Lifeboat Foundation

The BREST-OD-300 reactor is planned to start operating in 2026. A fuel production facility will be built by 2023 and the construction of an irradiated fuel reprocessing module is scheduled to start by 2024, Rosatom said. The design of the lead-cooled reactor is based on the principles of so-called natural safety, which makes it possible to abandon the melt trap.

“The successful implementation of this project will allow our country to become the world’s first owner of the nuclear power technology which fully meets the principles of sustainable development in terms of environment, accessibility, reliability, and efficient use of resources,” said Rosatom’s Director General Alexey Likhachev. “Today, we reaffirm our reputation as a leader in world progress in the nuclear technologies, that offers humanity unique solutions aimed at improving people’s lives,” he added.

According to President of the Kurchatov Institute Mikhail Kovalchuk, the project is aimed at bringing nuclear power to a new level.

Circa 2019

As quantum computing enters the industrial sphere, questions about how to manufacture qubits at scale are becoming more pressing. Here, Fernando Gonzalez-Zalba, Tsung-Yeh Yang and Alessandro Rossi explain why decades of engineering may give silicon the edge.

In the past two decades, quantum computing has evolved from a speculative playground into an experimental race. The drive to build real machines that exploit the laws of quantum mechanics, and to use such machines to solve certain problems much faster than is possible with traditional computers, will have a major impact in several fields. These include speeding up drug discovery by efficiently simulating chemical reactions; better uses of “big data” thanks to faster searches in unstructured databases; and improved weather and financial-market forecasts via smart optimization protocols.

Continue reading “Manufacturing silicon qubits at scale” »

Trapping and observing light in super-thin materials, Technion researchers say their work may pave way for new generation of tiny light-powered tech.

Those are the names of the new robots Amazon is testing with the goal of reducing strenuous movements for workers.

While the introduction of robots to the workplace often raises questions about whether human jobs will be replaced, Amazon argues they simply allow workers to focus on tasks that most need their attention while minimizing their potential for injury. Amazon said it’s added over a million jobs around the world since it began using robotics in its facilities in 2012.

In May, Amazon announced a goal of reducing recordable incident rates by 50% by 2025. It plans to invest over $300 million into safety projects this year.

Meet Apple’s Latest Invention: The Apple Car

Jeff Bezos’ spaceflight firm has yet to fly a single human, but one lucky auction winner has just bought the firm’s first seat for sale.

Toshiba’s Cambridge Research Laboratory has achieved quantum communications over optical fibres exceeding 600 km in length, three times further than the previous world record distance.

The breakthrough will enable long distance, quantum-secured information transfer between metropolitan areas and is a major advance towards building a future Quantum Internet.

The term “Quantum Internet” describes a global network of quantum computers, connected by long distance quantum communication links. This technology will improve the current Internet by offering several major benefits – such as the ultra-fast solving of complex optimisation problems in the cloud, a more accurate global timing system, and ultra-secure communications. Personal data, medical records, bank details, and other information will be physically impossible to intercept by hackers. Several large government initiatives to build a Quantum Internet have been announced in China, the EU and the USA.

The Atlantic is brimming with activity, and AccuWeather forecasters say things could heat up even more with a developing system that could aim for the Gulf Coast.

Researchers have developed a way to dynamically switch the surface of liquidmetal between reflective and scattering states. This technology could one day be used to create electrically controllable mirrors or illumination devices.

Liquid metals combine the electrical, thermal and optical properties of metals with the fluidity of a liquid. The new approach uses an electrically driven chemical reaction to create switchable reflective surfaces on a liquid metal. No optical coatings nor polishing steps, which are typically required to make reflective optical components, are necessary to make the liquid metal highly reflective.

In the Optical Society (OSA) journal Optical Materials Express, researchers led by Yuji Oki of Kyushu University in Japan show that switching between reflective and scattering states can be achieved with just 1.4 V, about the same voltage used to light a typical LED. The researchers collaborated with Michael D. Dickey’s research team at North Carolina State University to develop the new method, which can be implemented at ambient temperature and pressures.