Portal:Nuclear technology

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The Nuclear Technology Portal

Introduction

This symbol of radioactivity is internationally recognized.

• Nuclear technology is technology that involves the nuclear reactions of atomic nuclei. Among the notable nuclear technologies are nuclear reactors, nuclear medicine and nuclear weapons. It is also used, among other things, in smoke detectors and gun sights. (Full article...)
  
• Nuclear power is the use of nuclear reactions to produce electricity. Nuclear power can be obtained from nuclear fission, nuclear decay and nuclear fusion reactions. Presently, the vast majority of electricity from nuclear power is produced by nuclear fission of uranium and plutonium in nuclear power plants. Nuclear decay processes are used in niche applications such as radioisotope thermoelectric generators in some space probes such as Voyager 2. Reactors producing controlled fusion power have been operated since 1958 but have yet to generate net power and are not expected to be commercially available in the near future. (Full article...)
  
• A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from nuclear reactions, either fission (fission or atomic bomb) or a combination of fission and fusion reactions (thermonuclear weapon), producing a nuclear explosion. Both bomb types release large quantities of energy from relatively small amounts of matter. (Full article...)

General images -

The following are images from various nuclear technology-related articles on Wikipedia.

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  The Superphénix, closed in 1998, was one of the few FBRs. (from Nuclear reactor)
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  The launching ceremony of USS Nautilus January 1954. In 1958 it would become the first vessel to reach the North Pole. (from Nuclear power)
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  The cooling towers of the Philippsburg Nuclear Power Plant in Germany (from Nuclear fission)
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  The guided-missile cruiser USS Monterey (CG 61) receives fuel at sea (FAS) from the Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS George Washington (CVN 73). (from Nuclear power)
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  The nuclear fission display at the Deutsches Museum in Munich. The table and instruments are originals, but would not have been together in the same room. (from Nuclear fission)
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  The number of nuclear warheads by country in 2024, based on an estimation by the Federation of American Scientists. (from Nuclear weapon)
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  Share of electricity production from nuclear, 2023 (from Nuclear power)
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  The USSR and United States nuclear weapon stockpiles throughout the Cold War until 2015, with a precipitous drop in total numbers following the end of the Cold War in 1991. (from Nuclear weapon)
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  The now decommissioned United States' Peacekeeper missile was an ICBM developed to replace the Minuteman missile in the late 1980s. Each missile, like the heavier lift Russian SS-18 Satan, could contain up to ten nuclear warheads (shown in red), each of which could be aimed at a different target. A factor in the development of MIRVs was to make complete missile defense difficult for an enemy country. (from Nuclear weapon)
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  Reactor decay heat as a fraction of full power after the reactor shutdown, using two different correlations. To remove the decay heat, reactors need cooling after the shutdown of the fission reactions. A loss of the ability to remove decay heat caused the Fukushima accident. (from Nuclear power)
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  The Ikata Nuclear Power Plant, a pressurized water reactor that cools by using a secondary coolant heat exchanger with a large body of water, an alternative cooling approach to large cooling towers (from Nuclear power)
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  Lise Meitner and Otto Hahn in their laboratory (from Nuclear reactor)
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  A visual representation of an induced nuclear fission event where a slow-moving neutron is absorbed by the nucleus of a uranium-235 atom, which fissions into two fast-moving lighter elements (fission products) and additional neutrons. Most of the energy released is in the form of the kinetic velocities of the fission products and the neutrons. (from Nuclear fission)
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  The Leibstadt Nuclear Power Plant in Switzerland (from Nuclear power)
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  Edward Teller, often referred to as the "father of the hydrogen bomb" (from Nuclear weapon)
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  The Magnox Sizewell A nuclear power station (from Nuclear reactor)
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  Induced fission reaction. A neutron is absorbed by a uranium-235 nucleus, turning it briefly into an excited uranium-236 nucleus, with the excitation energy provided by the kinetic energy of the neutron plus the forces that bind the neutron. The uranium-236, in turn, splits into fast-moving lighter elements (fission products) and releases several free neutrons, one or more "prompt gamma rays" (not shown) and a (proportionally) large amount of kinetic energy. (from Nuclear fission)
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  Protest in Bonn against the nuclear arms race between the US/NATO and the Warsaw Pact, 1981 (from Nuclear weapon)
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  Most waste packaging, small-scale experimental fuel recycling chemistry and radiopharmaceutical refinement is conducted within remote-handled hot cells. (from Nuclear power)
