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The following is a guest post from Matt Wald, senior communications advisor at NEI. Follow Matt on Twitter at @MattLWald.
From the batteries in our cell phones to the clothes on our backs, "nanomaterials" that are designed molecule by molecule are working their way into our economy and our lives. Now there’s some promising work on new materials for nuclear reactors.
Reactors are a tough environment. The sub atomic particles that sustain the chain reaction, neutrons, are great for splitting additional uranium atoms, but not all of them hit a uranium atom; some of them end up in various metal components of the reactor. The metal is usually a crystalline structure, meaning it is as orderly as a ladder or a sheet of graph paper, but the neutrons rearrange the atoms, leaving some infinitesimal voids in the structure and some areas of extra density. The components literally grow, getting longer and thicker. The phenomenon is well understood and designers compensate for it with a …
From the batteries in our cell phones to the clothes on our backs, "nanomaterials" that are designed molecule by molecule are working their way into our economy and our lives. Now there’s some promising work on new materials for nuclear reactors.
Reactors are a tough environment. The sub atomic particles that sustain the chain reaction, neutrons, are great for splitting additional uranium atoms, but not all of them hit a uranium atom; some of them end up in various metal components of the reactor. The metal is usually a crystalline structure, meaning it is as orderly as a ladder or a sheet of graph paper, but the neutrons rearrange the atoms, leaving some infinitesimal voids in the structure and some areas of extra density. The components literally grow, getting longer and thicker. The phenomenon is well understood and designers compensate for it with a …
Comments
I don't buy the standard response that you don't endorse the material you link to--at best, it's a miscalculation, since a statement that there are a lot of pro-nuclear fringe right-wingers (really the only reasonable conclusion one can draw here) is not the message we need to convey nor the type of strength we should try to project. Nobody forces you to link to sites about "defending the American patriarchy" and other offensive material--if Osama bin Laden endorsed nuclear power, would you link to him?
Is that material offensive? Absolutely. Sexism is about a command economy, period. Capitalists and businesspeople everywhere need to oppose measures that rob the economy of 51% of its workforce by accident of birth--nothing could be more anti-capitalist.
I reserve the right to reprint this comment wherever and whenever I want.