nuclear

The US has had an idea to reassure Europe. Instead of soldiers, he is going to bring his nuclear weapons very close to Russia

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In 1983, tens of thousands of women surrounded a British air base to protest the deployment of American nuclear missiles. That mobilization, known in time as Greenham Commonbecame one of the major antinuclear symbols of the Cold War and showed the extent to which the location of these weapons could alter European politics. Less soldiers, more “nuclear”. Europe has been trying to figure out what it really means for months the strategic turn of the United States. The reduction of troops, the withdrawal of some military systems and the increasing priority given to the Indo-Pacific have fueled fears that Washington is progressively moving away from the continent. However, conversations within NATO point to a very different response than expected. Instead of reinforcing the conventional presence, the United States would be willing to expand the deployment of nuclear capabilities in Europe to demonstrate that its commitment to the defense of the continent remains intact. The idea is simple but powerful: if there are fewer American uniforms on the ground, the nuclear umbrella must remain visible and credibleeven “closer.” The closer the interest is to Russia. There is no doubt, the allies most interested in this possibility are precisely those who observe Russia from the first line. Poland has been leading for years the list of candidates to host US nuclear capabilities and some Baltic countries have also shown interest in participating in future deterrence formulas. The invasion of Ukraine and Putin’s continued references to its nuclear arsenal have profoundly changed the perception of security in Eastern Europe. I remembered the financial times that, for these countries, hosting aircraft capable of using US nuclear weapons would have enormous political and military value, since it would turn any threat against them into an issue directly linked to Washington’s strategic credibility. The legacy of the Cold War. The proposal does not involve creating a new system, but rather expanding a mechanism that has existed for decades. Currently Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Türkiye and the United Kingdom participate in the program nuclear delivery of NATO, through which they store American nuclear weapons under exclusive control of Washington and train their air forces to operate within that scheme. This model was born during the Cold War to guarantee that European allies could participate in the Alliance’s nuclear strategy without having to develop their own atomic weapons. More than half a century later, the formula is once again gaining prominence in a continent that watches with concern the deterioration of the relationship with Moscow. Europe seeks to replace some capabilities, but not others. European capitals have assumed that they will have to spend more in defense and rebuild conventional capabilities that for decades were delegated to the United States. From anti-missile systems to strategic transportation to military intelligence, much of the current conversation revolves around how to fill those gaps. However, there is one area that many governments they consider it impossible to replace in the short term: the American nuclear deterrent. Although France and the United Kingdom have their own arsenals, Washington’s umbrella continues to be perceived as the central element of the European security architecture and as the ultimate guarantee against any military escalation. The signal that Washington wants to send. They told in the Times that for now there is no final decision and the conversations remain highly confidential. Still, the mere fact that the possibility is on the table reveals how Western strategy toward Russia is changing. For years the US military presence in Europe was measured in bases, brigades and deployed troops. Now the discussion increasingly revolves around another type of message. While Washington concentrates resources in Asia and requires its allies to assume a greater share of the defensive effortthe signal it seeks to convey is that nuclear protection remains intact. In a way, the new formula to reassure Europe is not to bring more soldiers closer to the Russian borders, but to bring closer what for decades has served as a last guarantee of security: American nuclear weapons. Image | Air Force, SJOERD HILCKMANN In Xataka | Spain’s great fear is not an invasion: it is a slow hybrid war with Morocco against its two most vulnerable cities In Xataka | To become technologically “independent” from the US, the European Union already has a plan: four desperate measures

The nuclear explosion that changed the world also created a material that exists nowhere else in the known universe

