The Nuclear Technology Portal
Introduction
- 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. Nuclear warfare is widely considered a global catastrophic risk. Nine sovereign states are known or believed to possess nuclear weapons as of 2026[update]: the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, France, China, India, Pakistan, North Korea and Israel. (Full article...)
General images -
The following are images from various nuclear technology-related articles on Wikipedia.
The first nuclear weapons were gravity bombs, such as the "Fat Man" weapon dropped on Nagasaki, Japan. They were large and could only be delivered by heavy bomber aircraft (from Nuclear weapon)
A schematic nuclear fission chain reaction. 1. A uranium-235 atom absorbs a neutron and fissions into two new atoms (fission fragments), releasing three new neutrons and some binding energy. 2. One of those neutrons is absorbed by an atom of uranium-238 and does not continue the reaction. Another neutron is simply lost and does not collide with anything, also not continuing the reaction. However, the one neutron does collide with an atom of uranium-235, which then fissions and releases two neutrons and some binding energy. 3. Both of those neutrons collide with uranium-235 atoms, each of which fissions and releases between one and three neutrons, which can then continue the reaction. (from Nuclear fission)
A comparison of levelized cost of energy (LCOE) over time for nuclear power and other sources. While wind turbines and solar panels can be mass-produced and thus enjoy learning curve effects, nuclear are almost always one-of-a-kind projects due to the limited number of reactors being built. The source of this chart, Our World in Data notes that the costs presented here is the global average, and these costs were driven up by 2 projects in the United States. The organization recognises that the median cost of the most exported and produced nuclear energy facility in the 2010s the South Korean APR1400, remained "constant", including in export. (from Nuclear power)
Ukrainian workers use equipment provided by the US Defense Threat Reduction Agency to dismantle a Soviet-era missile silo. After the end of the Cold War, Ukraine and the other non-Russian, post-Soviet republics relinquished Soviet nuclear stockpiles to Russia. (from Nuclear weapon)
Dry cask storage vessels storing spent nuclear fuel assemblies (from Nuclear power)
The Superphénix, closed in 1998, was one of the few FBRs (from Nuclear reactor)
Nuclear waste flasks generated by the United States during the Cold War are stored underground at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico. The facility is seen as a potential demonstration for storing spent fuel from civilian reactors. (from Nuclear power)
Overhead view of the core of the RA-3 Research and Production Reactor (CNEA, Argentina) (from Nuclear reactor)
Animation of a Coulomb explosion in the case of a cluster of positively charged nuclei, akin to a cluster of fission fragments. Hue level of color is proportional to (larger) nuclei charge. Electrons (smaller) on this time-scale are seen only stroboscopically and the hue level is their kinetic energy. (from Nuclear fission)
Survey respondents in the European Union and US considered investment in nuclear energy to be a higher priority than those in China, though all three favored renewable energy much more strongly than nuclear overall. (from Nuclear power)
Activity of spent UOx fuel in comparison to the activity of natural uranium ore over time (from Nuclear power)
The nuclear fission display at the Deutsches Museum in Munich. The table and instruments are originals, but would not have been together in the same room. (from Nuclear fission)
Scaled-down model of TOPAZ nuclear reactor (from Nuclear reactor)
Death rates per unit of electricity production for different energy sources (from Nuclear power)
A Minuteman III ICBM test launch from Vandenberg Space Force Base, United States. MIRVed land-based ICBMs are considered destabilizing because they tend to put a premium on striking first. (from Nuclear weapon)
The multi-mission radioisotope thermoelectric generator (MMRTG), used in several space missions such as the Curiosity Mars rover (from Nuclear power)
Reactor decay heat as a fraction of full power after the reactor shutdown, using two different correlations. To remove the decay heat, reactors need cooling after the shutdown of the fission reactions. A loss of the ability to remove decay heat caused the Fukushima accident. (from Nuclear power)
The launching ceremony of USS Nautilus January 1954. In 1958 it would become the first vessel to reach the North Pole. (from Nuclear power)