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  Primary coolant system showing reactor pressure vessel (red), steam generators (purple), pressurizer (blue), and pumps (green) in the three coolant loop Hualong One pressurized water reactor design (from Nuclear reactor)
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  The CANDU Qinshan Nuclear Power Plant (from Nuclear reactor)
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  The nuclear fuel cycle begins when uranium is mined, enriched, and manufactured into nuclear fuel (1), which is delivered to a nuclear power plant. After use, the spent fuel is delivered to a reprocessing plant (2) or to a final repository (3). In nuclear reprocessing, 95% of spent fuel can potentially be recycled to be returned to use in a power plant (4). (from Nuclear power)
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  Life-cycle greenhouse gas emissions of electricity supply technologies, median values calculated by IPCC (from Nuclear power)
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  Treatment of the interior part of a VVER-1000 reactor frame at Atommash (from Nuclear reactor)
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  In thermal nuclear reactors (LWRs in specific), the coolant acts as a moderator that must slow the neutrons before they can be efficiently absorbed by the fuel. (from Nuclear reactor)
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  NC State's PULSTAR Reactor is a 1 MW pool-type research reactor with 4% enriched, pin-type fuel consisting of UO₂ pellets in zircaloy cladding. (from Nuclear reactor)
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  Animation of a Coulomb explosion in the case of a cluster of positively charged nuclei, akin to a cluster of fission fragments. Hue level of color is proportional to (larger) nuclei charge. Electrons (smaller) on this time-scale are seen only stroboscopically and the hue level is their kinetic energy. (from Nuclear fission)
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  Over 2,000 nuclear explosions have been conducted in over a dozen different sites around the world. Red Russia/Soviet Union, blue France, light blue United States, violet Britain, yellow China, orange India, brown Pakistan, green North Korea and light green (territories exposed to nuclear bombs). The black dot indicates the location of the Vela incident. (from Nuclear weapon)
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  Demonstration against nuclear testing in Lyon, France, in the 1980s (from Nuclear weapon)
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  The Torness nuclear power station – an AGR (from Nuclear reactor)
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  A photograph of Sumiteru Taniguchi's back injuries taken in January 1946 by a US Marine photographer (from Nuclear weapon)
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  Activity of spent UOx fuel in comparison to the activity of natural uranium ore over time (from Nuclear power)
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  A demilitarized, commercial launch of the Russian Strategic Rocket Forces R-36 ICBM; also known by the NATO reporting name: SS-18 Satan. Upon its first fielding in the late 1960s, the SS-18 remains the single highest throw weight missile delivery system ever built. (from Nuclear weapon)
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  The stages of binary fission in a liquid drop model. Energy input deforms the nucleus into a fat "cigar" shape, then a "peanut" shape, followed by binary fission as the two lobes exceed the short-range nuclear force attraction distance, and are then pushed apart and away by their electrical charge. In the liquid drop model, the two fission fragments are predicted to be the same size. The nuclear shell model allows for them to differ in size, as usually experimentally observed. (from Nuclear fission)
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  Three of the reactors at Fukushima I overheated, causing the coolant water to dissociate and led to the hydrogen explosions. This along with fuel meltdowns released large amounts of radioactive material into the air. (from Nuclear reactor)
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  Drawing of the first artificial reactor, Chicago Pile-1 (from Nuclear fission)
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  Soviet OTR-21 Tochka missile. Capable of firing a 100-kiloton nuclear warhead a distance of 185 km (from Nuclear weapon)
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  The town of Pripyat abandoned since 1986, with the Chernobyl plant and the Chernobyl New Safe Confinement arch in the distance (from Nuclear power)
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  The Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant – a RBMK type (closed 2009) (from Nuclear reactor)
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  The "curve of binding energy": A graph of binding energy per nucleon of common isotopes. (from Nuclear fission)
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  Olkiluoto 3 under construction in 2009. It was the first EPR, a modernized PWR design, to start construction. (from Nuclear power)
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  The basics of the Teller–Ulam design for a hydrogen bomb: a fission bomb uses radiation to compress and heat a separate section of fusion fuel. (from Nuclear weapon)
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  Fission product yields by mass for thermal neutron fission of uranium-235, plutonium-239, a combination of the two typical of current nuclear power reactors, and uranium-233, used in the thorium cycle (from Nuclear fission)
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  The two basic fission weapon designs (from Nuclear weapon)
