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Category: nuclear energy – Page 46

It is “designed to use an inherently safe and extremely robust fuel form.”

The future of deep space exploration is near. Rolls-Royce revealed a new image of a micro-reactor for space that it says is “designed to use an inherently safe and extremely robust fuel form.”

The iconic engineering firm recently tweeted the image alongside a caption. It is designing the nuclear fission system as part of an agreement it penned with the UK Space Agency in 2021.

Nuclear propulsion systems for space, which harness the energy produced during the splitting of atoms, have great potential for accelerating space travel and reducing transit times. This could be of particular importance when sending humans to Mars… More.

Rolls-Royce/Twitter.

Rolls-Royce revealed a new image of a micro-reactor for space that it says is “designed to use an inherently safe and extremely robust fuel form.”

Continue reading “Rolls-Royce’s new micro-reactor design could send humans to Mars” | >

At our StrictlyVC event a few nights ago, Altman was generous with his time, spending an hour with those gathered to talk about the latest at OpenAI (the hottest startup in the world at the moment), as well as answering questions about how his other investments fit into larger themes that he expects to play out — and in the not-distant future.

This is part one of that interview, focused on Altman’s investments, including in Helion Energy, a nuclear fusion company that Altman described at the event as “the other thing beside OpenAI that I spend a lot of time on.” We also talked Twitter, supersonic jets, making babies out of skin cells, and why he’s “not super interested” in crypto.

You can find the second part of our talk, focused on OpenAI, here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ebjkD1Om4uw

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Please join the Project on Nuclear Issues for a book launch event, featuring “The Fragile Balance of Terror: Deterrence in the Nuclear Age.”

In The Fragile Balance of Terror, edited by Vipin Narang and Scott Sagan, the foremost experts on nuclear policy and strategy offer insight into an era rife with more nuclear powers. Some of these new powers suffer domestic instability, others are led by pathological personalist dictators, and many are situated in highly unstable regions of the world—a volatile mix of variables. The increasing fragility of deterrence in the twenty-first century is created by a confluence of forces: military technologies that create vulnerable arsenals, a novel information ecosystem that rapidly transmits both information and misinformation, nuclear rivalries that include three or more nuclear powers, and dictatorial decision making that encourages rash choices. The nuclear threats posed by India, Pakistan, Iran, and North Korea are thus fraught with danger.
Audience questions: https://forms.gle/t1ecgsgib9hhFjAC8
This event is made possible by general CSIS support.

A nonpartisan institution, CSIS is the top national security think tank in the world.
Visit www.csis.org to find more of our work as we bring bipartisan solutions to the world’s greatest challenges.

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This will reduce carbon emissions from mining operations but is that the only way?

TeraWulf, a Minnesota-headquartered company, will become the first entity in the U.S. to power its Bitcoin mining operations with nuclear energy, CNET.

Luza studios/iStock.

Over the years, the puzzles have become more difficult to crack, and miners have dedicated greater computational resources in their bid to earn the coveted new coin. This, in turn, has increased the power consumption of the Bitcoin industry, making it less sustainable than beef farming, and it is estimated to have emitted 86.3 million tons of carbon in 2022 alone.

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The research is a huge milestone towards fusion energy that can power millions of homes and businesses with a carbon-neutral energy source.

Researchers at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory announced that they observed a net gain in nuclear fusion energy for the very first time at the end of 2022. The research is a huge milestone towards fusion energy that can power millions of homes and businesses with a carbon-neutral energy source. However, converting this achievement into a practical nuclear energy source requires innovative technologies to bring fusion-powered society to life.

PNNL

Jacob Haag, the first author of the research, said this is the first study on such material interfaces at too-small length scales. He added they also revealed some fundamental mechanisms that govern the toughness and durability of materials.