The stages of binary fission in a liquid drop model. Energy input deforms the nucleus into a fat "cigar" shape, then a "peanut" shape, followed by binary fission as the two lobes exceed the short-range nuclear force attraction distance, and are then pushed apart and away by their electrical charge. In the liquid drop model, the two fission fragments are predicted to be the same size. The nuclear shell model allows for them to differ in size, as usually experimentally observed. (from Nuclear fission)
The basics of the Teller–Ulam design for a hydrogen bomb: a fission bomb uses radiation to compress and heat a separate section of fusion fuel. (from Nuclear weapon)
Drawing of the first artificial reactor, Chicago Pile-1 (from Nuclear fission)
Montage of an inert test of a United States Trident SLBM (submarine launched ballistic missile), from submerged to the terminal, or re-entry phase, of the multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles (from Nuclear weapon)
Protest in Bonn against the nuclear arms race between the US/NATO and the Warsaw Pact, 1981 (from Nuclear weapon)
Onkalo spent nuclear fuel repository, Olkiluoto, Finland (from Nuclear power)
Fission product yields by mass for thermal neutron fission of uranium-235, plutonium-239, a combination of the two typical of current nuclear power reactors, and uranium-233, used in the thorium cycle (from Nuclear fission)
A photograph of Sumiteru Taniguchi's back injuries taken in January 1946 by a US Marine photographer (from Nuclear weapon)
The first light bulbs ever lit by electricity generated by nuclear power at EBR-1 at Argonne National Laboratory-West (now the Idaho National Laboratory), December 20, 1951. (from Nuclear power)
The Leibstadt Nuclear Power Plant in Switzerland (from Nuclear power)
The USSR and United States nuclear weapon stockpiles throughout the Cold War until 2015, with a precipitous drop in total numbers following the end of the Cold War in 1991. (from Nuclear weapon)
The number of nuclear warheads by country in 2024, based on an estimation by the Federation of American Scientists (from Nuclear weapon)
NC State's PULSTAR Reactor is a 1 MW pool-type research reactor with 4% enriched, pin-type fuel consisting of UO2 pellets in zircaloy cladding. (from Nuclear reactor)
Following the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, the world's worst nuclear accident since 1986, 50,000 households were displaced after radiation leaked into the air, soil and sea. Radiation checks led to bans of some shipments of vegetables and fish. (from Nuclear power)
Induced fission reaction. A neutron is absorbed by a uranium-235 nucleus, turning it briefly into an excited uranium-236 nucleus, with the excitation energy provided by the kinetic energy of the neutron plus the forces that bind the neutron. The uranium-236, in turn, splits into fast-moving lighter elements (fission products) which have a very large amount of kinetic energy, and also releases several free neutrons, and one or more "prompt gamma rays" (not shown). (from Nuclear fission)
Nuclear fuel assemblies being inspected before entering a pressurized water reactor in the United States (from Nuclear power)
Three of the reactors at Fukushima I overheated, causing the coolant water to dissociate and leading to the hydrogen explosions. This, along with fuel meltdowns, released large amounts of radioactive material into the air. (from Nuclear reactor)
More than 2,000 nuclear explosions have been conducted in more than a dozen different sites around the world. Red Russia/Soviet Union, blue France, light blue United States, violet Britain, yellow China, orange India, brown Pakistan, green North Korea and light green (territories exposed to nuclear bombs). The black dot indicates the location of the Vela incident. (from Nuclear weapon)
The Trinity test of the Manhattan Project was the first detonation of a nuclear weapon, which led J. Robert Oppenheimer to recall verses from the Hindu scripture Bhagavad Gita: "If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the mighty one" ... "I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds". (from Nuclear weapon)
The US has been counting on private industry to lead in fusion power, while more recently China's government has made fusion a national priority. In 2025, $2.1 billion was poured into a single Chinese state-owned fusion company, an amount two and a half times the U.S. Energy Department's annual fusion budget. (from Nuclear power)- An example of an induced nuclear fission event. A neutron is absorbed by the nucleus of a uranium-235 atom, which in turn splits into fast-moving lighter elements (fission products) and free neutrons. Though both reactors and nuclear weapons rely on nuclear chain reactions, the rate of reactions in a reactor is much slower than in a bomb. (from Nuclear reactor)
