By ScienceAdviser.  Excerpt: Scientists and governments alike have spent decades chasing nuclear fusion for its potential to provide virtually limitless clean energy. Artificial intelligence may bring this power source closer by helping model the precise chemical and physical conditions needed to generate it. New research just crossed an important step toward that goal: accurately predicting the result of a fusion experiment based on the ones that came before it. At the U.S. National Ignition Facility (NIF), the world’s most energetic laser system compresses and heats a tiny nuclear capsule to spark a fusion reaction. ...researchers created a fusion model based on the outcomes of NIF experiments from 2021-2022, then combined it with generative machine learning to predict the possible outcomes of successive experiments based on the model’s previous results. ...the AI model estimated that the NIF’s next big fusion test would have a 74% chance of success— and it turned out to be right...

By Emily Conover , Science News.  Excerpt: Last week, both Google and Amazon announced agreements with companies that are developing small modular reactors. Last week, both Google and Amazon announced agreements with companies that are developing small modular reactors. ...Commercial reactors in the United States typically produce around a billion watts of electrical power. Small modular reactors would produce less than a third of that. ...Commercial reactors in the United States typically produce around a billion watts of electrical power. Small modular reactors would produce less than a third of that....  Full article at https://www.sciencenews.org/article/small-modular-nuclear-reactors-amazon .  See also Youtube video The Canadian Reactors that can Burn Nuclear Waste and The Big Lie About Nuclear Waste . 

By Richard Luscombe , The Guardian.  Excerpt: A nuclear reactor at the notorious Three Mile Island site in  Pennsylvania  is to be activated for the first time in five years after its owners, Constellation Energy, struck a deal to provide power to Microsoft’s proliferating artificial intelligence operations. The plant was the location of the  most serious nuclear meltdown  and radiation leak in US history, in March 1979 when the loss of water coolant through a faulty valve caused the Unit 2 reactor to overheat. More than four decades later, the reactor is still in a decommissioning phase. Constellation closed the adjacent but unconnected Unit 1 reactor in 2019 for economic reasons, but will bring it back to life after signing a 20-year power purchase agreement to supply Microsoft’s energy-hungry data centers, the company  announced on Friday . The restart, the first time a nuclear reactor in the US has been recommissioned after closure, will send an additio...

By Molly Burke , Times Union.  Excerpt: New York's four reactors generate 22 percent of the state's electricity, while fossil fuels continue to power nearly 50 percent. ...The energy the plant produces — which does not emit any greenhouse gasses — will not contribute toward New York’s fast-approaching goal to transition 70 percent of the electrical grid to renewable sources by 2030 under mandates by the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act. Nuclear energy, while low-carbon, is produced from finite materials and is nonrenewable. ...While renewable energy projects have faltered,  including two offshore wind projects off the coast of Long Island being scrapped in mid-April , nuclear energy in New York has continued steadily for a number of years. The cancellations of the wind projects ...underscore the variables and cost challenges facing efforts in New York and the nation to develop coastal wind as a major energy source.  Full article at https://www.timesuni...

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/11/12/climate/nuclear-reactors-clean-energy.html By Brad Plumer and Ivan Penn , The New York Times.  Excerpt: Towering over the Savannah River in Georgia, the first nuclear reactors built from scratch in the United States in more than 30 years illustrate the enormous promise of nuclear power — and its most glaring weakness. The  two new reactors  at the Vogtle nuclear power plant will join two older units to create enough electricity to power two million homes, 24 hours a day, without emitting any of the carbon dioxide that is dangerously heating the planet. But those colossal reactors cost $35 billion, more than double the original estimates, and arrived seven years behind schedule. That’s why no one else is planning to build large reactors in the United States. Instead, the great hope for the future of nuclear power is to go small. Nearly a dozen companies are developing reactors that are a fraction of the size of those at Vogtl...

https://www.science.org/content/article/despite-opposition-japan-may-soon-dump-fukushima-wastewater-pacific By Dennis Normile, Science.  Excerpt: Government says the release poses no risk to marine or human life, but some scientists disagree. The Japanese government is pushing ahead with its plan to release 1.3 million tons of radioactive water from the defunct Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant into the Pacific Ocean. ...The Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), which owns the power station, says it is running out of space to store the water on land. Radioactivity levels in the discharged water will be too low to pose a risk to marine life or humans, TEPCO says, and its plan has the blessing of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). ...But critics say the risks haven’t been studied in enough detail. TEPCO’s assurances are “not supported by the quantity and quality of the data,” says oceanographer Ken Buesseler of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. ...says Ro...