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On July 16, 1945, the first detonation of an atomic bomb—known as the trinity test— changed the course of history and left an indelible mark on the New Mexico desert. The explosion of the plutonium device released energy equivalent to 21 kilotons of TNT, enough to vaporize the 30-meter test tower, the kilometers of copper cables connecting the recording instruments, and the desert sand itself. All this material, carried by the immense fireball, rained down in the form of molten glassy fragments, creating a unique form of matter known today as trinite. The vast majority of this trinite is a classic green color, but there is a much rarer variant called “red trinite,” whose color is attributed to the presence of copper oxide formed when transmission lines vaporized in the explosion. It is precisely inside this rare variant where scientists have discovered unprecedented crystalline structures. The violent conditions of the detonation subjected the materials to temperatures of around 1,500 °C and extreme pressures of 5 to 8 gigapascals. The matter vaporized, mixed, and cooled so extremely quickly—in a matter of seconds—that the atoms did not have time to organize themselves into stable structures, forging forms of matter that had never existed on our planet. An unprecedented find. Almost 80 years after that first nuclear explosion, an international research team led by Luca Bindi, a geologist at the University of Florence, has managed to identify a new material hidden in these samples. As the research explainsit is a “clathrate”: a cage-shaped chemical network that traps other atoms inside. This new crystal is built with 12- and 14-sided silicon cages that enclose atoms of calcium, copper, and small amounts of iron. It represents the first time that the presence of a clathrate among the solid products of a nuclear explosion has been crystallographically confirmed. That this discovery comes now, in 2026, is no coincidence. Samples of red trinitite are extremely rare and difficult to obtain, and only recent advances in mining techniques x-ray diffraction At a nanoscopic scale, they have made it possible to identify such tiny structures within metallic microdroplets embedded in glass. The technology simply was not up to par with the material before. The quasicrystal that arrived first. The story becomes even more fascinating because this discovery joins another monumental find made by the same team in 2021: the identification of a quasicrystal in the same little red trinity. Unlike ordinary crystals—such as salt or quartz, which have a precisely repeating atomic pattern—quasicrystals break the rules of classical crystallography. Its atoms are ordered, but without periodically repeating themselves, which generates symmetries that are prohibited in a conventional crystal. The one found at Trinity exhibits five-fold icosahedral symmetry and is composed of silicon, copper, calcium and iron. It is not only the quasicrystal created by the oldest known human being: has the incredible property that its exact moment of creation was indelibly recorded in historical records. The decisive role of copper. The most elegant thing about the new study is the mechanism that explains why two such different structures were formed in the same explosion. The key was the concentration of copper available during cooling. In the microzones where copper levels were low —about 10 to 11%— conditions allowed the clathrate cage structure to stabilize. Where there was more copper, that same structure collapsed and the atoms rearranged themselves in the forbidden geometry of the quasicrystal. Two radically different destinies, separated by a microscopic difference in chemical composition, at the same time and in the same place. The power of natural laboratories. Discovering these architectures on a microscopic scale is revolutionary because, as Terry C. Wallace explainsdirector emeritus of Los Alamos National Laboratory and co-author of the quasicrystal research, these structures require extreme environments that rarely exist on Earth: colossal shocks, temperatures and pressures, comparable only to the hypervelocity impacts of meteorites or nuclear detonations themselves. Destructive events that, paradoxically, act as laboratories capable of producing what no conventional laboratory can replicate. A tool for global security. Beyond materials science, this type of research has direct applications in the field of nuclear nonproliferation. Understanding the design of other countries’ nuclear weapons programs is an enormous forensic challenge. Scientists often track radioactive gases and waste in test areas, but those signatures inevitably decay over time. The crystals formed at the site of the explosion, on the other hand, are practically eternal. The red trinitite samples still preserve radioactive isotopes that allow variables such as the exact distance to the hypocenter of the explosion to be calculated with great precision. Wallace sums it up clearly: If science can establish a precise thermodynamic explanation for how these crystals form, a complete picture of the bomb and the materials used could be obtained, giving the world a new tool to monitor illicit nuclear explosions. A timestamp that cannot be falsified or deleted. The paradoxical legacy of Trinity. The study of trinitite demonstrates how matter is capable of reorganizing itself in astonishing ways under unimaginably hostile conditions. It is an almost poetic paradox that an event designed for destruction has left, 80 years later, a hidden legacy of microscopic geometric perfection that is useful today for the human future. This discovery is not only a window into the creation of cutting-edge energy materials and technologies, but it functions as a compass for future research. As the experts conclude in his academic publicationexamine the remains of other extreme and fleeting natural phenomena, such as fulgurites forged by lightning strikes or rocks subjected to meteorite craters, could continue to reveal unusual configurations of matter. Even today, hidden beneath the scars of destruction, structures await that continue to challenge our fundamental understanding of the universe. Image | PNAS and Unsplash Xataka | Europe throws away 16 billion a year in electronic waste. Spain has just turned on the first oven in Europe to recover them

We would need to detonate Earth’s nuclear arsenal 130 times to release the energy that caused the Moon’s great cannons.

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The Moon has its own “Grand Canyon of the Colorado”, and doubly so. Only these two canyons were not caused by the slow erosion of a river like the Colorado: 15 minutes of destruction were enough to leave these two enormous scars on the surface of the Moon. 10 minutes of destruction. A 2025 study analyzed in detail two enormous geological strips located in the vicinity of the south pole of the Moon. The analysis has determined, among other conclusions, that they were formed by the impact of an asteroid or comet and that the impact was such that these canyons were formed in less than 15 minutes of destruction. Two large cannons. Their names are Schrödinger Valley and Planck Valley and they are two enormous geological strips that radiate in a straight line from a point located in the Schrödinger basin, near the lunar South Pole, not far from the place chosen by NASA to the return from humans to the Moon. The study has offered us new data on the magnitude and morphological characteristics of these two sores on the surface of our satellite. These two canyons have a length of 270 and 280 kilometers; and 2.7 and 3.5 kilometers deep, respectively. An immense force. In addition to analyzing the characteristics of these two strips, the study tried to characterize the impact that caused them. By studying the way in which these were excavated, they determined that the process lasted between 4.9 and 15 minutes in one of the cases and between 5.2 and 15.4 minutes in the other. That is, they only needed about 10 minutes so that the impact would destroy tons and tons of lunar rock. The impact would have been enormous. According to the team responsible for the study, the energy required to produce these cannons would have been 700 times greater than the energy released by the nuclear tests of China, the United States and the USSR, and 130 times greater than the energy in the world inventory of nuclear weapons. Details of the study, like this last one, were published in an article in the magazine Nature Communications. The best analogue of the Chicxulub crater. The impact would have occurred billions of years before the one that caused the extinction of the dinosaurs on Earth. However, the team responsible for the study maintains in their article that this lunar impact is the “best analog expression on the surface” of the Chicxulub crater. In Xataka | Earth has lost its minimoon, but it posed for a photo before leaving (and promised to return soon) In Xataka | ESA wants to take its ships into space with nuclear reactors: this is how the Rocketroll project works Image | NASA\SVS\Ernie T. Wright A version of this article was published in February 2025

