Energy Archives - Phonesnews.com

November 30, 2025

What should countries do with their nuclear waste?

One of the highest-risk components of nuclear waste is iodine-129 (I-129), which stays radioactive for millions of years and accumulates in human thyroids when ingested. In the U.S., nuclear waste containing I-129 is scheduled to be disposed of in deep underground repositories, which scientists say will sufficiently isolate it.

Meanwhile, across the globe, France routinely releases low-level radioactive effluents containing iodine-129 and other radionuclides into the ocean. France recycles its spent nuclear fuel, and the reprocessing plant discharges about 153 kilograms of iodine-129 each year, under the French regulatory limit.

Is dilution a good solution? What’s the best way to handle spent nuclear fuel? A new study by MIT researchers and their collaborators at national laboratories quantifies I-129 release under three different scenarios: the U.S. approach of disposing spent fuel directly in deep underground repositories, the French approach of dilution and release, and an approach that uses filters to capture I-129 and disposes of them in shallow underground waste repositories.

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November 25, 2025

How artificial intelligence can help achieve a clean energy future

There is growing attention on the links between artificial intelligence and increased energy demands. But while the power-hungry data centers being built to support AI could potentially stress electricity grids, increase customer prices and service interruptions, and generally slow the transition to clean energy, the use of artificial intelligence can also help the energy transition.

For example, use of AI is reducing energy consumption and associated emissions in buildings, transportation, and industrial processes. In addition, AI is helping to optimize the design and siting of new wind and solar installations and energy storage facilities.

On electric power grids, using AI algorithms to control operations is helping to increase efficiency and reduce costs, integrate the growing share of renewables, and even predict when key equipment needs servicing to prevent failure and possible blackouts. AI can help grid planners schedule investments in generation, energy storage, and other infrastructure that will be needed in the future.

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November 23, 2025

Introducing the MIT-GE Vernova Climate and Energy Alliance

MIT and GE Vernova launched the MIT-GE Vernova Energy and Climate Alliance on Sept. 15, a collaboration to advance research and education focused on accelerating the global energy transition.

Through the alliance — an industry-academia initiative conceived by MIT Provost Anantha Chandrakasan and GE Vernova CEO Scott Strazik — GE Vernova has committed $50 million over five years in the form of sponsored research projects and philanthropic funding for research, graduate student fellowships, internships, and experiential learning, as well as professional development programs for GE Vernova leaders.

“MIT has a long history of impactful collaborations with industry, and the collaboration between MIT and GE Vernova is a shining example of that legacy,” said Chandrakasan in opening remarks at a launch event. “Together, we are working on energy and climate solutions through interdisciplinary research and diverse perspectives, while providing MIT students the benefit of real-world insights from an industry leader positioned to bring those ideas into the world at scale.”

The energy of change

An independent company since its spinoff from GE in April 2024,

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November 7, 2025

MIT Energy Initiative launches Data Center Power Forum

With global power demand from data centers expected to more than double by 2030, the MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI) in September launched an effort that brings together MIT researchers and industry experts to explore innovative solutions for powering the data-driven future. At its annual research conference, MITEI announced the Data Center Power Forum, a targeted research effort for MITEI member companies interested in addressing the challenges of data center power demand. The Data Center Power Forum builds on lessons from MITEI’s May 2025 symposium on the energy to power the expansion of artificial intelligence (AI) and focus panels related to data centers at the fall 2024 research conference.

In the United States, data centers consumed 4 percent of the country’s electricity in 2023, with demand expected to increase to 9 percent by 2030, according to the Electric Power Research Institute. Much of the growth in demand is from the increasing use of AI,

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October 31, 2025

Using classic physical phenomena to solve new problems

Quenching, a powerful heat transfer mechanism, is remarkably effective at transporting heat away. But in extreme environments, like nuclear power plants and aboard spaceships, a lot rides on the efficiency and speed of the process.

It’s why Marco Graffiedi, a fifth-year doctoral student at MIT’s Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering (NSE), is researching the phenomenon to help develop the next generation of spaceships and nuclear plants.

Growing up in small-town Italy

Graffiedi’s parents encouraged a sense of exploration, giving him responsibilities for family projects even at a young age. When they restored a countryside cabin in a small town near Palazzolo, in the hills between Florence and Bologna, the then-14-year-old Marco got a project of his own. He had to ensure the animals on the property had enough accessible water without overfilling the storage tank. Marco designed and built a passive hydraulic system that effectively solved the problem and is still functional today.

