The Princeton Physics Lab has built a Stellarator nuclear fusion reactor prototype using permanent magnets. This is a scientific first that enables mostly off the shelf magnet for simple and low cost experiments to test new concepts for future fusion power plants. It does not generate net energy, but it has some nuclear processes and …
Helicity Space, a commercial space company developing in-space propulsion and power technology based on fusion power, announced an investment from Lockheed Martin Ventures, the venture capital arm of Lockheed Martin. This latest raise from Lockheed Martin Ventures comes on the heels of a $5 million seed round of Helicity Space funding from investors including Airbus …
A new 20 Tesla Superconducting magnet reduces the cost per watt of a fusion reactor by a factor of almost 40. MIT worked with Commonwealth Fusion Systems, a startup with over $2 billion in funding. The funders of CFS include Temasek Holdings (Singpore), the U.S. Department of Energy, Tiger Global Management, Bill Gates, Google and …
RocketStar, a US based startup, has successfully demonstrated an electric propulsion unit for spacecraft that uses nuclear fusion-enhanced pulsed plasma. During ground tests the process did create ionizing radiation and improved the base propulsion unit’s thrust by 50%. FireStar Drive markedly improves performance, utilizing high-speed protons from ionized water vapor. When protons interact with boron …
Elon Musk tweeted that SpaceX Starship will travel across the solar system and to the cloud of objects around us. The cloud of objects around us are either referring to the Kuiper Belt (35-80AU and possibly larger) and the Oort Comet Cloud (0.03 to 3.2 light-years). Nextbigfuture has covered recent research findings that the Kuiper …
NANO Nuclear is a startup that has raised over $8 million to develop micro nuclear fission reactors with up to 2 megawatts of power. They will be transported by Semi Trucks. I, Brian Wang of Nextbigfuture, was contacted by the Nano Nuclear team for a correction that their initial nuclear fission reactors will be 1-2 …
Kairos Power has successfully completed 1,000 hours of pumped salt operations with its non-nuclear Engineering Testing Unit (ETU) at the company’s testing and manufacturing facility in Albuquerque, N.M. This achievement arrives on the heels of operators loading 12 metric tons of a molten fluoride salt coolant known as “Flibe” into ETU, making it the largest …
NANO Nuclear is a startup that has raised over $8 million to develop micro nuclear fission reactors with up to 2 megawatts of power. They will be transported by Semi Trucks. They plan to sell 1,000 microreactors on a yearly basis for a trillion-dollar industry. Nuclear currently supplies some 18% of US power needs off …
The White House’s national security adviser said Wednesday that he had already scheduled a classified meeting with congressional leadership before a top House Republican requested that President Joe Biden declassify all information that relates to serious national security threat. An anti-satellite nuclear weapon would likely be something that would generate an electromagnetic pulse. In 2018, …
Ultra-high performance concrete (UHPC) is an enhanced fibrous and cementitious concrete with high compressive strength (120–250 MPa) particle packing density (0.825–0.855, tensile strength (15–20 MPa) and extraordinary durability. UHPC has 300 times the ductility and energy absorption of high performance concrete (HPC) and three to sixteen times the compressive strength of regular concrete. A $100+ …
Shell Oil and Southern Electric utility company had a 2021 research paper that explored if nuclear batteries could be economical for generating power. (Above – (a) MIT’s conceptualization of a nuclear battery (NB) with integrated gas turbine; (b) LANL’s Megapower; (c) NASA and LANL’s KRUSTY/Kilopower reactor using Stirling engine technology for space applications; (d) Westinghouse’s …