manufactured

Bugatti has manufactured its latest W16

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four years ago, Bugatti announced the end of its most iconic engine. The mythical and beastly W16 was coming to an end. He did it with a last dance to match. During the last four years, the company has released 99 units of the Bugatti Mistral. Now, the last unit has left its factory. The last Bugatti Mistral. The last Bugatti Mistral has left the doors of the company’s artisanal factory in Molsheim (France). A Blanc Éternel unit, inspired by the porcelain from Königliche Porzellan-Manufaktur in Berlin. The supercar, as pointed out in Autonomyadds numerous details in honor of Ettore Bugatti, founder of the company, but has the customization expected in a car of this type. They explain in the middle that, for example, the classic elephant head on the gear shift knob has been replaced by a falcon head that represents the Middle East, where this last unit has ended up. The last of its kind. “The last of his kind.” So reads the tribute plaque found inside and on the spoiler of this latest Bugatti Mistral. This refers, of course, to the last dance of the W16 engine that dies with this supercar. The Bugatti Mistral will go down in history for being the last model to mount an unparalleled engine but also because its production has been limited to 99 units. (sold in one day) that They have been customized from scratch by each owner. Thus, each unit can increase its value, costing some of them more than five million euros. The supercar is the latest evolution of a series that began with the Veyron, which has continued with the Chiron and which has the last of its kind in the Mistral. A beast that has 1,600 HP and 1,600 nm of torque under its body. And a top speed that exceeds 400 km/h. The W16. With the latest Mistral the W16 is also lost. This engine is considered one of the jewels of automotive engineering. Its configuration comes from “gluing together” two V18 engines. The result is the 16 cylinders that they mount. A figure to which we must add its 8.0 liters of displacement and four turbos with which first appeared on the Veyron just over 20 years ago. Then the engine delivered 1,001 HP of power but this has skyrocketed to the 1,600 HP found in the brand’s latest supercars. The W16 is made up of 3,712 parts that add up to 400 kg. To achieve this reduced weight in such a monstrous engine, Bugatti produces its engines with large amounts of carbon and titanium, as light as they are resistant to high temperatures. The idea of ​​developing this engine came from Ferdinand Piëch, engineer and grandson of Ferdinand Porsche, who resurrected Bugatti with the clear idea that it should represent the best and most exclusive in the world of motors. And, furthermore, he used the company to take cold revenge born in Le Mans in the late 80s. And now? Now, the future for the company lies in the hybrid. When the company presented the Bugatti Tourbillon, it did so by anticipating what would come in the future: plug-in hybridization. And the supercar, limited to 250 units and starting from four million eurosis a 1,800 HP plug-in hybrid with which, who knows, if one day they will be able to break the barrier of 500 km/h top speed. Yes, Bugatti’s proposal is to electrify the car to continue increasing the power of its machines. But it does it with a naturally aspirated V16 engine that no one else has. To this it adds three electric motors that also drive the wheels. The customer-facing concept is very similar to the W16: yes, it’s hybrid, but no one else has it. And, as our colleagues from MotorpassionMate Rimac, CEO of Bugatti, is clear: “if it is affordable, it would not be a Bugatti.” An uncertain future. It remains to be seen now what will become of Bugatti. A few months ago, the company was completely separated from the Volkswagen Groupwhich owned part of the property through shares in the name of Porsche. Mate Rimac has finally managed to completely control the company. Bugatti was one of the crown jewels of the group but it was also a whim. With the less personalized units, Volkswagen was losing more than four million euros. Now he is Mate Rimac, creator of the electric supercar company that bears his name, who is at the forefront of this new era of the company. Rimac was, in fact, the first to show a Tourbillon outside the factory. And he did it on a huge carpet of snow. It remains to be seen how Rimac manages to make profitable the investments and development that must be done for a car that is manufactured by hand and that, at least for the moment, will not jump to the electric car. The why, Mate Rimac himself can tell you. Photo | Bugatti In Xataka | Bugatti is taking its custom packages to extreme places: 230,000 euros for eight exhaust pipes

