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Tryst with a fusion reactor Trends
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Tryst with a fusion reactor Electric power generation is a dirty business, thus far at least. This may change if the International Thermo-nuclear Experimental Re-actor (ITER) to be constructed at Cadarache in the South of France, at a cost of about 5 billion Euros over the next 10 years, succeeds. Fusion reactors will be safe, reliable, environmentally benign and economically viable and will offer unlimited energy. The fuel materials, deuterium and lithium from which tritium can be extracted are abundant; deuterium in sea water and lithium in earth’s crust. Fusion produces no greenhouse gases that cause global warming and climate change. Unlike fossil fueled plants, fusion reactors do not emit noxious gases; nor do they release cadmium, mercury, arsenic and natural radioactive elements They do not produce long lived radioactive wastes. Some metal parts may get activated; these activities are relatively shortlived. A fusion power plant uses tritium, a beta particle emitter of very low energy. It is consumed in the process itself. Fusion can never run out of hand, as it is not a chain reaction. The process is inherently safe. A successful fusion plant can power millions of houses. Europe will contribute roughly 2.5 billion Euros to the project; while China, Japan, India, the Republic of Korea, the Russian Federation and the USA will contribute equally to the rest. On March 6, 2008, the ITER Organisation and the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) signed a Cooperation Agreement. CERN has rich experience in many ITER related technologies. CERN will also contribute its expertise in finance, purchasing and human resources and software programmes. ITER may provide the knowhow to build the first electricity generating power station based on magnetic confinement of high temperature plasma. Scientists will use it to test high-temperature tolerant components, large scale superconducting magnets, fuel breeding blankets using high temperature coolants to produce power efficiently and safe remote handling of irradiated components. In December 2005, India joined the ITER organisation as its seventh full partner. The US-India joint statement of March 2, 2006 welcomed the participation of India in the ITER initiative on fusion energy as an important further step towards the common goal of full nuclear energy cooperation. India will contribute equipment worth 500 million dollars to the ITER project and will participate in its subsequent operation and experiments. India will supply nine items including a massive cryostat which forms the outer vacuum envelope for ITER, the vacuum vessel shields made of special boron steel and occupying space between the two walls, eight 2.5 mega watt in cyclotron heating sources, complete with power systems and controls and cryo-distribution and water cooling subsystems (Nuclear India, May/June 2006). The Institute for Plasma Research (IPR), an aided institution under the Department of Atomic Energy is the Indian Domestic Agency for the project IPR has been carrying out research in basic and applied plasma physics. It has several basic experimental devices for research in plasma physics. It is currently building the Steady State Superconducting Tokamak (SST-1). The strong commitments of the partners of this seemingly costly project indicate that it will succeed. Fifty years from now, when fusion reactors become a reality, we will have a breed of Indian engineers and scientists to construct and operate such plants which offer unlimited power to the country. Indian scientists and engineers will get direct hands-on experience in design, fabrication, and operation etc. on the latest fusion technologies for the first time. India may join collaborative efforts to develop low activation materials and learn robotic technologies developed to handle radioactive components weighing up to 50,000kg. As full partners in a prestigious international experiment, India will have to come to international standards of quality, safety, time schedule maintenance etc. immediately. “If we backup the ITER INDIA effort with an aggressive, well focused national programme, it will allow us to leapfrog by at least a couple of decades” Dr P.K. Kaw, Director, IPR wrote in an article in Nuclear India. (K.S.Parthasarathy is former Secretary, Atomic Energy Regulatory Board) |
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Trends The scientists uncovered a Tarbosaurus — related to the giant carnivorous Tyrannosaurus — from a chunk of sandstone they dug up in August, 2006 in the Gobi Desert in Mongolia, said Takuji Yokoyama, a spokesman for the Hayashibara Museum of Natural Sciences, a co-organizer of the joint research project. “We were so lucky to have found remains that turned out to be a complete set of all the important parts,” he said. — AP Day-care babies gain more weight Infants cared for by someone other than mom or dad are more apt to be exposed to “unfavorable” feeding practices and to gain more weight during their first year of life, a new study shows, which could contribute to childhood weight problems. “Parents may want to have enough communication with child care providers about when, what and how to feed their babies during their stay in day care, which is important to avoid potential risk of overfeeding or underfeeding at home,” Dr. Juhee Kim of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, told Reuters Health. —
Reuters Mystery insect The almond-shaped insect, about the size of a grain of rice, and was first seen in March 2007 on some of the plane trees that grow on the grounds of the 19th century museum, collections manager Max Barclay said Tuesday. Within three months, it had become the most common insect in the garden, and it was also spotted in other central London parks, he said.
—AP
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THIS UNIVERSE If there are two people sitting on a bench and one of them gets up and starts moving at the speed of light and goes around the earth, when he comes to his initial starting point, he would have grown older by just a fraction of a second. But on the other hand his friend who was sitting on the bench would have grown older by many years in this time. This is supposed to be a theoretically proven fact. What is the explanation? Yes it is proven theoretically and also demonstrated through experiment. We cannot accelerate a human being to velocities close to velocity of light. But unstable fundamental particles can be. One of these particles is the muon which has a life time of 2 microseconds. If there were two such particles, one of them moving at low speed and the other with a velocity close to that of light, it is found that the first one decays in a couple of microseconds barely traveling the length of a football field while the other one can travel for tens of kilometers without dying. I understand that the sum of mass and energy is conserved, meaning that they can be converted into each other. Mass is converted to energy in nuclear fission and fusion reactions. Can you give me an example when energy is converted into mass? One can, and has, observed high energy gamma rays passing by a nucleus convert into a pair of electrons, one negative and the other positive. Positive electrons are called positrons. These are frequent observations in cosmic ray experiments and around accelerator experiments.
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ITER will produce 500 MW of fusion power for a burn length of 400 seconds. It may operate for nearly 20 years.
Japanese and Mongolian scientists have successfully recovered the complete skeleton of a 70-million-year-old young dinosaur, a nature museum announced Thursday.
The experts at London’s Natural History Museum pride themselves on being able to identify species from around the globe, from birds and mammals to insects and snakes. Yet they can’t figure out a tiny red-and-black bug that has appeared in the museum’s own gardens.