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A Thorium-Salt Reactor Has Fired Up for the First Time In Four Decades
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Time: 2017-08-22 19:56:58 UTC
Original URL: https://www.technologyreview.com/the-download/608712/a-thorium-salt-reactor-has-fired-up-for-the-first-time-in-four-decades/ [technologyreview.com] using ISO-8859-1 encoding.
Title: A Thorium-Salt Reactor Has Fired Up for the First Time In Four Decades
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A Thorium-Salt Reactor Has Fired Up for the First Time In Four Decades
Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story [technologyreview.com]:
The road to cleaner, meltdown-proof nuclear power has taken a big step forward. Researchers at NRG, a Dutch nuclear materials firm, have begun the first tests of nuclear fission using thorium salts since experiments ended at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in the early 1970s.
Thorium has several advantages over uranium, the fuel that powers most nuclear reactors in service today. First, it's much harder to weaponize. Second, as we pointed out last year in a long read on thorium-salt reactors [technologyreview.com], designs that call for using it in a liquid form are, essentially, self-regulating and fail-safe.
The team at NRG is testing several reactor designs [thoriumenergyworld.com] on a small scale at first. The first experiment is on a setup called a molten-salt fast reactor, which burns thorium salt and in theory should also be able to consume spent nuclear fuel from typical uranium fission reactions.
The tests come amid renewed global interest in thorium. While updated models of uranium-fueled power plants are struggling mightily [technologyreview.com] to get off the ground in the U.S., several startup companies are exploring molten-salt reactors. China, meanwhile, is charging ahead with big plans for its nuclear industry, including a heavy bet on thorium-based reactors. The country plans to have the first such power plants hooked up to the grid inside 15 years. If they pull it off, it might just help usher in a safer future for nuclear power.
Posted by Michael Reilly
Sometimes it's good to start small. Or, in the case of the all-electric Sun Flyer plane, get small as quickly as possible.
That's been the goal for George Bye, the aerospace executive behind the Sun Flyer, a two-seat craft he said aims to be flying later… Read more [soylentnews.org]
Sometimes it's good to start small. Or, in the case of the all-electric Sun Flyer plane, get small as quickly as possible.
That's been the goal for George Bye, the aerospace executive behind the Sun Flyer, a two-seat craft he said aims to be flying later this year. Writing about the development of the plane in IEEE Spectrum, [ieee.org] Bye says the secret to making all-electric flight work is a motor that weighs just 20 kilograms (45 pounds), boasts 95 percent energy efficiency, and still has enough pep to heft a load of lithium batteries along for the ride.
Bye's craft is meant to be used for training pilots—a niche he sees as a good fit for a plane that will for now remain limited to shorter flights. But his company, Bye Aerospace, has its sights set on building planes that will one day ferry commuters on short-hop and regional flights.
In that, he has some competition. As battery technology improves steadily (but slowly [technologyreview.com]), a raft of companies, including startups Zunum Aero and Wright Electric [technologyreview.com], but also big incumbents like Airbus are hatching plans to build battery-powered aircraft that could one day fly 150 passengers up to 300 miles—about the distance from London to Paris.
Despite his diminutive aircraft, though, Bye is definitely thinking big.
Posted by Michael Reilly
The road to cleaner, meltdown-proof nuclear power has taken a big step forward. Researchers at NRG, a Dutch nuclear materials firm, have begun the first tests of nuclear fission using thorium salts since experiments ended at Oak Ridge National Laboratory… Read more [soylentnews.org]
The road to cleaner, meltdown-proof nuclear power has taken a big step forward. Researchers at NRG, a Dutch nuclear materials firm, have begun the first tests of nuclear fission using thorium salts since experiments ended at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in the early 1970s.
Thorium has several advantages over uranium, the fuel that powers most nuclear reactors in service today. First, it's much harder to weaponize. Second, as we pointed out last year in a long read on thorium-salt reactors [technologyreview.com], designs that call for using it in a liquid form are, essentially, self-regulating and fail-safe.
