Seminars

Nuclear data to be updated

On 2 July, a seminar of the Department of Nuclear Physics was held at FLNP. Another popular science lecture was given by Ivan RUSKOV (Institute for Nuclear Research and Nuclear Energy, BAS, JINR) - "Beryllium: precious damn metal".

The speaker gave a brief overview of some investigations of nuclear reactions of beryllium-9 with neutrons carried out in the past, as well as spoke about current experiments and possible areas for future research.

Beryllium is strategically important, valuable, of utmost importance both for understanding the processes of formation of elements in the Universe and for use in current technologies. It is one and a half times lighter than aluminum but stronger than special steels; very hard but brittle; highly corrosion resistant. In various forms, it is widely used in automotive, aerospace engineering, X-ray machines, robotics, nuclear and thermonuclear facilities and other fields. The main producers of beryllium today are Kazakhstan, China, Russia and the United States, while Brazil and Argentina have significant reserves. The Be-9 isotope plays a decisive role in neutron deceleration due to its relatively high neutron scattering cross section.

In nuclear reactors, beryllium is used as a reflector for neutrons to increase their number in the reactor core and to increase its efficiency. It allows reducing the size of the core that makes beryllium suitable for small nuclear power reactors used in aviation and shipbuilding. However, beryllium is highly toxic and dangerous to human health, so it is not recommended to touch it with bare hands or to inhale its dust.

Ivan provides all his lectures from the series "Zamyatninki" with relevant information not only from the scientific research area. This time, he gave an example of a task for the 8th grade of a theoretical tour in chemistry of the 2015 regional Olympiad. In the conditions of the task "Metal of the future", it is said: "In the 1930s of the twentieth century, academician A.E.Fersman called it the metal of the future. Today, in response to a question about the practical application of the compounds of this element, they say: an aircraft the weight of which is half that of a conventional one; propellant with the highest specific impulse; springs that do not know fatigue (capable of withstanding 20 billion load cycles); this element is part of emeralds."

Some news was delivered: on 2 June, 2025, US President D.Trump signed decrees on the development of nuclear energy that will quadruple its capacity by 2050, will begin construction of 10 large reactors by 2030 and will redesign closed nuclear power plants for the needs of the Pentagon. We were also introduced the Russian news: at present, Russia revives on its territory a full cycle of production of beryllium - a strategic metal for the nuclear programme of the future. Its production is resumed at a unique field in Buryatia, where it was curtailed in 1987. An enterprise is under construction to process beryllium instead of lost, after the collapse of the USSR, in Kazakhstan. A project is currently developed for a research waste-free liquid-salt reactor, the operation of which will require a significant amount of beryllium-containing materials.

Elements from the Li-Be-B group participate in reactions with neutrons, producing, in addition to helium and tritium, gamma rays that can be registered.

And the story of beryllium started with the research of the German physicist Walter Bote that as a professor of physics at the University of Giessen, in 1930, together with G.Becker, was engaged in the bombardment of beryllium using alpha particles. His research contributed to J.Chadwick's discovery of the neutron. Ivan reminded the participants of the seminar that on 20 August, the 80th anniversary of the Russian nuclear industry will be celebrated, recalled Yu.S.Zamyatnin, a participant in the Atomic Project and the iconic figures of this project A.D.Sakharov, Ya.B.Zeldovich. He also spoke about the spy story in the Manhattan Project.

Beryllium was used in the first version of the ITER fusion reactor. In 2023, it was decided to replace the armor material for the first wall of the ITER blanket from beryllium to tungsten.

The speaker quoted the memoirs of the veteran-FLNP reactor specialist E.P.Shabalin: "I do not like beryllium, since in my practice of developing nuclear facilities, the use of this wonderful metal in all respects (the lightest, most durable and not absorbing neutrons) brought only failures." Nevertheless, Evgeny Shabalin today works on projects using beryllium - the design of the future NEPTUNE reactor provides for the use of beryllium neutron reflectors.

Ivan shared the news of NASA that developed and tested the Kilopower system at a nuclear assembly in Nevada that uses a beryllium oxide neutron reflector. Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) will increase in the next 50 years the production of plutonium "pits" for current American nuclear weapons and thermonuclear "primary charges" that use beryllium.

The speaker emphasized the relevance of nuclear data required for a better understanding of the mechanisms of nuclear reactions with neutrons and for their successful use in neutron-nuclear science and technology. He focused on nuclear data on neutron scattering with an energy of 14.1 MeV per beryllium, since these data directly affect the neutron properties of the solid-state blanket for the ITER reactor.

More accurate and thorough information on the nuclear reactions of beryllium isotopes with neutrons of various energies will improve the quality of current libraries with estimated nuclear data.

At a seminar on applied nuclear data (WANDA 2025, 13-15 February), a report on the capability and plan for studying (until 2029) the ⁹Be (n, 2n) reaction using a CoGNAC multi-detector facility on the LANSCE neutron time-of-flight spectrometer in LANL was presented.

At a meeting of Committee on experiments on the n-TOF neutron time-of-flight spectrometer in CERN held on 8 April this year, it was offered to measure the cross-sections of the ⁶Li(n, t)α, ⁷Li(n, n't)α и ⁹Be(n, 2n)2α reactions. Accurate and reliable experimental nuclear data for these reactions are of great importance for simulating blankets designed to reproduce tritium in some of the most promising thermonuclear reactor designs.

The investigation of interaction of 14.1-mW neutrons with BeO is also scheduled in the framework of the TANGRA project at FLNP JINR.

The speaker answered numerous questions asked by JINR Vice Director L.Kostov, the FLNP employees V.I.Furman, V.N.Shvetsov, Yu.N.Kopatch, P.V.Sedyshev and others.

Olga TARANTINA,
collage of Ivan RUSKOV