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  Ballistic missile submarines have been of great strategic importance for the United States, Russia, and other nuclear powers since they entered service in the Cold War, as they can hide from reconnaissance satellites and fire their nuclear weapons with virtual impunity. (from Nuclear weapon)
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  A Minuteman III ICBM test launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base, United States. MIRVed land-based ICBMs are considered destabilizing because they tend to put a premium on striking first. (from Nuclear weapon)
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  Scaled-down model of TOPAZ nuclear reactor (from Nuclear reactor)
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  Death rates per unit of electricity production for different energy sources (from Nuclear power)
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  The multi-mission radioisotope thermoelectric generator (MMRTG), used in several space missions such as the Curiosity Mars rover (from Nuclear power)
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  Nuclear waste flasks generated by the United States during the Cold War are stored underground at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico. The facility is seen as a potential demonstration for storing spent fuel from civilian reactors. (from Nuclear power)
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  Dry cask storage vessels storing spent nuclear fuel assemblies (from Nuclear power)
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  A comparison of prices over time for energy from nuclear fission and from other sources. Over the presented time, thousands of wind turbines and similar were built on assembly lines in mass production resulting in an economy of scale. While nuclear remains bespoke, many first of their kind facilities added in the timeframe indicated and none are in serial production.Our World in Data notes that this cost is the global average, while the 2 projects that drove nuclear pricing upwards were in the US. The organization recognises that the median cost of the most exported and produced nuclear energy facility in the 2010s the South Korean APR1400, remained "constant", including in export.
  LCOE is a measure of the average net present cost of electricity generation for a generating plant over its lifetime. As a metric, it remains controversial as the lifespan of units are not independent but manufacturer projections, not a demonstrated longevity. (from Nuclear power)
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  Proportions of the isotopes uranium-238 (blue) and uranium-235 (red) found in natural uranium and in enriched uranium for different applications. Light water reactors use 3–5% enriched uranium, while CANDU reactors work with natural uranium. (from Nuclear power)
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  The mushroom cloud of the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, on 9 August 1945 rose over 12 kilometres (7.5 mi) above the bomb's hypocenter. An estimated 39,000 people were killed by the atomic bomb, of whom 23,145–28,113 were Japanese factory workers, 2,000 were Korean slave laborers, and 150 were Japanese combatants. (from Nuclear fission)
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  Typical composition of uranium dioxide fuel before and after approximately three years in the once-through nuclear fuel cycle of a LWR (from Nuclear power)
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  The Calder Hall nuclear power station in the United Kingdom, the world's first commercial nuclear power station (from Nuclear power)
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  The status of nuclear power globally (click for legend) (from Nuclear power)
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  Anti-nuclear protest near nuclear waste disposal centre at Gorleben in northern Germany (from Nuclear power)
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  Montage of an inert test of a United States Trident SLBM (submarine launched ballistic missile), from submerged to the terminal, or re-entry phase, of the multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles (from Nuclear weapon)
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  This view of downtown Las Vegas shows a mushroom cloud in the background. Scenes such as this were typical during the 1950s. From 1951 to 1962 the government conducted 100 atmospheric tests at the nearby Nevada Test Site. (from Nuclear weapon)
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  Otto Hahn and Lise Meitner in 1912 (from Nuclear fission)
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  J. Robert Oppenheimer, principal leader of the Manhattan Project, often referred to as the "father of the atomic bomb". (from Nuclear weapon)
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  Growth of worldwide nuclear power generation (from Nuclear power)
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  Schematic of the ITER tokamak under construction in France (from Nuclear power)
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  The Chicago Pile, the first artificial nuclear reactor, built in secrecy at the University of Chicago in 1942 during World War II as part of the US's Manhattan project (from Nuclear reactor)
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  An example of an induced nuclear fission event. A neutron is absorbed by the nucleus of a uranium-235 atom, which in turn splits into fast-moving lighter elements (fission products) and free neutrons. Though both reactors and nuclear weapons rely on nuclear chain reactions, the rate of reactions in a reactor is much slower than in a bomb. (from Nuclear reactor)
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  Mushroom cloud from the explosion of Castle Bravo, the largest nuclear weapon detonated by the US, in 1954 (from Nuclear weapon)
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  UN vote on adoption of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons on July 7, 2017
  

