• How Disasters Can Spur Resilience in the Gulf

    Communities in the Gulf of Mexico are all too familiar with the whims of nature and power of the sea. This year’s hurricane season brought power outages, heavy rain, downed trees, property damage, and death and injury. As disasters cascade and compound, progress toward resiliency is made by people working together and using science to decide next steps. 

  • Making Our Infrastructure Safer

    Saurabh Amin, a systems engineer at MIT, focuses on making transportation, electricity, and water infrastructure more resilient against disruptions. “There are a lot of commonalities among these networks — they are built and operated by human actors, but their functionality is governed by physical laws. So, that is what drives me forward,” Amin says.

  • Novel Chemical Process a First Step to Making Nuclear Fuel with Fire

    Uranium dioxide, a radioactive actinide oxide, is the most widely used nuclear fuel in today’s nuclear power plants. A new “combustion synthesis” process recently established for lanthanide metals—non-radioactive and positioned one row above actinides on the periodic table—could be a guide for the production of safe, sustainable nuclear fuels.

  • Improving Water Security for People in Africa and Asia by 2024

    New funding from the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) will support global research and practice to improve water security for 10 million people in Africa and Asia. The FCDO’s grant to the University of Oxford will now extend to 2024 and increase to £22.5 million, to support the REACH program improve water security by delivering world-class science to transform policy and practice.

  • Guidance Will Improve Critical Infrastructure Resilience

    It is easy to understand the importance of our “critical infrastructure,” such as telecommunications, energy, transportation, and emergency services, but what’s often overlooked are the underlying technologies that enable them. DHS S&T is doing something about it.

  • Students of Nuclear Security Have a Problem. Here’s How to Help Them.

    Radioactive materials are attractive targets to thieves and other bad actors. These are rare finds, valuable on the black market and relatively easy to weaponize. New security professionals rarely learn practical skills for protecting these targets until they are on the job at nuclear power plants, research reactors, processing plants and other nuclear facilities.

  • Oil Feld Operations Likely Triggered Earthquakes in California Near San Andreas Fault

    The way companies drill for oil and gas and dispose of wastewater can trigger earthquakes, at times in unexpected places. California was thought to be an exception, a place where oil field operations and tectonic faults apparently coexisted without much problem. Now, new research shows that the state’s natural earthquake activity may be hiding industry-induced quakes.

  • Study Identifies Reasons for Soaring Nuclear Plant Cost Overruns in the U.S.

    Analysis points to ways engineering strategies could be reimagined to minimize delays and other unanticipated expenses. Many analysts believe nuclear power will play an essential part in reducing global emissions of greenhouse gases, and finding ways to curb these rising costs could be an important step toward encouraging the construction of new plants.

  • Putting Nuclear Reactors in Space

    A new agreement hopes to speed along a nuclear reactor technology that could be used to fuel deep-space exploration and possibly power human habitats on the Moon or Mars.

  • Smart Concrete Could Pave the Way for High-Tech, Cost-Effective Roads

    Of the 614,387 bridges in the U.S., for example, 39% are older than their designed lifetimes, while nearly 10% are structurally deficient, meaning they could begin to break down faster or, worse, be vulnerable to catastrophic failure. The cost to repair and improve nationwide transportation infrastructure ranges from nearly US$190 billion to almost $1 trillion. Repairing U.S. infrastructure costs individual households, on average, about $3,400 every year. Traffic congestion alone is estimated to cost the average driver $1,400 in fuel and time spent commuting, a nationwide tally of more than $160 billion per year.

  • Policy, Not Tech, Spurred Danish Dominance in Wind Energy

    In emerging renewable energy industries, are producers’ decisions to shut down or upgrade aging equipment influenced more by technology improvements or government policies? It’s an important long-term question for policymakers seeking to increase renewable electricity production, cost-effectiveness and efficiency with limited budgets. Anew study focused on Denmark, a global leader in wind energy found that government policies have been the primary driver of that industry’s growth and development.

  • Building European Cities with Wood Would Sequester, Store Half of Cement industry’s Carbon Emissions

    Buildings around us create a whopping one-third of global greenhouse gas emissions – that’s about ten times more than air traffic worldwide. In Europe alone about 190 million square meters of housing space are built each year, mainly in the cities, and the amount is growing quickly at the rate of nearly one percent a year. Slowly increasing the use of wood in European construction could increase the carbon storage of buildings by 420 million CO2 tons over the next 20 years.

  • New Cyber Technologies Protect Utility Energy Delivery Systems

    Researchers are taking new approaches to solve cybersecurity vulnerabilities for utilities and other industries that use process control technologies. These connected devices are used in operational technology settings and tend to be more vulnerable to cyberattacks than information technology equipment. The software identifies and mitigates vulnerabilities in operational technologies.

  • Bridges with Limb-Inspired Architecture Can Withstand Earthquakes, Cut Repair Costs

    Structural damage to any of the nation’s ailing bridges can come with a hefty price of billions of dollars in repairs. New bridge designs promise more damage-resistant structures and, consequently, lower restoration costs. But if these designs haven’t been implemented in the real world, predicting how they can be damaged and what repair strategies should be implemented remain unresolved.

  • Extending Concrete Structure's Lifespan with Carbon Textile

    Researchers have developed an effective structural strengthening method using a noncombustible carbon textile grid and cement mortar, which can double the load-bearing capacities of structurally deficient concrete structures and increase their usable lifespan threefold.