(ScienceDaily, March 26, 2010) — Self-repairing materials within nuclear reactors may one day become a reality as a result of research by Los Alamos National Laboratory scientists. In a paper appearing March 26 in the journal Science, Los Alamos researchers report a surprising mechanism that allows nanocrystalline materials to heal themselves after suffering radiation-induced damage. Nanocrystalline materials are those created from nanosized particles, in this case copper particles. A single nanosized particle — called a grain — is the size of a virus or even smaller. Nanocrystalline materials consist of a mixture of grains and the interface between those grains, called grain boundaries. Click here to read more…