Satellite images reveal how much Russia fears Ukraine’s drones. 7,000 km away they are covering their nuclear missiles

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The British Navy discovered something truly absurd during naval tests in 1945: a single flock of birds could appear on the radar with a signature similar to that of enemy aircraft. Eight decades later, some of the most sophisticated military systems on the planet clash again to the same problem: Tiny, cheap threats that are difficult to distinguish before it is too late. The drone war against the Russian nuclear arsenal. They counted this week in Naval News that satellite images taken over the Russian submarine base of Rybachiy, on the Kamchatka Peninsula, reveal the extent to which drone warfare in Ukraine is altering Russian military logic even thousands of kilometers from the front. to some 7,400 kilometers of Ukrainetwo strategic nuclear submarines of the Borei class They have appeared completely covered with anti-drone nets while they remain docked in port. The scene is shocking because these submarines are part of the core of Russian nuclear deterrent: each one carries 16 Bulava ballistic missiles capable of launching intercontinental nuclear attacks. However, even that geographical distance no longer seems sufficient for Moscow to feel completely safe from possible surprise Ukrainian operations. From the Black Sea to the Pacific nuclear fleet. The evolution reflects how drones have ceased to be an exclusively tactical problem and have become a strategic threat. Russia had been installing for some time cages, nets and metal structures improvised on ships and patrol boats in the Black Sea to try to stop Ukrainian FPV attacks. Now that same logic has reached some of the most sensitive platforms in its entire military arsenal. The fear does not seem to focus so much on drones launched directly from Ukraine, something practically impossible at such a distance, but on covert operations similar to those that have already hit Russian targets very far from the front. The idea of ​​small cheap drones reaching multi-million dollar strategic assets It has even begun to modify the protection of nuclear submarines. A small threat capable of altering the strategic balance. The nets observed on the Borei do not hide the submarines from satellites nor do they serve as conventional camouflage. Its function It’s purely defensive.: prevent light drones from approaching, landing on the deck or launching explosive charges at vulnerable points, especially on hatches and exposed systems while the submarines are on the surface. Russia had already installed similar protections on some Baltic and Arctic submarines, but on Rybachiy the coverage is much more extensive and envelops practically the entire vessel. There is no doubt, the image conveys a certainly powerful conclusion: the Kremlin already considers it plausible that cheap, improvised and difficult to detect attacks could threaten even part of its nuclear triad. The great psychological change of the war in Ukraine. Beyond the real effectiveness of these networks, the important detail is rather psychological and strategic. Ukraine has managed to get Russia to dedicate resources, time and defensive concern to bases located on the other end of the continent Eurasian. For decades, the logic of nuclear deterrence assumed that submarines hidden in remote bases were virtually untouchable except in an all-out war between great powers. And this is where drones have begun to erode that sense of immunity. The war in Ukraine is showing that a country with limited resources can force a nuclear superpower to cover with mesh improvised some of their most important systems for fear of unexpected attacks. When “nuclear” fears the cheapest. In short, the image of nuclear submarines protected with networks recalls the extent to which the Ukrainian conflict is transforming modern military rules. Platforms designed to survive atomic wars, operate under the ocean for months, and launch intercontinental missiles now also have to worry about cheap quadcopters, commercial explosives, and improvised attacks. Of course, Russia still maintains a huge nuclear and naval advantagebut the proliferation of drones is altering something much more difficult to measure than weapons: the feeling of (in)security. And when even the most remote nuclear bases begin to be armored against small drones, it means that the war in Ukraine has already changed the global perception of military vulnerability. Image | Vantor In Xataka | Once again, Ukraine has opened a missile launched by Russia. Once again, surprising manufacturers have been found In Xataka | Russia has been advancing at a snail’s pace in Ukraine for months. That’s about to change because of one season: summer.

