Author: Fission Today

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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…

This blog was drafted by Allie Maggart, a 2024 J.D./M.A. joint degree candidate at the University of San Diego School of Law and Joan B. Kroc School of Peace Studies, with minimal edits. As the legislative calendars move towards the end of the 2022 term with the next major deadline being whether bills reach the governor’s desk, the following provides an update on climate and energy legislative trends from the 2021-2022 sessions based on several interrelated topics: housing, wildfire, greenhouse gas emissions, transportation, energy demand response, and utilities regulation. The Legislature will reconvene on August 1, 2022, with August 31st…

Back in the old days — the really old days — the task of designing materials was laborious. Investigators, over the course of 1,000-plus years, tried to make gold by combining things like lead, mercury, and sulfur, mixed in what they hoped would be just the right proportions. Even famous scientists like Tycho Brahe, Robert Boyle, and Isaac Newton tried their hands at the fruitless endeavor we call alchemy.Materials science has, of course, come a long way. For the past 150 years, researchers have had the benefit of the periodic table of elements to draw upon, which tells them that…

Paris, France – New documents obtained by investigative outlet Disclose suggests that France spent €90,000 to discredit research into the impacts of its nuclear testing in the Pacific. In response:  Shiva Gounden, Head of Pacific at Greenpeace Australia Pacific said: “This act by France is not just a denial of truth — it is an insult to generations who continue to live with the radioactive legacy of these experiments. From the scarred atolls of the Marshall Islands to the irradiated lands of Maohi Nui (French Polynesia), our people carry the enduring fallout of nuclear colonialism – cancers, displacement, environmental devastation,…

Statehouse Happenings This Week: It’s a busy week for energy issues in the Kansas Capitol.  Tuesday morning kicks off two BIG hearings in the House Energy committee. The Climate + Energy Project’s Clean Energy Business Council members will appear before the committee on HB 2228 and HB 2227. HB 2228 creates a uniform net-metering policy across investor-owned utility, municipal, and cooperative territories and increases system size limits. This has been an initiative of the CEBC’s since our inception and we’re excited to see it gaining momentum.  The CEBC has also long-advocated for 3rd-Party Power Purchase Agreements. Members are eager to present the concept to the committee and…