The first sub-1nm chip is here. It was manufactured by IBM and it is spectacular

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It has been a long time since we witnessed a milestone like this. Innovations in the field of semiconductor manufacturing they happen constantlybut what IBM has just announced is a monumental achievement: it has managed to produce the world’s first chip with subnanometer technology. This simply means that it has been manufactured on a 0.7 nm (or 7 angstroms) node, which has allowed this company’s engineers to pack almost 100 billion transistors into a surface the size of a fingernail. Crossing the nanometer barrier is not just a matter of numbers. For decades, the integrated circuit industry has evolved under the logic of Moore’s Law. The problem is that this principle has been losing force as transistors approach the dimensions of the atoms themselves. Quantum physics is relentless: each further reduction is an almost unsolvable problem. Reaching 0.7 nm means that IBM has found a way out of that alley. And it has done so not by further miniaturizing transistors according to conventional designs, but by completely reinventing how they are built. This new chip offers up to 50% more performance. Or 70% more energy efficiency if we compare it with 2nm integrated circuits from IBM itself. These two metrics represent the extremes of a spectrum that designers can adjust depending on the application these semiconductors are intended for. For workloads of artificial intelligence (generative AI), cloud infrastructure or next-generation devices, this flexibility is not a minor detail: it is exactly what differentiates a viable chip from a disruptive one. Stack to scale The most important innovation of IBM’s 0.7nm integrated circuit is the technology nanostackwhich we can translate into Spanish as ‘nanostacking’. This is the industry’s first three-dimensional architecture based on stacked nanosheets, and has been developed entirely by IBM. To understand what it means, we are interested in remembering that the previous generation of frontier technology, nanosheets, represented a very important conceptual leap compared to FinFET transistors: instead of a transistor with a vertical fin, nanosheets have several horizontal sheets of silicon stacked and wrapped around the control gate, which improves electrical performance in a smaller space. Nanostack goes one step further: it stacks and staggers entire transistors in three dimensions, thus taking advantage of 3D sequential integration to insert more logic in less surface. What differentiates this architecture from a mere exercise in miniaturization is that each stacked layer can incorporate combinations of different materials, allowing the performance and energy efficiency of each transistor to be optimized independently. Not all transistors on a chip need to behave the same. Some prioritize speed, and others prioritize energy savings Or put another way: not all transistors on a chip need to behave the same. Some prioritize speed, and others prioritize energy savings. Nanostack makes it possible to fine-tune that balance layer by layer, something that planar architectures (or even conventional nanosheets) do not allow with the same granularity. IBM also presented results at the VLSI 2026 conference that demonstrate a 40% improvement in SRAM scaling thanks to this architecture, enabling the manufacturing of semiconductors capable of handling the bandwidth demands of the most demanding AI workloads. Experimental validation of the architecture nanostack It is based on three essential pillars: the ultra-thin dielectric link in CMOS integration, the demonstration of dual-channel engineering capability and the functional operation of a CMOS inverter with expected switching performance. This last point is especially important: a functional CMOS inverter is, in practice, the most basic logic unit of any digital circuit. That nanostack Running it with the expected metrics confirms that this architecture is not just a promising lab result; It is a technology that can be physically built and translated into real computing. IBM and its partners (Lam Research, Tokyo Electron and SCREEN Semiconductor Solutions) have long been working on manufacturing tools and processes with High NA extreme ultraviolet lithography of ASML at its facilities in Albany (New York). Anderon is a quantum chip manufacturing company independent of IBM However, traveling the path that separates the laboratory from the factories requires a lot of time. IBM estimates a production horizon of between three and five years for the first commercial adoption of the technology nanostack in the sub-nanometer node, with a schedule that projects at least a decade of additional scaling. On the other hand, this company has just announced Anderon, a quantum chip manufacturing company independent of IBM that will combine its experience in quantum computing and semiconductors to manufacture quantum wafers on an industrial scale. Be that as it may, with the 7 angstrom node IBM not only demonstrates that the era of subnanometer scaling is physically possible: It also claims its role as a reference laboratory in an industry that has been searching for a way out of the limits of silicon for years. Image | IBM In Xataka | An unexpected salvation for the end user emerges from the memory market debacle: Chinese chips In Xataka | China needs to develop a new type of chips immune to US sanctions. And your scientists have just achieved it

China manufactured more solar panels in one year than the planet can absorb. Now the market is devouring itself

