Applications of Nuclear Physics

Abstract

Today the applications of nuclear physics span a very broad range of topics and fields. This review discusses a number of aspects of these applications, including selected topics and concepts in nuclear reactor physics, nuclear fusion, nuclear non-proliferation, nuclear-geophysics, and nuclear medicine. The review begins with a historic summary of the early years in applied nuclear physics, with an emphasis on the huge developments that took place around the time of World War II, and that underlie the physics involved in designs of nuclear explosions, controlled nuclear energy, and nuclear fusion. The review then moves to focus on modern applications of these concepts, including the basic concepts and diagnostics developed for the forensics of nuclear explosions, the nuclear diagnostics at the National Ignition Facility, nuclear reactor safeguards, and the detection of nuclear material production and trafficking. The review also summarizes recent developments in nuclear geophysics and nuclear medicine. The nuclear geophysics areas discussed include geo-chronology, nuclear logging for industry, the Oklo reactor, and geo-neutrinos. The section on nuclear medicine summarizes the critical advances in nuclear imaging, including PET and SPECT imaging, targeted radionuclide therapy, and the nuclear physics of medical isotope production. Each subfield discussed requires a review article onto itself, which is not the intention of the current review. Rather, the current review is intended for readers who wish to get a broad understanding of applied nuclear physics.

References in corpus (15)

• The fundamental constants and their variation: observational status and theoretical motivations
• Phenomenology of Forward Hadrons in DIS: Fracture Functions and its $Q^2$ Evolution
• One million year old groundwater in the Sahara revealed by krypton-81 and chlorine-36
• Observation of Geo-Neutrinos
• Tracing Noble Gas Radionuclides in the Environment
• Nuclear Reactor Safeguards and Monitoring with Antineutrino Detectors
• Antineutrino monitoring for the Iranian heavy water reactor
• Monitoring the Thermal Power of Nuclear Reactors with a Prototype Cubic Meter Antineutrino Detector
• Reaction-in-Flight Neutrons as a Test of Stopping Power in Degenerate Plasmas
• Background for Terrestrial Antineutrino Investigations: Radionuclide Distribution, Georeactor Fission Events, and Boundary Conditions on Fission Power Production
• Determining Reactor Flux from Xenon-136 and Cesium-135 in Spent Fuel
• Reaction-in-Flight Neutrons as a Signature for Shell Mixing in NIF capsules
• Prompt Beta Spectroscopy as a Diagnostic for Mix in Ignited NIF Capsules
• Theory of Antineutrino Monitoring of Burning MOX Plutonium Fuels
• Reactor Monitoring with Neutrinos

Cited by in corpus (6)

• Fission of ${}^{240}$Pu with symmetry-restored density functional theory
• Improved Determination of the ${}^{235}\text{U}$ and ${}^{239}\text{Pu}$ Reactor Antineutrino Cross Sections per Fission
• Benchmarking boron carbide equation of state using computation and experiment
• Comparison of ablators for the polar direct drive exploding pusher platform
• Cross sections for neutron-induced reactions from surrogate data: revisiting the Weisskopf-Ewing approximation for $(n,n^{\prime })$ and $(n,2n)$ reactions
• Learning nuclear cross sections across the chart of nuclides with graph neural networks