Author: Fission Today

If you’re looking for hard problems, building a nuclear fusion power plant is a pretty good place to start. Fusion — the process that powers the sun — has proven to be a difficult thing to recreate here on Earth despite decades of research.“There’s something very attractive to me about the magnitude of the fusion challenge,” Hartwig says. “It’s probably true of a lot of people at MIT. I’m driven to work on very hard problems. There’s something intrinsically satisfying about that battle. It’s part of the reason I’ve stayed in this field. We have to cross multiple frontiers of…

All through this week including yesterday, 22 January 2026, ICAN partners marked the five year anniversary of the nuclear ban treaty with actions, lectures, film screenings, discussions and demonstrations.  Follow #5YearsTPNW on social media, or check out highlights below.  Over the last few days, and continuing through the weekend, ICAN partners and allies have celebrated the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons as a hopeful light in what seems like an otherwise dark time for the world. We’ve heard about activities across at least three continents marking this important milestone in the history of abolishing nuclear weapons. From governmental…

America is one step closer to tapping into a new and potentially limitless clean energy source today, with the announcement from MIT spinout Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS) that it plans to build the world’s first grid-scale fusion power plant in Chesterfield County, Virginia.The announcement is the latest milestone for the company, which has made groundbreaking progress toward harnessing fusion — the reaction that powers the sun — since its founders first conceived of their approach in an MIT classroom in 2012. CFS is now commercializing a suite of advanced technologies developed in MIT research labs.“This moment exemplifies the power of…

Summary comments on the Deep Geologic Repository (DGR) Project for Canada’s Used Nuclear Fuel. The nuclear waste will be radioactive for, say, a period of time that is close to eternity, whereas the project covers a period of 160 years.  The solution is therefore very far from permanent. We are swimming here in the middle of a pro-nuclear religion. by Miguel Deschênes, 20 Jan 26 a translation of comments submitted in French to the  Impact Assessment Agency of Canada (IAAC) by Miguel Deschêne on this subject.  Seven major objections stand out: 1- Developers are not trustworthy On page v of the document,…

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Over the past 14 months, as the impact of the ongoing Israel-Gaza war has rippled across the globe, a faculty-led initiative has emerged to support MIT students and staff by creating a community that transcends ethnicity, religion, and political views. Named for a flower that blooms along the Israel-Gaza border, MIT-Kalaniyot began hosting weekly community lunches that typically now draw about 100 participants. These gatherings have gained the interest of other universities seeking to help students not only cope with but thrive through troubled times, with some moving to replicate MIT’s model on their own campuses.Now, scholars at Israel’s nine state-recognized…

The electrical interconnection between Crete and mainland Greece was completed and has been in operation since May 2025. The completion of this infrastructure project is a big step in Greece’s energy transition. Connecting the island of Crete with the mainland allows the country to finally tap into the abundant wind and solar energy potential on Crete and to switch off old and polluting power plants. At the same time, the Ariadne interconnection builds the foundation for advancing green energy in the Eastern Mediterranean. Daniel Argyropoulos reports. Credits: Ariadne Interconnection. In Greek mythology, Ariadne, daughter of the Cretan king Minos, gave Theseus…

As climate change accelerates and emission reduction efforts struggle to reach the Paris Agreement’s goal to reduce global warming to well below 2°C until 2050, carbon removal has become critical for mitigating CO2 emissions that are hard to abate otherwise. In Switzerland, these hard-to-abate emissions mostly originate from the agricultural sector, cement, and (bio)waste-to-energy plants. Carbon removal often involves extracting CO2 from the atmosphere and storing it in plants, soil, or even deep rock formations. Well-known approaches to remove CO2 from the atmosphere include afforestation projects or machines that filter CO2 directly from the air (i.e., Direct Air Capture and…

Most people take boiling water for granted. For Associate Professor Matteo Bucci, uncovering the physics behind boiling has been a decade-long journey filled with unexpected challenges and new insights.The seemingly simple phenomenon is extremely hard to study in complex systems like nuclear reactors, and yet it sits at the core of a wide range of important industrial processes. Unlocking its secrets could thus enable advances in efficient energy production, electronics cooling, water desalination, medical diagnostics, and more.“Boiling is important for applications way beyond nuclear,” says Bucci, who earned tenure at MIT in July. “Boiling is used in 80 percent of…

The electricity sector faces a timing problem that’s becoming impossible to ignore. Data centers, artificial intelligence (AI) deployment, industrial reshoring, and broader electrification are driving load growth at rates not seen in decades—and much of that new demand wants carbon-free, firm power. Nuclear checks those boxes. But can the industry deliver capacity fast enough? POWER spoke with two EPRI vice presidents to get a clearer picture: Steve Swilley, vice president of Nuclear and Chief Nuclear Officer, and Steve Chengelis, vice president of Energy Supply, Nuclear Development, and Fusion. Their message was direct: optionality is not an option. Meeting demand will…