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In early 2026, the closure of the Strait of Hormuz shook energy markets. Consumers, frightened by the volatility of fossil fuels, looked in all directions for alternatives. What they found was a disconcerting paradox: the planet had—has—a historic surplus of clean, cheap energy. There was no shortage of solar panels. There were plenty of them. And no one really knew what to do with them. Economist Adam Tooze summed it up bluntly in his column Financial Times: “Clean energy, on a scale that would have seemed utopian at the time of the Paris Agreement in 2015, is now within our reach. The price of solar panels has plummeted. And yet factories are paralyzed.” It’s not rhetoric. It’s a diagnosis. After a huge increase in investment since 2020, Chinese companies reached a production capacity of 1,000 gigawatts of solar panels per year. To get an idea: in 2023 global demand was only 451 GW, according to Energy News. Chinese production of solar cells that year—588 GW—already doubled international demand. And they continued building. The result was what economists call “involution”: a spiral of destructive competition where companies destroy each other with none winning. More than 40 Chinese manufacturers have gone bankrupt, been acquired or delisted. A third of the staff of the surviving big five were laid off. JinkoSolar, the world’s largest supplier, registered in 2025 a drop in revenue of 29%, a drop in gross profit of 86% and net losses of 4.45 billion yuan. In this way, in June of last year, more than 30 manufacturers They agreed to an OPEC-style pact to stabilize prices and curb supply. Six months later, the result was a disaster: far from stabilizing, production reached historic highs, installations tripled and losses continued to accumulate. “Since when are solar panels just another commodity? They are a technological miracle. They make us cultivators of the sun,” details Adam Tooze in his column. And in all that time, the price of a solar module fell to $0.10 per watt, according to EnkiAI —well below the $0.16/W production cost of the most advanced TOPCon modules. It is, strictly speaking, the largest climate technology sell-off in history. This is not a steel crisis. It’s something else When economists talk about Chinese overproduction, the debate usually revolves around steel, cement or electric cars. But Tooze makes a distinction worth hearing: Solar panels are no ordinary commodity. They are the result of half a century of research—from NASA spinoff programs in the 1970s to the big energy push of the Carter era—and, along with batteries, they are the master key to a sustainable future. Wasting that surplus is not just an economic problem. It is a civilizational irrationality. According to the OECD, China invested less than $18 billion in sector support over 15 years to build an industry capable of providing more clean energy than the world can easily absorb. That figure is less than the cost of building a medium-sized international airport in Europe, or what the US spent on a single Gerald Ford-class aircraft carrier. The concentration of power in the supply chain is also unprecedented in the history of energy. China controls more than 80% of the entire global solar production chaindirect result of the plan Made in China 2025 with which Beijing decided to stop being the world’s cheap factory and become its technological supplier. By the end of 2025, its operational module capacity exceeded 900 GW, several times the total global demand. The five largest Chinese manufacturers concentrate more than 50% of the market. LONGi Green Energy alone shipped more than 45 GW in 2025 – more than the entire US domestic manufacturing capacity (73 GW). Never in the history of energy has a single nation so completely dominated a key technology for the decarbonization of the planet. Not even oil at its peak. And the climate paradox is painful: since the Paris Agreement of 2015, a scale of deployment like the current one would have seemed like science fiction. The goal was to stop global warming. The instruments to do so are manufactured and stacked in warehouses. What fails, Tooze points out, is coordination: what Keynes would call a global “chaos,” a catastrophe of collective planning. The global bet Chaos has its own correction mechanisms, even if they are painful. In China, the crisis has already forced the Government to act a few months ago, Beijing called for ‘concerted efforts’ to end price war. The proposed measures include capacity control, minimum guideline prices, mergers and acquisitions, and intellectual property protection “to promote the high-quality development of the photovoltaic industry.” In practice: the Chinese State orchestrating an orderly rescue of the sector that it itself encouraged to grow without limits. The consolidation had already started before. In August of last year, several players in the sector launched a plan for large manufacturers to jointly invest $7 billion in buying and closing the least efficient facilities, according to OilPrice.com. In practice, a cartel to stop the bleeding. Prices already reflect the shift. According to ABC SolutionsChinese modules have risen between 10% and 20% in 2026 due to the adjustment of overproduction and new logistics tariffs. Wood Mackenzie forecasts a further rise of 9%. The window for the big bargain is closing, although prices remain historically low. The critical variable for 2027 is how the surplus is resolved: through orderly consolidation or through new business disruptions. Meanwhile, Chinese foreign business continues to boom. As Tooze points out in the FTexports of Chinese solar technology to virtually every country except the United States are skyrocketing. And manufacturers have evolved: they now integrate batteries into systems to offer greater stability to the grid, pushing the product towards the complete solution instead of the isolated module. Storage batteries, which They have also reached historical lows in cost Pushed by the same dynamic of overproduction, they thus complete the package: panel plus storage, at a knockdown price. Domestic demand will also recover. China exceeded 1,230 GW of installed solar capacity … Read more

the new NASA material that would allow resources to be manufactured directly there

