radiation

can no longer contain the radiation

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On February 14, 2025, an explosive drone Shahed 136Iranian-made and possibly launched by Russia, pierced the structure of confinement at Chernobyl reactor 4, considered one of the greatest feats of modern engineering and designed to contain radiation from the worst nuclear disaster in history. Shortly after, Europe confirmed an open secret: plugging the “gap” was going to take a long time. The consequence has now arrived: Chernobyl is once again a problem. The impact and deterioration. The structure that was to guarantee a century of nuclear safety at Chernobyl has entered into a critical phase after the drone attack that pierced and burned he New Safe Confinementthe gigantic metal arch installed in 2016 to permanently seal reactor number four and contain any leaks of dust or radioactive gases. The IAEA mission, after examining the state of the exterior coating, has confirmed that the structure has lost its essential function: no longer confines radiation as designed. The post-impact fire, which remained active for weeks When an impermeable internal membrane caught fire, it forced emergency crews to open hundreds of holes in the deck to locate embers, multiplying potential escape routes and further compromising the integrity of a system designed to be airtight for generations. The “good”. That no increases have been recorded in the radiation levels in the surroundings, although the loss of tightness implies that an internal incident, even a minor one, could generate environmental dispersion in a complex where tons of radioactive material remain encapsulated inside the old Soviet sarcophagus, already exhausted in its useful life and never completely sealed. The perforated sarcophagus The fragility of a colossus. The sarcophagus is not just any structure: it is the largest mobile installation ever built, a metal arch as tall as a 30-story building and heavy as a battleship, financed by more than forty countries to allow (finally) the safe dismantling of the reactor destroyed in 1986. Its mission was twofold: contain the toxic legacy of the past and provide a stable environment to remove, piece by piece, the remains of the molten core. But he february attack It opened a fifty-square-foot hole, damaged the main crane, and exposed a deeper problem: repairing a shield of this size and sensitivity is extraordinarily difficult. The urgent thing. The most compromised areas are in areas where radiation prevents working normally, and moving the arch to intervene from the outside entails structural and exposure risks that still have no clear technical solution. IAEA experts insist on the urgent need to control humidityreinforce anti-corrosion programs and plan permanent repairs before progressive deterioration turns the current situation into a cumulative risk. An environmental threat. The impact of the drone, which Ukraine attributes to Russiahas not only left physical consequences on the structure: it has introduced a new vulnerability vector in an area that was already occupied in 2022, when Russian troops crossed the nuclear exclusion during their advance towards kyiv. Since then the enclave has become a symbol of the extent to which war can reopen dangers that Europe believed contained forever. The loss of function of the shield does not imply an immediate disaster, how they emphasize both the IAEA and independent specialists, but it does increase the probability that an internal accident or a future incident will cause the release of radioactive dust towards an exterior that is no longer hermetically isolated. Plus. The absence of leaks detected today does not reduce the severity of a deterioration that, if not corrected, can amplify any problem operational in a facility where dismantling work has been delayed for years precisely because of the war. The balance between technical stability, environmental risk and vulnerability to attacks is thus profoundly altered, in a context in which restoring security will not be quick, cheap or easy. The technical challenge. The recommendations of the IAEA Director General, Rafael Grossi, insist on a complete and urgent restoration that stops the degradation of the shield and recovers its confinement function. However, the intervention it’s complicated: Handling damaged materials in a radioactive environment requires conditions that war does not guarantee, and moving the structure to work on it can generate mechanical stresses and unwanted risks. Thus, Ukrainian authorities and international teams will have to decide how to act on a system designed to be immovable for a hundred years, now weakened by fires, drilling and prolonged exposure. Meanwhile, Europe is witnessing a strong reminder that nuclear infrastructure is not only vulnerable to the passage of time, but also to the dynamics of a conflict that has crossed all possible borders, including that of a disaster that forever marked the memory of the continent. Image | State Nuclear Regulatory Inspectorate of Ukraine, Picryl In Xataka | A Russian drone has opened one of the largest engineering works. The problem: it was the sarcophagus of Chernobyl reactor 4 In Xataka | Europe built a shield to contain radiation from Chernobyl. A Russian drone drilled into it, and it has been open since then

