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Category: nuclear energy – Page 8

Google has unveiled a quantum computing chip, “Willow,” capable of performing tasks in minutes that would take supercomputers 10 septillion years. This breakthrough in error correction marks a significant step towards practical quantum computing, with potential applications in drug discovery, fusion energy, and climate change solutions.

Google on Monday showed off a new quantum computing chip that it said was a major breakthrough that could bring practical quantum computing closer to reality.

A custom chip called “Willow” does in minutes what it would take leading supercomputers 10 septillion years to complete, according to Google Quantum AI founder Hartmut Neven.

“Written out, there is a 1 with 25 zeros,” Neven said of the time span while briefing journalists. “A mind-boggling number.”

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The universe is a stage filled with extreme phenomena, where temperatures and energies reach unimaginable levels. In this context, there are objects such as supernova remnants, pulsars, and active galactic nuclei that generate charged particles and gamma rays with energies far exceeding those involved in nuclear processes like fusion within stars. These particles, as direct witnesses of extreme cosmic processes, offer key insights into the workings of the universe.

Gamma rays, for instance, have the ability to traverse space without being altered, providing direct information about their sources of origin. However, charged particles, known as cosmic rays, face a more complex journey. When interacting with the omnipresent magnetic fields of the cosmos, these particles are deflected and lose part of their energy, especially high-energy electrons and positrons, referred to as cosmic-ray electrons (CRe). With energies surpassing one teraelectronvolt (TeV)—a thousand times more than visible light— these particles gradually fade away, complicating the identification of their point of origin.

Detecting high-energy particles such as CRe is a monumental task. Space instruments, with their limited detection areas, fail to capture sufficient particles at these extreme energies. On the other hand, ground-based observatories face an additional challenge: distinguishing particle cascades triggered by cosmic-ray electrons from the far more frequent ones generated by protons and heavier cosmic-ray nuclei.

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Google Quantum AI announced that it is moving past the Sycamore era and taking another leap down its roadmap with the introduction of the 105-qubit Willow, a new quantum chip that has achieved a milestone in computational power and error correction, marking a major step toward large-scale, commercially viable quantum computing.

The team, which published their findings in Nature, is also eyeing a quantum device that overcomes the limitations of errors and offers real-world solutions to tough problems, the ultimate destination as they progress along their roadmap.

“The mission of the Google quantum AI team is to build quantum computing for otherwise unsolvable problems,” said Hartmut Neven, a vice president of engineering at Google and founder and manager of the Quantum Artificial Intelligence lab, at a recent roundtable about the new milestone.” So what problems do we have in mind? The first applications will be modeling and understanding systems where quantum effects are important. So that’s the case for common drug discovery, understanding and designing nuclear fusion reactors, bringing down the enormous energy costs of fertilizer production. But it then extends to multiple other areas, such as quantum machine learning.”

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Scientists from the Longevity Research Institute (LRI), which was formed by the merger of SENS Research Foundation and Lifespan.io, have achieved expression of an essential mitochondrial gene in the nucleus and proper functioning of the protein. This could pave the way for curing diseases caused by mitochondrial mutations [1].

The fragile mitochondrial DNA

The prevailing scientific consensus is that mitochondria were once independent microorganisms that entered a symbiotic relationship with larger cells. This duo gave rise to eukaryotic cells: the building blocks of all multicellular life. Without that fateful “marriage,” complex life would not exist, as mitochondria provide cells with essential energy via oxidative phosphorylation.

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A research team has clarified the mechanism behind the generation of runaway electrons during the startup phase of a tokamak fusion reactor. The paper, “Binary Nature of Collisions Facilitates Runaway Electron Generation in Weakly Ionized Plasmas,” was published in the journal Physical Review Letters.

Nuclear energy refers to a power generation method that harnesses the energy of an artificial sun created on Earth, using resources extracted from seawater. To achieve this, technology capable of confining high-temperature plasma exceeding 100 million degrees for extended periods in a fusion is essential.

A tokamak is an artificial sun system in the shape of a torus, with no beginning or end, where magnetic fields are applied to confine particles.

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This paper presents a “hybrid” approach to direct drive inertial confinement fusion that can exploit a high-energy gas laser with two opposed beams. The target and driver are asymmetric, much like experiments performed on the National Ignition Facility, but have been designed to benefit from scale and their particular compatibility with a fusion power plant. The imploded masses (and areal densities) are increased by a factor of 12 relative to findings by Abu-Shawareb et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 129, 75,001 (2022)] and provide a path to high-gain implosions that robustly ignite. The design also mitigates common concerns such as laser imprint and cross-beam energy transfer. We discuss the rationales for a hybrid target, the methods used to control implosion symmetry, and the implication(s) for inertial fusion energy.

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Nuclear microreactors in remote areas require robust monitoring for safe operation.

A team of researchers at the University of Michigan has developed a groundbreaking real-time, 3D temperature mapping system for nuclear microreactors.

This innovation promises to enhance safety monitoring and pave the way for wider adoption of these compact power sources.

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The Japanese government is planning to generate some 20 gigawatts of electricity, equivalent to the output of 20 nuclear reactors, through thin and bendable perovskite solar cells in fiscal 2040.

The industry ministry plans to designate next-generation solar cells as the key to expanding renewables…

TOKYO (Kyodo) — The Japanese government is planning to generate some 20 gigawatts of electricity, equivalent to the output of 20 nuclear reactors, through thin and bendable perovskite solar cells in fiscal 2040.

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Long before humans began creating nuclear reactors to fulfill our ridiculous energy needs, back when the Earth was dominated by microbes, in fact, nature beat us to it and built the first nuclear reactor on Earth.

In May 1972, a physicist at a nuclear processing plant in Pierrelatte, France, was conducting analysis on uranium samples when he noticed something pretty strange. In usual uranium ore deposits, three different isotopes are found; uranium 238, uranium 234, and uranium 235. Of these, uranium 238 is the most abundant, while uranium 234 is the rarest. Isotope 235 makes up around 0.72 percent of uranium deposits, and is the most coveted, as if you can enrich it past 3 percent it can be used to create a sustained nuclear reaction.

In the samples from the Oklo deposits in Gabon, Africa, isotope 235 was found to make up 0.717 percent of the total. That might not sound like much of a difference, but it’s pretty weird.

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