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To the Moon, and to space in general, you have to travel light. Every extra kilogram represents a huge cost of fuel. Therefore, the ideal is to obtain as many resources as possible directly at the destination. moon dustknown as regolith, can be a good source of metals for construction and oxygen for fuel and life support. However, to obtain all these materials the rock would have to be melted. The result is something similar to lava, which corrodes much of what is in its path. The process cannot be carried out inside any container or oven; but, luckily, a team of NASA scientists has found the ideal material for encapsulate the molten rock. 6 months of testing. The discoverers of this new material They spent 6 months investigating candidate substances to obtain a material that resists the corrosion of molten lunar dust. After that time, they found something interesting. By mixing scandium oxide with moon dust and heating the mixture red hot, a new material was obtained. They compared it to a list of more than a million materials analyzed by X-rays and the composition did not match any of them. It was totally new and, as they saw later, its properties were ideal. Property analysis. Since they were dealing with a new substance, these scientists decided to analyze its chemical properties from scratch. Thus, you can see not only its advantages, but ways to optimize them even further. Once this analysis was completed, they proceeded to make a mixture of eight basic oxide components, including scandium, with lunar regolith. The reaction was started by subjecting the mixture to 1,593ºC. The initial mixture is a pink powder that changes to beige when the reaction is complete, so it is very intuitive. All advantages. The material obtained by heating the regolith and oxides is ideal for manufacturing the containers in which the extraction of metals and oxygen from the lunar rock is carried out. It has been proven to have great resistance to corrosion, but at the same time great thermal stability. Therefore, that type of lava would not cause damage. On the other hand, it is true that scandium is expensive, but not as expensive as platinum that is normally used for this type of purpose. It would be ideal in future lunar colonizations. Other applications. This type of materials can also have applications in aerospace engineering. For example, it can be used to make coatings for jet engines, as it is also a lighter, less dense and better insulating material than the coatings normally used. These engines reach very high temperatures, so it is important to coat them to prevent them from overheating or burning other parts of the aircraft. SpaceX, for example, has used shielding in each of the Starship engines in previous versions. In version 3 the external piping system has been optimized and a thermal protection system has been inserted into the motors themselves. Be that as it may, it is clear that these types of coatings are essential. Having a material with so many advantages would also be very useful in this area. Image | POT In Xataka | Elon Musk says it will take 1,000 Starships and 20 years to build the first sustainable city on Mars

the IMEC chip laboratory has manufactured the first qubit with ASML’s High-NA machine

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Manufacture a qubit, the physical device that implements the minimum unit of information in the quantum computersit is not at all a piece of cake. There are several types: superconductors, ion traps, neutral atoms or ions implanted in macromolecules, among other variants. Not all of them are equally complexbut all are difficult to produce and manipulate. In fact, the ideal is to be able to manufacture them on a large scale in order to make possible the arrival of quantum machines equipped with many more qubits than the current ones. The first step in this direction was taken by Intel and QuTech, the research institute specialized in quantum computing that belongs to the Technical University of Delft, in the Netherlands. At the end of March 2024 they announced that they had managed to produce the first qubit industrially and using the same processes and technology that is currently used for manufacture semiconductors. However, it is now IMEC (Interuniversity Microelectronics Center), the most experienced laboratory in the development of new integration and nanotechnology technologies that we have in Europe, which has signed a very important milestone: has managed to manufacture a qubit using extreme ultraviolet (UVE) and high aperture (High-NA) photolithography equipment from ASML. Currently this is integrated circuit manufacturing machine most advanced that exists. Caressing the dream of industrial manufacturing of qubits for quantum machines IMEC’s ​​main laboratory resides in Leuven, Belgium and has collaborated closely with ASML for more than four decades. Thanks to this collaboration you have access to the most advanced lithography equipment of the Netherlands company. The qubit produced using ASML’s High-NA equipment is a silicon quantum dot spin type. These qubits are very interesting because they are considered the most promising candidates for industrial scaling. In fact, as IMEC assuresthey are known as “the qubits of industry.” IMEC has shown that the manufacturing of these qubits is largely compatible with the production of CMOS chips The really relevant news is that IMEC has demonstrated that the manufacturing of these qubits is largely compatible with the production of integrated circuits using CMOS technology (Complementary Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor or complementary metal oxide semiconductor). And therefore it is possible manufacture them in conventional semiconductor plants. An important note: CMOS is the transistor manufacturing technology behind virtually all modern chips. Sofie Beyne, the director of this project at IMEC, maintains that “We can leverage decades of semiconductor innovation and repurpose the entire silicon scale-up ecosystem, taking quantum devices beyond laboratory experiments into large-scale, fabricatable systems. This is where silicon-based qubits have a clear advantage.” Experts who research in the field of quantum computing they are convinced that having machines with millions of qubits will lead to the arrival of error correction technology, which is the holy grail of these computers. Broadly speaking, silicon quantum dot spin qubits confine an electron within a silicon nanostructure, so that the spin state of the trapped electron is used to store quantum information. This architecture requires that the spaces between the different doors be minimal in order to reduce environmental noise and minimize errors. Be that as it may, what is really important is that IMEC has managed to manufacture a network of qubits with spaces of just 6 nm. Thanks to the nanoscale of this component, millions of qubits could theoretically be integrated into a single chip. Image | IMEC More information | IMEC In Xataka | China has reached one of the holy grails of quantum physics. So says Peter Zoller, father of quantum computers