We have left Moss out for nine months in space at the mercy of vacuum and radiation. He’s back alive and breaking records

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Life is much more tenacious than we usually think, even when we take it out of its cradle and expose it to the most hostile environment we know: the emptiness of the outer space. And to carry out this test, a team of scientists has decided to take a moss and expose it to conditions outside of Earth, giving a result that opens a path for us on how to create new ecosystems on other planets. The protagonist of this story is Physcomitrium patensor better known as primitive moss. And there were a series of Japanese researchers those who wanted to check What would happen if this little primitive moss was left outside the International Space Station. The logical a priori thing would have been that he would have died instantly, since he did not have oxygen, the environment was really aggressive, with a lot of direct radiation as he did not have the protection of our ozone layer and logically he was not in his natural habitat. But the reality is that he has managed to endure the absolute emptiness and the cosmic radiation for 283 days. But not only has it survived these conditions, but upon returning to Earth it has been planted and germinated. Without a doubt a great surprise in the face of the resistance that these organisms have. A round trip. The research, led by biologist Tomomichi Fujita of Hokkaidō University and published in iScience, started from a premise that seemed like science fiction: can a primitive land plant withstand prolonged exposure to cosmic elements without protection? To find out, in March 2022 they launched hundreds of samples aboard the ship Cygnus NG-17. Once on the ISS, the astronauts attached these samples to the outside of the station, orbiting at about 400 km altitude from the Earth’s surface. There they stayed for nine months, exposed to constant cycles of light and shadow, extreme cold, and relentless ultraviolet radiation. In January 2023, the samples returned in a SpaceX capsule (mission CRS-16) and when analyzed in the laboratory, the results perplexed the researchers. More than 80% of the spores had survived and were able to germinate. Not everything is the same. Just as two humans may not be equally resistant, something similar happens with mosses. In this research, we tried to verify the resistance of three types of fabric, but the winner was undoubtedly the sporophytewas the hardest fabric. Something that was already suspected, but the litmus test that this was was missing. In terrestrial laboratories, stress is usually tested separately. That is, in a season an organism is exposed to heat, or cold, or high radiation. But in this case everything happens at the same time, and that is why it was expected that his survival would be null with this combination of factors. But the reality is that the spores protected within the sporangium endured. And although the scientists noted a degradation of one type of chlorophyll due to visible light, the structural and genetic integrity of the plant remained intact enough to be “resurrected” upon returning home. Its importance. Growing a moss on the surface of the ISS seems insignificant and a silly waste of money. But the reality is that this finding has two very important readings. The first looks towards the stars and the terraforming process. It must be taken into account that mosses were the first plants to colonize land on our planet 500 million years ago. It can be said that they are natural pioneers thanks to the fact that they can settle on bare stones and then when they die, they generate soil where more complex plants later emerge. In this way, if they can survive space travel and withstand extreme conditions, they could theoretically be the biological vanguard. in lunar or martian bases to help modify its atmosphere and ecosystem. Something more urgent. Right now, our goal has to be to create crops that are more resistant to the extreme weather conditions we face on our planet. And the solution may lie in these spores and their genetics. Understanding the mechanism that gives them this great resistance is vital so that we can modify seeds of other crops with the aim of conferring the same resistance. A vital step to face everything that may be yet to come to our planet. Images | Mike Frandson POT In Xataka | Fungal spores and other microorganisms are candidates for surviving on the surface of Mars, according to NASA

An American physicist has found a shortcut to get to Mars in 90 days. It is key to surviving radiation

