Week 51 of 2023
Three nuclear energy innovation news!
🤖 Engineers from the University of Glasgow, the University of Manchester, Bristol Robotics Laboratory, and Heriot-Watt University successfully perform a demo of their SMuRFs system in simulated radioactive storage facility. It consists in a collaborative cyber physical system that enables real-time communication with up to 1,600 sensors, including wheeled, four-legged, and airborne robots. A single human supervisor can remotely monitor and control the whole system.
🗑 Rosatom's Mining and Chemical Combine produces the first three fuel assemblies containing uranium-plutonium mixed oxide (MOX) fuel with minor actinides, specifically americium-241 and neptunium-237, for the BN-800 fast neutron reactor at Beloyarsk nuclear power plant. The fuel, accepted and scheduled for loading in 2024, marks a step in addressing hazardous components of nuclear waste through fast neutron reactors.
👩🔬 The Gateway for Accelerated Innovation in Nuclear (GAIN) awards vouchers providing expertise and access to nuclear research capabilities of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). This includes Westinghouse Electric Company for irradiation testing, SHINE Technologies for sensor technologies, Aalo Atomics for digital twinning, ARC Clean Technology for simulations, Global Nuclear Fuel Americas for electroreduction, Boston Atomics for fuel handling, and Energy Northwest for climate forecasting.
👨🎓 Paper of the week: "X-Ray Energy Deposition Model for Simulating Asteroid Response to a Nuclear Planetary Defense Mitigation Mission", The Planetary Science Journal (2023). https://doi.org/10.3847/PSJ/ad0838
👉 Armeggedon was right: nuclear devices are key to deflect asteroids.
👇 Did you spot anything else? Let me me know!
