Europe is seriously considering developing space-based solar power to increase its energy independence and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the leader of the European Space Agency said this week. Ars Technica reports: "It will be up to Europe, ESA and its Member States to push the envelope of technology to solve one of the most pressing problems for people on Earth of this generation," said Josef Aschbacher, director general of the space agency, an intergovernmental organization of 22 member states. Previously the space agency commissioned studies from consulting groups based in the United Kingdom and Germany to assess the costs and benefits of developing space-based solar power. ESA published those studies this week in order to provide technical and programmatic information to policymakers in Europe. Aschbacher has been working to build support within Europe for solar energy from space as a key to energy de-carbonization and will present his Solaris Program to the ESA Council in November. This council sets priorities and funding for ESA. Under Aschbacher's plans, development of the solar power system would begin in 2025.

In concept, space-based solar power is fairly straightforward. Satellites orbiting well above Earth's atmosphere collect solar energy and convert it into current; this energy is then beamed back to Earth via microwaves, where they are captured by photovoltaic cells or antennas and converted into electricity for residential or industrial use. The primary benefits of gathering solar power from space, rather than on the ground, is that there is no night or clouds to interfere with collection; and the solar incidence is much higher than at the northern latitudes of the European continent.

The two consulting reports discuss development of the technologies and funding needed to start to bring a space-based power system online. Europe presently consumes about 3,000 TWh of electricity on an annual basis, and the reports describe massive facilities in geostationary orbit that could meet about one-quarter to one-third of that demand. Development and deployment of these systems would cost hundreds of billions of euros. Why so much? Because facilitating space-based solar power would require a constellation of dozens of huge, sunlight-gathering satellites located 36,000 km from Earth. Each of these satellites would have a mass 10 times larger, or more, than that of the International Space Station, which is 450 metric tons and required more than a decade to assemble in low Earth orbit. Launching the components of these satellites would ultimately require hundreds or, more likely, thousands of launches by heavy lift rockets. "Using projected near-term space lift capability, such as SpaceX's Starship, and current launch constraints, delivering one satellite into orbit would take between 4 and 6 years," a report by British firm Frazer-Nash states. "Providing the number of satellites to satisfy the maximum contribution that SBSP could make to the energy mix in 2050 would require a 200-fold increase over current space-lift capacity." Critics of the concept include Elon Musk and physicist Casey Handmer, among others, which take issue with the poor photon to electron to photon conversion efficiency and prohibitively expensive transmission losses, thermal losses, and logistics costs.

After just four months, Snapchat is sunsetting future development on its easy-to-use "Pixy" drone, "seemingly in part of a broader effort to cut costs after the company's second-quarter earnings," reports Input Mag. The Wall Street Journal was first to break the news. From the report: Snap isn't alone in suffering under the current economic downturn -- or the long-term effect Apple's App Tracking Transparency has had on the mobile advertising business -- but its struggles with hardware are somewhat unique. Whether it's the Spectacles camera glasses or now the Pixy, Snap's experimental hardware hasn't really caught on in the same way other new hardware has. [Snap CEO Evan Spiegel] was the first to tease possible future Pixys (Pixies?) in an interview with The Verge, noting that Snap even underestimated how many people would want to buy the first version. "Maybe we would make more with version two if people love the original product," Spiegel explained. After the relative failure of the Spectacles from a sales perspective, the Pixy seemed like a corrective product people would be more interested in. "After a couple versions of camera glasses, it just becomes very clear that the market for camera glasses is actually very small and constrained to people who want that first person POV," Spiegel told The Verge. "I think the market for Pixy is bigger."

Snap software continuing to succeed while its hardware struggles puts the company in an odd position. Learning through making hardware, and ideally selling that hardware for a profit, is a big part of its push for an augmented reality future. But if no one's buying it, or it's too expensive to develop in the first place, that's kind of a problem. Snap thinks of itself as a camera company. That might have seemed premature when it was only developing an app, but it's since backed that up with experimental toys, and plenty of exciting acquisitions. It's ironic then, that it maybe got it right the first time. If Google's proved anything with its Pixel phones, it's that the most important camera you own is the software that processes your photos, not the physical hardware itself. For the immediate future, software is working for Snap, and it seems like that's what it's going to be selling.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: [Swedish car publication Vi Bilagare] tested 11 new cars alongside a 2005 Volvo C70, timing how long it took to perform a list of tasks in each car. These included turning on the seat heater, increasing the cabin temperature, turning on the defroster, adjusting the radio, resetting the trip computer, turning off the screen, and dimming the instruments. The old Volvo was the clear winner. "The four tasks is handled within ten seconds flat, during which the car is driven 306 meters at 110 km/h [1,004 feet at 68 mph]," VB found. Most of the other cars required twice as long, or more, to complete the same tasks. VB says that "one important aspect of this test is that the drivers had time to get to know the cars and their infotainment systems before the test started." VB lays the blame for the shift from buttons to screens with designers who "want a 'clean' interior with minimal switchgear."

