Author: Fission Today

Questions and Answers:  What is the goal of the Fission Surface Power system? The system is intended to provide reliable, sustained electrical power on the lunar surface to support future missions and enable the development of a lunar economy. Which technical capabilities does NASA emphasize? NASA highlights automated operation, fault detection and recovery, restart capability without external power, adherence to wire and cable derating standards, and support for high-power user loads through multiple 120 VDC connector ports. What is the timeline for feedback and engagement? Comments are due by 5 p.m. Eastern on 12 December 2025. Virtual one-on-one sessions will take place…

Britain’s AI boom is running straight into an energy wall, and nuclear power was supposed to act as its crutch to get around it.Instead, the government has hit pause, just as data centre demand is set to explode, leading investors wondering whether the UK risks talking itself out of its opportunity.Recent analysis from the Nuclear Industry Association and Oxford Economics warned that data-centre electricity demand will jump more than fivefold by 2030, swallowing nearly nine per cent of the UK’s total power use.The AI labs and hyperscalers behind that surge want plug in-ready, 24/7 power, all within two years. Britain…

Quenching, a powerful heat transfer mechanism, is remarkably effective at transporting heat away. But in extreme environments, like nuclear power plants and aboard spaceships, a lot rides on the efficiency and speed of the process.It’s why Marco Graffiedi, a fifth-year doctoral student at MIT’s Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering (NSE), is researching the phenomenon to help develop the next generation of spaceships and nuclear plants.Growing up in small-town ItalyGraffiedi’s parents encouraged a sense of exploration, giving him responsibilities for family projects even at a young age. When they restored a countryside cabin in a small town near Palazzolo, in…

China plans to launch commercial operations at the world’s first small modular reactor (SMR) to generate nuclear energy as early as in the first half of 2026, according to the president of the China Institute of Nuclear Industry Strategy. The Linglong One reactor was the first SMR to be approved by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in 2016.  Linglong One, based in Hainan province in China, earlier this year completed its primary circuit cold functional test, the China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC) said in October. “Linglong One is the first commercial onshore small modular reactor worldwide to pass the International Atomic Energy…

One of the highest-risk components of nuclear waste is iodine-129 (I-129), which stays radioactive for millions of years and accumulates in human thyroids when ingested. In the U.S., nuclear waste containing I-129 is scheduled to be disposed of in deep underground repositories, which scientists say will sufficiently isolate it.Meanwhile, across the globe, France routinely releases low-level radioactive effluents containing iodine-129 and other radionuclides into the ocean. France recycles its spent nuclear fuel, and the reprocessing plant discharges about 153 kilograms of iodine-129 each year, under the French regulatory limit.Is dilution a good solution? What’s the best way to handle spent…

Students enrolled in MIT’s New Engineering Education Transformation (NEET) program recently collaborated across academic disciplines to design and construct a solar-powered charging station. Positioned in a quiet campus courtyard, the station provides the MIT community with climate-friendly power for phones, laptops, and tablets.Its installation marked the “first time a cross-departmental team of undergraduates designed, created, and installed on campus a green technology artifact for the public good, as part of a class they took for credit,” says Amitava “Babi” Mitra, NEET founding executive director.The project was very on-brand for the NEET program, which centers interdisciplinary, cross-departmental, and project-centric scholarship with…

DIFFER–Dutch Institute for Fundamental Energy Research, Eindhoven, the NetherlandsB. Kool, G. L. Derks, T. A. Wijkamp, J. T. W. Koenders & M. van BerkelEindhoven University of Technology, Eindhoven, the NetherlandsB. Kool, K. Verhaegh, G. L. Derks, T. A. Wijkamp & J. T. W. KoendersUnited Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority–Culham Campus, Culham, UKK. Verhaegh, N. Lonigro, G. McArdle, C. Vincent, S. S. Henderson & N. OsborneYork Plasma Institute, University of York, York, UKN. LonigroOak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, TN, USAJ. Lovell, F. Federici, F. Federici, B. A. Lomanowski, J. Lore, J. Lovell & H. R. WilsonMax-Planck-Institut fur Plasmaphysik, Garching, GermanyD. Brida, M. Bernert, M. Dunne, M. Faitsch & B. SieglinÉcole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Swiss Plasma Center (SPC), Lausanne, SwitzerlandH. Reimerdes, F. Bagnato, A. Balestri, M. Baquero Ruiz, P. Blanchard, M. Carpita, J. Cazabonne, S.…

Publisher’s note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.This is a summary of: Kool, B. et al. Demonstration of Super-X divertor exhaust control for transient heat load management in compact fusion reactors. Nat. Energy (2025). Source link

Learning diagnostic correlations: ECE to Interferometer reconstructionBefore investigating a multimodal ML-based model to generate synthetic SRTS using other diagnostics, it is crucial to first verify the existence, strength, and robustness of their underlying correlations. We therefore begin by demonstrating a fundamental capability of ML: leveraging one diagnostic’s measurements to reconstruct another’s. Specifically, we use ECE spectrograms, spatially resolved measurements with about 40 channels from edge to core, to reconstruct the line-integrated density fluctuation signals of the Interferometer. Because certain plasma instabilities and modes, such as Alfvén Eigenmode (AE), manifest in both temperature and density measurements, it is reasonable to expect…

The neural state-space modelLearning dynamical systems from data has been a core discipline within control design for decades, including aircraft flight control20 and simulation21, and has historically been known as system identification22,50. However, due to computational limitations of the time, classical approaches have typically been restricted to linear models, often in the form of linear SSMs:$$\dot{{{\bf{x}}}}=A{{\bf{x}}}+B{{\bf{a}}}$$ (1) $${{\bf{o}}}=C{{\bf{x}}}+D{{\bf{a}}}$$ (2) Where A, B, C, and D are the matrices to be learned from datasets of observables, o, actions, a, and, possibly, states, x. We note that the controls literature typically uses the notation y in lieu of o and u in…