Since the beginning of the full-scale war, the IAEA has coordinated assistance to Ukraine in the form of supplies of a wide ...

Following up on her history of radium in “Half Lives” (2021), Lucy Jane Santos now focuses, in “Chain Reactions,” on the element that started this atomic revolution—uranium.

Meanwhile, the SPARC nuclear fusion reactor, a US project involving MIT, is currently in development in Devens, Massachusetts and scheduled to start operations in 2026.

The result is a nuclear explosion. By contrast, the more common isotope, U-238, usually absorbs slow neutrons without splitting and cannot drive such a devastating chain reaction.

The typically ceramic fuel pellets are then inserted into a fission reactor and the U-235 is exposed to a neutron source that then kickstarts a nuclear chain reaction. Reprocessing And Pyroprocessing ...

The U.S. hasn't tested a nuclear weapon in decades, and since the 1990s has used simulations and experiments to verify they're working properly. NPR was granted a rare look at how they do it.

Compared to large reactors, for example, it’s harder to sustain a chain reaction with small reactors since “their high surface-to-volume ratio means a lot of neutrons leak out,” Buongiorno says.

The easiest reaction to initiate in the laboratory is the fusion of isotopes of hydrogen, deuterium and tritium. Per unit mass, the reaction produces 4 times more energy than the fission of U235.

The U.S. Department of Energy estimates that the country will need 20% more electricity over the next 10 years. It’s a far cry from the 1960s, when consumption doubled, but it would nevertheless ...

This fear of nuclear Armageddon, as Trump has repeatedly cautioned, prompted a statement from the White House indicating the U.S. desire to pursue nuclear arms control dialogues with Russia and ...