Even with touchscreens, though, we can see in the spread of scores VB gave to different all-touch cars that design matters. You'll find almost no buttons in a Tesla Model 3, and we called out the lack of buttons in the Subaru Outback in our review, but both performed quite well in VB's tests. And VW's use of capacitive touch (versus physical) for the controls on the center stack appears to be exactly the wrong decision in terms of usability, with the ID.3 right at the bottom of the pack in VB's scores. I'm not surprised that the BMW iX scored well; although it has a touchscreen, you're not obligated to use it. BMW's rotary iDrive controller falls naturally to hand, and there are permanent controls arrayed around it under a sliver of wood that both looks and feels interesting. It's an early implementation of what the company calls shy tech, and it's a design trend I am very much looking forward to seeing evolve in the future.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: It sounds like something out of an urban legend: Some Windows XP-era laptops using 5400 RPM spinning hard drives can allegedly be forced to crash when exposed to Janet Jackson's 1989 hit "Rhythm Nation." But Microsoft Software Engineer Raymond Chen stands by the story in a blog post published earlier this week, and the vulnerability has been issued an official CVE ID by The Mitre Corporation, lending it more credibility. According to Chen, CVE-2022-38392 was originally discovered by "a major computer manufacturer," and it can affect not just the laptop playing the song but adjacent laptops from other PC companies as well.

The specific hard drive model at issue -- again from an unnamed manufacturer -- would crash because "Rhythm Nation" used some of the same "natural resonant frequencies" that the drives used, interfering with their operation. Anyone trying to independently recreate this problem will face several obstacles, including the age of the laptops involved and a total lack of specificity about the hard drives or computer models. The CVE entry mentions "a certain 5400 RPM OEM hard drive, as shipped with laptop PCs in approximately 2005" and links back to Chen's post as a primary source. And while some Windows XP-era laptop hard drives may still be kicking out there somewhere, after almost two decades, it's more likely that most of them have died of natural causes. The PC manufacturer was able to partially resolve the issue "by adding a custom filter in the audio pipeline that detected and removed the offending frequencies during audio playbanck," says Chen. However, these HDDs would still crash if they were exposed to another device that was playing the song.

Qualcomm is taking another run at the market for server processors, Bloomberg News reported Thursday, citing people familiar with its plans, betting it can tap a fast-growing industry and decrease its reliance on smartphones. From a report: The company is seeking customers for a product stemming from last year's purchase of chip startup Nuvia, according to the people, who asked not to be identified because the discussions are private. Amazon.com AWS business, one of the biggest server chip buyers, has agreed to take a look at Qualcomm's offerings, they said. Chief Executive Officer Cristiano Amon is trying to turn Qualcomm into a broader provider of semiconductors, rather than just the top maker of smartphone chips. But an earlier push into the server market was abandoned four years ago under his predecessor. At the time, the company was trying to cut costs and placate investors after fending off a hostile takeover by Broadcom.

This time around, Qualcomm has Nuvia, staffed with chip designers from companies such as Apple. Amon, who acquired the business for about $1.4 billion in 2021, has said that its work will help revitalize Qualcomm's high-end offerings for smartphones. But Nuvia was founded as a provider of technology for the server industry. The market for cloud computing infrastructure -- the kind of equipment that Amazon, Google and Microsoft use to whisk data around the world -- generated $73.9 billion last year, according to research firm IDC. That was up 8.8% from 2020. The owners of giant cloud data centers have long relied on Intel's chip technology for their servers. But they're increasingly embracing processors that use designs from Arm, a key partner in phone chips for San Diego-based Qualcomm.