    Yes

    No

    Did not vote

  (from Nuclear weapon)
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  An assortment of American nuclear intercontinental ballistic missiles at the National Museum of the United States Air Force. Clockwise from top left: PGM-17 Thor, LGM-25C Titan II, HGM-25A Titan I, Thor-Agena, LGM-30G Minuteman III, LGM-118 Peacekeeper, LGM-30A/B/F Minuteman I or II, PGM-19 Jupiter (from Nuclear weapon)
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  The Trinity test of the Manhattan Project was the first detonation of a nuclear weapon, which led J. Robert Oppenheimer to recall verses from the Hindu scripture Bhagavad Gita: "If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the mighty one "... "I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds". (from Nuclear weapon)
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  Nuclear fuel assemblies being inspected before entering a pressurized water reactor in the United States (from Nuclear power)
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  Diablo Canyon – a PWR (from Nuclear reactor)
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  Ukrainian workers use equipment provided by the US Defense Threat Reduction Agency to dismantle a Soviet-era missile silo. After the end of the Cold War, Ukraine and the other non-Russian, post-Soviet republics relinquished Soviet nuclear stockpiles to Russia. (from Nuclear weapon)
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  The first light bulbs ever lit by electricity generated by nuclear power at EBR-1 at Argonne National Laboratory-West, December 20, 1951. (from Nuclear power)
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  Anti-nuclear weapons protest march in Oxford, 1980 (from Nuclear weapon)
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  Following the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, the world's worst nuclear accident since 1986, 50,000 households were displaced after radiation leaked into the air, soil and sea. Radiation checks led to bans of some shipments of vegetables and fish. (from Nuclear power)
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  Some of the Chicago Pile Team, including Enrico Fermi and Leó Szilárd (from Nuclear reactor)
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  The first nuclear weapons were gravity bombs, such as this "Fat Man" weapon dropped on Nagasaki, Japan. They were large and could only be delivered by heavy bomber aircraft (from Nuclear weapon)
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  A schematic nuclear fission chain reaction. 1. A uranium-235 atom absorbs a neutron and fissions into two new atoms (fission fragments), releasing three new neutrons and some binding energy. 2. One of those neutrons is absorbed by an atom of uranium-238 and does not continue the reaction. Another neutron is simply lost and does not collide with anything, also not continuing the reaction. However, the one neutron does collide with an atom of uranium-235, which then fissions and releases two neutrons and some binding energy. 3. Both of those neutrons collide with uranium-235 atoms, each of which fissions and releases between one and three neutrons, which can then continue the reaction. (from Nuclear fission)
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  United States and USSR/Russian nuclear weapons stockpiles, 1945–2006. The Megatons to Megawatts Program was the main driving force behind the sharp reduction in the quantity of nuclear weapons worldwide since the cold war ended. (from Nuclear power)

Selected article -

Trinity was the first detonation of a nuclear weapon, conducted by the United States Army at 5:29 a.m. MWT (11:29:21 GMT) on July 16, 1945, as part of the Manhattan Project. The test was of an implosion-design plutonium bomb, or "gadget", of the same design as the Fat Man bomb later detonated over Nagasaki, Japan, on August 9, 1945. Concerns about whether the complex Fat Man design would work led to a decision to conduct the first nuclear test. The code name "Trinity" was assigned by J. Robert Oppenheimer, the director of the Los Alamos Laboratory, possibly inspired by the poetry of John Donne.

The test, both planned and directed by Kenneth Bainbridge, was conducted in the Jornada del Muerto desert about 35 miles (56 km) southeast of Socorro, New Mexico, on what was the Alamogordo Bombing and Gunnery Range (renamed the White Sands Proving Ground just before the test). The only structures originally in the immediate vicinity were the McDonald Ranch House and its ancillary buildings, which scientists used as a laboratory for testing bomb components. Fears of a fizzle prompted construction of "Jumbo", a steel containment vessel that could contain the plutonium, allowing it to be recovered; but ultimately Jumbo was not used in the test. On May 7, 1945, a rehearsal was conducted, during which 108 short tons (98 t) of high explosive spiked with radioactive isotopes was detonated.

Some 425 people were present on the weekend of the Trinity test. In addition to Bainbridge and Oppenheimer, observers included Vannevar Bush, James Chadwick, James B. Conant, Thomas Farrell, Enrico Fermi, Hans Bethe, Richard Feynman, Isidor Isaac Rabi, Leslie Groves, Frank Oppenheimer, Geoffrey Taylor, Richard Tolman, Edward Teller, and John von Neumann. The Trinity bomb released the explosive energy of 25 kilotons of TNT (100 TJ) ± 2 kilotons of TNT (8.4 TJ), and a large cloud of fallout. Thousands of people lived closer to the test than would have been allowed under guidelines adopted for subsequent tests, but no one living near the test was evacuated before or afterward.

