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Project Alberta, also known as Project A, was a section of the Manhattan Project which assisted in delivering the first nuclear weapons in the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II.

Project Alberta was formed in March 1945, and consisted of 51 United States Army, Navy, and civilian personnel, including one British scientist. Its mission was three-fold. It first had to design a bomb shape for delivery by air, then procure and assemble it. It supported the ballistic testing work at Wendover Army Air Field, Utah, conducted by the 216th Army Air Forces Base Unit (Project W-47), and the modification of B-29s to carry the bombs (Project Silverplate). After completion of its development and training missions, Project Alberta was attached to the 509th Composite Group at North Field, Tinian, where it prepared facilities, assembled and loaded the weapons, and participated in their use. (Full article...)

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Credit: Gazjo at [[wikipedia:|English Wikipedia]]
Site of first atomic test on mainland Australia, known as Totem One. Photo taken by Gazjo on 1st January 2006

Did you know?

  • ... that the British Tychon missile was developed from a Barnes Wallis concept to keep strike aircraft safe while dropping nuclear bombs?
  • ... that the 1991 Andover tornado narrowly avoided hitting two warplanes equipped with nuclear warheads?
  • ... that music manager Alan Wills learned about management from his father, who was "in charge of the UK's nuclear early warning system"?
  • ... that the Manhattan Project feed materials program used uranium ore from a mine in Canada near the Arctic Circle?
  • ... that the Russian and Belarussian military exercise Zapad 2009 involved nuclear-capable ballistic missiles?
  • ... that the area of Cultybraggan Camp has been a royal hunting ground, a prison for fervent Nazis and the site of an underground bunker intended for use in a nuclear war?

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Edward Teller (Hungarian: Teller Ede; January 15, 1908 – September 9, 2003) was a Hungarian and American theoretical physicist and chemical engineer who is known colloquially as "the father of the hydrogen bomb" and one of the creators of the Teller–Ulam design based on Stanisław Ulam's design. He had a volatile personality, and according to Richard Rhodes in his book Dark Sun, was "driven by his megaton ambitions, had a messianic complex, and displayed autocratic behavior." A thermonuclear design he devised was an Alarm Clock model bomb with a yield of 1000 MT (1 GT of TNT) and proposed delivering it by boat or submarine. It would be capable of incinerating an entire continent.

Born in Austria-Hungary in 1908, Teller emigrated to the United States in the 1930s, one of the many so-called "Martians", a group of prominent Hungarian scientist émigrés. He made numerous contributions to nuclear and molecular physics, spectroscopy (in particular the Jahn–Teller and Renner–Teller effects), and surface physics. His extension of Enrico Fermi's theory of beta decay, in the form of Gamow–Teller transitions, provided an important stepping stone in its application, while the Jahn–Teller effect and the Brunauer–Emmett–Teller (BET) theory have retained their original formulation and are still mainstays in physics and chemistry. According to Freeman Dyson, Teller thought about his problems using basic principles of physics and often discussed with other cohorts to make headway through difficult problems. This was seen when he worked with Stanislaw Ulam to get a workable thermonuclear fusion bomb design (a solution to Teller's own classical thermonuclear bomb proposal) but later temperamentally (and with fury) dismissed Ulam's aid. Herbert York stated that Teller utilized Ulam's general idea of compression and heating to start thermonuclear fusion to generate his own sketch of a "Super" bomb that would work. Prior to Ulam's idea, Teller's classical Super was essentially a system for heating (using a fission bomb primary) uncompressed liquid deuterium to the point, Teller hoped, when it would sustain thermonuclear burning. It was, in essence a simple idea from physical principles, which Teller pursued with a ferocious tenacity even if he was wrong or shown that it wouldn't work. To get support from Washington for his Super weapon project, Teller proposed a thermonuclear radiation implosion experiment as the "George" shot of Operation Greenhouse.

Teller made contributions to Thomas–Fermi theory, the precursor of density functional theory, a standard modern tool in the quantum mechanical treatment of complex molecules. In 1953, with Nicholas Metropolis, Arianna Rosenbluth, Marshall Rosenbluth, and Augusta Teller, Teller co-authored a paper that is a standard starting point for the applications of the Monte Carlo method to statistical mechanics and the Markov chain Monte Carlo literature in Bayesian statistics. Teller was an early member of the Manhattan Project, which developed the first atomic bomb. He made a serious push to develop the first fusion-based weapons, but ultimately fusion bombs only appeared after World War II. He co-founded the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and was its director or associate director. After his controversial negative testimony in the Oppenheimer security clearance hearing of his former Los Alamos Laboratory superior, J. Robert Oppenheimer, the scientific community ostracized Teller.

Teller continued to find support from the US government and military research establishment, particularly for his advocacy for nuclear energy development, a strong nuclear arsenal, and a vigorous nuclear testing program. In his later years, he advocated controversial technological solutions to military and civilian problems, including a plan to excavate an artificial harbor in Alaska using a thermonuclear explosive in what was called Project Chariot, and Ronald Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative. Teller was a recipient of the Enrico Fermi Award and the Albert Einstein Award. He died on September 9, 2003, in Stanford, California, at 95. (Full article...)

Nuclear technology news


15 May 2025 – Iran–United States relations
U.S. president Donald Trump says that the U.S. and Iran have "sort of" agreed on the terms of a deal on Iran's nuclear program, which reportedly includes Iran agreeing to give up highly enriched uranium while keeping lower-grade uranium needed for civilian nuclear power, in exchange for the lifting of sanctions. (AP)

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