Week 10 of 2024

Three nuclear energy innovation news!

🔵 ITOCHU Corporation and SoftBank invest in Blue Laser Fusion (US). The startup is headed by Shuji Nakamura, who won the 2014 Nobel Prize in physics for the development of the blue light-emitting diode. Their approach involves MJ laser pulse intensification on proton & boron-11 pellets within a vacuum, aiming for a commercial launch in 2030.

🌘 Ask for the moon (FR) closes a € 2.5m round with Matterwave Ventures and UI Investissement. The startup is developping an AI-powered cogenerative knowledge platform. It is already deployed in the nuclear sector with key accounts such as Framatome and SPIE Nucléaire. The funds will be used to scale-up with 40 new employees, half of whom will be solely dedicated to R&D, while expanding to Scandinavia and Germany.

♻️ Orano (FR) and SHINE Technologies (US) sign a MoU to work towards a US-based pilot plant for recycling used nuclear fuel from light water reactors. The recovered material would be reused for new fuel for existing and advanced reactor design, with some radioisotoptes being used for industrial and medical applications. The objective is to have the facility operational in the early 2030s, with a capacity of 100 tons per year.

👨‍🎓 Paper of the week: "Environmental radiation exposure at Chornobyl has not systematically affected the genomes or chemical mutagen tolerance phenotypes of local worms", roceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2024).

👉 Tiny worms with simple genomes show exceptionnal resilience to radiation.

👇 Did you spot anything else? Let me me know!