A drone has set fire to the perimeter of the first Arab nuclear power plant

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During the war between Iran and Iraq in 1982, a missile accidentally hit near the plant Iran’s Bushehr nuclear when it was still under construction. The incident sowed such concern international that for decades civil nuclear facilities in the Middle East were surrounded by a kind of unwritten taboo even in the midst of the region’s toughest conflicts. A drone and a border that no one wanted to cross. For years, Gulf monarchies assumed that their large energy infrastructures could be vulnerable to missiles or attacks on refineries, ports and pipelines. But there was one psychological line that seemed to remain intact: nuclear power plants. The fire caused by a drone in the perimeter of Barakah, the first nuclear plant trade of the Arab world, has changed that. Although there was no radioactive leak or damage inside the reactor, the simple fact that an unmanned aircraft reached the immediate surroundings of a nuclear facility in the middle of the war between Iran, the United States and Israel has opened a completely new scene for regional security. The Gulf has just entered unknown territory: it is no longer just about protecting oil and gas, but about defending civilian nuclear facilities against cheap, difficult to intercept and politically explosive attacks. Much more than electricity. The Barakah central It occupies a particularly sensitive place within the Emirati strategy. Built with South Korean technology and operational since 2021, it provides around of a quarter of the country’s electricity and represents the great project with which the Emirates tried to diversify its energy economy and reduce its dependence on fossil fuels. That is why the attack has a symbolic burden enormous even if the damage was limited. Hitting the Barakah perimeter means demonstrating that no strategic infrastructure is completely out of reach of the drone war that already dominates the Middle East. Also launches another disturbing message: Civilian nuclear facilities are beginning to enter the risk map of modern regional conflicts. The Gulf War no longer revolves only around oil. The truth is that the evolution of the conflict is profoundly altering the security logic of the entire region. Since the start of the war, Iran has launched thousands of drones and missiles against the Emirates and other Gulf countries to increase the economic and political cost of the campaign led by the United States and Israel. Until now, much of the concern has focused on Hormuz, energy exports and maritime traffic. But he Barakah incident expands the problem into another, much more delicate dimension. An attack against a nuclear power plant, even if it is peripheral, immediately forces international alarms to be activated, involve the International Atomic Energy Agency and propose scenarios that until recently seemed unlikely in the region. The real problem. The most uncomfortable thing for the Emirates and its allies is that the attack proves again a reality that has already been seen in Ukraine, Russia or the Red Sea: even extremely rich and protected countries have enormous difficulties in stopping relatively simple and cheap drones. According to the Emiratesthree aircraft penetrated from the western border and one of them managed to reach the external electrical generator of Barakah despite the existing defenses. The scene perfectly sums up the current imbalance of modern warfare. A small drone can force the activation of nuclear protocols, trigger diplomatic tensions and generate global concern at a negligible cost compared to the gigantic air defense investments of the Gulf states. An increasingly fragile truce. The attack also arrives in one of the most tense moments since the ceasefire between Iran and the United States. Donald Trump has toughened his speech against Tehran (a few hours ago he even said he was about to attack Iran before to stop the operation), Israel speculate again openly with a resumption of the war and the Emirates has become the Arab country more aggressive against Iran during the conflict. Abu Dhabi directly accuses to Iran or its regional allies for having crossed an extremely dangerous line. The problem is that the Barakah incident demonstrates the extent to which the region has entered a phase where escalation can occur. through ambiguous attackscheap and difficult to attribute with complete clarity. And that makes every downed drone (or every drone what gets through) now has the potential to trigger a much larger crisis. Image | Store N., Wikimedia In Xataka | Iran is about to inaugurate in Hormuz a concept that has the shape of a global nightmare: the underwater toll In Xataka | Dubai has come to the same conclusion as Russia. To protect your oil from drones there is something better than missiles: giant cages

There is a “nuclear” gift from Russia to North Korea off the coast of Spain

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In the 1990s, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, many Western experts began to fear that Russian scientists and military technology would end arriving in North Korea through opaque means, silently fueling Pyongyang’s weapons programs. Since then, every strange move between Moscow and the North Korean regime has been observed with a mixture of concern, secrecy and suspicions that are difficult to prove. A collapse full of unknowns. counted this morning CNN in an extensive report that the sinking of the Russian freighter Ursa Major off the Spanish coast has ended up becoming one of the strangest and most opaque stories to emerge around the Ukrainian war, as well as one of the most delicate. Officiallythe ship suffered several explosions in December 2024 before sinking in the Mediterranean. However, from the first moment they began to accumulate details difficult to fit into the version of a simple maritime accident: a cargo absurdly described as “manhole covers”, a Russian military escort for much of the journey, strange maneuvers before the sinking, subsequent explosions on the wreck and a very unusual silence from both Moscow and the Spanish authorities. Little by little, the case began to look less like a conventional shipwreck and more a strategic operation that went wrong in the middle of an extremely sensitive geopolitical context. The suspicion that changes everything. The great suspicion arose when Spanish researchers and sources cited by CNN They began to point out that the Ursa Major could transport nuclear reactor components similar to those used in Russian submarines. The captain himself would have ended up admitting to Spanish investigators that those supposed “manhole covers” were actually linked pieces to two naval reactors, although he claimed not to know if they contained nuclear fuel. The most disturbing hypothesis is that the final destination was not Vladivostok, despite officially appearing on the route, but the North Korean port of Rason. That is where the story takes on a completely different dimension, because the sinking would no longer be just a maritime incident, but the possible interruption of a technology transfer extremely sensitive between Moscow and Pyongyang, just after North Korea sent thousands of soldiers to support Russia in the Ukrainian war. The WC-135 off Spain. The arrival of the WC-135 aircraft Americans was the detail that definitively set off all the alarms. These planes, known as “nuke sniffers,” are not just any aircraft: they are extremely specialized platforms designed to detect radioactive traces and analyze nuclear contamination in the atmosphere. Washington normally uses them to monitor nuclear tests, atomic accidents or sensitive activity in places like the Russian Arctic or Iran, in any case, not to routinely fly over the Mediterranean off Spain. that the United States will send twice These devices over the area where the Ursa Major rests immediately fueled the suspicion that he feared something much more serious than a simple shipwreck. Although there is no public confirmation of radioactive contamination, the simple deployment of these planes left a sensation that is very difficult to ignore: Russia could have had a nuclear “gift” destined for North Korea sunk in front of Europe. Let us remember that a few months later, Kim Yong Un showed the world his alleged nuclear submarine. Explosions, spy ships and an uncomfortable wreck. The sequence after the sinking made the story even stranger. According to the research quoted by CNNthe ship did not seem doomed to sink immediately after the first explosions. However, hours after Spanish rescue resources arrived, the Russian ship Ivan Gren It launched red flares over the area and new explosions were recorded, detected even by Spanish seismic systems. Days later it also appeared the Yantarofficially a Russian research ship but designated for years by NATO as spy platform submarine. He remained on the wreck for several days before to register more explosions underwater. All of this continued to fuel the theory that Moscow may have attempted to destroy sensitive evidence at the bottom of the Mediterranean, especially if the ship was carrying advanced military nuclear technology or compromised documentation related to North Korea. The theory of silent sabotage. Another of the most surprising aspects of the investigation is the possibility that the Ursa Major was attacked with an extremely unusual weapon. The Spanish authorities are handling the hypothesis of a small hole just 50 centimeters caused by a supercavitating torpedo Barracuda typea weapon capable of moving at very high speed by reducing the friction of water using a gas bubble. The disturbing thing about this type of torpedoes is that they can pierce a hull without necessarily generating a large audible explosion, something that would fit with the account of the Russian captain, who stated not having heard no impact as the ship began to lose speed. Other experts believe the use of limpet mines or attached charges to the helmet. In any case, the mere fact that sophisticated sabotage is contemplated in waters near Spain reveals to what extent the case has stopped looking like a conventional accident. The reflection of a new alliance. Beyond the concrete mystery of the Ursa Majorthe case reflects something even more important: the rapid rapprochement between Russia and North Korea. For years, Moscow avoided crossing certain lines related to the transfer of strategic military technology to Pyongyang. However, the war in Ukraine has changed many priorities. As we have been countingNorth Korea contributes ammunition, missiles and soldiers, and Russia could be returning the favor with technical knowledge much more sensitive. The images released months later of the sinking with Kim Jong Un showing the helmet of a supposed North Korean nuclear submarine fit closely with this possibility. If there really was an attempt to move Russian naval reactors to North Korea, the sinking of the Ursa Major could represent one of the most important (and most secret) episodes of the new military relationship between both countries. Whatever it is is still in the Mediterranean. To this day, the wreck remains at about 2,500 meters deep … Read more

