Decommissioning teams at Japan’s Fukushima nuclear plant have begun a two-week operation aimed at retrieving a sample of the radioactive debris that remains inside the facility’s stricken nuclear reactors, using a telescoping robot custom-built for the task, thirteen years after the power plant suffered multiple meltdowns in the wake of the tsunami thatread more
Researchers at the National Ignition Facility (NIF) in Livermore, California have reproduced a crucial fusion ignition experiment that saw more energy produced from a hydrogen fusion reaction than what was used to start the reaction in the first place. Although the research team is still crunching the numbers, they sayread more
Taking Nikola Tesla’s dream of transmitting electrical power wirelessly over long distances one step further, an engineering team at the California Institute of Technology has successfully transmitted microwave energy across open space between the experimental components of an orbiting satellite—including sending a portion of this power as a signal to a groundread more
Defense contractor Lockheed Martin was recently awarded a patent for a novel design of compact nuclear fusion reactor, a device presumably small enough to be housed in a standard shipping container. According to earlier promotional material released by the company, the reactor’s compact design could be used not only for commercial energy-generating applications, but also incorporated into ocean-going ships and aircraft to vastly extend the vehicles’ ranges. In terms of generating electricity for commercial use, the device could also be used to replace not only nuclear waste-producing fission reactors, but also fossil fuel-based electrical generators, dramatically reducing the carbon footprint of our civilization’s thirst for energy.
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