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An introduction to the school “Rewriting Nuclear Physics Textbooks: one step forward” and future perspectives

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Abstract

The third edition of the school “Rewriting Nuclear Physics Textbooks: one step forward” was devoted to the societal impact of nuclear physics. One of the main beneficiaries in this area is medicine. From magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to the different types of radiation used in hospitals, nuclear physics is omnipresent. The development of new radioisotope production techniques, therapy of certain cancers with ions and hadron therapy are among the subjects undergoing rapid development. Many other fields benefit from the techniques of nuclear physics: archaeometry, the non-destructive investigation of packages or containers at customs, the study of the pollution of our environment, etc. The school was completed by the presentation of some basic research topics: the contribution of cold and ultra-cold neutrons to the study of the lifetime and electric dipole moment of the neutron, the measurement of the proton charge radius via the study of muonic atoms, the investigation of the extremes of neutron richness in nuclei, and finally, the quest for traces of 60Ni in sediments in order to study the history of supernova explosions in our universe. The number and quality of projects in a scientific field gives a measure of its future. For nuclear physics, the number of accelerators under construction in the world attests to the robustness and the future of the field. In the last part of the article, I briefly recall the specifics of nuclear physics accelerators under construction throughout the world. In my introductory presentation at the school, I covered all of these topics by pointing out the contributions of nuclear physics. This article closely follows this presentation.

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Notes

  1. http://www.nupecc.org/index.php?display=lrp2016/main.

  2. Rewriting Nuclear Physics Textbooks: one more step forward.

  3. Between the 4th and 23rd July 1896, Victor Despeignes, a French district physician, performed the first anticancer radiotherapy that was validated by undeniable publications and practical facts.

  4. During the First World War, Marie Curie with her daughter Irene and Antoine Béclère, designed eighteen mobile surgical units, “radiological ambulances” nicknamed the “Petites Curies”.

  5. The price of ISEULT may be estimated at the order of several tens of millions of Euros (~ 50 M€). How can such an equipment be made much cheaper and easier to use? How is it possible in a society where the price of medical treatment is steadily increasing to make these techniques accessible to everyone? This is one of the major concerns of the scientific world.

  6. From Ref. [8] “…. The creation of technetium-99 m involves one of those miraculous, globe-crossing supply chains that modern economies have rendered commonplace. The journey starts with enriched uranium from the United States, which is made into plates and shipped to research reactors around the world. Each plate is baked for a week in the glare of a nuclear reactor’s neutrons, which fission about 6% of the uranium into molybdenum-99. This has a half-life of 66 h and slowly decays into technetium….”.

  7. A pronounced peak on the curve representing the energy loss of ionizing radiation during its path through matter. For heavy ions, the peak occurs immediately before the particles come to rest.

  8. In Egypt, a 1983 Law on the Protection of Antiquities prohibited the export of archaeological samples from Egyptian territory, which led some foreign missions to develop archaeometric laboratories in the country.

  9. Taking the example of France, air pollution is responsible for 48,000 deaths per year. It is the third leading cause of death, after tobacco, 78,000 deaths, and alcohol, 49,000 deaths.

  10. Indeed, the Higgs mechanism provides mass to the mediators of the weak interaction, to the quarks and to the leptons, but the quarks contribute very little to the mass of the nucleons, which provide the mass of the universe.

  11. HIAF(*) is The Chinese Heavy Ion Accelerator Facility (HIAF) project, approved to be built at Huizhou, Guangdong Province (100 km north-east of Hong Kong) as a off-shoot of the Heavy Ion Research Facility in Lanzhou (HIRFL).

  12. As defined in the Design Study, the EURISOL layout consists of a superconducting linear accelerator providing protons of 1 GeV energy and an impressive power of 5 MW, but also capable of accelerating deuterons, 3He and ions up to mass 40.

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  1. IRFU, CEA, Université Paris-Saclay, 91191, Gif-sur-Yvette, France

    Nicolas Alamanos

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Correspondence to Nicolas Alamanos.

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Alamanos, N. An introduction to the school “Rewriting Nuclear Physics Textbooks: one step forward” and future perspectives. Eur. Phys. J. Plus 135, 417 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1140/epjp/s13360-020-00379-8

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