Lifeboat Foundation

A once-impossible new technique creates fusion energy with powerful lasers and without radioactive fuel.

New rules will require investing in solar, biofuels and maybe even nuclear power.

A growing number of start-ups want to create and commercialise nuclear fusion, to generate clean energy for all. Can they succeed where the big guns have failed?

A new type of nuclear reactor will bring clean energy to India.

TerraPower, a nuclear-energy company founded by Bill Gates, is building a molten-chloride fast reactor that could help lower carbon-dioxide emissions.

Scientists toiling away on the cutting edge Wendelstein 7-X nuclear fusion reactor in Germany have pulled together results from their latest round of testing, with a few records to be found amongst them. Following a series of upgrades, the team is reporting the experimental device has achieved its highest energy density and the longest plasma discharge times for device of this type, marking another step forward in the quest for clean fusion power.

On Tuesday, a team from China’s Hefei Institutes of Physical Science announced that its Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) reactor — an “artificial sun” designed to replicate the process our natural Sun uses to generate energy — just hit a new temperature milestone: 100 million degrees Celsius (180 million degrees Fahrenheit).

For comparison, the core of our real Sun only reaches about 27 million degrees Fahrenheit — meaning the EAST reactor was, briefly, more than six times hotter than the closest star.

Continue reading “China’s ‘artificial sun’ is now hot enough for nuclear fusion” »

For half a century, researchers have seen loops of displaced atoms appearing inside nuclear reactor steel after exposure to radiation, but no one could work out how.

Researchers at Idaho National Laboratory have discovered how to make “superalloys” even more super, extending useful life by thousands of hours. The discovery could improve materials performance for electrical generators and nuclear reactors. The key is to heat and cool the superalloy in a specific way. That creates a microstructure within the material that can withstand high heat more than six times longer than an untreated counterpart.