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The long flight will be One of the many risks that astronauts who travel to Mars in front. SIX TO NINE MONTHS Broken the safe radiation limit that NASA establishes as acceptable: 600 msv. The problem would be forgotten if you could get to Mars in just 90 days. And you can with current technology, according to recent research. Conventional chemistry, record times. The physicist Jack Kingdon, a researcher at the University of California, has published in the magazine Scientific Reports A proposal that breaks with the provisions of trips to Mars. Normally, a flight to the red planet requires between six and nine months, which raises multitude of challenges for exposure to radiation. With Kingdon’s trajectory, 90 days per path would suffice. The most surprising thing is that their calculations are based on the classic method to optimize interplanetary trajectories (Lambert’s problem) and do not depend on futuristic engines, but on a current chemical rocket: the Spacex starship. Two crew and four loading ships. The proposal is a monumental scale. The mission to Mars would require six ships: two crew and four loads that would travel separately. To put them on the route, they would take about 45 Starship pitches within two to three weeks, a rhythm that, although ambitious, fits with Spacex’s plans to massively climb their operations. A gas station in space. The real logistics challenge would occur in the low terrestrial orbit. There, a starship-cistern fleet (ships dedicated exclusively to transport fuel) would perform a complex dancing of reposses: The two manned starship would need about 15 reposses each to load the 1,500 tons of propellant that will allow them to take the rapid trajectory. The four load starship, aimed at carrying the equipment and supplies, would receive only four reposses each and would be sent to Mars in a slower and lower energy consumption trajectory. The shortcut. Once full of methane and liquid oxygen, the two crew ships would turn on their engines to escape the earth’s orbit. They would cover a high -energy Lambert type trajectory required by an ΔV ≈ 4.6 km/s, which translates into a 90 -day flight time. Just before being captured by the severity of Mars, the ships would make a key ignition to stop, reducing their input speed of about 9.7 km/sa about 6.8 km/s. The Martian atmosphere would be in charge of dissipating the rest of the energy by aerocapture, a maneuver in which the ship “brushes” the atmosphere to stop without spending fuel. Finally, a brief ignition of the engines would allow a propulsive landing on the surface. The study demonstrates that this scheme is mathematically possible for the 2035 launch window, but it depends on Spacex dominating two critical technologies: the cryogenic orbital refueling on a large scale and hyperbolic aerocapture. And the return? An even more complex plan. If the idea is to return, the mission becomes much bold. First, a fuel production plant should be established on Mars (As Sabatier reactors) to manufacture methane and oxygen from CO₂ and the ice of the planet. The return plan implies that the manned ship take off from the surface of Mars and entered orbit. There, the load ships, which arrived previously, would also take off to act as cisterns in the Martian orbit, transferring all the necessary fuel to the manned ship for its 90 -day trip back to the earth. Not everyone shares optimism. The study identifies a viable return window in 2037. However, not everyone shares optimism. The own Paper recognizes that his proposal collides with the vision of agencies such as NASA, which has historically shown preference for nuclear propulsion For fast missions to Mars, a technology that, according to the author of the study, still has a low maturity and great regulatory obstacles. All this, of course, whenever the goal is to return. Recall that Elon Musk’s idea is to send robots first and then volunteers to build a self -sufficient city on the red planet. Image | Spacex In Xataka | All the technical challenges that we must solve if we want to achieve the greatest feat of the human being: get to Mars

In the 50 we decided to bombard food cans with huge amounts of radiation. Thus we discover a new bacteria: ‘D. Radiodurans’