Mezli isn't the first automated restaurant to roll out in San Francisco, but, at least according to its three co-founders, it's the first to remove humans entirely from the on-site operation equation. Eater SF reports: About two years and a few million dollars later, Mezli co-founders Alex Kolchinski, Alex Gruebele, and Max Perham are days away from firing up the touch screens at what they believe to be the world's first fully robotic restaurant. To be clear, Mezli isn't a restaurant in the traditional sense. As in, you won't be able to pull up a seat and have a friendly server -- human, robot, or otherwise -- take your order and deliver your food. Instead, Mezli works more like if a vending machine and a restaurant had a robot baby, Kolchinski describes. It's a way to get fresh food to a lot of people, really fast (the box can pump out about 75 meals an hour), and, importantly, at a lower price; the cheapest Mezli bowl starts at $6.99.

On its face, the concept actually sounds pretty simple. The co-founders built what's essentially a big, refrigerated shipping container and stuffed it with machines capable of portioning out ingredients, putting those ingredients into bowls, heating the food up, and then moving it to a place where diners can get to it. But in a technical sense, the co-founders say it was quite difficult to work out. Most automated restaurants still require humans in some capacity; maybe people take orders while robots make the food or, vice versa, with automated ordering and humans prepping food behind the scenes. But Mezli can run on its own, serving hundreds of meals without any human staff.

The food does get prepped and pre-cooked off-site by good old-fashioned carbon-based beings. Mezli founding chef Eric Minnich, who previously worked at Traci Des Jardins's the Commissary and at Michelin-starred Madera at Rosewood Sand Hill hotel, says he and a lean team of just two other people can handle all the chopping, mixing, cooking, and portioning at a commissary kitchen. Then, once a day, they load all the menu components into the big blue-and-white Mezli box. Inside the box, there's an oven that either brings the ingredients up to temp or finishes up the last of the cooking. Cutting down on labor marks a key cost-saving measure in the Mezli business model; with just a fraction of the staff, as in less than a half dozen workers, Mezli can serve hundreds of meals. "The fully robot-run restaurant begins taking orders and sliding out Mediterranean grain bowls by the end of this week with plans to celebrate a grand opening on August 28 at Spark Social," notes Eater.

Klaxton shares a report from Electrek: Clean energy accounted for more than two-thirds of the new US electrical generating capacity added during the first six months of 2022, according to data recently released by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). Wind (5,722 megawatts) and solar (3,895 MW) provided 67.01% of the 14,352 MW in utility-scale (that is, greater than 1 MW) capacity that came online during the first half of 2022. Additional capacity was provided by geothermal (26 MW), hydropower (7 MW), and biomass (2 MW). The balance came from natural gas (4,695 MW) and oil (5 MW). No new capacity was reported for 2022 from either nuclear power or coal. This brings clean energy's share of total US available installed generating capacity up to 26.74%. To put that in perspective, five years ago, clean energy's share was 19.7%. Ten years ago, it was 14.76%.

Germany plans to keep its remaining nuclear power plants open for longer in a major U-turn as it scrambles to keep the lights on this winter with less Russian gas. The Telegraph reports: Officials have concluded the plants are needed due to gas shortages and they can be kept open without safety concerns, the Wall Street Journal reported. Germany pledged to phase out nuclear power after the Fukushima disaster in Japan in 2011, which hardened opposition to the technology. Berlin has been under pressure to change course since the invasion of Ukraine to limit the impact of the gas crisis on manufacturers and households. Germany has three plants left, operated by E.ON, EnBW and RWE, supplying about 6pc of the country's electricity. They are currently due to close at the end of the year. Any extension has yet to be officially adopted and details remain under discussion, the Wall Street Journal added. It came as Norway warned it could not do more to help Germany avoid a gas crisis this winter as Russia restricts supplies.

Tesla's Supercharger stations that are open to non-Tesla electric vehicles are deemed "illegal" in Germany due to the lack of kWh counter on the units. Electrek reports: Handelsblatt reports that Tesla's Superchargers are considered "illegal" because they don't have a visible kWh counter at the stations (translated from German): "Every charging station at which charging current is billed according to kilowatt hours must comply with calibration law in Germany , i.e., have a meter that precisely measures the charged current. This applies to public space, but also to company and private premises." Tesla has always relied on its mobile app to monitor charging sessions, and the stations are not equipped with screens.

