Science - NRC Approves Gen IV Nuclear Reactor Design

I don't even understand most of them but the speed at which new discoveries are occurring is mindboggling. Between batteries, alt energy methods, new medicines, and new materials, our world is going to change rapidly in the next 3 - 10 years as these discoveries find their way into our daily lives. I can't help but think that it is only going to accelerate with AI and new medicines and materials. Now if we can just stop from blowing it all up

 

seems that Google has achieved a major milestone in quantum computing, which is advancing by leaps and bounds weekly..

will quantum computing make Nvidia and all these other chips worthless?

Quantum computer built by Google can instantly execute a task that would normally take 47 years (msn.com)

In a significant leap for the field of quantum computing, Google has reportedly engineered a quantum computer that can execute calculations in mere moments that would take the world's most advanced supercomputers nearly half a century to process. The news, reported by the Daily Telegraph, could signify a landmark moment in the evolution of this emerging technology.
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Google's latest iteration of its quantum machine, the Sycamore quantum processor, currently holds 70 qubits. This is a substantial leap from the 53 qubits of its earlier version. This makes the new processor approximately 241 million times more robust than the previous model.
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For instance, according to the Google team, it would take the Frontier supercomputer merely 6.18 seconds to match a calculation from Google's 53-qubit computer. However, the same machine would take an astonishing 47.2 years to match a computation executed by Google's latest 70-qubit device.

 

another day, another amazing battery lab breakthrough...yawn...

this one feels different. team of worldwide specialists worked together to create ceramic solid state battery with production group from Austria who is a supplier to Apple. imagine your phone going 100 days without needing a charge. hopefully they can scale it

Apple supplier unveils groundbreaking battery material with 100x more energy density: 'World's first battery of its kind' (msn.com)

An all-ceramic power pack rolled out by Japanese company TDK could soon provide your Apple and other products with much greater battery life — by a factor of 100.

The latest breakthrough, CeraCharge, is coming out of the company's Austria manufacturing facility, according to a TDK press release and video clip.

The solid-state power pack is being billed as a world's first that's able to energize sensors, watches, phones, hearing aids, and many other devices for longer stretches of time, the company's experts said.

Fascinatingly, they are touting an energy density 100 times greater than its existing solid-state packs. What's more, the reusable cells could help to reduce the millions of nonrechargeable household batteries that are sometimes recycled and often trashed.

 

can someone smarter than me tell me if this is legit and which companies will benefit most from this

if this is real and they cut AI energy costs by 1000x plus, well someone is going to get rich, just wonder how long to deploy it and if it will crash Nvidia and others or help them

New memory tech unveiled that reduces AI processing energy requirements by 1,000 times or more (msn.com)

A group of engineering researchers at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities have demonstrated an AI efficiency-boosting technology and published a peer-reviewed paper outlining their work and findings. The paper was published in npj Unconventional Computing, a peer-reviewed journal by Nature. In essence, they’ve created a shortcut in the normal practice of AI computations that greatly reduces the energy requirement for the task.

In current AI computing, data is transferred between the components processing it (logic) and where data is stored (memory/storage). This constant shuttling of information back and forth is responsible for consuming as much as 200 times the energy used in the computation, according to this research. Thus the researchers have turned to Computational Random-Access Memory (CRAM) to address this. The CRAM the research team has developed places a high-density, reconfigurable spintronic in-memory compute substrate within the memory cells themselves.
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Using CRAM, the data never leaves memory, instead undergoing processing entirely within the computer’s memory array. According to the research team, this allows the system running the AI computing application an energy consumption improvement “on the order of 1,000x over a state-of-the-art solution.”

Other examples suggest the potential for even greater energy savings and faster processing. In one test, performing an MNIST handwritten digit classifier task, the CRAM proved 2,500 times more energy-efficient and 1,700 times as fast as a near-memory processing system using the 16nm technology node. This task is used to train AI systems to recognize handwriting.

 

Chevron develops first new deepwater well with pressures in excess of 20k psi. New tools and techniques make this first well ever drilled with pressures in excess of 15k psi but more coming. Numbers are shocking..$5.1B to drill, generates 75k barrels of oil per day in addition to massive amounts of nat gas. expected to produce for 30 years or more. This technique will unlock billions of barrels under the GOM..people talking about peak oil production for the last 30 years get laughed at again

Chevron delivers industry first in ultra-high pressure oil field (msn.com)

Chevron has achieved a technological breakthrough, producing first oil from a U.S. Gulf of Mexico field under extreme subsea pressures, the energy company said on Monday. Its $5.7-billion project, called Anchor, ushers in an era of production from deepwater areas that had long been off-limits, because of the lack of equipment able to cope with pressures of up to 20,000 pounds per square inch. Chevron and partner TotalEnergies expect the Anchor development to produce for 30 years.