Edward Teller, often referred to as the "father of the hydrogen bomb" (from Nuclear weapon)
The Ikata Nuclear Power Plant, a pressurized water reactor that cools by using a secondary coolant heat exchanger with a large body of water, an alternative cooling approach to large cooling towers (from Nuclear power)
A demilitarized, commercial launch of the Russian Strategic Rocket Forces R-36 ICBM; also known by the NATO reporting name: SS-18 Satan. Upon its first fielding in the late 1960s, the SS-18 remains the single highest throw weight missile delivery system ever built. (from Nuclear weapon)
This view of downtown Las Vegas shows a mushroom cloud in the background. Scenes such as this were typical during the 1950s. From 1951 to 1962 the government conducted 100 atmospheric tests at the nearby Nevada Test Site. (from Nuclear weapon)
Proportions of the isotopes uranium-238 (blue) and uranium-235 (red) found in natural uranium and in enriched uranium for different applications. Light water reactors use 3–5% enriched uranium, while CANDU reactors work with natural uranium. (from Nuclear power)
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Selected article -
Planned and directed by Kenneth Bainbridge, the test was conducted in the Jornada del Muerto desert about 35 miles (56 km) southeast of Socorro, New Mexico, on what was the Alamogordo Bombing and Gunnery Range, but was renamed the White Sands Proving Ground just before the test. The only structures originally in the immediate vicinity were the McDonald Ranch House and its ancillary buildings, which scientists used as a laboratory for testing bomb components.
Fears of a fizzle prompted construction of "Jumbo", a steel containment vessel that could contain the plutonium, allowing it to be recovered, but Jumbo was not used in the test. On May 7, 1945, a rehearsal was conducted, during which 108 short tons (98 t) of high explosive spiked with radioactive isotopes was detonated.
425 people were present on the weekend of the Trinity test. In addition to Bainbridge and Oppenheimer, observers included Vannevar Bush, James Chadwick, James B. Conant, Thomas Farrell, Enrico Fermi, Hans Bethe, Richard Feynman, Isidor Isaac Rabi, Leslie Groves, Philip Morrison, Frank Oppenheimer, Geoffrey Taylor, Richard Tolman, Edward Teller, and John von Neumann. The Trinity bomb released the explosive energy of 25 kilotons of TNT (100 TJ) ± 2 kilotons of TNT (8.4 TJ), and a large cloud of fallout. The test was conducted without evacuating nearby residents. Postwar radiation safety guidelines, developed in part from Trinity data, would have required evacuation at those distances. The test site was declared a National Historic Landmark district in 1965 and listed on the National Register of Historic Places the following year. (Full article...)
Selected picture -
Credit: Cherie Cullen
United Kingdom Defense Minister Des Browne addresses the audience during a reception hosted by U.S. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, left, commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Mutual Defense Agreement between the United States and the U.K. at the State Department in Washington, D.C., July 9, 2008.
Did you know?
- ... that Trump wrote a letter to Ali Khamenei in an effort to initiate new nuclear negotiations with Iran?
- ... that 15,000 Ukrainians joined a Telegram channel for an orgy on a Kyiv hill in the event of a Russian nuclear strike?
- ... that the role of the British Mobile Defence Corps was to carry out rescue work in the aftermath of a nuclear attack?
- ... that Fritz Strassmann, a co-discoverer of nuclear fission, concealed a Jewish woman in his home during World War II?
- ... that music manager Alan Wills learned about management from his father, who was "in charge of the UK's nuclear early warning system"?
- ... that the 1991 Andover tornado narrowly avoided hitting two warplanes equipped with nuclear warheads?
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Selected biography -
Starting from Rainwater's concept of an irregular-shaped liquid drop model of the nucleus, Bohr and Mottelson developed a detailed theory that was in close agreement with experiments.
Since his father, Niels Bohr, had won the prize in 1922, he and his father are one of the several pairs of fathers and sons who have both won the Nobel Prize. (Full article...)
Nuclear technology news
- 22 October 2026 –
- The Finnish Government grants Posiva an operating license for the Onkalo spent nuclear fuel repository in Eurajoki, making it the world's first licensed deep geological disposal facility for spent nuclear fuel. (AFP via France 24)
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