UAE begins commercial operations of first Arab nuclear plant
The United Arab Emirates announced Tuesday that its Barakah nuclear power plant has started commercial operations, in a first for the Arab world.
Apr 6, 2021
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Energy & Green Tech
The United Arab Emirates announced Tuesday that its Barakah nuclear power plant has started commercial operations, in a first for the Arab world.
Apr 6, 2021
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13
Electronics & Semiconductors
Resistive switching memory devices offer several advantages over the currently used computer memory technology. Researchers from the MIPT Atomic Layer Deposition Lab have joined forces with colleagues from Korea to study ...
Nov 23, 2020
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Energy & Green Tech
Japan will release more than a million tonnes of treated radioactive water from the stricken Fukushima nuclear plant into the sea in a decades-long operation, reports said Friday, despite strong opposition from local fishermen.
Oct 16, 2020
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Computer Sciences
Scientists have created a device which could make it easier to harness super-fast quantum computers for real-world applications, a team at Finland's Aalto University said on Wednesday.
Sep 30, 2020
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Energy & Green Tech
The U.N. nuclear agency said Friday that slightly elevated levels of radioactivity detected in northern Europe likely were related to a nuclear reactor that was either operating or undergoing maintenance, but it's still unclear ...
Jul 3, 2020
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Engineering
Large telescopes that could be used for detecting and analyzing Earth-like planets in orbit around other stars or for peering back in time to observe the very early universe may not necessarily have to be built and assembled ...
May 8, 2020
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Energy & Green Tech
Recent reports from scientists pursuing a new kind of nuclear fusion technology are encouraging, but we are still some distance away from the "holy grail of clean energy."
Feb 24, 2020
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Energy & Green Tech
The United Arab Emirates said Monday it has issued an operating licence for a reactor at its Barakah nuclear power plant, the first in the Arab world, hailing it as a "new chapter".
Feb 17, 2020
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Energy & Green Tech
A new method could enable researchers to fabricate more efficient and longer lasting perovskite solar cells, LEDs and photodetectors. By growing thin perovskite films on substrates with different compositions, engineers at ...
Jan 9, 2020
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Energy & Green Tech
Japan's economy and industry ministry proposed on Monday the gradual release or evaporation of massive amounts of treated but still radioactive water being stored at the tsunami-wrecked Fukushima nuclear plant.
Dec 23, 2019
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The atom is a basic unit of matter consisting of a dense, central nucleus surrounded by a cloud of negatively charged electrons. The atomic nucleus contains a mix of positively charged protons and electrically neutral neutrons (except in the case of hydrogen-1, which is the only stable nuclide with no neutron). The electrons of an atom are bound to the nucleus by the electromagnetic force. Likewise, a group of atoms can remain bound to each other, forming a molecule. An atom containing an equal number of protons and electrons is electrically neutral, otherwise it has a positive or negative charge and is an ion. An atom is classified according to the number of protons and neutrons in its nucleus: the number of protons determines the chemical element, and the number of neutrons determine the isotope of the element.
The name atom comes from the Greek ἄτομος/átomos, α-τεμνω, which means uncuttable, something that cannot be divided further. The concept of an atom as an indivisible component of matter was first proposed by early Indian and Greek philosophers. In the 17th and 18th centuries, chemists provided a physical basis for this idea by showing that certain substances could not be further broken down by chemical methods. During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, physicists discovered subatomic components and structure inside the atom, thereby demonstrating that the 'atom' was divisible. The principles of quantum mechanics were used to successfully model the atom.
Relative to everyday experience, atoms are minuscule objects with proportionately tiny masses. Atoms can only be observed individually using special instruments such as the scanning tunneling microscope. Over 99.9% of an atom's mass is concentrated in the nucleus, with protons and neutrons having roughly equal mass. Each element has at least one isotope with unstable nuclei that can undergo radioactive decay. This can result in a transmutation that changes the number of protons or neutrons in a nucleus. Electrons that are bound to atoms possess a set of stable energy levels, or orbitals, and can undergo transitions between them by absorbing or emitting photons that match the energy differences between the levels. The electrons determine the chemical properties of an element, and strongly influence an atom's magnetic properties.
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