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What happens if we bombard Escherichia coli? Well, many things may probably happen, but what happened in 1956 was that those responsible for this extreme experience discovered a new species of bacteria. They discovered it for a simple fact: Deinococcus radiodurans It is a bacterium with enormous resistance to ionizing radiation. In his experiment, the team submitted the can to a Dose of 4,000 gray (gy) of radiation-γ. A radiation capable of sterilizing almost anything. At first, its discoverers baptized the species as Micrococcus radioduransbut decades of taxonomic work led to reclassify the species as a member of a new genre that was called Deinococcus. The new name of the bacteria: D. Radiodurans. Almost seven decades after the discovery of its first member, the strange family of the deinococcus already has 11 cataloged species. The “strange” is not a saying: the name of this genre comes from the Greek word “Deinos“, Which can be translated as” strange “or” unusual. “ Seven decades of study have allowed us to enter the mechanisms that D. RadioduransUse to get unharmed from exposure to ionizing radiation (it is estimated that the bacteria can leave “rositas” of Dose equivalent to 5,000 gy and get to survive even higher levels) and the breaks of the DNA chains that usually result from this type of exposure. This bacterium uses several “tricks” of survival that, according to An article Posted in 2005 in Naturecan be classified between passive, and active or enzymatic mechanisms. Among the passive mechanisms that this bacterium has, the fact that D. Radiodurans Porta with several copies of its genome and with a condensed organization in its nuclear body. Thus you can avoid the dissemination of DNA fragments generated upon receiving radiation, explains the signatory team of the article in Nature. Regarding active or enzymatic mechanisms, the article explains that this unicellular organism has processes for the Damaged DNA repair. Also how much with mechanisms that limit DNA degradation after receiving radiation. The study continues In the last 20 years we have continued advancing in the study of this strange bacteria. Last year without going any further, the magazine Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences published a new article detailing a study that revealed new aspects of the resistance of this bacterium. The article studied the presence of a series of metabolites of this bacterium that, in combination with manganese, could form a powerful antioxidant agent. The team analyzed a synthetic version of this compound they called MDP, composed of manganese ions, phosphate and a small peptide. As they observedthe MDP components form a much more powerful complex when protecting against radiation than the compounds formed by the combination of manganese and the individual components of the MDP. The resistance of the bacteria can fascinate us but if so much attracts the interest of the scientific community is not only out of curiosity. Discoveries such as MDP antioxidant can help us protect our own radiation body and its effects. If we want to do long -term space tripsprotect us from Cosmic radiation It is essential; as it can also be to protect people who could be exposed to excessive radiation doses here on Earth. We do not know much about the origin of this bacterium but decades of study have given us enough information to rule out some ideas perhaps more typical of science fiction, such as the one that is postulating that it is an extraterrestrial organism or the fruit of the entry into the nuclear era. D. Radiodurans It is a bacterium, which implies a clear bond with the rest of the living beings of this planet and the evolution of its gender does not seem something that can occur in a few decades. The study of this bacterium, and of other similar will continue, either to satisfy our natural curiosity or to try to find new ways to protect us against radiation. In Xataka | The last time we lost a radioactive capsule ended in tragedy: Kramorsk nuclear incident Image | Michael Daly laboratory, uniform Services University / Catalan

In the 60s Spain wanted to experiment with gamma radiation. The result was an “atomic forest” in Alcalá

