201108/backpage.cfm
This is the latest Global Innovation Index 2011 rankings of the world’s most innovative countries, Canada ranks 8 behind Switzerland, Sweden, Singapore, Hong Kong (SAR), Finland, Denmark, and the US: http://www.globalinnovationindex.org/gii/main/analysis/rankings.cfm?vno=a&viewall=true
There
is still no plan to solve the medical (as well as industrial and
research) isotope shortage problem in the long term: "At present, both
the Dutch and Canadian reactors are operational again, and doctors have
enough isotopes to carry out millions of routine nuclear medicine
procedures per year, as they have in the past. But because both of these
reactors, as well as all of the rest in the small fleet of research reactors that generate medical isotopes, are rapidly aging, a replacement for them is desperately needed.
The Canadian government has even given the world a hard deadline for
this replacement. In 2016, it has pledged to shut down the 50-year-old
Chalk River reactor forever." ... Let's not forget a replacement for the
aging NRU not only will solve the medical isotope problem but also
allows Canada to continue with its leadership role in neutron scattering
and nuclear science and technology for years to come... Read more: http://www.txchnologist.com/2011/endangered-isotopes-where-will-nuclear-medicine-get-its-critical-tool
