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Novel Model Illustrates The Finer Details Of Nuclear Fission (phys.org)
mdsolar quotes a report from Phys.Org: For nearly 80 years, nuclear fission has awaited a description within a microscopic framework. In the first study of its kind, scientists collaborating from the University of Washington, Warsaw University of Technology (Poland), Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, and Los Alamos National Laboratory, developed a novel model to take a more intricate look at what happens during the last stages of the fission process. Using the model, they determined that fission fragments remain connected far longer than expected before the daughter nuclei split apart. Moreover, they noted the predicted kinetic energy agreed with results from experimental observations. This discovery indicates that complex calculations of real-time fission dynamics without physical restrictions are feasible and opens a pathway to a theoretical microscopic framework with abundant predictive power.
there wasn't really anything wrong with this one, though. It doesn't take a stance for or against. It's just a press release about some basic research.
Oh damn, now we have to redo all the nuke simulations again.
Why?
Shoot the messenger?
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
I would say "cool!", but somehow that word doesn't seem adequate to the topic.
Please don't post stories that were submitted by mdsolar.
FTFY.
I thought they made network products.
I don't know what the personal agenda might be behind a post how to calculate the nuclear fission of a nucleus. Yes, there is the question what we could to with the knowledge afterwards, but all it gives right now is a model whose calculations come very close to the results from actual measurements.
The researchers extended the density functional theory (DFT) modeling method designed for electronic structure systems to strongly interacting many-fermion systems and real-time dynamics, creating a time-dependent superfluid local density approximation (TDSLDA). For the study reported, evaluating the theory amounted to solving 56,000 complex coupled nonlinear, time-dependent, three-dimensional partial differential equations for a 240Pu nucleus using a highly efficient parallelized graphic processing unit (GPU) code. The calculations required 1760 GPUs and 550 minutes total wall time on Titan, a Cray XK7 supercomputer located at the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility (OLCF).
The new, improved oil drop model....
Only that nuclear physics is cool. Getting close to calculable is a big advance.
Finally news for nerds. It may not be revolutionary, but the interesting parts are that this model can make predictions that can be tested, and that one result differs significantly from current thinking.
This article holds far more interest for me than all the boring, pointless "multinational company X has problems producing random plastic widget Y" articles put together. Seriously, no nerd should be in the remotest bit interested in business chat that implies humanities future progress will soon vanish up its own backside in an orgy of consumer-driven pointlessness.
That modern Slashdot posters (I assume most of them are almost at the point where they could be considered capable of reading) don't find this at all interesting speaks volumes about how sites such as this have been flooded by shallow "norms" leading to the flight of and self-censorship by intelligent readers.
These days, one tends to think that by "model", they mean a woman on a magazine's cover. However, those type of models do not necessarily have a detailed understanding of nuclear physics. Usually. Sadly.
He's obviously trying to get some street cred. I'm guessing he thinks people will take his fud more seriously if he appears to have some knowledge of the subject.
Better atomic bombs for everybody!
I always wondered what they wandered into after the Netware market collapsed.
For once - actual nerd news. Something not written by a teenager aimed at the least common denominator...
Assuming I'm understanding correctly, this will allow simplified simulations of nuclear fission on a larger scale without having to run the intense calculations each time. Hopefully this leads to new understanding of the fission process and refinements to our use of nuclear power. The more we can control the fission process the more we can develop techniques to limit waste products and refine the overall use.
Nuclear fission is fairly simple and produces enormous energy for a given input...but the variables involved make plants large, safety measures redundant (by intent) and costs high. If we can simplify things and bring costs down by better understanding the atomic process then maybe 'too cheap to meter' could actually be a thing one day.
Renewable has it's place, energy storage has it's use, baseline power is important as well.
You can get rich if you own a politician, but you have to be rich to buy one in the first place.
Dear "Why is this posted to Slashdot" crowd: If you haven't figured out how stories get submitted and approved yet, please refer to the Slashdot FAQ. If user submitted to you means "everything I like and nothing I don't" start your own site. YMMV.
This probably makes the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty easier to sign.
"opens a pathway to a theoretical microscopic framework with abundant predictive power."
(It's like a sentence but really it's just puff-PR piece dribblings on the floor)
Remember when "editor" meant "someone who edits" and "edit" meant actually knew how to read, sometimes modified, improved, and maybe even approved something for publication?
Slashdot readers are still great.
Slashdot "editors" not so much.
Best
E
I've been reading slashdot since I was nuclear physicist nerd....the kind with a rel science degree and job, not the comic book kids movie kind. This is the type of content that made slashdot a once popular site.
The shell model gets to magic numbers by potential approximation, but this method seems to be calculating a time dependent potential.
Background https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik...
Nuclear fission is fairly simple and produces enormous energy for a given input...but the variables involved make plants large, safety measures redundant (by intent) and costs high. If we can simplify things and bring costs down by better understanding the atomic process then maybe 'too cheap to meter' could actually be a thing one day.
Not that nuclear power should not be cheaper, but "too cheap to meter" will never happen and should never happen. There are negative externalities that need to be priced into the cost of producing power from any source, and eventually we are going to run up into some hard thermodynamic limits to how much energy we can produce without cooking ourselves. We're going to end up (in a few centuries) in a thermodynamic zero sum game. This may be as good as it gets for power costs, and we probably should think carefully about anything that would provide incentives for greater power use per capita.
There is nothing wrong with making nuclear power cheaper, but any power source being "too cheap to meter" would probably do more harm than good.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
sorry Charlie, physics are physics and you still don't have it right.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
There is no other use for nuclear fission than weapons. Sure. All the useful idiots you pay have been saying this.
...we know how to do fission quite well. We know what is going on and especially we know the nasty thing called "heat from fission product tree". Even if you have a reactor scrammed it will produce about 1/10th of nominal max power for another couple of hours. And after two days, there will still be something like 1/30th of nominal power be produced.
What we do not know to the last degree is how to ENSURE COOLING UNDER ANY CONDITION. This is much more a problem of Newtonian physics, compared with plain intelligence, plain rationality and a hefty amount of anti-bullshit, anti-MBA way of thinking.
For example, they should have immediately vented the reactor in Fukushima (cooling by steam-blow off) and also have immediately ordered by telephone the airlift of diesel-powered, 4-man-portable fire pumps to the site(replenishing water into the reactor in order to allow for more cooling steam).
But alas, Tepco was run by one of these pennywise clever, poundwise foolish MBAdiots. Engineers were cowed into submission to the MBAers and nodbody dared to do the necessary thing until the fuel rots were melting. Of course the MBA dictated that the flood walls here high enough.
COOLING, COOLING, COOLING - solve that problem and you have solved the problems around nuclear power.
Also the Tshernobyl accident was a completely f*cked attempt at "saving emergency cooling generators, because no money was there for Diesel generators".
In other words: If you try to cheapen nuclear power generation too much, you will burn your fingers.
They should play CIA whores like Saddam did. That would only imply being destroyed as soon as the whims of some Potus and his corrupt friends demand that. All for freedom, sodom and gomorrea.