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Before rowing us and getting into work I propose a game. One fast, simple and above all curious. Open Google Maps, activates the satellite vision (with that of the street the effect will not be the same), write “Alcalá Atomic Garden” And then let the web transfer you to a point located near Meco and the Northeast HighwayA-2. There, Google’s red claw. Approximate. What do you see? Exact. A Huge circumference green Symmetric. Perfect As if they had drawn it with an XXL size compass. If you dedicate a couple of seconds you will appreciate that it is formed by concentric circles, a succession Tree rings Almost and leafy enough to stand out in bird view and that someone planted in their day around a clear center. It is not a mistake. It is history. More specifically the footprint of “El Encín Gamma Radiation Field”an installation that in its day, back in the last decades of Franco, stood out on the country’s scientific map. His chronicle is fascinating. Almost as much as the large 15 -hectare wooded square left in Alcalá and that, In words From the anthropologist Ambrosio Sánchez de Ribera, it is “a singularity” at European level. New times, new science The 50s and 60s were times of change. For the world, which gradually entered into The cold war. And of course for Spain, where Franco seemed to enter a new phase marked by developmentalism and a certain cracking of its international isolation, with milestones such as The signing of the concordat with the Holy See In 1953, the Pacts of Madrid or the entrance to the UN, In 1955. The 50 were also time for something else: nuclear energy. With still the recent memory of Hiroshima and Nagasaki And in full arms race with Moscow, the US wanted international opinion not to focus only on the threat of atomic war and also value its civil and scientific uses. Probably the best proof of that effort is speech “Peace atoms”pronounced in 1953 by Eisenhower before the UN. “Instead of focusing exclusively on the dangers of atomic war, Eisenhower praised the Civil nuclear applications In agriculture, medicine and energy generation. He proposed to create an ‘international atomic energy organism’ that promoted the peaceful use of nuclear energy ‘for the benefit of humanity’ “, Remember Elisabeth Röhrlichhistorian of the University of Vienna. The result soon materialized: just Four years laterIn 1957, the International Atomic Energy Agency (OIEA) was created. Spain, who had started his own (and shy) history with nuclear energy to late 40did not remain impermeable to those changes. In the 50 Patria Press (Node included) already talked about the US plants either United Kingdom and experiments with radioactive sources applied to medicine and agriculture. In 57 Madrid even hosted a European FAO summit on the subject. Thus, with that backdrop, around 1959, Spain decided to take another step and, with the key mediation of César Gómez Campoan engineer with experience in the USA, planned to create his own “Gamma Radiation Field”a focused specifically designed to perform “crop and seed irradiation experiments”. The chosen place: El Encín, a plot away from Alcalá where Gómez Campo himself had been conducting studies for Agronomic Research Institute. The project advanced relatively fast, as Ambrosio Sánchez de Ribera recalls in a broad (and very complete) essay About the Encín published in 2018 in Complutenses Annals. In 1961, what time was lifted would be an active scientific installation whose footprint still shows today from Google bird: a field of study of 440 square meters of diameter, an area of ​​15 hectares and 18,000 trees, although in 2018 there were only 5,000 left. A huge outdoor laboratory The Encín was a huge outdoor laboratory. One with a design as peculiar as its purpose. The field was circular and was formed by a series of concentric rings arranged around an axis. In the center there was a circle of 25 m radius with a removable hexagonal greenhouse. Inside it contained a lead sarcophagus that housed the source of radiation with which scientists operated, Cesio137 from used bars of American nuclear reactors. Around that central almond of 50 m in diameter, protected with a concrete wall and a stepped soil slope of several meters high to avoid the radiation output, the nearly 18,000 trees that completed the circumference of 15 hectares were distributed. Its purpose was to serve as extra screen against radiation. By way of auction, the center had a garden of large trees and several constructions where the staff had its offices and laboratories. Clarified what the Encín was the other great question: What did they do in it in the 60s? Basically experiment with radiation to find mutations that in last terms allow to achieve varieties of interesting vegetables, fruits or seeds for their characteristics. What is called induced mutagenesis. Gómez Campo himself explained In 1964, which centers such as El Encín were dedicated: “Essentially it consists of a gamma ray emitting source that is installed in an open field, so that the irradiation of growth or relatively bulky animals is possible.” Certain hours a day and for several months a year, at the Alcalá base the technicians opened the lead sarcophagus so that the gamma ray emitting source could act in the center of the field, the 50 m area of ​​diameter protected with a wall and slope in which plants, seeds, insects or some animals were exposed. “The dose received depended on the distance from Cesio137”, Sánchez de Ribera clarifies. When the years of irradiation ended the lead sarcophagus fell again, the caesium was locked and the researchers could access to work. The El Encín field worked 12 years, Between 1961 and 1973when his activity was complicated by the construction of a cement factory in the surroundings. The dust hindered research, so that in 73 it was decided to remove the radioactive source and transfer it to the Polytechnic University of Madrid. There he was only three years before embarking on … Read more

