TEPCO is demanding that its own employees return nuclear accident compensation money. ex-skf.blogspot.jp
A problem affecting water flow in a steam generator shut down unit 3 at New York’s Indian Point nuclear plant Monday. nuclearstreet.com
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Geiger Readings for January 8, 2013
Ambient office = 112 nanosieverts per hourAmbient outside = 130 nanosieverts per hourSoil exposed to rain water = 137 nanosieverts per hourRed bell pepper from Top Foods = 126 nanosieverts per hourTap water = 69 nanosieverts per hourFiltered water = 54 nanosieverts per hour -
Nuclear Fusion 4 – History 2
In 1954, the ZETA project began at Harwell in the U.K. ZETA stands for Zero Energy Thermonuclear Assembly. The U.K. had built a number of devices to test the concept of the zeta-pinch which used magnetic fields generated by induced electrical currents to compress a plasma. ZETA was the first large scale nuclear fusion reactor built. The U.S. had also been working on pinch devices as well as stellarator machines as a path to nuclear fusion. The construction of the ZETA was seen as a major leap forward in fusion research, putting the U.K. ahead of the U.S. In the same year, Edward Teller, a theoretical physicist gave a talk in which he concluded that most proposed designs for magnetic confinement of plasmas would be unstable.
In 1956, it was revealed that the U.S.S.R. was working on tokamak systems at the Kurchatov Institute in Moscow. Their experiments were encountering problems similar to those found in the U.K. and U.S. experiments. This revelation stimulated discussions on the public release of classified fusion research documents by the U.S. and the U.K. That same year, Friedwardt Winterberg, a physicist at the University of Nevada suggested that a fusion reaction could be initiated by a convergent shockwave.
In 1957, ZETA went into operation. Neutrons were generated during each test which was a strong indication that nuclear fusion had occurred. Temperatures reached five million degrees during the experiments with ZETA. The results of the experiments matches the theoretical models of fusion. However, researchers in the U.S. conducted their own experiments and concluded that the temperatures were not correctly measured and that neutrons could be produced that were not indicative of fusion. The enthusiastic announcements of the U.K. ZETA researches had to be withdrawn which resulted in a lack of confidence in the “pinch” route to nuclear fusion. By 1961, most work on using zeta pinch to generate fusion had ended. Although the first ZETA experiments failed to produce fusion, the machine did continue to be used for plasma pinch research and produced a number of important and useful results.
In 1958, a great number of research documents were shared by the U.K., the U.S.S.R. and the U.S. at the Atoms for Peace conference in Geneva. This was the biggest conference on fusion research held to date. One conclusion of the shared research was that the basic pinch approach was not successful.
In 1963, Friedwardt Winterberg proposed bombarding a mixture of liquid 2H (deuterium) and 3H (tritium) with micro-particles which had been accelerated to one thousand kilometers per second. Winterberg made many contributions to nuclear fusion theory as well as designing some of the hardware used in fusion research. He also proposed a nuclear fusion propulsion system for spacecraft called the Winterberg/ Daedalus Class Magnetic Compression Reaction Chamber which was built at the University of Alabama. Winterberg continued to be active in fusion research and development for decades.
ZETA machine:
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Radiation News Roundup January 7, 2013
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Geiger Readings for January 7, 2013
Ambient office = 86 nanosieverts per hourAmbient outside = 86 nanosieverts per hourSoil exposed to rain water = 70 nanosieverts per hourYellow bell pepper from Top Foods = 107 nanosieverts per hourTap water = 79 nanosieverts per hourFiltered water = 65 nanosieverts per hour -
Nuclear Fusion 3 – History 1
In 1946, George Thomson, an English Physicist, and Moses Blackman, an English Physicist, were working at the Imperial College in England. They proposed a device that would utilize an electric current in a plasma (a gas of ionized hydrogen) to generate a magnetic field that would compress the plasma and could potentially lead to a fusion reaction. This type of plasma confinement system was referred to as a zeta pinch. The name was taken from the mathematical diagram for the system along with pinch as a reference to the compression of the plasma.
In 1947, Thomson, Blackman, Cousins, Ware and other physicists meet in Harwell, U.K, to discuss development of the pinch effect. Cousins and Ware create the first plasma energized by kiloamperes of electricity in a glass vessel shaped like a doughnut otherwise known as a torus. The plasma was very unstable despite the pinch effect and only lasted for a few seconds.
In 1950, the Soviet scientists Andre Sakharov and Igor Tamm proposed a nuclear fusion reactor they called a “tokamak” based on an original idea by Oleg Lavrentiev. In order to achieve a more stable plasma, the design called for a toroidal electrical field that travels around the torus. A poloidal field that is generated by the circulating toroidal field circulates around the cross sections of the torus. Electromagnets are used to induce the current in the plasma. These two fields at right angles to each other result in a magnetic field that travels around the torus in a helical configuration. (See diagram at end of article.)
In 1951, Lymen Spitzer came up with the idea for a fusion reactor called a stellarator. Unlike the tokamak design, the stellarator called for a lower density plasma and a longer confinement time. The big challenge was to keep all the plasma particles confined. Winding a wire in a cylindrical shape causes a plasma to be pushed to the center of the cylinder by the magnetic field. However, the plasma can still escape out either end of the cylinder. However, the plasma can still escape out either end of the cylinder. Bending the cylinder around into a torus shape solves that problem but because the windings will be closer together on the inside of the torus than the windings will be on the outside. This results in an asymmetrical confinement field which allows plasma to escape. Lymen came up with a design where the torus shape was drawn out into more of a race track shape with two long sides joined by curved ends. This allowed the cancellation of the asymmetries for the plasmas and extended the confinement time.
In 1952, Cousins and Ware build a larger toroidal pinch device and conclusively demonstrate that plasma instabilities make such pinch devices fundamentally unstable. In 1953, the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. build pinch devices and try to generate a fusion reaction without concern for the instabilities in the plasmas or long term plasma confinement.
Diagram of electrical fields in a tokomak. The blue arrow is the toroidal field and the red arrow is the poloidal field:
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Geiger Readings for January 6, 2013
Ambient office = 104 nanosieverts per hourAmbient outside = 108 nanosieverts per hourSoil exposed to rain water = 90 nanosieverts per hourRed bell pepper from Top Foods = 90 nanosieverts per hourTap water = 72 nanosieverts per hourFiltered water = 65 nanosieverts per hour -
Geiger Readings for January 5, 2013
Ambient office = 83 nanosieverts per hourAmbient outside = 129 nanosieverts per hourSoil exposed to rain water = 138 nanosieverts per hourRed bell pepper from Top Foods = 125 nanosieverts per hourTap water = 70 nanosieverts per hourFiltered water = 57 nanosieverts per hour
