Searching News Content

250 Results
Adding nuclear to the mix with Jacopo Buongiorno
Jacopo Buongiorno, a nuclear scientist at MIT, argues that you can’t get to a robust clean energy portfolio without nuclear and we have learned a lot more about making nuclear power safer. He provides a run-down of the benefits and risks associated with nuclear and the role it plays in achieving a clean energy mix.
Will neutrons compromise the operation of superconducting magnets in a fusion plant?
New experiments show that the immediate effect of atomic displacements, known as the “beam on effect,” should not be an issue during fusion power plant operations.
Unlocking the secrets of fusion’s core with AI-enhanced simulations
Fusion’s future depends on decoding plasma’s mysteries. Simulations can help keep research on track and reveal more efficient ways to generate fusion energy.
Nuno Loureiro receives Presidential Early Career Award
Loureiro was nominated by the NSF for his work on the generation and amplification of magnetic fields in the universe. He is among 400 scientists and engineers recognized for outstanding leadership potential.
Developing materials for stellar performance in fusion power plants
When Zoe Fisher was in fourth grade her art teacher asked her to draw her vision of a dream job on paper. At the time, those goals changed like the flavor of the week in an ice cream shop—”zookeeper” featured prominently for...
For clean ammonia, MIT engineers propose going underground
New computational chemistry techniques accelerate the prediction of molecules and materials
A multi-task machine learning approach is developed to predict the electronic properties of molecules, as demonstrated in the computational workflow illustrated here. Back in the old days, the really old days, the task of designing materials was laborious. Investigators, over the course...
Unlocking the hidden power of boiling — for energy, space, and beyond
Uncovering the physics of boiling could enable advances in efficient energy production, electronics cooling, water desalination, medical diagnostics, and more.
MIT spinout Commonwealth Fusion Systems unveils plans for the world’s first fusion power plant
The company has announced that it will build the first grid-scale fusion power plant in Chesterfield County, Virginia. The concept for a fusion power plant evolvved out of a design class taught by NSE’s Prof Dennis Whyte in 2012. Whyte challenged the graduate students to design a fusion device that would use a new kind of superconducting magnet to confine the plasma used in the reaction.
Transforming fusion from a scientific curiosity into a powerful clean energy source
SPOTLIGHT: Driven to solve hard problems, Associate Professor Zachary Hartwig is advancing a new approach to commercial fusion energy.