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(PhysOrg.com) -- In the basement of Hoyt Laboratory at Princeton University, Alexei Tyryshkin clicked a computer mouse and sent a burst of microwaves washing across a silicon crystal suspended in a frozen cylinder of stainless steel.

A collection of atoms in the basement of Small Hall is a million times colder than outer space. It’s one of the coldest spots in the universe, but it’s not cold enough.

Twenty-five years after the tragedy at the Chernobyl power plant in Ukraine, tons of concrete shield workers and visitors from the puddle of dangerously radioactive melted fuel that lurks in the basement. In contrast, more than 30 years after the accident at Three Mile Island near Harrisburg, Pa., the next-door twin of the partially melted-down reactor is still in operation and surrounded by homes.

More than three months after a powerful earthquake and 14-meter-tall tsunami struck Japan, the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant remains flooded with a salty mix of fresh and sea water--saltwater contaminated with the radioactive residue of three reactors and four spent fuel pools' worth of nuclear fuel. Every day an additional 500 metric tons of seawater is poured onto the still hot nuclear fuel in the stricken reactors and fuel pools.

I've tried it all: caulking cracks, blowing in insulation, replacing drafty windows and--I'm especially proud of this one--installing a mail-slot cover so airtight it could be used in a space shuttle docking module . Yet my home heating bill remains an object of fear and loathing