The team at NRG is testing several reactor designs [thoriumenergyworld.com] on a small scale at first. The first experiment is on a setup called a molten-salt fast reactor, which burns thorium salt and in theory should also be able to consume spent nuclear fuel from typical uranium fission reactions.
The tests come amid renewed global interest in thorium. While updated models of uranium-fueled power plants are struggling mightily [technologyreview.com] to get off the ground in the U.S., several startup companies are exploring molten-salt reactors. China, meanwhile, is charging ahead with big plans for its nuclear industry, including a heavy bet on thorium-based reactors. The country plans to have the first such power plants hooked up to the grid inside 15 years. If they pull it off, it might just help usher in a safer future for nuclear power.
Posted by Michael Reilly
If you suddenly lose control of a host of Web services at once, there could be a simple root cause: hackers have taken control of your phone number. The New York Times reports [nytimes.com] that hackers have been increasingly able to convince carriers to transfer… Read more [soylentnews.org]
If you suddenly lose control of a host of Web services at once, there could be a simple root cause: hackers have taken control of your phone number. The New York Times reports [nytimes.com] that hackers have been increasingly able to convince carriers to transfer customer phone numbers to devices in their control. That allows them to reset passwords for sites secured using two-factor authentication, a feature that is now used widely by sites like Twitter and Facebook.
You might be particularly concerned if you’re an early adopter of cryptocurrencies, as attackers appear to be focusing attentions on commandeering logins for currency lockers and then draining them. The Times points to the particularly troubling experience of Joby Weeks, a Bitcoin entrepreneur who lost “about a million dollars’ worth of virtual currency” last year via this kind of scam, even though he had alerted his cell carrier that he might have been targeted.
Earlier this month, Wired published an interesting piece highlighting the newfound status of the phone number as “the only username that matters [wired.com].” From the article:
That sounds awfully convenient. But held up alongside the findings of the Times, it also seems rather terrifying.
Posted by Jamie Condliffe
Security firm IOActive has shown that several industrial and consumer robots can be hacked and used as weapons or spying devices.
Perhaps most dangerous is its hack of robot arms made by Universal Robotics, which are designed for use alongside humans… Read more [soylentnews.org]
Security firm IOActive has shown that several industrial and consumer robots can be hacked and used as weapons or spying devices.
Perhaps most dangerous is its hack of robot arms made by Universal Robotics, which are designed for use alongside humans in industrial settings. The team of researchers found that it could easily overwrite safety files tucked inside the robot arm’s operating system, allowing it to remove limits on speed of movement and, more important, adjust how sensitive its infrared sensors are to nearby objects. IOActive tells Bloomberg [bloomberg.com] the robots can deliver force that "is more than sufficient to cause a skull fracture."
Elsewhere, the firm was able to gain full control over consumer robots including UBTech’s Alpha2 and Softbank’s NAO by installing its own malicious software on the devices. That allowed it to turn Alpha 2 into the screwdriver-wielding psychopath seen in the GIF above. The team also found that it could take control of the cameras and microphone aboard these consumer robots, effectively turning them into listening posts that could spy on their owners.
All the attacks are worrying, and they suggest that the robot makers aren’t taking security as seriously as they should. Speaking to Wired [wired.com], UBTech and Softbank both downplayed the findings, while Universal Robotics said that it would "monitor closely the potential vulnerability described and potential countermeasures." One hopes they'll be in place before a real hacker performs a similar attack in anger.