Europe and Japan step on the accelerator of nuclear fusion and place the ball in the court of a strategic country: Spain

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Europe and Japan walk hand in hand towards nuclear fusion commercial. They have been working together for several years in the JT-60SA experimental reactorthe largest magnetic confinement fusion energy machine that currently exists. However, this is not the only project in which they collaborate. They are also fine-tuning the LIPAc linear particle accelerator (Linear IFMIF Prototype Accelerator or IFMIF Prototype Linear Accelerator). This machine resides in Rokkasho (Japan). After having undergone a very ambitious update, it is ready to begin the final phase that will conclude with its commissioning in 2027. Its purpose is to test the limits of particle beam physics to pave the way for future fusion reactors. Europe and Japan began developing this 36-meter-long particle accelerator in 2007 with the aim of validating the design of an IFMIF-type machine (International Fusion Materials Irradiation Facility) capable of acting as a neutron source. To achieve this, this device had to recreate the intense irradiation conditions that occur inside a fusion reactor. One of Europe’s most important contributions is a huge steel cryostat with magnetic shielding and a thermal shield that houses a powerful superconducting radio frequency system. This component serves to accelerate protons and deuterium nuclei until they reach a maximum energy of 9 MeV (megaelectronvolts), which will place them close to the high-energy neutrons that future commercial fusion reactors will produce. LIPAc is the precursor of IFMIF-DONES, which is already being built in Spain The knowledge that scientists hope to gain from LIPAc will be used in the development of IFMIF-DONES (International Fusion Materials Irradiation Facility DEMO-Oriented NEutron Source), that is already being built in Escúzar, a town in the province of Granada. The heart of this facility is a linear particle accelerator that will cost approximately 450 million euros, although the Government of Andalusia will provide half of this money. However, this is the cost of the accelerator; The entire IFMIF-DONES project will cost around 700 million euros. Spain will contribute half of this capital. IFMIF-DONES is one of the three fundamental pillars of the nuclear fusion edifice in whose construction the European Union is involved. The other two are ITER (International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor) and DEMO. The experimental nuclear fusion reactor that is currently being built in the French town of Cadarache aims to demonstrate that fusion at the scale that man can handle worksand also that it is profitable from an energy point of view. However, ITER does not aim to produce electricity. That will be the task of DEMO (DEMOnstration Power Plant), a facility that will take the technological advances that have been proven to work correctly at ITER and take them one step further to establish itself as the true precursor of commercial nuclear fusion reactors. However, without IFMIF-DONES there will be no DEMO, so right now Granada is the center of attention. The IFMIF-DONES linear accelerator will produce high-energy neutrons with the intensity and irradiation volume necessary to test candidate materials To fully understand the role of the IFMIF-DONES project, it is necessary to briefly review the fundamentals of nuclear fusion. One of the greatest challenges faced by technicians involved in the development of nuclear fusion reactors using magnetic confinement, such as ITER, is to recreate the conditions necessary for them to operate inside the vacuum chamber of these sophisticated machines. deuterium and tritium nuclei fuse. However, this is by no means all. When this reaction takes place, the fusion of a deuterium nucleus and another tritium nucleus triggers the production of a helium nucleus and a neutron that is ejected with an energy of about 14 MeV. The problem is that the neutron lacks a net electrical charge, so it cannot be confined inside the magnetic field which, however, does manage to retain the deuterium and tritium nuclei, which have a positive electrical charge. This is the reason why when it originates as a result of the nuclear fusion reaction, this neutron is ejected towards the walls of the vacuum chamber with enormous energy. This particle is very important because in practice it will be closely linked to the production of electrical energy in nuclear fusion reactors, but, at the same time, it represents a very aggressive form of radiation that can significantly degrade the materials used in the reactor. The components that will be most affected by the direct impact of high-energy neutrons and the most intense heat flow are the internal wall of the vacuum chamber and the blanket. The components that will be most affected by the direct impact of high-energy neutrons and the most intense heat flow are the inner wall of the vacuum chamber and the blanketwhich is a mantle that covers it and whose purpose is to regenerate the tritium that must be used as fuel in the nuclear fusion reaction. This is why it is crucial to develop new materials that are able to withstand the neutron flux and therefore ensure that the reactor will have a long operational life. This is, neither more nor less, the purpose of IFMIF-DONES. And to carry it out it is necessary to set up facilities designed to allow the technicians involved in the project evaluate the properties of candidate materials to intervene not only in DEMO, but also in future commercial nuclear fusion reactors. The mission of this project invites us to intuit what the heart of IFMIF-DONES is: a source capable of producing high-energy neutrons with the intensity and volume of irradiation necessary to test the candidate materials. And this neutron source will be nothing more than a linear particle accelerator that will help IFMIF-DONES scientists to test, validate and qualify the materials that in the medium term should reach future electric energy production plants through fusion. Image | Fusion for Energy More information | Fusion for Energy In Xataka | ITER has faced one of the great challenges of nuclear fusion: preventing plasma at 150 million ºC from destroying the reactor

