extremely

New generation nuclear energy is still extremely expensive

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The future of fission energy is unquestionably linked to Modular and compact nuclear reactorsknown as SMR for its English denomination (Small Modular Reactor). They carry out more than two decades, and some of them are being designed according to The principles and requirements established for equipment Fourth Generation Nuclear Fission. In fact, they are being devised for the purpose of not being weighed down by the deficiencies introduced in the previous generations. One of the characteristics that, in theory, allows them to outdo conventional nuclear reactors is that their commissioning and maintenance costs have to be comparable to the expenses required by other energy sources. However, for the moment they are not. Csiro, the National Scientific Agency of Australia, has prepared a report in which it analyzes the cost of the energy sources currently used, and the renewables are the cheapest. This conclusion was predictable, but the surprising thing is that next -generation nuclear reactors are the most expensive energy generation technology. To reach this conclusion CSIRO has analyzed the costs of the Darlington (Canada) SMR Nuclear Nuclear Plan SMR plan, which in principle will ascend to 23.200 million dollars. China and Russia already have SMR reactors In operation, but Darlington’s will be the first built in a western country. The shocking thing is that, According to Csirothis project will be much more expensive than any other option, including a conventional nuclear power plant. Cheaper energy generation technologies are photovoltaic and wind solar. Secondly, the gas resides, and then the nuclear on a large scale, the coal, and, finally, the SMR reactors. Despite all SMR reactors are the future of nuclear energy Before moving forward it is important that we keep in mind that the costs derived from the Darlington nuclear project will probably be reduced in other posterior SMR reactor facilities. This plan is a pioneer in the West, and, therefore, everything is new and presumably expensive. Even so, for the moment it is not clear if this technology will really equate its costs with those of other generation sources. It is currently difficult to anticipate that in the future an SMR reactor plant will have costs similar to those of a photovoltaic or wind solar installation. 4th generation designs can be very different from those of previous generations In any case, the SMR reactors that respect the established principles for fourth -generation nuclear fission equipment have other advantages that are worth not overlooked. On the one hand they have to reach the maximum possible sustainabilityso that the fuel is maximized to produce energy, the amount of radioactive waste resulting from the process is minimized and its management is as efficient as possible. In addition, modular and compact reactors can be installed in locations where it would be unfeasible to build a conventional nuclear power plant, such as, for example, On a floating platform. And finally, something also very important: their safety and reliability must be high enough to minimize the probability that the reactor core suffers damage. In addition, if an accident occurs, it should not be necessary to take emergency measures beyond the facilities of the nuclear power plant. Image | Nuclear forum More information | Indaily In Xataka | European historical milestone in nuclear fusion: the JET reactor has broken a crucial record on the road to commercial fusion energy

Drought is a real threat after an extremely warm, and also dry June

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The month of June has been the warmest since we have records, as confirmed by the State Meteorology Agency (Aemet). Perhaps more striking is the fact that, despite successive storms interspersed among the warm episodes, the first summer month of 2025 has been drier than average. Warm and dry. Aemet has published Your meteorological summary of the month of June. In this confirm something that we already sensed: last month it was extremely warm, with an average thermal anomaly of 3.6º Celsius above what would be common at this time. It has also been drier than usual, with 68% of the rainfall that would be expected from the sixth month of the year. 23.7º. According to the published summary, the average temperature during the month of June was 23.7º in the Peninsula, which implies the aforementioned anomaly. June 2025 has become the hottest in the historical series for a wide difference: 0.9º above the previous record, marked in 2017. The Balearic Islands also saw a month “extremely warm”, with an average 3.1º above the average. The Canary Islands however remained in a somewhat less extreme record: with an anomaly of 0.7º, its June was listed as “very warm.” Returning to the Peninsula, in some areas of the northeast thermal anomaly in this month exceeds 4.5º. Lack of water. The Meteorological Summary Results With regard to heat they are expected, but there is another important detail and is referring to rainfall. Last month it was also drier than usual in peninsular Spain, with average rainfall of 21.7 mm, more than 30% below the average June. This can be striking if we take into account the various stormy episodes seen throughout the month. These storms were interspersed, serving as relief among the successive warm episodes that occurred during the month. Balearic Islands, with hardly any water. But the most extreme case was not that of peninsular Spain but the one lived in the Balearic Islands. In the Mediterranean archipelago, rainfall fell about 99% compared to the average. During the past month the archipelago received only 0.1 mm of rain. Without reaching such an extreme, the Canary Islands also experienced a dry month: 0.7 mm, 27% of what would be conventional in June. In the peninsula some isolated areas saw rainfall higher than average, especially in the northern plateau and in the Ebro valley. Change in the trend? Between the past fall and the last spring, the high rainfall managed to get a good part of the country out of the drought situation in which it was. Swamps and reservoirs before under minimums saw their volume of water significantly grow. Great news that was welcomed with a certain degree of skepticism after more than a year of drought. June is not the first month dry than usual we see in the last year, but the less a reminder that the hydrological bonanza era will not be eternal and that we must prepare for when the drought prevails again. In Xataka | “Clouds of fire”, the phenomenon that makes escape from sixth generation fires can make it impossible Image | Aemet

Ozempic and blindness, we have been on the track of an extremely rare adverse effect for months. Now the AEMPS has taken a step forward