It is manufactured in Extremadura combining hydrogen and CO2

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Green hydrogen is no longer a distant promise for the future in Spain. The European Commission has selected the Extremadura T2X project within the third auction of the European Hydrogen Bank, awarding community support to this strategic initiative. In short. This proposal is the first in Europe that manages to pour green gas directly into the distribution network. This historic achievement places Extremadura as an undisputed benchmark in the European energy transition race. The project is promoted by the German promoter Turn2X, which had already inaugurated its first global plant in the Cáceres municipality of Miajadas in 2024. In depth. To achieve this milestone, the Miajadas plant uses a disruptive technology known as Power to Gas (P2G). As detailed pv magazinethe process consists of combining 100% renewable hydrogen with biogenic carbon dioxide, which in this specific case comes from a nearby bioethanol plant. Through the well-known Sabatier reaction, high purity synthetic methane gas is obtained. This renewable natural gas (RNG) is transported to industrial customers via existing pipeline infrastructure. The gas has already been tested successfully injecting fluidly into the Gas Extremadura distribution network. The industrial objective of this advance is clear: decarbonize sectors where electrification is very complex, such as steel plants, the ceramics industry or the maritime sector. Technical level. The T2X project —managed by TURN2X Asset Co II EXTREMADURA SL— will deploy an electrolysis capacity of 9 megawatts. According to local mediathe forecast is to produce around 6,390 tons of renewable hydrogen throughout its first ten years of activity. Once the subsidy agreements are signed, something that is expected to occur in the last quarter of 2026, the initiative will receive a fixed European premium of 0.62 euros for each kilogram of certified hydrogen produced for a decade. From that moment on, companies have a maximum period of five years to put the facility into commercial operation. Additionally, to ensure source power is truly clean, Turn2X has sealed an innovative agreement power purchase agreement (PPA) with Axpo Iberia, the entity that will supply renewable electricity generated by Aquila Clean Energy. The weight of Extremadura. The choice of the Extremaduran community is not the result of chance, but rather responds directly to the numerous hours of sunshine that the territory offers. Added to this, according to the statements of the regional Executive collected by theEconomistthe strategic location of the region right on the route of the future European hydroduct, which will cross it from north to south. Due to this initial success, the Turn2X project, which is already in the production phase, has proposed an industrial expansion that is currently in the public information phase. The German company has even initiated environmental procedures before the Board to build a second facility in the town of Miajadas. This ecosystem is rapidly being strengthened with the talent of pioneering local companies; Recently, the Minister of Economy visited Eficae, a firm in the region with ten years of experience and 22 professionals, which has already managed to mobilize more than 2,000 million euros in energy investment. Finally, there is good news at the national level: those projects that have passed the technical requirements but remain in the reserve of the European fund will be eligible for aid, since Spain will contribute an additional 440 million euros under the ‘Auctions as a service’ mechanism. A real starting point for Europe. The agreement signed by Turn2X demonstrates with tangible facts that green hydrogen It is no longer a simple promise to become an industrial reality with proven economic viability. This emerging industrial fabric is a fundamental magnet to attract investments that generate wealth and high-quality employment in the region. Today, Spain and, in a very particular way, Extremadura, are no longer just a promising testing laboratory; have been consolidated as the real starting point for Europe to move firmly towards true and sustainable energy independence. Image | Turn2X Xataka | In Extremadura they have managed to produce 100% renewable natural gas: they only needed sun and plant waste

The United States had not manufactured its most critical uranium for 20 years. He has just resurrected his production with an old metallurgy trick