Meta and Google talk about nuclear fusion for the future; The short-term reality is that they are pulling natural gas

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Silicon Valley has an undeniable gift for selling the future. If one listens to the great technological leaders, Artificial Intelligence will soon be powered by energy sources worthy of a science fiction novel. Goal just signed an agreement to obtain solar energy directly from satellites in space, while figures such as Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, They assure that nuclear fusion It is the great “silver bullet” that will save the sector. However, it is enough to look down from the stars to the earth to find a much smokier reality. To feed the insatiable “energy monster” that AI has unleashed, big technology companies are turning to the technology of the past. As explained from Axiosthe race to dominate artificial intelligence is accelerating at such a dizzying pace that the industry’s ambitious climate goals are taking a discreet backseat. Today, the world’s most sophisticated cloud is being built on a foundation of fossil fuels. The numbers speak for themselves. Far from nuclear fusion laboratories, the actual infrastructure being built in the United States tells a story based on natural gas. Meta’s case is perhaps the most graphic, as detailed in Bloomberg, US utility Entergy Corp. has had to increase its capital spending plan by almost a third, reaching $57 billion, to build 10 new natural gas plants dedicated exclusively to powering the new data campus Hyperion of Meta in Louisiana. This gigantic complex will require more than 7 gigawatts of power, the equivalent of the output of seven large nuclear reactors. Google, the historic champion of clean energy, is not far behind either. An investigation by the market intelligence firm Cleanview has brought to light Google’s partnership with the company Crusoe Energy to develop a huge data center in Texas named “good night“. The project includes a 933-megawatt gas plant built outside the traditional electrical grid. The end of the green utopia? The environmental impact of this installation is not minor, how to explain Guardianthe plant will emit up to 4.5 million tons of carbon dioxide per year. To put it in perspective, this exceeds the annual emissions of the entire city of San Francisco or is equivalent to putting 970,000 additional gasoline cars on the roads. Given this, Google’s official position is cautious. Chrissy Moy, company spokesperson, does not deny the project before the mediaalthough it clarifies that, although they are linked to the campus, they still “do not have a contract in force” to acquire energy from said gas plant. How have they developed in oil pricethe origin of this sudden gas rush is that data centers are putting local power grids under unprecedented pressure, causing consumers to bear the cost of this increased energy competition. To overcome the slow expansions of the public network and the endless waiting lists for permits, Wired points out that data center developers They are choosing to generate their own energy “behind the meter” (off-grid). And in that fast and private strategy, gas is king. Their green mask falls off. This is a serious blow to Silicon Valley’s green image. As you remember GuardianGoogle was once a pioneer in promising net zero emissions by 2030. However, the company itself has had to admit that its carbon emissions have increased by 48% in the last five years due to data centers. Now, those environmental objectives have been internally downgraded to the category of climate moonshots (speculative projects very difficult to achieve). The underlying problem is purely physical. As he reflects Impakterenergy—not chip shortages—is emerging as the real bottleneck for AI. Traditional renewable sources are intermittent, and large language models require devouring electricity 24 hours a day. A systemic problem that is already raising blisters in Washington. The return to natural gas is not an isolated anecdote of a couple of companies. There are currently about 100 gigawatts of gas-fired power in development in the United States destined for data centers alone. Microsoft just signed a deal with oil giant Chevron in Texas, and permits for OpenAI’s Project Jupiter in New Mexico suggest it could emit up to 14 million tons of greenhouse gases annually (triple that of Google’s project). Faced with this fossil avalanche, Democratic senators such as Whitehouse, Van Hollen and Heinrich have sent letters demanding formal explanations from leaders of Meta and OpenAI for putting the country’s climate commitments at risk. The industry defends itself by arguing that it is a necessary evil. Cully Cavness, president of Crusoe, explained that natural gas it is a critical “bridge” and the only power source available today capable of scaling at the pace AI demands. Next-generation clean alternatives will take decades. Meta’s promising agreement to receive solar energy from space will not have a pilot satellite until 2028and its commercial viability is not expected, at best, until the 2030s or 2040s. The same happens with commercial fusion reactors: they will not dump a single watt into the grid well into the next decade. The great paradox of AI. Business magazines celebrate the financial success of this revolution. In their profiles of the most influential companies, TIME relates how Google, under Sundar Pichai, has reached a $4 trillion market value driven by its advances in AI, while Mark Zuckerberg celebrates record ad revenue on Meta by promising systems that will soon “understand the unique personal goals” of each user. Silicon Valley promises that this same Artificial Intelligence will one day help us solve humanity’s great challenges, including climate change itself. But the current paradox is inescapable: in the real world of 2026, to train the most brilliant and avant-garde artificial mind ever created, human beings still inevitably need to set natural gas on fire. Image | Photo by Tasos Mansour on Unsplash Xataka | Solving the mystery of the red balls on high-voltage cables: a simple way to save lives