Thomas Weberpals, head of the Bavarian State Office for Weights and Measures, said that it is Tesla's job to retrofit the stations, and it is working toward that. The government doesn't plan to act on it right now: "The illegal operation is not hindered and not sanctioned. It was and is being worked toward a lawful state." "There are a few other charging companies that are also in violation of the regulation, but Tesla has the highest number of stations in violation," notes Electrek.

Alphabet's Google is combining the eyes and arms of physical robots with the knowledge and conversation skills of virtual chatbots to help its employees fetch soda and chips from breakrooms with ease. From a report: The mechanical waiters, shown in action to reporters last week, embody an artificial intelligence breakthrough that paves the way for multipurpose robots as easy to control as ones that perform single, structured tasks such as vacuuming or standing guard. Google robots are not ready for sale. They perform only a few dozen simple actions, and the company has not yet embedded them with the "OK, Google" summoning feature familiar to consumers.

While Google says it is pursuing development responsibly, adoption could ultimately stall over concerns such as robots becoming surveillance machines, or being equipped with chat technology that can give offensive responses, as Meta Platforms and others have experienced in recent years. Microsoft and Amazon are pursuing comparable research on robots. "It's going to take a while before we can really have a firm grasp on the direct commercial impact," said Vincent Vanhoucke, senior director for Google's robotics research. When asked to help clean a spill, Google's robot recognizes that grabbing a sponge is a doable and more sensible response than apologizing for creating the mess.

The United States is formally banning the export of four technologies tied to semiconductor manufacturing, calling the protection of the items "vital to national security." The Register reports: Announced Friday (PDF) by the US Commerce Department's Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) and enacted today, the rule will ban the export of two ultra-wide bandgap semiconductor materials, as well as some types of electronic computer-aided design (ECAD) technology and pressure gain combustion (PGC) technology. In particular, the BIS said that the semiconductor materials gallium oxide and diamond will be subject to renewed export controls because they can operate under more extreme temperature and voltage conditions. The Bureau said that capability makes the materials more useful in weapons. ECAD software, which aids design for a wide range of circuits, comes in specialized forms that supports gate-all-around field effect transistors (GAAFETs), which are used to scale semiconductors to 3 nanometers and below. PGC technology also has "extensive potential" for ground and aerospace uses, the BIS said.

All four items are being classified under Section 1758 of the Export Control Reform Act, which covers the production of advanced semiconductors and gas turbine engines. Those types of technology are also covered by the Wassenaar Arrangement, made in 2013 between the US and 41 other countries, which functions as a broader arms control treaty. "We are protecting the four technologies identified in today's rule from nefarious end use by applying controls through a multilateral regime," Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Export Administration Thea D Rozman Kendler said in a statement. "This rule demonstrates our continued commitment to imposing export controls together with our international partners."

The reason for the addition of the four forms of technology to export controls is a change made in May to how the BIS characterizes emerging and foundational technologies. Under the change, such tech was reclassified to be covered by Section 1758. The BIS statement announcing the export ban made no mention of the countries, but recent events make it clear the target is China -- the US has been considering other tech export bans (and investment freezes), recently all of which appeared tailored to target China. Analysts in the Middle Kingdom have claimed the ban would have little short-term impact on China's chipmaking industry as no one in China has yet managed to design chips as advanced as those targeted by the ban.

At a military convention in Russia, a local company is showing off a robot dog that's carrying a rocket launcher. From a report: Russian news agency RIA Novosti today filmed the four-legged bot at the Army 2022 convention, which is taking place near Moscow and sponsored by the country's Ministry of Defense. The robot was recorded trotting along on the convention floor while wielding a rocket-propelled grenade launcher on its back. The robot is also capable of crouching on the floor, making it harder to spot, while it presumably waits to fire off a rocket. It remains unclear if the robot will ever be used on the field when Russia is locked in a war with Ukraine, and already using air-based drones at least for recon and targeting purposes. But according to RIA Novosti, the bot is dubbed the M-81 system and comes from a Russian engineering company called "Intellect Machine." The developers say the robot dog is being designed to both transport weapons and ammunition and fire them during combat missions.

The leaders of Canada and Germany will sign a multibillion-dollar green energy agreement this month "that could prove pivotal to Canada's nascent hydrogen industry," reports CTV News: The German government on Friday issued a statement confirming the agreement will be signed August 23 in Stephenville, where a Newfoundland-based company plans to build a zero-emission plant that will use wind energy to produce hydrogen and amonia for export.