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/05/world/asia/lanyu-taiwan-nuclear-waste.html By Amy Qin  and  Amy Chang Chien , The New York Times.  Excerpt: ...in 1980, when a local pastor saw an article buried in the back of a newspaper, ...the islanders found out what the site actually was: a massive nuclear waste dump. ...Following the revelation that the site was a nuclear waste facility, the Tao fought vigorously to persuade the government to remove it. For years they staged mass protests on the island and in front of government offices in Taipei, Taiwan’s capital. They became self-taught experts in nuclear waste. ...But despite the government’s repeated promises to relocate the site, the dump remains. ...efforts to relocate the waste fell short. In 1993, a group of countries  voted to permanently ban  the practice of dumping all nuclear waste in the ocean. Other potential options, including a plan to export the waste to North Korea, were scuttled. ...the authorities agr...

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/05/world/europe/europe-energy-germany-nuclear.html By Erika Solomon , The New York Times.  Excerpt: LANDSHUT, Germany — When Angela Merkel pulled the plug on nuclear power after  the Fukushima meltdown , she set Germany on a course to become the only leading industrial nation to abandon atomic energy in the world. The economic engine of Europe planned instead to fuel itself through a transition to renewable energies with cheap Russian gas. Now, 11 years later, with  Russia toying with Germany’s gas supply , her successor, Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who has modeled himself in Ms. Merkel’s image, is staring at the possibility of reversing that momentous decision. Europe’s geopolitical calculations have been turned upside down by  the war in Ukraine . It has created an energy crisis that comes at a critical moment for Germany and Europe’s ambitions to become global leaders in the transition to climate neutrality. Instead, as Russia tightens ...

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/may/14/poisoned-legacy-why-the-future-of-power-cant-be-nuclear By  Serhii Plokhy , The Guardian.  Excerpt: ...On the surface, the switch to nuclear makes sense. It would not only enable European countries to meet their ambitious net zero targets, since it produces no CO 2 . It would also make them less vulnerable to Russian threats, and allow them to stop financing the Russian war machine. But the invasion also provided a chilling reminder of just why so many governments have treated nuclear power with great caution over the years. On the first day, Russian troops in unmarked uniforms took control of the  Chernobyl nuclear  power plant, the site of the worst ever nuclear disaster. On the following day, electronic monitors in the Chernobyl exclusion zone indicated sharp spikes in radiation levels as heavy equipment and trench-digging by Russian soldiers threw up contaminated dust. The world woke up to an even more nightmarish rea...

https://www.science.org/content/article/dirty-bomb-ingredients-go-missing-chornobyl-monitoring-lab By Richard Stone, Science Magazine.  Excerpt: Insecure radioactive materials are the latest worry as Russia continues occupation of infamous nuclear reservation. ...When the lights went out at Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant on 9 March, the Russian soldiers holding Ukrainian workers at gunpoint became the least of Anatolii Nosovskyi’s worries. More urgent was the possibility of a radiation accident at the decommissioned plant. If the plant’s emergency generators ran out of fuel, the ventilators that keep explosive hydrogen gas from building up inside a spent nuclear fuel repository would quit working, says Nosovskyi, director of the Institute for Safety Problems of Nuclear Power Plants (ISPNPP) in Kyiv. So would sensors and automated systems to suppress radioactive dust inside a concrete “sarcophagus” that holds the unsettled remains of Chornobyl’s Unit Four reactor, which melted down i...

https://www.science.org/content/article/finland-built-tomb-store-nuclear-waste-can-it-survive-100000-years? By Sedeer El-Showk, Science Magazine.  Excerpt: Finland is set to open the world’s first permanent repository for high-level nuclear waste. ...Although nuclear power is declining in many nations, Finland has embraced the carbon-free energy source, lobbying the European Union to label it as sustainable. ...nuclear power will account for more than 40% of Finland’s electricity. The emissions-free electricity comes with a downside: hot and highly radioactive spent uranium fuel rods. ...surface storage is vulnerable to accidents, leaks, or neglect during the thousands of years the waste remains dangerous, ...groundwater contaminated by leaky waste tanks at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Hanford Site in Washington state, where reactors produced plutonium for the first nuclear weapons. Without a long-term solution, the waste is piling up. Finland had about 2300 tons of wast...

