Pellet triggering of edge localized modes in low collisionality pedestals at DIII-D

Edge localized modes (ELMs) are triggered using deuterium pellets injected into plasmas with ITER-relevant low collisionality pedestals, and the resulting peak ELM energy fluence is reduced by approximately 25-50% relative to natural ELMs destabilized at similar pedestal pressures. Cryogenically frozen deuterium pellets are injected from the low-field side of the DIII-D tokamak at frequencies lower than the natural ELM frequency, and heat flux is measured by infrared cameras. Ideal MHD pedestal stability calculations show that without pellet injection, these low collisionality pedestals were limited by their current density (peeling-limited) rather than their pressure gradient (ballooning-limited). ELM triggering success correlates strongly with pellet mass, consistent with the theory that a large pressure perturbation is required to trigger an ELM in low collisionality discharges that are far from the ballooning stability boundary. For sufficiently large pellets, both instantaneous and time-integrated ELM energy deposition measured by infrared cameras is reduced with respect to naturally occurring ELMs at the inner strike point, which is the position where it is largest for natural ELMs. Energy fluence at the outer strike point is less effected. Cameras observing both heat flux and D-alpha emission often find significant toroidally asymmetric striations in the outboard far scrape-off layer resulting from ELMs that are triggered by pellets. Toroidal asymmetries at the inner strike point are similar between natural and pellet-triggered ELMs, suggesting that the reduction in peak heat flux and total fluence at that location is robust for the conditions reported here.

Radioactivity and Nuclear Reactions

Radioactivity and Nuclear Reactions gives an overview of nuclear chemistry with emphasis on radioactive decay, binding energy and nuclear stability. Modes of radioactive decay are discussed, along with writing and balancing nuclear equations. Decay modes covered include alpha emission, beta emission, gamma emission, positron emission, and electron capture, along with a summary of how each type of decay process affects the parent radioisotope and determines the daughter isotope formed. Nuclear transmutation induced by changes in the nuclei is discussed. The chapter covers the kinetics of radioactive decay including the relationship between the half-lives of radioisotopes and radioisotopic dating. The chapter concludes with a quantitative coverage of the energy of nuclear reactions including the interconversion of mass and energy via the mass defect.

The use of radioactive substances in medicine — history and development prospects

Nuclear medicine (NM) is a medical specialty that uses radionuclides (radioactive tracers) and ionising radiation for diagnostic and therapeutic (theranostic) purposes. Nuclear medicine arose and developed at the intersection of physics, chemistry and clinical medicine. The radiation emitted by radioisotopes can consist of gamma-, beta- and alpha emission, or it’s combination. Radioisotope of choice for medical purposes should have futher requirements: low radiotoxicity, suitable type of radiation, energy and half-life (several minutes to several hours and days), and also convenient detection of gamma ray radiation. The radionuclide is part of radiopharmaceutical (RP) and acts as its indicator. RP accumulates in morphological structures, becomes a carrier of coordinated information from patient to gamma camera or other equipment and reflects the dynamics of processes occurring in the examined organ. In 2021 NM celebrates its 80th anniversary. The trajectory of NM combines modern methods of radiotheranostics and applied genomic and post-genomic technologies.

Basics of CANDU Reactor Physics

Nuclear fission is the splitting of a (large) nucleus, with the release of energy. The nuclei of some heavy elements, such as U-238, do exhibit spontaneous fission in nature. However, the rate of such fissions is extremely low. The half-life of uranium is longer than 100 million years, and most of its decay is by alpha emission, so spontaneous fission is not a practical source of energy. Spontaneous fission is not of much use to us as an energy source!

Solar Irradiance Variability Due to Solar Flares Observed in Lyman-Alpha Emission