If approved, the project would be the first of its kind in Canada.

Germany is keen to find new sources of energy because Russia's invasion of Ukraine has led to a surge in natural gas prices.... Meanwhile, the company behind the Newfoundland project, World Energy GH2, has said the first phase of the proposal calls for building up 164 onshore wind turbines to power a hydrogen production facility at the deep-sea port at Stephenville.

Long-term plans call for tripling the size of the project.... "The development of large-scale green hydrogen production facilities is just starting, providing (Newfoundland and Labrador) and Canada with the opportunity and advantages of being a first mover in the green energy sector," the proposal says....

The company says construction of its first wind farm is slated for late next year on the Port au Port Peninsula.
Thanks to Slashdot reader theshowmecanuck for sharing the article.

The German news magazine Der Spiegel spoke to a 54-year-old who had always been in favor of the company's plan to phase out nuclear power by the end of 2022. Until now — with fears about Russia curtailing supplies of natural gas.

And he's not the only one: A poll commissioned by DER SPIEGEL has revealed some rather shocking numbers. According to the survey carried out by the online polling firm Civey, only 22 percent of those surveyed are in favor of shutting down the three nuclear plants that are still in operation in Germany...as planned at the end of the year. Seventy-eight percent of those surveyed are in favor of continuing to operate the plants until the summer of 2023, a variant that is being discussed in the political sphere as a "stretch operation" — in other words, continuing to keep them online for a few months, but without the acquisition of new fuel rods. Even among Green Party supporters, a narrow majority favors this approach....

The answers suggest that the attitude of Germans toward nuclear power has changed significantly. Sixty-seven percent are in favor of continuing to operate the nuclear plants for the next five years, with only 27 percent opposed to it. The only group without a clear majority in favor of running the plants for the next five years are the supporters of the Green Party....

On the question of whether Germany should build new nuclear power plants because of the energy crisis, 41 percent of respondents answered "yes," meaning they favor an approach that isn't even up for debate in Germany. The results are astounding all around, especially compared with past surveys. Thirty-three years ago, a polling institute asked a similar question on behalf of DER SPIEGEL. At the time, only a miniscule 3 percent of respondents thought Germany should build new plants.

Officially, Germany is supposed to be transitioning to green energies, but these polling figures suggest that people may be interested in returning to the old energy status quo.... It had already become clear in recent years that support for the nuclear phaseout was already slowly crumbling. The Russian war of aggression against Ukraine has now accelerated this shift, calling into question many old certainties, or overturning them completely.... The energy security that people took for granted for decades in Germany has been shaken ever since Russia cut gas deliveries and costs rose.

The result being that an old German dogma now seems to be crumbling: the rejection of nuclear energy. Concerns are either being put on the backburner or are evaporating. Radiation from nuclear waste? Safety risks? Danger of large-scale disasters? Who cares. Those are things you worry about when you have working heat. Electricity first, then ethics.
Thanks to Slashdot reader atcclears for sharing the article

In January a California startup named Autonomy began "stocking up on EVs from pretty much every company that makes them," reports Bloomberg (including Tesla, Ford, and Polestar). Their plan? Collect a $5,900 "start fee," then charge $490 to $690 a month for an electric vehicle subscription with up to 1,000 miles of driving (but with no maintenance or registration fees): The subscription model has some logic for consumers. In part because of fast-evolving technology, EVs have traditionally shed value much quicker than gas-powered cars. On a depreciation scale, consumers typically lump them in with cell phones.... But EV ownership is also looking better by the day. The depreciation curve is flattening thanks to longer-range machines, and car companies are getting more vocal about things like battery longevity. A three-year-old Chevrolet Bolt, for example, will recoup 84% of its value today, in line with the average resale of all three-year-old cars in North America, according to CarEdge.com, a consumer-facing market research platform.

That could be why auto executives are pushing to round up that sweet, sweet software revenue in smaller chunks. BMW, to much outcry, is selling an $18-a-month subscription for heated seats in the UK, and General Motors turned its OnStar voice navigation into a $1,500 "mandatory" subscription on every new Buick, GMC and Cadillac Escalade. Even without a la carte add-ons, one of the major forces propping up prices for used EVs is, ironically, their ability to update remotely — the same technology carmakers are using to nickel-and-dime drivers with subscription services.