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In the hills of Oak Ridge, Tennessee, lies a place that carries the weight of contemporary history in its foundation: the Y-12 National Security Complex. According to the files of the US Department of Energy (DOE)these facilities were born in 1943 as a vital cog in the Manhattan Project. However, for more than two decades, the halls of its most advanced nuclear processing sector had remained in a prolonged dormancy. Today, that industrial silence has been broken. The United States has just ended a long gap in its domestic processing capabilities. The milestone that marks this rebirth is as visual as it is forceful: the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) has successfully manufactured its first “button” of purified enriched uranium, an achievement that opens a new era in the American nuclear deterrent. In short. From the NNSA have confirmed the restart of uranium purification at the Y-12 complex. It is not a sudden step; This achievement comes months after, in September 2025, the start of the project will be authorized electrorefining. This is the first authorization of its kind since the opening of the Highly Enriched Uranium Materials Facility 15 years ago. More in depth. The new process allows installation slam the door definitively on the old Y-12 plants. For years, uranium processing depended on complex chemical treatments that were inefficient and, above all, posed greater risks for workers. The new era abandons these legacy systems in favor of much cleaner and safer technology. A strategic milestone. According to the statement from the NNSAthis purified uranium is a critical material that will support unavoidable national security missions, from the production of nuclear weapons to providing the fuel needed for the reactors of the United States Navy’s aircraft carriers and submarines. This effort is not a coincidence, but respond directly to the security and defense guidelines promoted under the mandate of President Donald Trump. Added to this military strategy is a pressing need for independence of resources. In November of last year, the US Geological Survey (USGS) added uranium to its final list of 60 critical minerals. This government directive has a clear objective: to shield the country against the risks of interruption in global supply chains. The “magic” of electrorefining. The secret behind this renaissance is called electrorefining. Although it may sound like science fiction, it is based on well-established commercial processes commonly used to purify everyday metals such as aluminum, titanium or copper. The method was originally developed by the prestigious Argonne National Laboratory and later perfected by the Y-12 development team itself. A simple process (at first glance). To understand how it works, the magazine Science Direct explains it in a simple way: The process uses an electrolytic cell where two electrodes are immersed in a chemical solution. One of them acts as an anode (where the impure recycled material is placed) and the other as a cathode. Through a controlled electrical reaction, metal ions travel to the cathode, where the pure metal is deposited, while the impurities fall to the bottom as an “anode sludge.” The result: An astonishing 99.9% purity. The format: An NNSA spokesperson He explained that the process It first generates “purified uranium crystals,” which are then melted in a furnace to create the compact, secure, high-purity uranium “buttons.” Additionally, Nikolai Sokov, senior researcher at the Vienna Center for Disarmament and Non-Proliferation, explained that this innovative technology allows recovering and recycling uranium from various byproducts. Along the same lines, this method drastically reduces the waste generated compared to old chemical treatments. The weight of history: environmental debt. No story about the Y-12 complex would be complete without looking at its darker side. The background documents of the US Department of Energy rreveal the heavy inheritance of the Cold War. During the 1950s and 1960s, facilities used massive amounts of mercury for lithium separation. The ecological toll was devastating: an estimated 700,000 pounds (more than 317,000 kilos) of mercury were lost in the buildings and the surrounding environment. Today, to contrast technological advancement with the mistakes of the past, the top priority of the Environmental Management (EM) program at Y-12 is the cleanup of this mercury. He DOE informs that it is being built the Outfall 200 Mercury Treatment Facility. Scheduled for 2027, this plant will be capable of treating up to 3,000 gallons of water per minute. This vital infrastructure will allow older, more contaminated facilities (such as Alpha-2 by 2029 and Beta-1 by 2030) to be safely demolished without mercury ending up in the nearby Upper East Fork Poplar Creek. A process of metamorphosis. Audrey Beldio, NNSA Principal Deputy Administrator for Production Modernization, summed it up forcefully in the statements. project startup: “Electrorefining revolutionizes the processing of enriched uranium.” With uranium flowing again into Y-12, the United States is not just abandoning aging infrastructure. It is sending a clear message to the world: after twenty years of lethargy, the US nuclear sector has taken a leap towards a future where technological efficiency, the safety of its workers and the reliability of its arsenal are once again the spearhead of its defense policy. Image | HeUraniumC Xataka | While the West does not decide on nuclear, China already has a reactor 100 times more efficient than traditional ones

A single company is going to buy 20% of all the footwear manufactured in Mexico. Their goal: confront China

