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Nuclear Expertise Guides Global Nonproliferation Innovation
Researchers tackling national security challenges at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory are upholding an 80-year legacy of leadership in all things nuclear. Today, they’re developing the next generation of technologies that will help reduce global nuclear risk and enable safe, secure, peaceful use of nuclear materials worldwide.
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Critical Minerals Need Insulation from China’s Market Manipulation
Investors can handle lots of different risks. They can price risks in construction, interest rates, weather and, with hedging, price movements in product markets. But the one risk they can’t price is political risk, the chance of some government action ruining profits. You can’t hedge against it.
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Facing a Potentially Warmer, Drier Washington State, Scientists Develops Plans to Be Sure Nuclear Power Plants Stay Cool
Waterways — tried and true cooling sources for nuclear power plants — could get warmer due to global climate change. Washington is planning ahead. Argonne scientists will use Gateway for Accelerated Innovation in Nuclear funding from the U.S. Department of Energy to work with Washington’s Energy Northwest on climate-ready nuclear reactor designs.
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Small Hydroelectric Plants Could Provide Emergency Power During Outages
Idaho National Laboratory (INL) is seeking a hydropower utility to collaborate on a case study, funded by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Water Power Technologies Office (WPTO), to understand how small hydroelectric plants operating at 10 megawatts or less can be upgraded to provide emergency power to critical loads (e.g., hospitals and emergency service providers) during outages.
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History Says Tariffs Rarely Work, but Biden’s 100% Tariffs on Chinese EVs Could Defy the Trend
Earlier this month, President Biden announced a hike in tariffs on a variety of Chinese imports, including a 100% tariff that would significantly increase the price of Chinese-made electric vehicles. Tariffs have a troubled history, but Biden’s move might defy historical precedent and succeed where other tariffs have failed. The Biden tariffs can succeed in giving the U.S. EV industry room to grow, and encourage similar protective actions elsewhere, reinforcing the global shift toward securing supply chains and promoting domestic manufacturing.
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University Students Tackle Adventure in CyberForce — Conquer the Hill Competition
University of Central Florida’s Cameron Whitehead wins CyberForce Conquer the Hill: Adventure Competition 2024. Whitehead was one of 112 students from 71 accredited U.S. colleges and universities who competed virtually to complete work-based cybersecurity tasks and challenges during a full day of energy sector-related adventure.
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Ground-Breaking Study Reveals How COVID-19 Vaccines Prevent Severe Disease
A landmark study by scientists at the University of Oxford, has unveiled crucial insights into the way that COVID-19 vaccines mitigate severe illness in those who have been vaccinated.
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Researchers Predicting Well Above-Average 2024 Atlantic Hurricane Season
Hurricane researchers are predicting an extremely active Atlantic hurricane season in their initial 2024 forecast. The researchers cite record warm tropical and eastern subtropical Atlantic sea surface temperatures as a primary factor for their prediction of 11 hurricanes this year.
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Extreme Weather is Battering the World. What's the Cause?
Floods and heatwaves across Africa, deluges in southern Brazil, drought in the Amazon, and extreme heat across Asia, including India: the news has been full of alarming weather disaster stories this year, and for good reason. Climate change is likely fueling a surge in extreme weather events across the planet. It could be a troubling sign of things to come.
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Beyond Watermarks: Content Integrity Through Tiered Defense
Watermarking is often discussed as a solution to the problems posed by AI-generated content. However, watermarking is inadequate without other methods of detecting and sorting out AI-generated content.
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Elaine Liu: Charging Ahead
The U.S. Department of Energy reports that the number of public and private EV charging ports nearly doubled in the past three years, and many more are in the works. Users expect to plug in at their convenience, charge up, and drive away. But what if the grid can’t handle it? An MIT senior calculates how renewables and EVs impact the grid.
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Solar Geoengineering to Cool the Planet: Is It Worth the Risks?
There is no international, national or state framework that currently governs geoengineering. As a result, one worrisome future scenario is that climate impacts in a particularly vulnerable country will be so severe that it resorts to deploying stratospheric aerosol injection (SAI, also called solar radiation management or SRM) on its own before the world is ready for it. This could cause political instability or provoke retribution from other countries that suffer its effects.
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U.S.-China Trade War: Why Joe Biden Has Raised the Stakes
In a move to safeguard domestic industries and address unfair trade practices, the US president has quadrupled tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles and raised levies on other green tech.
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Addressing the Colorado River Crisis
Sustaining the American Southwest is the Colorado River. But demand, damming, diversion, and drought are draining this vital water resource at alarming rates. The future of water in the Southwest was top of mind for participants and attendees at the 10th Annual Eccles Family Rural West Conference.
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Making Batteries Takes Lots of Lithium: Almost Half of It Could Come from Pennsylvania Wastewater
Most batteries used in technology like smartwatches and electric cars are made with lithium that travels across the world before even getting to manufacturers. But what if nearly half of the lithium used in the U.S. could come from Pennsylvania wastewater?
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More headlines
The long view
Are We Ready for a ‘DeepSeek for Bioweapons’?
Anthropic’s Claude 4 is a warning sign: AI that can help build bioweapons is coming, and could be widely available soon. Steven Adler writes that we need to be prepared for the consequences: “like a freely downloadable ‘DeepSeek for bioweapons,’ available across the internet, loadable to the computer of any amateur scientist who wishes to cause mass harm. With Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4 having finally triggered this level of safety risk, the clock is now ticking.”
A Brief History of Federal Funding for Basic Science
Biomedical science in the United States is at a crossroads. For 75 years, the federal government has partnered with academic institutions, fueling discoveries that have transformed medicine and saved lives. Recent moves by the Trump administration — including funding cuts and proposed changes to how research support is allocated — now threaten this legacy.
Bookshelf: Preserving the U.S. Technological Republic
The United States since its founding has always been a technological republic, one whose place in the world has been made possible and advanced by its capacity for innovation. But our present advantage cannot be taken for granted.
Autonomous Weapon Systems: No Human-in-the-Loop Required, and Other Myths Dispelled
“The United States has a strong policy on autonomy in weapon systems that simultaneously enables their development and deployment and ensures they could be used in an effective manner, meaning the systems work as intended, with the same minimal risk of accidents or errors that all weapon systems have,” Michael Horowitz writes.
Ukraine Drone Strikes on Russian Airbase Reveal Any Country Is Vulnerable to the Same Kind of Attack
Air defense systems are built on the assumption that threats come from above and from beyond national borders. But Ukraine’s coordinated drone strike on 1 June on five airbases deep inside Russian territory exposed what happens when states are attacked from below and from within. In low-level airspace, visibility drops, responsibility fragments, and detection tools lose their edge. Drones arrive unannounced, response times lag, coordination breaks.
Shots to the Dome—Why We Can’t Model US Missile Defense on Israel’s “Iron Dome”
Starting an arms race where the costs are stacked against you at a time when debt-to-GDP is approaching an all-time high seems reckless. All in all, the idea behind Golden Dome is still quite undercooked.