A contemporary car is nothing if not a dense stack of software, which means subscriptions on wheels are not entirely bonkers. But a car is also an appliance, and consumers aren't accustomed to renting a refrigerator, let alone paying a monthly fee to use the ice-maker. Luckily for Autonomy, the simplest pitch may be the best one. If it can bigfoot individual EV orders by jumping to the head of the queue, the startup could find scads of subscribers — simply because it will have available cars.

On Thursday the International Atomic Energy Agency's director "warned that parts of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant had been knocked out due to recent attacks, risking an 'unacceptable' potential radiation leak," according to CNN: "IAEA experts believe that there is no immediate threat to nuclear safety," but "that could change at any moment," Grossi said.... Ukraine's nuclear agency Energoatom said 10 shells landed near the complex on Thursday, preventing a shift handover. "For the safety of nuclear workers, the buses with the personnel of the next shift were turned back to Enerhodar," the agency said. "Until the situation finally normalizes, the workers of the previous shift will continue to work."

Energoatom said radiation levels at the site remained normal, despite renewed attacks.

Several Western and Ukrainian officials believe that Russia is using the giant nuclear facility as a stronghold to shield their troops and mount attacks, because they assume Kyiv will not return fire and risk a crisis.
Later CNN added: Ukraine and Russia again traded blame after more shelling around the plant overnight on Thursday, just hours after the United Nations called on both sides to cease military activities near the power station, warning of the worst if they didn't.

"Regrettably, instead of de-escalation, over the past several days there have been reports of further deeply worrying incidents that could, if they continue, lead to disaster," UN secretary general, António Guterres, said in a statement....

Energoatom, Ukraine's state-run nuclear power company, accused Russian forces on Thursday of targeting a storage area for "radiation sources," and shelling a fire department nearby the plant. A day later, the company said in a statement on its Telegram account that the plant was operating "with the risk of violating radiation and fire safety standards."

Ukraine's Interior Minister, Denys Monastyrskyi, said Friday that there was "no adequate control" over the plant, and Ukrainian specialists who remained there were not allowed access to some areas where they should be.... Last weekend, shellfire damaged a dry storage facility — where casks of spent nuclear fuel are kept at the plant — as well as radiation monitoring detectors, making detection of any potential leak impossible, according to Energoatom. Attacks also damaged a high-voltage power line and forced one of the plant's reactors to stop operating.
Tonight the BBC reported on a response from Ukraine's president. In his nightly address on Saturday, Volodymyr Zelensky said any soldier firing on or from the plant would become "a special target" for Ukraine. He also accused Moscow of turning the plant into a Russian army base and using it as "nuclear blackmail"...

Zelenskiy added that "every day" of Russia's occupation of the plant "increases the radiation threat to Europe"....

A BBC investigation revealed earlier this week that many of the Ukrainian workers at the site are being kept under armed guard amid harsh conditions.
UPDATE (8/14): "Ukraine's military intelligence agency said that on Saturday, Russian artillery fire hit a pump, damaged a fire station and sparked fires near the plant that could not be immediately extinguished because of the damage to the fire station," reports the New York Times: Engineers say that yard-thick reinforced concrete containment structures protect the reactors from even direct hits. International concern, however, has grown that shelling could spark a fire or cause other damage that would lead to a nuclear accident.

The six pressurized water reactors at the complex retain most sources of radiation, reducing risks. After pressurized water reactors failed at the Fukushima nuclear complex in Japan in 2011, Ukraine upgraded the Zaporizhzhia site to enable a shutdown even after the loss of cooling water from outside the containment structures, Dmytro Gortenko, a former plant engineer, said in an interview....

"Locals are abandoning the town," said the former engineer, who asked to be identified by only his first name, Oleksiy, because of security concerns. Residents had been leaving for weeks, but the pace picked up after Saturday's barrages and fires, he said.

"A major breakthrough in nuclear fusion has been confirmed a year after it was achieved at a laboratory in California," reports Newsweek: Researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's National Ignition Facility (NIF) recorded the first case of ignition on August 8, 2021, the results of which have now been published in three peer-reviewed papers....

