NASA's Mars 2020 rover has received its nuclear power plant. The Multi-Mission Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator (MMRTG) unit will provide the robotic spacecraft with 125 W of electricity to operate the drive motors and power the onboard systems.
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The latest tidings from the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics, creators of the Wendelstein 7-X, are that a new record has been set for the fusion product – another significant step along the path to practical fusion power.
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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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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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PNNL has vitrified low-level radioactive waste taken from a tank at the decommissioned Hanford Site nuclear production complex in Washington state for the first time in a continuous process. The waste was turned into durable glass that immobilizes the radioactive and chemical compounds inside.
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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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In good news for future planetary missions, NASA has announced that its next-generation Kilopower Reactor Using Stirling Technology (KRUSTY) nuclear reactor has passed its initial demonstration tests.
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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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Researchers have broken the efficiency record for nuclear fusion on the micro-scale. Using an ultra-fast, high-powered laser, the results were about 500 times more efficient than previous experiments. The researchers blasted arrays of nanowires to create incredibly hot, dense plasmas.
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