The utilization of clean energy is a matter of primary importance for sustainable development as well as a vital approach for solving worldwide energy-related issues. If the low utilization rate of nuclear fuel, nuclear proliferation, and insufficient nuclear safety can be solved, nuclear fission energy could be used as a sustainable and low-carbon clean energy form for thousands of years, prov...

The chronicle of McLaughlin et al. (2000) details how multiple process criticality accidents occurred in the 1950s and 1960s when criticality safety programmes were in their infancy and when operator training was often overlooked. A period of relative calm prevailed after 1970 as strict mass controls and administrative procedures were introduced together with criticality education programmes. H...

The rationale is disclosed for a substructure within the Earth's inner core, consisting of an actinide subcore at the center of the Earth, surrounded by a subshell composed of the products of nuclear fission and radioactive decay. Estimates are made as to possible densities, physical dimensions, and chemical compositions. The feasibility for self-sustaining nuclear fission within the subcore is...

Super-heavy elements [1] can only be formed by fusing two massive nuclei. These elements are predicted to be stabilised by nuclear shell effects associated with near-spherical shapes around new predicted neutron and proton magic numbers. Their cross section of formation is inhibited by several orders of magnitude by the premature breakup of the elongated di-nuclear system known as quasi-fission...

Mitosis in eukaryotic cells employs spindle microtubules to drive accurate chromosome segregation at cell division. Cells lacking spindle microtubules arrest in mitosis due to a spindle checkpoint that delays mitotic progression until all chromosomes have achieved stable bipolar attachment to spindle microtubules. In fission yeast, mitosis occurs within an intact nuclear membrane with the mitot...

The conditions for the manifestation of transient effects in fission are carefully examined by analysing experimental data where fission is induced by peripheral heavy-ion collisions at relativistic energies. Experimental total nuclear fission cross sections of U at 1⋅A GeV on gold and uranium targets are compared with the predictions of a nuclear-reaction code, where transient effects in fissi...

The nuclear lamina is an intermediate filament network that underlies the nuclear membrane in higher eukaryotic cells. During mitosis in higher eukaryotes, nuclear lamins are phosphorylated by a mitosis-specific kinase and this induces disassembly of the lamina structure. Recently, p34cdc2 protein kinase purified from starfish has been shown to induce phosphorylation of lamin proteins and disas...