Humankind has an insatiable appetite for energy that has put the planet in a very precarious position environmentally, but is also one of the main drivers of prosperity and improved living standards. New Atlas keeps you up to date with the latest breakthroughs in the energy sector, from the expanding field of renewable energy production to the exponential rise of battery technology and the slow march towards cold fusion.
The Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) in association with LCW Supercritical Technologies has made a potentially important breakthrough for the nuclear industry by extracting five grams of powdered uranium, called yellowcake, from ordinary seawater.
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Silicon is fast approaching its theoretical limit for solar efficiency, but pairing it up with other materials could help break through. Researchers have developed a new technique for combining silicon and perovskite solar cells, and reported a new record efficiency of 25.2 percent.
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A relatively new player on the nuclear fusion scene, a UK company called Tokamak Energy, is claiming a new milestone in the area after heating its ST40 device to 15 million degrees Celsius, similar to temperatures found at the center of the Sun.
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Nuclear batteries can last decades, but their power density is currently too low to be very practical. Now, Russian researchers have developed a new nuclear battery design based on nickel-63, which has a higher specific energy than regular, commercially-available batteries.
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Last weekend, Russia's floating nuclear power plant, the Akademik Lomonosov, was towed out to sea for the first time, beginning its voyage from St Petersburg to Murmansk, where it will be eventually loaded up with nuclear fuel and started up sometime in 2019.
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The first small modular reactor (SMR) application has passed an intensive Phase 1 review by the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). The okay for NuScale Power means that plans can progress on a 12-module plant scheduled to go online in Idaho in the middle of the next decade.
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According to new research from MIT and the Argonne National Laboratory, throttling the use of nuclear power plants could compensate the output of renewable energy sources and lead to lower energy bills.
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Using the power of the sun to split water and produce hydrogen fuel is one of the most promising clean energy technologies being pursued. Now researchers at the University of Exeter have created a semiconductor material that should help make it viable.
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Last month, GE unveiled its plan to build the world's largest, most powerful offshore wind turbine, known as the Haliade-X. This Tuesday, it was announced that the rig will be tested and developed over the next five years, at the UK’s Offshore Renewable Energy (ORE) Catapult research center.
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Most solar cells only capture the visible light. Now, researchers at Berkeley Labs have developed a way to use nanoparticles coated in special organic dyes to convert near-infrared light into visible light, which could allow solar cells to harvest more of the spectrum.
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