the day the US stole a Soviet nuclear submarine 5,000 meters deep

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In the 1970s, a gigantic American ship sailed slowly through the Pacific while several Soviet ships they watched him a few meters away, taking photos and listening to every conversation. On deck, the sailors talked loudly about rocks on the seabed and collected samples so that everything seemed routine, without anyone suspecting that, right under their feet, one of the most unusual operations of the entire Cold War. An impossible robbery. At the end of the 60s, in the middle of the Cold War, the United States secretly located the Soviet submarine K-129 sunk to more than 5,000 meters deep in the Pacific, a distance that made any recovery attempt practically unfeasible. Even so, the strategic value it was hugesince the submersible carried nuclear missiles, codes and key technology that could tip the balance at a time of nuclear parity between superpowers. With that goal in mind, the CIA launched the Azorian Projectan operation so ambitious that for years only a small circle within the Government knew of its existence. Context. In reality, the mission, which lasted more or less six years, had begun in 1968, when the K-129 loaded with ballistic missiles disappeared without explanation somewhere in the Pacific Ocean. The situation was not entirely strange if we think that, at that time after the Cuban Missile Crisisboth American and Soviet submarines patrolled the high seas with nuclear weapons on board, prepared for possible war. Model of the sunken and deteriorated submarine K-129 The sinking. There are reports indicating that it was due to a mechanical failure, such as the missile’s engine accidentally starting, while the Soviets suspected for a time that the Americans had acted in bad faith. Be that as it may, and after two months, the Soviet Union abandoned the search for the K-129 and the nuclear weapons it carried, but the United States, which had recently used Air Force technology to locate two of its own submarines sunken, located the submarine 2,400 kilometers northwest of Hawaii and 5,030 meters deep. According to the declassified history of the project by the CIA decades later, “no country in the world had managed to recover an object of this size and weight from such depth.” Sherman Wetmore, chief engineer of the Glomar Explorer, looks at an oil painting of the ship refloating the Soviet submarine The great theater of lies. Once Washington found its location and in order to hide the true purpose, one of the more elaborate covers of history: an alleged underwater mining mission led by the eccentric millionaire Howard Hugheswhose reputation made any extravagant project credible. As? The enormous was built Hughes Glomar Explorerpresented to the world as a ship capable of extract manganese nodules from the seabed, while in reality it hid inside a secret system designed to capture the submarine. The operation was so convincing that even influenced markets and universitiesfeeding for years the illusion of a new mining industry that was never actually the objective. Details of the construction plan of the Glomar Explorer (reproduction), from 1971. In the lower central part of the ship, you can see the plans of the so-called “lunar pool”, into which the claw could introduce the submarine The giant claw. The heart of the mission was, possibly, the most exciting part of an already incredible story. It was a device hidden under the boat: a gigantic mechanical “claw” capable of descending kilometers to the ocean floor, hugging the hull of the submarine and raising it through a complex system of pipes and cables. The entire process had to be executed out of sight, using an internal opening in the ship (the called “moon pool”) that allowed working completely hidden, even under the constant surveillance of suspicious Soviet ships, but they couldn’t prove anything. There is no doubt, the operation required extreme precision, withstanding colossal stresses and maintaining the ship’s position in the open sea for days, something that in itself already represented an unprecedented technological challenge. Everything (almost) ready. In the summer of 1974, after years of preparation, the CIA managed to reach the submarine and hooked it with the claw, at which point he began to slowly raise it towards the surface, in an operation that lasted days and kept the entire crew tense. However, halfway through the ascent, the structure gave way and much of K-129 fell back to the ocean floor, leaving only a recovered section. Even so, they managed to rescue remains of the helmet and bodies of several Soviet sailors, who were buried with honors at sea, while the real loot (the missiles and secret codes) was shrouded in uncertainty and absolute secrecy by the United States, since many of the details remain classified today. “We neither confirm nor deny.” The biggest twist in history came when the operation came out in 1975 after leaks and thefts of documents linked to the business cover, forcing the US Government to face a most delicate diplomatic situation. However, instead of admitting or denying the theft of a Soviet nuclear submarine more than 5,000 meters deep, Washington adopted a response that would go down in history: “We neither confirm nor deny”a formula designed to avoid direct tensions with Moscow and which has since become a standard in intelligence matters. That calculated silence It encapsulates the essence of the entire operation: a gigantic mission, almost impossible on paper, visible to everyone in appearance, but whose true purpose and results remain, to a large extent, hidden from the general public. The legacy. Although he Azorian Project did not recover the entire submarine, it left a deep mark on history of espionage and engineeringamong other things because it demonstrated that it was possible to operate at extreme depths and execute missions of a unprecedented complexity. Of course, it also demonstrated the extent to which the Cold War promoted radical technical solutions and operations that bordered on the improbable, in a race for gain strategic advantage at any price between both sides. Decades later, it remains one … Read more