The test site was declared a National Historic Landmark district in 1965 and listed on the National Register of Historic Places the following year. (Full article...)

More selected articles

Selected picture -

Credit: Probably Ed Westcott

Thermal Diffusion Process Building (F01) at S-50 completed

Did you know?

• ... that during World War II, pilot G. E. Clements was removed from training for secret missions associated with the Manhattan Project when senior officers realized she was a woman?
• ... that poet Peggy Pond Church became a strong pacifist and a member of the Society of Friends after the Manhattan Project used her home as a place to build nuclear weapons?
• ... that the British Tychon missile was developed from a Barnes Wallis concept to keep strike aircraft safe while dropping nuclear bombs?
• ... that T. K. Jones thought that a nuclear war was survivable if "there are enough shovels to go around"?
• ... that a nuclear reactor was nearly built at the New York Hall of Science, but the money for the institution instead went to Yankee Stadium?
• ... that the Manhattan Project feed materials program used uranium ore from a mine in Canada near the Arctic Circle?

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Selected biography -

Klaus Emil Julius Fuchs (29 December 1911 – 28 January 1988) was a German theoretical physicist and atomic spy who supplied information from the American, British, and Canadian Manhattan Project to the Soviet Union during and shortly after World War II. While at the Los Alamos Laboratory, Fuchs was responsible for many significant theoretical calculations relating to the first nuclear weapons and, later, early models of the hydrogen bomb. After his conviction in 1950, he served nine years in prison in the United Kingdom, then migrated to East Germany where he resumed his career as a physicist and scientific leader.

The son of a Lutheran pastor, Fuchs attended the University of Leipzig, where his father was a professor of theology, and became involved in student politics, joining the student branch of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), and the Reichsbanner Schwarz-Rot-Gold, an SPD-allied paramilitary organisation. He was expelled from the SPD in 1932, and joined the Communist Party of Germany (KPD). He went into hiding after the 1933 Reichstag fire and the subsequent persecution of communists in Nazi Germany, and fled to the United Kingdom, where he received his PhD from the University of Bristol under the supervision of Nevill Francis Mott, and his DSc from the University of Edinburgh, where he worked as an assistant to Max Born.

After the Second World War broke out in Europe, he was interned in the Isle of Man, and later in Canada. After he returned to Britain in 1941, he became an assistant to Rudolf Peierls, working on "Tube Alloys"—the British atomic bomb project. He began passing information on the project to the Soviet Union through Ursula Kuczynski, codenamed "Sonya", a German communist and a major in Soviet military intelligence who had worked with Richard Sorge's spy ring in the Far East. In 1943, Fuchs and Peierls went to Columbia University, in New York City, to work on the Manhattan Project. In August 1944, Fuchs joined the Theoretical Physics Division at the Los Alamos Laboratory, working under Hans Bethe. His chief area of expertise was the problem of implosion, necessary for the development of the plutonium bomb. After the war, he returned to the UK and worked at the Atomic Energy Research Establishment at Harwell as head of the Theoretical Physics Division.

In January 1950, Fuchs confessed that he had passed information to the Soviets over a seven-year period beginning in 1942. A British court sentenced him to fourteen years' imprisonment and he was subsequently stripped of his British citizenship. He was released in 1959, after serving nine years, and migrated to the German Democratic Republic (East Germany), where he was elected to the Academy of Sciences and became a member of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) central committee. He was later appointed deputy director of the Central Institute for Nuclear Physics in Dresden, where he served until his retirement in 1979.

Post Cold War declassified information states that the Russians freely acknowledged that Fuchs gave them the fission bomb. (Full article...)

More selected biographies

Nuclear technology news

2 April 2025 – Middle Eastern crisis

The United States Air Force deploys 6 nuclear-capable B-2 stealth bombers to Diego Garcia, amid rising tensions with Iran over their nuclear program. (AP)

30 March 2025 – Middle Eastern crisis

Iranian president Masoud Pezeshkian says that Iran will not have direct negotiations with the U.S. on its nuclear program, but is open for indirect talks to rebuild trust, after U.S. president Donald Trump threatened "bombing" if Iran does not agree to a new nuclear deal. (Al Jazeera) (Reuters)

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