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Chernobyl at 40 years: Looking back at Nuclear News
Sunday, April 26, at 1:23 a.m. local time will mark 40 years since the most severe nuclear accident in history: the meltdown of Unit 4 at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine, then part of the Soviet Union.
In the ensuing four decades, countless books, documentaries, articles, and conference sessions have examined Chernobyl’s history and impact from various angles. There is a similar abundance of outlooks in the archives of Nuclear News, where hundreds of scientists, advocates, critics, and politicians have shared their thoughts on Chernobyl over the years. Today, we will take a look at some highlights from the pages of NN to see how the story of Chernobyl evolved over the decades.
George H. Miley, Heinrich Hora
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 75 | Number 7 | October 2019 | Pages 575-580
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2019.1622970
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The importance of the development of chirped pulse amplification (CPA) was highlighted with the award of the 2018 Nobel Prize in Physics to Gerard Mourou and Donna Strickland. CPA laser physics opens the way to exciting new advances in laser applications including laser fusion. As noted in this paper, its application to laser fusion enables ultrahigh power levels for ignition of laser fusion systems without requiring thermal pressures and millions of degrees centigrade. Instead, nonthermal pressures are driven by nonlinear force to create ultrahigh picosecond acceleration of plasma blocks. This paper discusses the exciting possibility of using CPA with block ignition to provide a new route for burning the environmentally clean fusion of hydrogen–boron-11 (HB-11) fuel.