Ignition during a fusion reaction essentially means that the reaction itself produced enough energy to be self-sustaining, which would be necessary in the use of fusion to generate electricity. If we could harness this reaction to generate electricity, it would be one of the most efficient and least polluting sources of energy possible. No fossil fuels would be required as the only fuel would be hydrogen, and the only by-product would be helium, which we use in industry and are actually in short supply of....

This landmark result comes after years of research and thousands of man hours dedicated to improving and perfecting the process: over 1,000 authors are included in the Physical Review Letters paper.
This week the laboratory said that breakthrough now puts researchers "at the threshold of fusion gain and achieving scientific ignition," with the program's chief scientist calling it "a major scientific advance in fusion research, which establishes that fusion ignition in the lab is possible at the National Ignition Facility."

More news from this week's announcement by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory: Since the experiment last August, the team has been executing a series of experiments to attempt to repeat the performance and to understand the experimental sensitivities in this new regime. "Many variables can impact each experiment," Kritcher said. "The 192 laser beams do not perform exactly the same from shot to shot, the quality of targets varies and the ice layer grows at differing roughness on each target...."

While the repeat attempts have not reached the same level of fusion yield as the August 2021 experiment, all of them demonstrated capsule gain greater than unity with yields in the 430-700 kJ range, significantly higher than the previous highest yield of 170 kJ from February 2021. The data gained from these and other experiments are providing crucial clues as to what went right and what changes are needed in order to repeat that experiment and exceed its performance in the future. The team also is utilizing the experimental data to further understanding of the fundamental processes of fusion ignition and burn and to enhance simulation tools in support of stockpile stewardship.

Looking ahead, the team is working to leverage the accumulated experimental data and simulations to move toward a more robust regime — further beyond the ignition cliff — where general trends found in this new experimental regime can be better separated from variability in targets and laser performance. Efforts to increase fusion performance and robustness are underway via improvements to the laser, improvements to the targets and modifications to the design that further improve energy delivery to the hotspot while maintaining or even increasing the hot-spot pressure. This includes improving the compression of the fusion fuel, increasing the amount of fuel and other avenues.

"It is extremely exciting to have an 'existence proof' of ignition in the lab," said Omar Hurricane, chief scientist for the lab's inertial confinement fusion program. "We're operating in a regime that no researchers have accessed since the end of nuclear testing, and it's an incredible opportunity to expand our knowledge as we continue to make progress."
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader hesdeadjim99 for sharing the news.

"California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Friday proposed extending the life of the state's last operating nuclear power plant by five to 10 years," reports the Associated Press, "to maintain reliable power supplies in the climate change era." Newsom's draft proposal includes a potential forgivable loan for PG&E for up to $1.4 billion and would require state agencies to act quickly to clear the way for the reactors to continue running. The seaside plant located midway between Los Angeles and San Francisco produces 9% of the state's electricity. The proposal says its continued operation beyond 2025 is "critical to ensure statewide energy system reliability" as climate change stresses the energy system....

Newsom clearly wants to avoid a repeat of August 2020, when a record heat wave caused a surge in power use for air conditioning that overtaxed California's electrical grid. That caused two consecutive nights of rolling blackouts for the state, affecting hundreds of thousands of residential and business customers. The Newsom administration is pushing to expand clean energy, as the state aims to cut emissions by 40% below 1990 levels by 2030. Nuclear power doesn't produce carbon pollution like fossil fuels, but leaves behind waste that can remain dangerously radioactive for centuries.

The California Legislature has less than three weeks to determine if it will endorse the plan and attempt to extend the life of the plant — a decision that would be made amid looming questions over the costs and earthquake safety risks.... The Democratic governor, who is seen as a possible future White House candidate, has urged PG&E for months to pursue a longer run beyond a scheduled closing by 2025, warning that the plant's power is needed as the state transitions to solar, wind and other renewable sources of energy.
One concerned Democratic state Senator (from the district housing the plant) argued that another earthquake fault was discovered near the plant in 2008, and reminded the Associated Press that "seismic upgrades were never totally completed. Will they address that?"