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These are not easy times for the footwear industry in Mexico, a sector that generates tens of thousands of jobs, moves million-dollar investments and has its headquarters in the state of Guanajuato. main bastion. In a market highly conditioned by Asian competition, the local industry has experienced setbacks and job lossstaying far below of its production capacity. With this backdrop, the sector has received curious news: a single Mexican company is willing to buy 20% of all national production. Shoe addict. Grupo Coppel is a heavyweight in the Mexican economy. He holding companywhich a year ago announced its plans to invest almost 700 million of dollars in the country throughout 2025, has a long experience in the financial services and retail sector, with hundreds of points sales distributed throughout the country. All in all (and despite its enormous size), it is surprising the advertisement what it just did: in 2026 the company plans to buy no more and no less than 42 million pairs of shoes produced in Mexico. That’s a lot of shoes, right? Yes. To be precise, this is one million more pairs than those already purchased in 2025. However, the figure is striking for another reason. With this enormous volume of purchases, Coppel will account for a fifth (about 20%) of all formal national footwear production. The operation is part of a “strategic alliance” reached with the Chamber of the Footwear Industry of the State of Guanajuato (CICEG) and, according to calculations from the firm itself, will allow “contributing to the livelihood” of the more than 100,000 families that depend directly on the footwear industry in Guanajuato. “This alliance promotes the growth of our companies and strengthens the Mexican footwear industry in an environment of legality, transparency and respect for market rules. By choosing the formal national supplier, you contribute to the construction of a more solid and competitive sector,” celebrated a few days ago Juan Carlos Cashat, president of CICEG. For shoe manufacturers in Guanajuato, the news is a valuable breath of fresh air. Footwear ‘made in Mexico’. His output It is far from that of countries like China, India or Vietnam, but Mexico is a prominent footwear manufacturer. In fact there are rankings that place it as the tenth worldwide and second in Latin America, only behind Brazil. In 2024, the country’s companies produced around 214 million of pairs of shoes, which explains why the sector contributes million dollars to the Mexican GDP (especially in Guanajuato, the heart of the sector) and also maintain thousands of jobs. Despite this footprint, the sector has not had easy years. “The impact of the pandemic was severe. Before 2020 we had 64,000 jobs registered with the IMSS. During the pandemic that figure fell to 49,000,” recognized two years ago the CICEG. Since then the situation has changed, but the sector stay away to be at 100%. Beyond market fluctuations, the industry has had to deal with competition from low-cost merchandise from Asia. Click on the image to go to the tweet. The Government, to the rescue. The data quoted by the local press are eloquent. In 2022, Mexico imported 136.4 million pairs of footwear valued at 1,843 million dollars. Two years later, the Import Trade Balance showed that this flow had already reached 185.5 million pairs with a value of 2,163 million dollars. On average each pair cost $11.6. The problem was not so much the arrival of products manufactured in Asia as the competition it exerts on national firms, especially due to suspicions of price manipulation. To clear up doubts, the authorities responded with an investigation antidumping and in September 2025 they decided to impose a system of compensatory duties on imports from China. It was not the only support from the Government to the industry. In November the Executive advertisement a Textile and Footwear Promotion Plan to finance small and medium-sized businesses. The objective: inject around 6.5 billion dollars to improve the competitiveness of the industry and reactivate 50,000 jobs, recovering part of the lost production muscle. How does the future look? Optimistic. At least that is what the CIEG recognized in December. “Despite a challenging economic and commercial environment, the industry in Guanajuato is beginning to show signs of recovery, especially in terms of employment and productive capacity,” indicates the sectorwhich recalls that between the month of September and October it registered a small rebound in employment. The increase was modest (256), but it is the first recovery “in many years.” The employers’ association also detected a change in the international market. “Total imports remain high, with more than 141 million pairs imported from January to September 2025, although relevant progress in the fight against unfair practices stands out,” celebrates CIEG“Imports from China, corresponding to tariff items with quota, decreased by 81%.” Images | Irfan Simsar (Unsplash) and Phil Desforges (Unsplash) In Xataka | Mexico City is already noticing the economic effect of the World Cup: it is losing homes and gaining Airbnb apartments

part of the Mac mini will be manufactured in the US

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It’s not every day that Apple can announce that one of its products will begin manufacturing in the United States. The company, whose supply chain has been supported for years in Asia, has confirmed what part of mac mini will be produced in Houston later this year. We are not talking about the iPhone or its best-selling laptop, but rather its most affordable desktop computer, a model that, according to estimates by Consumer Intelligence Research Partners, represents less than 1% of total sales. Still, the movement is symbolic and comes at a time when domestic manufacturing is once again at the center of the industrial debate in Washington. The announcement is specific. Apple will begin producing the Mac mini at a facility in north Houston later this year. Manufacturing will take place at a plant operated by Foxconn, the same industrial partner that already assembles the company’s advanced AI servers there. “Apple is deeply committed to the future of American manufacturing and we are proud to significantly expand our presence in Houston with Mac mini production beginning later this year,” said Tim Cook in the official statement. The company presents the move as an expansion of its industrial presence in Texas and as part of its commitment to strengthen operations on US soil. What’s in Houston. The complex in the north of the city is not starting from scratch. Over there Foxconn It already assembles the advanced servers that Apple uses for its artificial intelligence services, including equipment that incorporates logic boards produced on site and shipped to data centers within the United States. The campus will have two buildings: one operational for servers and another, described as a large warehouse, which will be converted into about 220,000 square feet of space for the Mac mini. The pressure and the tariffs. The step is part of Apple’s commitment to invest $600 billion in the United States over the next four years, a promise the company made following President Donald Trump’s threats to impose a 25% tariff on products manufactured abroad. As we can see, these types of spending commitments occurred in a context of pressure to increase domestic investment, in exchange for tariff exemptions. Limited movement. Sabih Khan, Apple’s chief operating officer, explained to The Wall Street Journal that production in the United States is designed to cover local demand as the line gains capacity, but that thousands of units will continue to be manufactured in Asia. Additionally, the Mac mini represents less than 5% of global Mac computer sales and less than 1% of total sales, according to estimates by Consumer Intelligence Research Partners. And something very important: there is also, for now, no plan to move the manufacturing of the iPhone to the country, the product that really supports the bulk of the business. Texas was already part of the map. Before the Mac mini, the Mac Pro had been the flagship of Apple computer manufacturing in the United States. Since 2013 it has been assembled in Austin and in 2019 the company reiterated its commitment to that facility, relying on American suppliers and a tariff exclusion for certain components. More than a radical change, the decision represents a calculated adjustment. Apple expands its manufacturing presence in Texas with a product of moderate scope, in a context in which supply chains remain international. Images | Apple In Xataka | NVIDIA was founded by three engineers, but only Jensen Huang remains CEO: “I wish I had kept some shares”

