Tag Archives: nuclear

Technetium-99m generators

Posted on 15th January by Mr Reid

Technetium-99m is a radio­active tracer that is used in twenty million medical dia­gnostic pro­ced­ures per year. At least 31 radio­phar­ma­ceut­icals based on Tc-99m are used for imaging and studying organs such as the brain, heart muscle, thyroid, lungs, liver, gall­bladder … Continue reading →

Tagged , | 2 Comments |

Curiosity’s nuclear battery

Posted on 14th December by Mr Reid

The Curi­osity rover that is the main part of the Mars Science Labor­atory mission is very dif­ferent from its pre­de­cessors Sojourner and the twin rovers Spirit & Oppor­tunity. L-R: Spirit/Oppor­tunity, Sojourner and Curi­osity. L-R: The wheels of Sojourner, Spirit/Oppor­tunity and … Continue reading →

Tagged , , | 2 Comments |

SNIFing out rogue nuclear reactors

Posted on 12th August by Mr Reid

This was my losing entry for the Wellcome Trust Science Writing Prize. The search for hidden nuclear reactors has tra­di­tion­ally been an intel­li­gence oper­a­tion run by organ­isa­tions like the CIA and the SIS (formerly MI6), but in future it might … Continue reading →

Tagged , | 1 Comment |

Passive Institutional Controls

Posted on 29th July by Mr Reid

The storage of nuclear waste is a long term problem, on the scale of tens of thou­sands of years.  Regular warning signs are no use on a times­cale this long: paper rots, metal rusts and paint peels. Changes in language … Continue reading →

Tagged , , | Leave a comment |

Fuel Mix and CO2

Posted on 26th May by Mr Reid

Since 2005 UK elec­tri­city sup­pliers have been legally obliged by Ofgem to provide inform­a­tion about the fuel mix they use to generate elec­tri­city and the carbon dioxide they produce in the process. The UK average fuel mix; heavy on gas and coal. … Continue reading →

Tagged , , | Leave a comment |

Potassium iodide pills are radioactive

Posted on 23rd March by Mr Reid

Matter is made of atoms, and atoms are made of protons, neutrons and elec­trons. The protons are pos­it­ively charged, the elec­trons are neg­at­ively charged and (as their name suggests) the neutrons are neutral, having no charge. For every atom, the … Continue reading →

Tagged , | 3 Comments |

Fukushima nuclear accident timeline

Posted on 17th March by Mr Reid

This post is no longer being updated This timeline has been pieced together from numerous sources; there may be inac­curacies and many of the times are only approx­imate. All times given are in Japan Standard Time (UTC+0900). The most recent inform­a­tion … Continue reading →

Tagged , | 3 Comments |

Situation at Fukushima nuclear power station

Posted on 12th March by Mr Reid

This post is no longer being updated. During the March 11 earth­quake Units 1, 2 and 3 of the Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant shut down auto­mat­ic­ally. Diesel gen­er­ators kicked in to run the backup cooling system and extract excess heat … Continue reading →

Tagged , | 62 Comments |

Infrared imagery of the transport of nuclear waste

Posted on 25th January by Mr Reid

As much as I loathe Green­peace, they’ve released some fant­astic infrared imagery of nuclear waste being trans­ported by train. The intent seems to be to try and get people to think that the casks are emitting some­thing dan­gerous, but I … Continue reading →

Tagged , , | 3 Comments |

How does the damage caused by exposure to radiation vary as the dose of radiation increases?

Posted on 29th December by Mr Reid

Most people assume that if you double the amount of radi­ation you double the damage caused, and that there is no threshold below which no damage is done. This is called the Linear No Threshold (LNT) model and is rep­res­ented … Continue reading →

Tagged , , , | 1 Comment |

Finding hidden nuclear reactors with neutrinos

Posted on 28th November by Mr Reid

French phys­i­cists from the École Poly­tech­nique and the Com­mis­sariat à l’Energie Atomique et aux Energies Altern­at­ives have pub­lished a paper that looks at the pos­sib­ility of finding clandes­tine or rogue nuclear reactors by using mobile neutrino detectors trans­ported by super­tankers. … Continue reading →

Tagged , , | Leave a comment |

Long half-life ≠ dangerous

Posted on 26th October by Mr Reid

Nuclear waste is often quoted as having a “half-life of millions of years” as if this is a bad thing in and of itself.* But there’s another way of looking at it. Radio­active decay occurs when an unstable atom emits either … Continue reading →

Tagged , , | 3 Comments |

Uranium-233 and the thorium future

Posted on 22nd July by Mr Reid

When people think of nuclear fuel they tend to think of uranium and plut­nonium, or more spe­cific­ally their fissile isotopes: uranium-235, plutonium-239 and plutonium-241. But there is another fissile isotope that doesn’t get the atten­tion it deserves: uranium-233. A fissile … Continue reading →

Tagged , | Leave a comment |

State of the Union

Posted on 1st February by Mr Reid

“[T]o create more of these clean energy jobs, we need more pro­duc­tion, more effi­ciency, more incent­ives. And that means building a new gen­er­a­tion of safe, clean nuclear power plants in this country.” — Barack Obama, State of the Union Address, January … Continue reading →

Tagged , | Leave a comment |

Nuclear Powered X

Posted on 11th May by Mr Reid

Where X equals… Icebreaker The 50 Years Anniversary of Victory is a Russian nuclear powered icebreaking ship, the largest icebreaker in the world. Light­house In the Arctic Ocean and along the remote Kola Pen­in­sula there are at least 130 Russian light­houses … Continue reading →

Tagged | Leave a comment |

Combo post

Posted on 27th March by Mr Reid

By com­bining this post about T-shirts and this post about nuclear energy I have produced this post:

Tagged , | Leave a comment |

Environmentalists in favour of nuclear power

Posted on 2nd March by Mr Reid

In a piece for The Inde­pendent, four leading envir­on­ment­al­ists have come out in favour of nuclear power. Stephen Tindale, former director of Green­peace, said: “My position was neces­sarily that nuclear power was wrong, partly for the pol­lu­tion and nuclear waste … Continue reading →

Tagged | 4 Comments |