Portal:Nuclear technology

• Nuclear technology is technology that involves the nuclear reactions of atomic nuclei. Among the notable nuclear technologies are nuclear reactors, nuclear medicine and nuclear weapons. It is also used, among other things, in smoke detectors and gun sights. (Full article...)
  
• Nuclear power is the use of nuclear reactions to produce electricity. Nuclear power can be obtained from nuclear fission, nuclear decay and nuclear fusion reactions. Presently, the vast majority of electricity from nuclear power is produced by nuclear fission of uranium and plutonium in nuclear power plants. Nuclear decay processes are used in niche applications such as radioisotope thermoelectric generators in some space probes such as Voyager 2. Reactors producing controlled fusion power have been operated since 1958 but have yet to generate net power and are not expected to be commercially available in the near future. (Full article...)
  
• A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from nuclear reactions, either nuclear fission (fission or atomic bomb) or a combination of fission and nuclear fusion reactions (thermonuclear weapon), producing a nuclear explosion. Both bomb types release large quantities of energy from relatively small amounts of matter. Nine sovereign states are believed to possess nuclear weapons as of 2026: United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, France, China, India, Pakistan, North Korea, and Israel. (Full article...)

Construction workers were housed in a community known as Happy Valley. Built by the Army Corps of Engineers in 1943, this temporary community housed 15,000 people. The township of Oak Ridge was established to house the production staff. The operating force peaked at 50,000 workers just after the end of the war. The construction labor force peaked at 75,000, and the combined employment peak was 80,000. The town was developed by the federal government as a segregated community; Black Americans lived only in an area known as Gamble Valley, in government-built "hutments" (one-room shacks) on the south side of what is now Tuskegee Drive. (Full article...)

• ... that Fritz Strassmann, a co-discoverer of nuclear fission, concealed a Jewish woman in his home during World War II?
• ... that sabotage in World War II involved delaying the Nazi nuclear program, derailing trains, freeing Jews, and ... explosive rats?
• ... that the British National Hospital Service Reserve trained volunteers to carry out first aid in the aftermath of a nuclear or chemical attack?
• ... that poet Peggy Pond Church became a strong pacifist and a member of the Society of Friends after the Manhattan Project used her home as a place to build nuclear weapons?
• ... that some years after unknowingly working for the Manhattan Project, Charles Fisk quit physics and became an organ builder?
• ... that an official investigation found the Fukushima nuclear accident was foreseeable and preventable?

• WikiProject Energy
• WikiProject Technology
• WikiProject Military history

A graduate of the University of South Dakota and University of Minnesota, Lawrence obtained a PhD in physics at Yale in 1925. In 1928, he was hired as an associate professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley, becoming the youngest full professor there two years later. In its library one evening, Lawrence was intrigued by a diagram of an accelerator that produced high-energy particles. He contemplated how it could be made compact, and came up with an idea for a circular accelerating chamber between the poles of an electromagnet. The result was the first cyclotron.

Lawrence went on to build a series of ever larger and more expensive cyclotrons. His Radiation Laboratory became an official department of the University of California in 1936, with Lawrence as its director. In addition to the use of the cyclotron for physics, Lawrence also supported its use in research into medical uses of radioisotopes. During World War II, Lawrence developed electromagnetic isotope separation at the Radiation Laboratory. It used devices known as calutrons, a hybrid of the standard laboratory mass spectrometer and cyclotron. A huge electromagnetic separation plant was built at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, which came to be called Y-12. The process was inefficient, but it worked.

After the war, Lawrence campaigned extensively for government sponsorship of large scientific programs, and was a forceful advocate of "Big Science", with its requirements for big machines and big money. Lawrence strongly backed Edward Teller's campaign for a second nuclear weapons laboratory, which Lawrence located in Livermore, California. After his death, the Regents of the University of California renamed the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory after him. Chemical element number 103 was named lawrencium in his honor after its discovery at Berkeley in 1961. (Full article...)

23 March 2026 – Middle Eastern crisis

U.S. president Donald Trump says he is postponing his 48-hour ultimatum for five days before attacking the Iranian power plants as Iran and the U.S. have held "very good and productive conversations" on ending the war. Trump also claims that a "major points of agreement" focused on Iran's renunciation of the nuclear weapon are being talked. Iran denies any dialogue took place. (ABC News) (States Newsroom)

21 March 2026 – Middle Eastern crisis

Attack on Natanz nuclear facility

Israeli and U.S. jets strike the Natanz Nuclear Facility, according to the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran. (Al Jazeera)

13 March 2026 – El Salvador–United States relations, Nuclear power in El Salvador

El Salvador and the United States sign Agreement 123 under the Atomic Energy Act of 1954 to build a nuclear power plant in El Salvador that is planned to be operational by 2030. (El Mundo in Spanish)