At its peak, the floating platform will pump up to 75,000 barrels of oil and 28 million cubic feet of natural gas a day. The field is about 140 miles (225 km) off the coast of Louisiana."This industry-first deepwater technology allows us to unlock previously difficult-to-access resources and will enable similar deepwater high-pressure developments for the industry," said Chevron Executive Vice President Nigel Hearne.

Another U.S. oil company, Beacon Offshore Energy, aims to replicate Chevron's 20,000-psi feat at its Shenandoah deepwater field, also off the coast of Louisiana. That project has been delayed, with first oil expected in the second quarter of 2025.

BP discovered the Gulf of Mexico’s first 20,000-psi field, called Kaskida, in 2006, but the subsea technologies of the time did not allow development. Until now, subsea technologies have largely been capped at pressures of 15,000 psi.
Chevron's development will have seven subsea wells tied to the Anchor floating production platform. The subsea field is estimated to hold up to 440 million barrels of recoverable oil and gas.

 

Chevron Breakthrough Could Cause Surge In Oil Supply (msn.com)

Chevron has developed a new oil drilling process that was difficult until recently. This could mean a sharp rise in crude oil availability from the big fossil fuel corporations and cheap energy that produces greenhouse gases.

Nigel Hearne, executive vice president of Chevron Oil, Products & Gas, referring to its Anchor project, said, “Application of this industry-first deepwater technology allows us to unlock previously difficult-to-access resources and will enable similar deepwater high-pressure developments for the industry.” Some experts believe the world has too much oil.

The technology will allow it to add 75,000 gross barrels a day. Chevron will also Be able to extract more oil from deepwater installations in the Gulf of Mexico and perhaps elsewhere. The company also said that the installation would be able to limit its pollution, “To reduce carbon emissions, the Anchor FPU was designed as an all-electric facility with electric motors and electronic controls.” Of course, it takes energy to run those motors. Dropping oil prices can increase pollution.

The new technology allows for inexpensive production of fossil fuels, which tends to make them more efficient for fueling electricity plants. This, in turn, makes greenhouse gas alternatives less financially attractive.

 

new process using electrolysis turns wastewater into ammonia and clean water. if this can be scaled, it could be used worldwide to produce fertilizers and clean water using solar power and wastewater

Rice’s ‘revolutionary’ reactor turns wastewater into green ammonia, drinking water (msn.com)

Ammonia production accounts for approximately 2% of global energy use and 1.4% of carbon dioxide emissions. Traditionally, ammonia is synthesized using the Haber-Bosch process, which involves high-temperature, high-pressure reactions between hydrogen and nitrogen. This method relies on centralized infrastructure and is energy-intensive. In contrast, a new reactor developed by Rice University’s team offers a more sustainable approach by converting nitrates—common pollutants in industrial and agricultural runoff—into ammonia.
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“Electrochemistry can occur at room temperature, is more amenable to scalable formats for different infrastructure systems, and has the capacity to be powered by decentralized renewable energy,” explained Feng-Yang Chen, lead author and Rice graduate student, in the press release. The breakthrough lies in the reactor’s use of a porous solid electrolyte, which significantly improves efficiency by eliminating the need for high concentrations of supporting electrolytes. This challenge has previously hindered sustainable nitrate-to-ammonia conversion. This design not only enhances the reaction’s efficiency but also has the potential to make ammonia production carbon neutral when powered by renewable energy.

“We discovered that our novel reactor system could turn nitrate-contaminated water into pure ammonia and clean water very efficiently, without the need for extra chemicals. In simple terms, you put wastewater in, and you get pure ammonia and purified water out,” Chen stated in the press release. This new reactor eliminates the need for traditional denitrification processes used in wastewater treatment plants, which generate nitrogen to be fed into the Haber-Bosch process. By bypassing both denitrification and Haber-Bosch routes, the reactor provides an effective method for water decontamination while producing ammonia.

“Nitrate is one of the priority pollutants that most frequently violates drinking water standards, and it is a significant concern in growing cities as farmland with nitrate-contaminated groundwater supplies is converted to urban development,” noted Pedro Alvarez, the George R. Brown Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Rice.

 

the peer reviewed paper is linked. no idea if it contains what you are looking for

Experimental demonstration of magnetic tunnel junction-based computational random-access memory | npj Unconventional Computing (nature.com)

 

New drilling technology to put billions of barrels of oil in reach, analysts say (msn.com)

An oil production breakthrough that producers say can safely tap ultra-high pressure fields could put up to 5 billion barrels of previously inaccessible crude into production, analysts said.

Chevron on Monday disclosed it had pumped first oil from a field at 20,000 pounds per square inch pressures, a third greater than any prior well. Its $5.7 billion Anchor project employs specially designed equipment from NOV, Dril-Quip and drillships from Transocean.
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Today, the industry is employing new drillships and equipment that has been created to cope with the extreme pressures that are a third greater than encountered in the Macondo failure.

"The industry has done their bit to safely deliver the barrels, with the new technology," said Mfon Usoro, a principal analyst who focuses on Gulf of Mexico operations at research firm Wood Mackenzie.