It is the gamma radiation of nuclear waste

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Research in The field of batteries It does not cease. And it is understandable that it is so. The popularization of the electric car requires that these energy storage devices have The best possible benefits. As we suggest in the headline, the protagonist of this article is a technology that pursues Develop nuclear batteries For electronic devices. This idea is the fruit of an investigation developed by a group of engineers from Ohio State University (USA). In the article they have published in Optical materials: x They argue that it is possible to use the radioactive waste resulting from the activity of the fission reactors in operation to generate the electricity that many electronic devices require. “We are taking advantage of something that is considered a waste and trying to transform it into a treasure,” has declared Raymond Caonuclear engineer and one of the authors of the article. To test their idea they have manufactured a small prototype battery that has an approximate volume of 4 cubic centimeters. Its plan consists of introducing CESIO-137 or cobalt-60, two radioactive chemical elements that are usually the product of nuclear fission, with the purpose of using Gamma radiation They emit for Generate a small amount of electricity. Its prototype delivered 288 nanovatos with Cesio-137 and 1.5 microvatts with cobalt-60. It is evident that it is very little electricity, but these scientists are able to improve their technology enough to feed some not very demanding electronic devices, such as small sensors or monitors that require little maintenance. In any case, they do not propose these batteries for the consumer market. If they manage to refine their technology, they maintain that it can be used on devices housed near the facilities in which the radioactive residue occurs, such as, for example, inside the nuclear plants. On the other hand, they ensure that their battery can be handled safely and will not contaminate the environment. Gamma radiation is very penetrating, which will force them to put a very robust protective enclosure. In addition, they leave another question in the air: it is not clear what the useful life of such a battery will be. Gamma is a form of ionizing radiation Radioactivity is the process of natural origin that explains how An atomic nucleus Unstable loses energy in the attempt to achieve a more stable state. And to achieve this emits radiation. Around the nucleus orbit one or several elementary particles even much more tiny and with negative electric charge to which we call electrons. The nucleus, in turn, is made up of one or more protons, which are particles with positive electric charge. The simplest atom That we can find in nature is that of Protio (Hydrogen-1), an isotope of hydrogen that has a single proton in its nucleus and a single electron orbiting around it. The problem is that matter is not composed only of protio, but also of many other more complex and heavy chemical elements, and that, therefore, have more protons in their nucleus and more electrons orbiting around it. How is it possible that there is more than one proton in the nucleus If all of them have a positive electric charge? The reasonable thing is to think that they could not be close together because having the same elementary electric charge would repel. And yes, this idea is consistent. Those responsible for solving this dilemma are neutrons, the particles that live with the protons in the atomic nucleus. The Higgs field is a fundamental interaction that explains how particles acquire their mass Unlike protons, neutrons have neutral global electric charge, so they do not “feel” either repulsion or electromagnetic attraction to which protons and electrons are exposed. The function of neutrons is none other than stabilizing the nucleus, allowing several protons to live in it that, otherwise, would repel. And they manage to do so thanks to the action of one of the four fundamental forces of nature: strong nuclear interaction. The other three forces are electromagnetic interaction, gravity and weak nuclear interaction. Physicists usually place this same level The Higgs fieldwhich is another fundamental interaction that explains How particles acquire their massbut to facilitate their understanding, the texts usually collect as fundamental forces the four that I have mentioned a little higher because they are somehow with which we are all familiar. The nucleones, which are the protons and neutrons of the atomic nucleus, manage to stay together and overcome the natural repulsion that protons face because the presence of neutrons allows strong nuclear force to exercise as a glue capable of imposing itself to electromagnetic force. Strong nuclear interaction has a very small reach, but at short distances its intensity is enormous. The important thing about all this is that neutrons, as I advanced a few lines above, act stabilizing the atomic nucleus, so that as an atom has more protons, it will also need that in its nucleus there are more neutrons so that the attractive strong force manages to impose itself to the repulsive electromagnetic force. Interestingly, the balance between the amount of protons and neutrons is very delicate. An atom is stable if its nucleus has a precise amount of nucleons and the distribution of these between protons and neutrons allows strong nuclear interaction to act as “glue.” For this reason in nature we can only find A finite amount of chemical elements: those that collect the periodic table with which we are all to a greater or lesser extent familiar. Any other combination of protons and neutrons would not allow to maintain that fine balance, giving rise to an unstable atom. What differentiates a stable atom from an unstable one is that in the nucleus of the latter the strong nuclear interaction and electromagnetic force are not in equilibrium, so the atom needs to modify its structure to achieve a state of less energy that allows it to adopt a more stable configuration. A stable atom is “comfortable” with its current structure and … Read more