"A 17-year-old [named Robert Sansone] created a prototype of a novel synchronous reluctance motor that has greater rotational force -- or torque -- and efficiency than existing ones," writes Slashdot reader hesdeadjim99 from a report via Smithsonian Magazine. "The prototype was made from 3-D printed plastic, copper wires and a steel rotor and tested using a variety of meters to measure power and a laser tachometer to determine the motor's rotational speed. His work earned him first prize, and $75,000 in winnings, at this year's Regeneron International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF), the largest international high school STEM competition." From the report: The less sustainable permanent magnet motors use materials such as neodymium, samarium and dysprosium, which are in high demand because they're used in many different products, including headphones and earbuds, explains Heath Hofmann, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Michigan. Hofmann has worked extensively on electric vehicles, including consulting with Tesla to develop the control algorithms for its propulsion drive. [...] Synchronous reluctance motors don't use magnets. Instead, a steel rotor with air gaps cut into it aligns itself with the rotating magnetic field. Reluctance, or the magnetism of a material, is key to this process. As the rotor spins along with the rotating magnetic field, torque is produced. More torque is produced when the saliency ratio, or difference in magnetism between materials (in this case, the steel and the non-magnetic air gaps), is greater.

Instead of using air gaps, Sansone thought he could incorporate another magnetic field into a motor. This would increase this saliency ratio and, in turn, produce more torque. His design has other components, but he can't disclose any more details because he hopes to patent the technology in the future. [...] It took several prototypes before he could test his design. [...] Sansone tested his motor for torque and efficiency, and then reconfigured it to run as a more traditional synchronous reluctance motor for comparison. He found that his novel design exhibited 39 percent greater torque and 31 percent greater efficiency at 300 revolutions per minute (RPM). At 750 RPM, it performed at 37 percent greater efficiency. He couldn't test his prototype at higher revolutions per minute because the plastic pieces would overheat -- a lesson he learned the hard way when one of the prototypes melted on his desk, he tells Top of the Class, a podcast produced by Crimson Education. In comparison, Tesla's Model S motor can reach up to 18,000 RPM, explained the company's principal motor designer Konstantinos Laskaris in a 2016 interview with Christian Ruoff of the electric vehicles magazine Charged.

Sansone validated his results in a second experiment, in which he "isolated the theoretical principle under which the novel design creates magnetic saliency," per his project presentation. Essentially, this experiment eliminated all other variables, and confirmed that the improvements in torque and efficiency were correlated with the greater saliency ratio of his design. [...] Sansone is now working on calculations and 3-D modeling for version 16 of his motor, which he plans to build out of sturdier materials so he can test it at higher revolutions per minute. If his motor continues to perform with high speed and efficiency, he says he'll move forward with the patenting process.

After more than 50 years, molten salt nuclear reactors might be making a comeback. The US Department of Energy (DoE) has tapped Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) to lead a $9.25 million study into the structural properties and materials necessary to build them at scale. The Register reports: "The US needs projects like this one to advance nuclear technologies and help us achieve the Biden-Harris administration's goals of clean energy by 2035 and a net-zero economy by 2050," said Asmeret Asefaw Berhe, director of the office of science, in a statement. The study, conducted as part of the Scientific Discovery though Advanced Computing (SciDAC) program, seeks to gain a better understanding of the relationship between corrosion and irradiation effects at the atomic scale in metals exposed to molten salt reactors through simulation.

This isn't the first time the DoE has explored this reactor tech. In the middle of last century, Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) took the lessons learned from the Aircraft Reactor experiment to build a functional nuclear aircraft power source and began construction of a molten salt test reactor. The experiments, conducted between 1957 and 1969, utilized a mixture of lithium, beryllium, zirconium, and uranium fluoride salts. Cooling was also achieved using a fluoride salt mixture, but it lacked the uranium and zirconium found in the fuel. The experiments proved promising, as molten salt reactors were generally smaller and considered safer compared to the pressurized water reactors still used today. But both proved too heavy for powered flight or materials design. Because cooling was achieved by circulating molten salt through a heat exchanger as opposed to water, the risk of a steam explosion is effectively nonexistent. However, as the Oak Ridge National Laboratory found during the Molten Salt Reactor Experiment, fluoride salts are incredibly corrosive and required hardened materials to safely contain them. "ORNL's Molten Salt Reactor Experiment utilized specialized materials fabricated from Hastelloy-N -- a nickel-molybdenum alloy developed by the lab with a high resistance to corrosion even at high temperatures," adds the reports. "The research program announced this week will revisit the material choices and examine a variety of metals using higher-performance compute resources to simulate how they'll perform at scale in these reactors."