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Small may be beautiful for the nuclear power industry So argue a host of would-be builders of novel nuclear reactors. While the U.S

Scientific American editor David Biello takes us through newly released audio from the first week of the nuclear meltdown crisis at Fukushima Daiichi. [More]

Border of the Fukushima exclusion zone.

As Japanese officials consider whether and when to reactivate most of the country's 54 nuclear plants, a year after the Fukushima reactor disaster, they continue to face challenges to public confidence in the nuclear industry and its regulator.

Vogtle Unit 3 containment vessel bottom head being assembled. Credit- Souther Company In a historic vote earlier today, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission ( NRC ) approved Southern Company’s application to construct the nation’s first nuclear reactors in over 30 years. [More]

Researchers working at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory have used the world's most powerful X-ray laser to create and probe a two-million-degree piece of matter in a controlled way for the first time. This feat, reported today in Nature, takes scientists a significant step forward in understanding the most extreme matter found in the hearts of stars and giant planets, and could help experiments aimed at recreating the nuclear fusion process that powers the sun.

(PhysOrg.com) -- Physicists collaborating on experiments at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN – the European Organization for Nuclear Research in Geneva – will announce their latest results in the search for the Higgs boson particle on Tuesday 13 December.

(PhysOrg.com) -- "Liquid state Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) has been successful for quantum information processing,” Osama Moussa tells PhysOrg.com. “However, there are some questions about scalability and other issues. There are thoughts that maybe solid states NMR could overcome some of these problems."

Mottanai: it’s a Japanese term that translates as “too precious to waste.” It’s the philosophy that guides the island nation’s approach to natural resources like energy, and it has become particularly important as the meltdowns at Fukushima have resulted in roughly 25 percent of Japanese electricity supply disappearing as other nuclear reactors remain shutdown. [More]

The Daya Bay Reactor Neutrino Experiment has begun its quest to answer some of the most puzzling questions about the elusive elementary particles known as neutrinos. The experiment’s first completed set of twin detectors is now recording interactions of antineutrinos (antipartners of neutrinos) as they travel away from the powerful reactors of the China Guangdong Nuclear Power Group in southern China.

When he retired after 26 years as an investigator with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's Office of the Inspector General, George Mulley thought his final report was one of his best. Mulley had spent months looking into why a pipe carrying cooling water at the Byron nuclear plant in Illinois had rusted so badly that it burst. His report cited lapses by a parade of NRC inspectors over six years and systemic weaknesses in the way the NRC monitors corrosion.

What is the hottest problem in fundamental physics today? Physics aficionados most probably would answer: quantum gravity

I’ve been researching the oil and gas industry lately. This industry has a negative stigma attached to it as being very environmentally insensitive. Granted, oil spills and gas leaks aren’t helping the industry’s image.

A special inspection of U.S. nuclear plants after the Fukushima disaster in Japan revealed problems with emergency equipment and disaster procedures that are far more pervasive than publicly described by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, a review of inspection reports by ProPublica shows.

VIENNA (Reuters) - Global action to protect the nuclear industry against possible terrorist attacks is urgently needed, a leading expert said, as are safety steps to prevent any repeat of Japan's Fukushima accident.