the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, illustrated in fascinating cartographies of the disaster

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On April 26, 1986, reactor number 4 of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, in the former Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, exploded during a low-power safety test. The accident released an estimated amount of radioactive material of 400 times greater than that of the Hiroshima atomic bomb, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency. The RBMK-1000 reactor involved had no containment structure, so radioisotopes such as iodine-131, cesium-137 or strontium-90 were freely dispersed into the atmosphere for ten days in a row, until they extinguished the graphite fire on May 5. The management of the accident could clearly be improved: the authorities ordered the evacuation of the nearby city of Pripyat 36 hours later and the world found out when Sweden detected radiation at its Forsmark plant on April 28. Ten years later, independent Ukraine published the Atlas of the Chernobyl Exclusion Zonea set of large-format graphic resources prepared by the state cartographic agency. As explains data journalist Attila Bátorfywas the first serious attempt to map the radioactive impact of the disaster on the soil, air and ecosystems and a large number of scientific professionals from entities such as the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences or other research institutes dependent on the Ministry of Ukraine for the Protection of the Population from the Consequences of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant Accident participated in its preparation. Now it is available to anyone thanks to the digitized version available on Ecogisstorage. The atlas contains different cartographic blocks. One of the first and essential to understand evolution are the weather maps of europe the days during the active phase of the accident and show what the atmospheric situation was like afterwards, with isobars, atmospheric fronts or wind direction for each day. This is the basis of everything because without reconstructing how the air circulated those subsequent days it is not possible to interpret other pollution maps. The radioactive cloud followed erratic trajectories conditioned by the weather fronts, which explains why countries such as Sweden, Poland or Austria received significant deposits while closer areas were relatively less affected. Daily synoptic weather maps of Europe during the active phase of the Chernobyl accident To analyze the meteorological influence on dispersion in Ukraine, different graph formats are used, such as bars, wind speed and direction diagrams, or this one that goes under these lines: the radiological wind rose, which shows the amount of material released in each direction of the mean wind in the atmospheric boundary layer. Each line on the diagram represents the mean wind direction in the atmospheric boundary layer at a given time, with its date noted, the length indicating the magnitude of the radioactivity released. At first glance something can be seen: The dispersion was neither uniform nor radial.but tremendously asymmetrical. Thus, some fronts dragged pollution northwestward, towards Belarus and Scandinavia, while others diverted it to the south and west of Ukraine. Vector diagram of radioactivity emissions (in Bq) constructed for the average wind direction in the atmospheric boundary layer. The effects of the Chernobyl disaster, on maps Under these lines This is the most important map by far: that of Cesium – 137. Why is it important? Because due to its characteristics, Cs-137 is the radiological tracer par excellence, which allows directly showing the permanent chemical trace of the accident on the territory. Retrospective estimation map of soil contamination with cesium-137. At a scale of 1:200,000, it shows the deposition density of Cesium – 137 in the soil on May 10, 1986, reconstructed in retrospect. The pollution isolines draw a tremendously asymmetrical patch, with an absolute maximum concentrated in the north and northwest. There is also a second important spot in the south, following the course of the Pripyat River. The rest show decreasing levels with distance in a radial manner. Groundwater transport route map The previous one may be the most striking and without a doubt it is the one that has been most widely disseminated, but the most disturbing in the long term is the map of transport routes in groundwater because it quantifies the long-term risk of water pollution. Cs-137 is easily seen and measured, but strontium-90 moving silently through the aquifers toward the Dnieper, which supplies water to millions of people, is an invisible problem. This 1:200,000 scale map is the only one in the atlas that attempts to quantify this risk with real flow velocities, showing the probable migration trajectories of radionuclides through the aquifers. The arrows point predominantly to the south and southeast, in the direction of the Dnieper. Gamma dose map The map you see just above also has a scale of 1:200,000 and shows the gamma radiation dose power in μR/h (microroentgen per hour), measured 1 meter from the ground. Yes, the above maps are important to describe the severity of the problem, but the gamma dose rate map is essential for decision making: who can enter the area, for how long and what routes are passable. It was the work tool to access the area because it is the map for evaluate exposure dose of the population and the personnel who worked in the area. In Xataka | When Chernobyl exploded in 1986, Spain was freed from the radioactive cloud. AEMET has now discovered that it did it for very little In Xataka | We believed that the “elephant’s foot” was the most radioactive point in Chernobyl reactor 4. we were wrong Cover | Atlas of the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, Ecogisstorage

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