Posted by Jamie Condliffe
It may look much like a regular pallet truck, but this is one of a growing number [technologyreview.com] of autonomous warehouse vehicles looking to take over from inefficient humans. Its maker, Seegrid, a provider of material-handling equipment, takes the kinds of forklifts… Read more [soylentnews.org]
It may look much like a regular pallet truck, but this is one of a growing number [technologyreview.com] of autonomous warehouse vehicles looking to take over from inefficient humans. Its maker, Seegrid, a provider of material-handling equipment, takes the kinds of forklifts that move 8,000-pound loads around warehouses and makes them autonomous. It does that by popping five stereo cameras on top of the vehicles, having a human drive them around to map a space, and then using image recognition systems similar to those in autonomous cars to navigate the facilities. (Unlike autonomous cars that use sensors like radar and lidar [technologyreview.com], Seegrid can use just cameras, because lighting conditions in warehouses are more consistent than those on the open road.)
But while it’s easy enough to have a forklift move objects from one side of a factory to another, reliably loading and unloading them poses a bigger challenge. Other robots designed to haul loads like this tend to pick things up from below [technologyreview.com], rather than spearing pallets with forks. So autonomous forklifts usually require humans to be present during pickup and dropoff to make sure nothing goes wrong. Seegrid says that its customers don’t really like that. “Humans are notoriously unreliable for repetitive tasks,” Jeff Christensen, Seegrid’s vice president of product, tells MIT Technology Review. “We look for the next incremental step that can take away one more human touch.”
So Seegrid's new GP8 Series 6 forklift, pictured above, has been engineered to reverse its forks into pallets, pick them up, and set them down without a human in the loop. It’s not been quite as easy as you might expect. “The stuff you wouldn’t think is hard is hard,” says Christensen. “These are tricycle trucks … so once you’re going in reverse it’s a reverse pendulum that you have to drive backward with fairly coarse motor control, so the tuning has taken a lot of time.” Still, it works, so there's another human touch that isn't required [technologyreview.com].
Posted by Jamie Condliffe
“Spoon” is to “woman” as “tennis racket” is to “man.” At least, that’s according to AI algorithms trained on two of the more common collections of thousands of images that are usually used by researchers to help machines understand the real world.
“Spoon” is to “woman” as “tennis racket” is to “man.” At least, that’s according to AI algorithms trained on two of the more common collections of thousands of images that are usually used by researchers to help machines understand the real world.
It’s by no means the first time that an AI has been observed to pick up gender biases from training data. Last year, we reported [technologyreview.com] that researchers from Boston University and Microsoft Research found that an AI trained on archives of text learned to associate the word “programmer” with the word “man,” and “homemaker” with the word “woman.”
But it’s especially troubling that biases inherent in data sets may end up being amplified, rather than merely replicated, by the AIs that are trained on them. Sometimes it might cause offense, if, for instance, an AI is being used to target advertising based on images you upload to a social network. But in other applications—such as, say, the controversial practice of predicting criminality from a person’s face [technologyreview.com]—baked-in prejudice could be downright harmful.
Currently, many of the companies developing AI don’t seem too bothered about the problem of bias in their neural networks [technologyreview.com]. This finding is another piece of evidence to support those who argue that that needs to change.
Posted by Jamie Condliffe
How do you study the way zebrafish translate visual cues into movement, or whether mice are afraid of heights? For researchers at the Vienna Biocenter in Austria, the answer seemed obvious: build a virtual-reality rig for lab animals. So that’s exactly… Read more [soylentnews.org]
How do you study the way zebrafish translate visual cues into movement, or whether mice are afraid of heights? For researchers at the Vienna Biocenter in Austria, the answer seemed obvious: build a virtual-reality rig for lab animals. So that’s exactly what they’ve done.
The new setup, called FreemoVR [strawlab.org], is an arena whose walls and floors are made of computer displays, with 10 high-speed cameras hanging above that are able to monitor the movement of animals placed in the space. The researchers have software observe the animals' movements and quickly change the imagery shown on the displays.
So far, it seems to be pretty compelling for the critters that it's been tested on. Fruit flies that were shown virtual pillars flew in circles around them as though they were really there. Meanwhile, mice chose to walk only along raised pathways that appeared to be closer to the floor (an illusion achieved by using two sizes of checkerboard on the ground to provide a trick of perspective), just as they would in the physical world.
