Radioactivity

As work continues to clean up the mess left by the meltdown of Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in 2011, scientists are enlisting some local help in their efforts to survey the damage, in the form of rat snakes that frequent the area.

To reduce high-level radioactive waste and make nuclear reactors more economical, researchers at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory are working on ways to use real-time spectroscopic monitoring to improve the recycling of spent nuclear fuel.

Our story on NDB's self-charging nuclear diamond batteries generated a lot of heated discussion, so we reached out to the University of Bristol, where the technology was invented, to discover exactly what these diamond betabatteries can and can't do.

A new study has demonstrated how the atomic bomb tests from the Cold War era could help fill in some of the blanks for marine biologists, with scientists using nuclear isotopes to measure the age of the whale shark for the first time.

During and after nuclear bomb tests, levels of the radioactive isotope carbon-14 spiked in the atmosphere and in our bodies. Now, researchers have used that to carbon date our immune cells, helping solve a mystery about how our immune systems age.

A team of scientists has discovered a new, stable form of plutonium – and done so by accident. The famously unstable element is tricky to transport, store and dispose of, but the find could lead to new ways to tackle those problems.

Scientists are working on a new process to produce a pair of radioisotopes of the element scandium (Sc).

​A radioactive cloud spread over Europe in late 2017. Despite official denials, all the evidence pointed to Russia. A new study tracking over 1,000 atmospheric measurements suggests an unreported nuclear accident did likely occur at the Mayak facility in the Southern Ural mountains of Russia.

It’s hard to get a clear idea of the wild early days of Earth. But a new study by researchers from the University of Adelaide raises the possibility that continents may have risen out of the sea much earlier than is currently believed, before being destroyed once again by tectonic activity.​

Researchers from ETH Zurich have refined a process that can detect modern fakes of paintings by measuring excessive levels of the isotope carbon-14 released into the atmosphere through nuclear testing in the 20th century.

Although the many experiments searching for evidence of dark matter have yet to turn up any solid proof yet, they are making other amazing discoveries. The XENON1T experiment has now revealed the longest half-life ever seen in an element, which is far, far longer than the age of the universe.

​Airthings, the company behind digital sensors that detect radon gas, has built a global map based on frequently updated data pulled from its distributed network of devices installed in customers' homes.