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October 24, 2025

The brain power behind sustainable AI

How can you use science to build a better gingerbread house?

That was something Miranda Schwacke spent a lot of time thinking about. The MIT graduate student in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering (DMSE) is part of Kitchen Matters, a group of grad students who use food and kitchen tools to explain scientific concepts through short videos and outreach events. Past topics included why chocolate “seizes,” or becomes difficult to work with when melting (spoiler: water gets in), and how to make isomalt, the sugar glass that stunt performers jump through in action movies.

Two years ago, when the group was making a video on how to build a structurally sound gingerbread house, Schwacke scoured cookbooks for a variable that would produce the most dramatic difference in the cookies.

“I was reading about what determines the texture of cookies,

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October 7, 2025

New prediction model could improve the reliability of fusion power plants

Tokamaks are machines that are meant to hold and harness the power of the sun. These fusion machines use powerful magnets to contain a plasma hotter than the sun’s core and push the plasma’s atoms to fuse and release energy. If tokamaks can operate safely and efficiently, the machines could one day provide clean and limitless fusion energy.

Today, there are a number of experimental tokamaks in operation around the world, with more underway. Most are small-scale research machines built to investigate how the devices can spin up plasma and harness its energy. One of the challenges that tokamaks face is how to safely and reliably turn off a plasma current that is circulating at speeds of up to 100 kilometers per second, at temperatures of over 100 million degrees Celsius.

Such “rampdowns” are necessary when a plasma becomes unstable. To prevent the plasma from further disrupting and potentially damaging the device’s interior,

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October 6, 2025

Palladium filters could enable cheaper, more efficient generation of hydrogen fuel

Palladium is one of the keys to jump-starting a hydrogen-based energy economy. The silvery metal is a natural gatekeeper against every gas except hydrogen, which it readily lets through. For its exceptional selectivity, palladium is considered one of the most effective materials at filtering gas mixtures to produce pure hydrogen.

Today, palladium-based membranes are used at commercial scale to provide pure hydrogen for semiconductor manufacturing, food processing, and fertilizer production, among other applications in which the membranes operate at modest temperatures. If palladium membranes get much hotter than around 800 kelvins, they can break down.

Now, MIT engineers have developed a new palladium membrane that remains resilient at much higher temperatures. Rather than being made as a continuous film, as most membranes are, the new design is made from palladium that is deposited as “plugs” into the pores of an underlying supporting material. At high temperatures,

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October 2, 2025

Concrete “battery” developed at MIT now packs 10 times the power

Concrete already builds our world, and now it’s one step closer to powering it, too. Made by combining cement, water, ultra-fine carbon black (with nanoscale particles), and electrolytes, electron-conducting carbon concrete (ec3, pronounced “e-c-cubed”) creates a conductive “nanonetwork” inside concrete that could enable everyday structures like walls, sidewalks, and bridges to store and release electrical energy. In other words, the concrete around us could one day double as giant “batteries.”

As MIT researchers report in a new PNAS paper, optimized electrolytes and manufacturing processes have increased the energy storage capacity of the latest ec3 supercapacitors by an order of magnitude. In 2023, storing enough energy to meet the daily needs of the average home would have required about 45 cubic meters of ec3, roughly the amount of concrete used in a typical basement. Now, with the improved electrolyte, that same task can be achieved with about 5 cubic meters,

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September 28, 2025

AI system learns from many types of scientific information and runs experiments to discover new materials

Machine-learning models can speed up the discovery of new materials by making predictions and suggesting experiments. But most models today only consider a few specific types of data or variables. Compare that with human scientists, who work in a collaborative environment and consider experimental results, the broader scientific literature, imaging and structural analysis, personal experience or intuition, and input from colleagues and peer reviewers.

Now, MIT researchers have developed a method for optimizing materials recipes and planning experiments that incorporates information from diverse sources like insights from the literature, chemical compositions, microstructural images, and more. The approach is part of a new platform, named Copilot for Real-world Experimental Scientists (CRESt), that also uses robotic equipment for high-throughput materials testing, the results of which are fed back into large multimodal models to further optimize materials recipes.

Human researchers can converse with the system in natural language, with no coding required,

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