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A few days ago the The United Kingdom warned on an unexpected effect associated with the use of Ozempic and treatments based on the same principle, the phenomenon of Ozempic Babies. Now the Spanish Agency for Medicines and Health Products (AEMPS) has also issued a statement but this time as a consequence of a very different effect. Adverse reaction. This week the AEMPS, the agency in charge of ensuring that the drugs meet the required standards, has issued A statement To warn of a very uncommon ocular adverse reaction “associated with treatments based on the semaglutida, the active compound of drugs such as Ozempic, Rybelsus or Wegovy. The notice occurs after the Committee for the Risk Assessment in Pharmacovigilance (PRAC) of the European Medication Agency (EMA) reviewed the risk of developing an ocular condition called Niana, which can cause loss of sudden vision. While the agency affects that the frequency of appearance of this type of eye problems is “very low”, it recommends that a sudden loss of vision is carried out an ophthanmological examination for Evaluate the possibility to interrupt the treatment. Noiana. Noiana is an acronym that refers to calls Previous ischemic optical neuropathiesNaion in English. These ailments are caused For the infarction of the optic nerve head. In other words, blood does not reach this eye region and a loss of vision occurs, which is typically fast but painless. It is an unknown and infrequent disease, not only in the context of those who follow a trailer treatment: its prevalence in the general population is approximately 10 cases per 100,000 inhabitants. A year on track. A year agoa study I found indications of the relationship between the treatments of Semaglutida and Niana. Indications such as those that gave rise to the evaluation by the Pract. The Committee reviewed clinical and preclinical essay data together with suspicion of adverse reactions, explains the AEMPS. This work resulted in the conclusion that trailer treatment can be associated with a risk of developing this disorder but indicate that with a very low frequency. The AEMPS speaks of “an increase in the risk of developing Niana of approximately double compared to people not exposed to this treatment. This corresponds to an additional case of NOIANA for every 10,000 patients treated with semagglutida for a year.” And what about the “other ozempic”? The AEMPS statement focuses on the drug -based drugs such as Ozempic, Rybelsus and Wegovy but does not indicate whether similar effects have been detected on similar treatments such as those based on the tirzepatida, such as Zepbound and Mounjaro. A medication with side effects. Like any drug, the semaglutida has a series of Contraindications and side effects. It should be remembered in this sense that the success of drugs such as Ozempic began when it was observed that this treatment against diabetes made those who followed it lost weight. In Xataka | “Ozempic face”, “Ozempic language” and “Ozempic teeth”: the other very visible effect of consuming the medicine to lose weight Image | Chemist4u / Amanda Dalbjörn

Huawei plans to advise Nvidia in China. It has a new GPU for theory that in theory is extremely powerful

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Huawei is putting all the meat on the grill to absorb so much share in the Chinese GPU market for artificial intelligence (AI) as I can. And it is that the entry into force of the last US sanctions package is compromising with all probability Nvidia leadership in China. The US Department of Commerce It has imposed restrictions to the export to the country led by Xi Jinping of The H20 GPUand this in practice means that this chip presumably will not reach the Chinese clients of Nvidia. This last company has announced that this ban will cause a hole in its accounts of 5,500 million dollars Due to the commitments linked to the H20 GPU that had already acquired the reserves of this chip that it will not finally satisfy. Some of the Chinese companies that have bought large amounts from the H20 chip to NVIDIA and who presumably planned to continue doing them are Tencent, Alibaba or Bytedance, but at the current situation they will have to resort to an alternative. And Huawei has put it on a tray. The GPU Ascend 910D aspires to snatch the leadership in performance from Nvidia Huawei reacted immediately to US sanctions. And is that just a few hours after the entry into force of the new regulation of the Department of Commerce He presented his chip for the ascend 920a solution that is clearly destined to occupy in the Chinese market the gaps that the NVIDIA H20 GPU is going to leave. This proposal will enter large -scale production during the second half of 2025 using 6 NM integration technology that have presumably developed elbow with Huawei elbow and SMIC. Until now Huawei wanted to get his hardware to dominate the inference processes in AI However, this is not the only asset that Huawei has to increase its market share both in China and beyond its country of origin. And is that, According to Reutersthis company is preparing to start the testing and validation phase of a new GPU for AI: The Ascend 910D chip. Unlike the GPU Ascend 920 that, as we have seen, presumably aspires to compete with the NVIDIA H20 chip, the GPU Ascend 910D seeks to overcome the performance of the chip NVIDIA H100. If this movement is confirmed, already priori this information is reliable, it will be evident that Huawei will have chosen to fight in all hardware market segments for the nvidia. Until now this Chinese company wanted to get its hardware dominate the inference processes in AIand not the training of the models, as Georgios Zacharopoulos, a senior researcher of AI who works on the acceleration of inference in the Huawei laboratory in Zurich (Switzerland) points out in this statement. “The training is important, but it only happens a few times. Huawei focuses mainly on inference, which will ultimately give us access to more customers,” says Zacharopoulos. Inference is broadly the computational process carried out by language models with the purpose of Generate the answers which correspond to the requests they receive. In any case, the information we have reflects that the GPU Ascend 910D will allow Huawei to compete with the chips for the most advanced NVIDIA both in inference and in training. Image | Huawei More information | Reuters In Xataka | In a low voice, China has begun to remove some tariffs from US products. Your concern: the chips

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