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/10/world/europe/france-macron-nuclear-power.html By  Liz Alderman , The New York Times.  Excerpt: President Emmanuel Macron announced a major buildup of France’s huge nuclear power program on Thursday, pledging to construct up to 14 new-generation reactors and a fleet of smaller nuclear plants as the country seeks to slash planet-warming emissions and cut its reliance on foreign energy. The announcement represented an about-face for Mr. Macron, who had previously pledged to reduce France’s reliance on nuclear power but has pivoted to burnishing an image as a pronuclear president battling climate change as he faces a tough re-election bid in April.…

https://www.science.org/content/article/european-fusion-reactor-sets-record-sustained-energy Daniel Clery, Science Magazine.  Excerpt: In experiments culminating the 40-year run of the Joint European Torus (JET), the world’s largest fusion reactor, researchers announced today they have smashed the record for producing controlled fusion energy. On 21 December 2021, the U.K.-based JET heated a gas of hydrogen isotopes to 150 million degrees Celsius and held it steady for 5 seconds while nuclei fused together, releasing 59 megajoules (MJ) of energy—roughly twice the kinetic energy of a fully laden semitrailer truck traveling at 160 kilometers per hour. The energy in the pulse is more than 2.5 times the previous record of 22 MJ, set by JET 25 years earlier. “To see shots in which it sustains high power for a full 5 seconds is amazing,” says Steven Cowley, director of the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL). JET’s achievement doesn’t mean fusion-generated electricity will fl...

https://eos.org/opinions/geoscientists-can-help-reduce-the-threat-of-nuclear-weapons By  Alan Robock  and   Stewart C. Prager , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: While we all recognize that global warming threatens humanity, the effects of nuclear war pose an even graver threat to the global population. ...Currently, there are  more than 9,000 nuclear warheads  in the active military stockpiles of nine nations, with more than 90% of those in Russia and the United States. Nearly 2,000 warheads  are on alert status , ready to launch within minutes of an order. ...The nuclear arms control regime has been weakened in recent years with the termination of the  Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty  and the  Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty  between Russia and the United States, ... and the withdrawal of the United States from the  Iran nuclear deal . ...a nuclear conflict  would cause rapid changes  in Earth’s climate. Smoke fro...

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2021/11/nuclear-power-hot-moment/620665/ By  Robinson Meyer , The Atlantic.  Excerpt: The United States, Russia, and France now describe the once-neglected technology as a key part of their decarbonization plans.…

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/05/world/europe/russia-nuclear-power-climate-change.html By   Andrew E. Kramer , The New York Times.  Excerpt: A remote Siberian town now has its own miniature nuclear plant as a Russian state company tests a new model for residential heating. Some see it as a tool to minimize climate change.…

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/11/several-us-utilities-back-out-deal-build-novel-nuclear-power-plant Source:  By  Adrian Cho , Science Magazine.  Excerpt: ...Plans to build an innovative new nuclear power plant—and thus revitalize the struggling U.S. nuclear industry—have taken a hit as in recent weeks:  Eight of the 36 public utilities that had signed on to help build the plant have backed out of the deal . The withdrawals come just months after the Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems (UAMPS), which intends to buy the plant containing  12 small modular reactors from NuScale Power , announced that completion of the project would be delayed by 3 years to 2030. It also estimates the cost would climb from $4.2 billion to $6.1 billion. ...critics of the project say the developments underscore that the plant, which is designed by NuScale Power and would be built at the Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Idaho National Laboratory, will be untenably expensive....

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/05/us-department-energy-rushes-build-advanced-new-nuclear-reactors Source:   By Adrian Cho, Science Magazine. Excerpt: In the latest effort to revive the United States’s flagging nuclear industry, the Department of Energy (DOE) aims to select and help build two new prototype nuclear reactors within 7 years, the agency announced last week [ https://www.energy.gov/ne/nuclear-reactor-technologies/advanced-reactor-demonstration-program ]. The reactors would be the centerpiece of DOE’s new Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program, which will receive $230 million this fiscal year. Each would be built as a 50-50 collaboration with an industrial partner and ultimately could receive up to $4 billion in funding from DOE. ...But even some proponents of nuclear power doubt the program will spur construction of new commercial reactors as long as natural gas and renewable energy remain relatively cheap. “New builds can’t compete with renewables,” says Rober...