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Rachel Bronson, PhD, president and CEO, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, said: “We are living in a time of unprecedented danger, and the Doomsday Clock time reflects that reality. 90 seconds to midnight is the closest the Clock has ever been set to midnight, and it’s a decision our experts do not take lightly. The US government, its NATO allies and Ukraine have a multitude of channels for dialogue; we urge leaders to explore all of them to their fullest ability to turn back the Clock.”

The Doomsday Clock’s time is set by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists’ Science and Security Board with the support of the Bulletin’s Board of Sponsors, which includes 10 Nobel Laureates. Previously, the Doomsday Clock had been set at 100 seconds to midnight since 2020.

The Doomsday Clock statement explains that “Russia’s war on Ukraine has raised profound questions about how states interact, eroding norms of international conduct that underpin successful responses to a variety of global risks. And worst of all, Russia’s thinly veiled threats to use nuclear weapons remind the world that escalation of the conflict—by accident, intention, or miscalculation—is a terrible risk. The possibility that the conflict could spin out of anyone’s control remains high… Russia has also brought its war to the Chernobyl and Zaporizhzhia nuclear reactor sites, violating international protocols and risking widespread release of radioactive materials. Efforts by the International Atomic Energy Agency to secure these plants so far have been rebuffed.” The statement has been translated into Ukrainian and Russian.

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Is the Head, Nuclear Safety Office, overseeing the development of the DEMO Fusion Reactor (https://euro-fusion.org/programme/demo/), at EUROfusion.

DEMO (DEMOnstration Power Plant) refers to a proposed class of nuclear fusion experimental reactors that are intended to demonstrate the net production of electric power from nuclear fusion.

EUROfusion is a consortium of national fusion research institutes located in the European Union, the UK, Switzerland and Ukraine. It was established in 2014 to succeed the European Fusion Development Agreement (EFDA) as the umbrella organization of Europe’s fusion research laboratories.

Prior to this role, Ms. Elbez-Uzan spent over a decade at the ITER Organization as Head of the Division of Nuclear Safety.

ITER (the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor) is being built in southern France where upon completion of construction of the main reactor and first plasma, planned for late 2028, it will be the world’s largest magnetic confinement plasma physics experiment and the largest experimental tokamak nuclear fusion reactor.

Prior to this role, Ms. Elbez-Uzan spent several years as Deputy Head of the Nuclear Safety Department, at the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA), a key player in research, development and innovation in four main areas: defense and security, low carbon energies (nuclear and renewable energies), technological research for industry, and fundamental research in the physical sciences and life sciences.

Continue reading “Joelle Elbez-Uzan — Head, Nuclear Safety Office — DEMO Fusion Reactor — EUROfusion” | >

Can a nuclear diamond battery change things as we know it, including what to do with nuclear waste?

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✅ Nuclear Diamond Batteries Could Be The Final Answer For Energy Storage.

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I posted about Japan releasing radioactive water, and thought it was a bad idea, because of this MIT revelation.

Nuclear power continues to expand globally, propelled, in part, by the fact that it produces few greenhouse gas emissions while providing steady power output. But along with that expansion comes an increased need for dealing with the large volumes of water used for cooling these plants, which becomes contaminated with radioactive isotopes that require special long-term disposal.

Now, a method developed at MIT provides a way of substantially reducing the volume of contaminated water that needs to be disposed of, instead concentrating the contaminants and allowing the rest of the water to be recycled through the plant’s cooling system. The proposed system is described in the journal Environmental Science and Technology, in a paper by graduate student Mohammad Alkhadra, professor of chemical engineering Martin Bazant, and three others.

The method makes use of a process called shock electrodialysis, which uses an electric field to generate a deionization shockwave in the water. The shockwave pushes the electrically charged particles, or ions, to one side of a tube filled with charged porous material, so that concentrated stream of contaminants can be separated out from the rest of the water. The group discovered that two radionuclide contaminants — isotopes of cobalt and cesium — can be selectively removed from water that also contains boric acid and lithium. After the water stream is cleansed of its cobalt and cesium contaminants, it can be reused in the reactor.

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