He has not created a superhero, but radiation has given healing powers to the most unexpected material: to concrete

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It is difficult to imagine a world without concrete. This material has been fundamental in the history of mankind And it is still a pillar in modern construction. Although we are exploring more sustainable alternatives such as woodthere are constructions in which the concrete remains the clear protagonist. An example is nuclear power plants, which need to be resistant and well isolated. And a new study has investigated The effect of nuclear radiation on concrete. The most surprising thing is that radiation bombardment has an effect … curative. The study. The researchers at the University of Tokyo were not looking for a U -cement Self -backreparable concretebut the impact of nuclear radiation on concrete. Being the main structural material and armor in nuclear centrals and reactors, there is a concern about how radiation influences the aging of that armor. Specifically, the objective was to verify what is the impact on quartz, a common material in the rock that is used in the mixture of concrete, regardless of the part of the world in which that mixture is manufactured, and measure the impact on quartz It can help us understand how radiation affects the structure of the building. The good news is that, in theory, these concrete structures are more stable in the long term of what was believed, since radiation induces relaxation processes in quartz that allow some recovery of their internal structure. Irradia the quartz. To carry out the study, the effects of the irradiation of neutrons in different types of quartz were investigated. The synthetic, metacuarcita, sandstone and granodiorite quartz were irradiated at a temperature between 45 and 62 degrees Celsius, with a damage by displaced atom that ranged between 0.01 and 0.23 units. IPPEI Maruyama is one of those responsible for the investigation and Comment That the flow of neutron radiation “distorts the crystalline structure, causing amorphization and expansion.” This would be something negative because it implies that the material is not stable, but the surprising thing is that, due to the role of silicon and oxygen within the quartz grains, a healing process is triggered that mitigates the expansion of the volume of the material induced by Radiation. Self -repair. “At the same time there is a phenomenon in which distorted crystals recover and the expansion decreases,” says Maruyama. This is something that depends on the size of mineral crystals within concrete. For example, the largest grains showed a lower expansion, so the degradation of the concrete, which is one of the current concerns when building and maintaining nuclear centrals, could be less severe than what was thought. Likewise, the researcher confirms that “a lower radiation rate allows more time for self -reparation”, allowing nuclear energy plants to “operate safely for longer periods of time” of which it was expected initially. Next steps. There are still questions to be resolved, since the same team comments that they have a task ahead. The University of Tokyo’s team has been studying the impact of radiation on concrete since 2008, but confirms that it is an expensive field of study, so carrying out extensive research is not easy. Now, with this finding, Maruyama is confident that they will continue to explore the impact of nuclear radiation beyond quartz to, for example, see if that expansion phenomenon occurs in other minerals that make up the concrete. The objective is not only to predict how cracks are formed due to the expansion of minerals that are being bombarded by radiation, but how to select the best materials to create a much more resistant concrete for future nuclear energy plants. Beyond the centrals. We will have to see the next steps of the researchers to strengthen those first opinions of the study, but it is evident that getting a self -realistic concrete is an obsession. Due to CO2 emissions during its productionto what Its maintenance is very expensive Since it is ending world -sand reserves, having a material that repairs itself is something that different teams throughout the planet have been investigating for years. And progress has been made, such as mixtures with sugar either coffee that allow some self -repair of concrete. We will see, yes, what takes to use that new concrete on a day -to -day basis. Image | SAM300292 In Xataka | We use both cement that has become a serious problem. Solution: replace it with garbage

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