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Isaac Marshall

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Amani, Marjana, Tanzin

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1. Meeting at 9:00 on Tuesdays and Thursdays

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2. Amani-Introduction
Isaac- Application 1
Marjana- Application 2
Tanzin- Application 3
conclusion-Everyone

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Thorium salt nuclear reactors

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Thorium has long held promise for "safer" nuclear power. A slightly radioactive element, it transforms into fissionable U-233 when hit by high-energy neutrons. But after use, U-233 creates fewer long-lived radioactive waste products than the conventional U-235 now used in nuclear power plants.

But because nuclear power was traditionally tied up with nuclear weapons research into uranium and plutonium, thorium was mostly abandoned. Except for one test reactor that has been under construction a t Kalpakkam since 2004, thorium reactor research has been moribund.

But now, NRG, a nuclear research facility in Petten, on the North Sea coast of the Netherlands, has launched the Salt Irradiation Experiment (SALIENT) in collaboration with the EU Commission. The researchers want to use thorium as a fuel for a molten salt reactor, one of the next-generation designs for nuclear power in which both the reactor coolant, and the fuel itself, are a mixture of hot, molten salt.

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Many believe that molten salt reactors are well suited for using thorium as a fuel. Their unique working fluid can achieve very high temperatures, significantly boosting the efficiency of the power generation process.

The Petten team will use the facility's reactor to melt a sample of thorium fuel and then bombard it with neutrons to transmute the thorium into U-233, which can sustain the chain reaction needed to generate energy.

A later step is to study tough, temperature-resistant metal alloys and other materials that can survive the high heat and corrosive conditions inside a molten-salt reactor. Eventually, they'll need to examine how to deal with the waste from a molten salt thorium reactor. While largely considered safer than the long-lived products from a standard nuke, these will still need special disposal.

If this project bears fruit, there are many interests waiting to join the thorium club. A US startup based in Utah says it's developing a thorium reactor, while a consortium of eastern Utah counties is exploring whether to participate in the project. Last month, Utah's Seven County Infrastructure Coalition said it is searching for experts qualified to evaluate "a thorium energy facility for producing electricity".

So is thorium power really back on the table? We'll know by the end of the year, if the planned Kalpakkam test reactor in India starts generating energy. We will need clean energy sources to stave off climate change, yet fears raised by the Fukushima disaster have caused nuclear power to stagnate. If thorium's long promise pays off, it's not a moment too soon.

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Thorium could power the next generation of nuclear reactors

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Thorium has long held promise for "safer" nuclear power. A slightly radioactive element, it transforms into fissionable U-233 when hit by high-energy neutrons. But after use, U-233 creates fewer long-lived radioactive waste products than the conventional U-235 now used in nuclear power plants.

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3. Communication on WhatsApp and padlet

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Applications of nano lasers

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Researchers have developed a tiny nanolaser that can function inside of living tissues without harming them.

Just 50 to 150 nanometers thick, the laser is about 1/1,000th the thickness of a single human hair. At this size, the laser can fit and function inside living tissues, with the potential to sense disease biomarkers or perhaps treat deep-brain neurological disorders, such as epilepsy.

Developed by researchers at Northwestern and Columbia Universities, the nanolaser shows specific promise for imaging in living tissues. Not only is it made mostly of glass, which is intrinsically biocompatible, the laser can also be excited with longer wavelengths of light and emit at shorter wavelengths.

"Longer wavelengths of light are needed for bioimaging because they can penetrate farther into tissues than visible wavelength photons," said Northwestern's Teri Odom, who co-led the research. "But shorter wavelengths of light are often desirable at those same deep areas. We have designed an optically clean system that can effectively deliver visible laser light at penetration depths accessible to longer wavelengths."

The nanolaser also can operate in extremely confined spaces, including quantum circuits and microprocessors for ultra-fast and low-power electronics.

The paper was published today (Sept. 23) in the journal Nature Materials. Odom co-led the work with P. James Schuck at Columbia University's School of Engineering.

While many applications require increasingly small lasers, researchers continually run into the same roadblock: Nanolasers tend to be much less efficient than their macroscopic counterparts. And these lasers typically need shorter wavelengths, such as ultraviolet light, to power them.

"This is bad because the unconventional environments in which people want to use small lasers are highly susceptible to damage from UV light and the excess heat generated by inefficient operation," said Schuck, an associate professor of mechanical engineering.

Odom, Schuck and their teams were able to achieve a nanolaser platform that solves these issues by using photon upconversion. In upconversion, low-energy photons are absorbed and converted into one photon with higher energy. In this project, the team started with low-energy, "bio-friendly" infrared photons and upconverted them to visible laser beams. The resulting laser can function under low powers and is vertically much smaller than the wavelength of light.

"Our nanolaser is transparent but can generate visible photons when optically pumped with light our eyes cannot see," said Odom, the Charles E. and Emma H. Morrison Professor of Chemistry in Northwestern's Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences. "The continuous wave, low-power characteristics will open numerous new applications, especially in biological imaging."

"Excitingly, our tiny lasers operate at powers that are orders of magnitude smaller than observed in any existing lasers," Schuck said.

The study, "Ultralow-threshold, continuous-wave upconverting lasing from subwavelength plasmons," was supported by the National Science Foundation (award number DMR-1608258), the Vannevar Bush Faculty Fellowship from the U.S. Department of Defense (award number N00014-17-1-3023) and the U.S. Department of Energy (DE-AC02-05CH11231). Angel Fernandez-Bravo and Northwestern's Danqing Wang are the paper's co-first authors.

Odom is a member of Northwestern's International Institute of Nanotechnology, Chemistry of Life Processes Institute and the Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center of Northwestern University.

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vitamin d; medical devices; gene therapy; disorders and syndromes; psychology; numeracy; optics; biochemistry; physics

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Tiny, biocompatible nanolaser could function inside living tissues: Nanolaser has potential to treat neurological disorders or sense disease biomarkers

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Researchers have developed a tiny nanolaser that can function inside of living tissues without harming them. Just 50 to 150 nanometers thick, the laser is about 1/1,000th the thickness of a single human hair. At this size, the laser can fit and function inside living tissues, with the potential to sense disease biomarkers or perhaps treat deep-brain neurological disorders, such as epilepsy.

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Final Topic: Nanotechnology and its medical applications

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Final Topic: Nanotechnology and its medical applications

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How was the meeting yesterday? what did you do?

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How was the meeting yesterday? what did you do?

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Yesterday we met up and decided that we would have our poster topic on nano lasers. We also reviewed who would write each section. Marjarna is still doing the results and Amani introduction, however, as the method is the lengthiest part of the poster Isaac will be doing the method with help from Tanzin and Tanzin will write the conclusion and evaluation.

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Do you have the three applications now? MJH

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Do you have the three applications now? MJH

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https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/08/190822165012.htm

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Yes we have all three applications and will be starting to work out how to arrange and structure them in our poster today - 9/10/2019

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Thank you.

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To do:
-intro reference
-imagine citing

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https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.nanolett.5b02491

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https://docs.google.com/document/d/11ONCCsg9QAsN33KdNaManl5_k8XTUIHGQdw2do4vs8k/edit?usp=sharing