There is a material on which the future of the iPhone and AI depends. And almost everything is manufactured by the same Japanese company.

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More than 100 years ago two Japanese textile companies called Fukushima Boseki Co., Ltd., and Katakura Seishi Iwashiro Bosekisho they joined forces to become Nitto Boseki Co. Ltd, also known as Nittobo. A century later we have encountered a giant on which a critical material for the future of our chips depends: glass fabric. Technological glass artisans. The Japanese company was the first in industrially producing carbon fiber. They did it in 1938, almost right at the same time as Owens Corning Fiber Glass in the US. Later, in 1969, they developed the “crystal fabric” or “glass cloth” (glass cloth), a material that began to be used in printed circuits Hello, T-glass. That material evolved and in 1984 they launched their T-glass, an even more specialized glass fabric that began to be used as a substrate in chips of all types. This material is different from the common fiberglass like that used in surfboards or in insulation solutions. Thus, it has a very low coefficient of thermal expansion, which ensures its good performance even when the chips are operating at maximum performance. Japan, we have a problem. As indicated on Nikkeiexperts warn that the lack of this material has become a major obstacle to chip manufacturing and the advancement of AI in 2026. Nittobo is practically the only company in the world capable of manufacturing this glass with the necessary quality. Its glass fabric is extremely thin, bubble-free and heat-resistant, which has made it a fundamental part of chips such as those used in iPhones. Apple, in fact, was one of the first major technology companies to reach an agreement with Nittobo to use this material. Everyone loves Nittobo. The good performance of this material has now made companies like NVIDIA, Google or Amazon also demand T-glass for their chips, and that has generated a worrying competition due to inventory that is quickly depleted and it is not clear that it can cope with demand. Apple asks for help. The situation is so tense that Apple has sent some managers to Japan and has even asked the Japanese government to intervene to ensure supplies from Nittobo. Once again the objective is to guarantee the launch of its key products, and at Nikkei they point directly to the expected foldable iPhone. The fiberglass fabric is a critical layer on the chip substrate and ensures that everything works perfectly even under heavy workloads. Source: Nikkei. Capacity will grow, but not immediately. At Nittobo they know very well what the situation is like, but they can’t do anything to remedy it, at least in the short term. A company executive quoted in Nikkei indicates that “if we do not have additional capacity, it means that we do not have additional capacity no matter how much pressure is put on Nittobo. The way I see it, the situation will only improve significantly when Nittobo’s production increase becomes a reality in the second half of 2027.” Looking for alternatives. Apple and Qualcomm are looking for plans B, and their initiatives to find new suppliers in China or Taiwan are already underway. However, the demand for the quality of this type of material is very high: an error in the quality of the glass of the chip substrate cannot be repaired, and would ruin entire batches of components. AI causes chaos again. We already saw it with memories: the AI ​​industry needs immense quantities of DRAM and NAND memory chips, and that has now meant that the rest of the world is suffering from a huge rise in prices. The same thing is happening with this glass fabric: AI chip manufacturers have an exaggerated demand for this material, which harms the rest of the “traditional” chip manufacturers and, therefore, the users. bad business. And as happens with memories, in the end the material is sold to the highest bidder, which are usually companies like NVIDIA that have exceptional profit margins. That leaves consumer electronics manufacturers in a vulnerable position and with declining sales forecasts. Nittobo does not want to saturate the market. And as happened with the memory market, Nittobo does not want to oversize its business in the face of this demand and prefers to be cautious. Japanese suppliers already suffered losses from overstocks in 2022, so they are now reluctant to expand their factories aggressively. It is precisely the same speech that Micron made, which already suffered from excess inventory after the pandemic: although they could now manufacture more memory chips, for them that means risking history repeating itself. In Xataka | A thousand-year-old mystery allowed us to put nanotechnology into modern screens. Today the discovery has a Nobel Prize

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