The United States is preparing to mine a rare nuclear resource from some of its most dangerous Cold War legacies, turning ...

Powering spacecraft with solar energy may not seem like a challenge, given how intense the Sun’s light can feel on Earth. Spacecraft near the Earth use large solar panels to harness the Sun for the ...

Ever wonder how a spacecraft millions or even billions of miles from the Sun can keep its lights on? After all, solar panels become less efficient the farther you travel into the outer solar system ...

Isotek Systems, in partnership with TerraPower Isotopes, co-created by Bill Gates, are “producing cancer treatment material ...

Plutonium is not a fun word to speak, hear, or write. Used to depict an actinide metal we've known about for some time, it has become synonymous with human-caused destruction on a hard-to-comprehend ...

Elements that do not exist in nature—that have been created in a laboratory—are unstable. After hours or days of one element bombarding another with enough energy for both to fuse, the resulting new ...

In this lesson, students will simulate the randomness of decay in radioactive atoms and visualize the half-life of a sample radioactive element. This lesson can be completed in two (2) 45-minute class ...

The plutonium-244 hints at how heavy metals form in stars. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works. A rare version of the radioactive ...