As the Lyman-alpha (Ly$\upalpha $ α ) line of neutral hydrogen is the brightest emission line in the solar spectrum, detecting increases in irradiance due to solar flares at this wavelength can be challenging due to the very high background. Previous studies that have focused on the largest flares have shown that even these extreme cases generate enhancements in Ly$\upalpha $ α of only a few percent above the background. In this study, a superposed-epoch analysis was performed on ≈8500 flares greater than B1 class to determine the contribution that they make to changes in the solar EUV irradiance. Using the peak of the 1 – 8 Å X-ray emission as a fiducial time, the corresponding time series of 3123 B- and 4972 C-class flares observed in Ly$\upalpha $ α emission by the EUV Sensor on the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite 15 (GOES-15) were averaged to reduce background fluctuations and improve the flare signal. The summation of these weaker events showed that they produced a 0.1 – 0.3% enhancement to the solar Ly$\upalpha $ α irradiance on average. For comparison, the same technique was applied to 453 M- and 31 X-class flares, which resulted in a 1 – 4% increase in Ly$\upalpha $ α emission. Flares were also averaged with respect to their heliographic angle to investigate any potential center-to-limb variation. For each GOES class, the relative enhancement in Ly$\upalpha $ α at the flare peak was found to diminish for flares that occurred closer to the solar limb due to the opacity of the line and/or foreshortening of the footpoints. One modest event included in the study, a C6.6 flare, exhibited an unusually high increase in Ly$\upalpha $ α of 7% that may have been attributed to a failed filament eruption. Increases of this magnitude have hitherto only been associated with a small number of X-class flares.

Resolving a dusty, star-forming SHiZELS galaxy at z = 2.2 with HST, ALMA and SINFONI on kiloparsec scales

We present ∼0.15″ spatial resolution imaging of SHiZELS-14, a massive ($M_{*}\sim 10^{11}\, \rm {M_{\odot }}$), dusty, star-forming galaxy at z = 2.24. Our rest-frame $\sim 1\, \rm {kpc}$-scale, matched-resolution data comprise four different widely used tracers of star formation: the $\rm {H}\alpha$ emission line (from SINFONI/VLT), rest-frame UV continuum (from HST F606W imaging), the rest-frame far-infrared (from ALMA), and the radio continuum (from JVLA). Although originally identified by its modest $\rm {H}\alpha$ emission line flux, SHiZELS-14 appears to be a vigorously star-forming ($\rm {SFR}\sim 1000\, \rm {M_{\odot }\, yr^{-1}}$) example of a submillimeter galaxy, probably undergoing a merger. SHiZELS-14 displays a compact, dusty central starburst, as well as extended emission in $\rm {H}\alpha$ and the rest-frame optical and FIR. The UV emission is spatially offset from the peak of the dust continuum emission, and appears to trace holes in the dust distribution. We find that the dust attenuation varies across the spatial extent of the galaxy, reaching a peak of at least AHα ∼ 5 in the most dusty regions, although the extinction in the central starburst is likely to be much higher. Global star-formation rates inferred using standard calibrations for the different tracers vary from $\sim 10\!-\!1000\, \rm {M_{\odot }\, yr^{-1}}$, and are particularly discrepant in the galaxy’s dusty centre. This galaxy highlights the biased view of the evolution of star-forming galaxies provided by shorter wavelength data.

Actinide in Air (Rn-Progeny Rejected) Alpha Spectroscopy with Tensioned Metastable Fluid Detectors

This article discusses outcome of research for deriving a methodology and apparatus for ascertaining for the presence of ultra-trace level actinides in air from their alpha emission signatures, while remaining blind to the relatively large (1,000× higher activity) alpha emissions from Rn-progeny. Apparatus and techniques were developed to collect and characterize alpha-emitting nuclides of Rn-progeny and actinides in air on a polycarbonate 3 m pore size continuous air monitor (CAM) filter. A wet-chemistry approach was developed and validated for successfully separating the Rn-progeny alpha emitting isotopes of Po-214 and Po-218, while extracting the actinides (U, Pu, Am) in a fluid mixture that is suitable for conduct of alpha spectroscopy with a centrifugally tensioned metastable fluid detector (CTMFD). The resulting α-TMFD technology was compared against the state-of-art "Alpha-SentryTM" Continuous Air Monitor (CAM) system commonly utilized world-wide. Results indicate that the α-TMFD technology can potentially offer complementary and superior performance in multiple performance categories, and ~18× improvement in the time to detect [e.g., at 0.02 Derived Air Concentration (DAC) within ~3 h, vs ~70 h for Alpha-SentryTM] for actinides of interest while also remaining ~100% blind to ~103× higher Rn-progeny background - with the added potential for offering few keV scale energy resolution without resorting to peak shape fitting, vs ~300-400 keV for existing CAM systems.