Details of the system, as well as results from the experiments, are published in Nature Methods [nature.com]. The team reckons that the setup could be used as an easier way to understand how animals respond to visual stimulation. Indeed, IEEE Spectrum reports [soylentnews.org] that the lab is already investigating how differences in the brain function of fruit flies affect their responses to what they see in VR.
Posted by Jamie Condliffe
The original Volkswagen microbus may have appealed to all of our inner hippies, but the green credentials of the engine that propelled it would surely now bring a tear to their eyes. Good news, then: Volkswagen has announced [vw.com] that it’s bringing the old… Read more [soylentnews.org]
The original Volkswagen microbus may have appealed to all of our inner hippies, but the green credentials of the engine that propelled it would surely now bring a tear to their eyes. Good news, then: Volkswagen has announced [vw.com] that it’s bringing the old vehicle back to life with electric power.
The new I.D. Buzz, as it’s called, was shown as a concept at the Detroit Motor Show earlier this year but will go into production and on sale in 2022. The van has a design that’s based on the old vehicle, but that’s about where the similarities stop: the new version has four electric motors that create 369 horsepower and a 111-kilowatt/hour battery to provide a range of almost 300 miles. It can charge to 80 percent capacity in 30 minutes.
As Roadshow points out [cnet.com], though, its most fundamental difference may be an autonomy pack that’s expected to be available on the van by 2025. The idea, at least, is that the driver will be able to hand full control to the vehicle itself, then have the front seats rotate 180 degrees to make use of the famous communal space while the vehicle is in motion. That is, of course, driverless cars the way that futurists tend to imagine them—so it will be interesting to see if Volkswagen can make it a reality in the coming years.
Posted by Jamie Condliffe
An open letter [futureoflife.org] published today from 116 technologists, including DeepMind founder Mustafa Suleyman and (predictably [technologyreview.com]) Elon Musk, calls on the United Nations to ban the development and use of autonomous weapons. The note warns that killer robots "threaten… Read more [soylentnews.org]
An open letter [futureoflife.org] published today from 116 technologists, including DeepMind founder Mustafa Suleyman and (predictably [technologyreview.com]) Elon Musk, calls on the United Nations to ban the development and use of autonomous weapons. The note warns that killer robots "threaten to become the third revolution in warfare."
It continues: "Once developed, they will permit armed conflict to be fought at a scale greater than ever, and at timescales faster than humans can comprehend ... We do not have long to act. Once this Pandora’s box is opened, it will be hard to close."
It is by no means the first time that such concerns have been raised—a very similar letter was signed two years ago [futureoflife.org]. But calls for an outright ban aren't necessarily the best way to police this threat. As we've explained in the past [technologyreview.com], the advances required to create truly autonomous weapons are still a little way off. And other experts believe that a call to halt research and development may overlook ethical arguments that would be better thrashed out: robot soldiers could, after all, mean fewer deaths on the battlefield.
It is, clearly, an incredibly thorny topic. But it isn't clear that shutting down the debate entirely is the best route forward.
Posted by Jamie Condliffe
One of the more reassuring things about industrial robotic arms is that they tend to stay put. Well, not this one. Clearpath Robotics, a company that specializes in building mobile automatons, has strapped a Kuka robot arm to its omndirectional Ridgeback… Read more [soylentnews.org]
One of the more reassuring things about industrial robotic arms is that they tend to stay put. Well, not this one. Clearpath Robotics, a company that specializes in building mobile automatons, has strapped a Kuka robot arm to its omndirectional Ridgeback platform. The company hasn't said what sort of tasks the hybrid bot is meant for, but one could imagine it making itself useful in lots of different ways—even if the vision of a disembodied arm rolling its way toward you is a little bit disconcerting.
Posted by Michael Reilly
-- submitted from IRC
