Category: Other Sciences

It’s a replay of the VHS versus Betamax war, but with higher stakes for a warming planet: A battle over EV charging standards finds Tesla winning decisively, as major automakers abandon their Combined Charging System (CCS) plugs in favor of…

Lots of green energy experiments in the lab publish impressive results—but what’s more impressive is when those results come from an actual on-site pilot demonstration in the real world. That’s the case with new research that is able to…

Funding for two new microreactors could bring reliable nuclear power to remote locations. Westinghousesecured US $3 million for its eVinci microreactor, and Radiant Industries received $2 million for its Kaleidos microreactor, both in November…

Over the last year, Spectrum’s editors have noticed an emerging through line connecting several major stories: the centrality of technology to geopolitics. Last month, our cover story, done in partnership with Foreign Policy magazine, was on…

After a half-century hiatus,thorium has returned to the front lines of nuclear power research as a source of fuel. In 2025, China plans to start building a demonstration thorium-based molten-salt reactor in the Gobi Desert.

The 10-megawatt…

Wielding a shiny chrome scoop, Michael Rosenthal leans over and digs into the powder in a half-filled 55-gallon drum. He holds up the scoop and takes a pinch in his fingers and smooshes it to show me the texture. It’s like talc, but it’s an…

IEEE Spectrum’s most-read energy stories of 2024 centered on creative ways to produce, store and connect more carbon-free energy. Our readers wanted to know more about power beaming, new kinds of nuclear fusion, vertical solar farms, powerful…

To Nick de Vries, chief technology officer at the solar-energy developer Silicon Ranch, a transformer is like an interstate on-ramp: It boosts the voltage of the electricity that his solar plants generate to match the voltage of grid transmission…

When Meta announced last week that it’s looking for a nuclear energy developer to power its future AI operations, it joined a growing cadre of tech companies all suddenly repeating the same refrain: We need more power—preferably…

While the world is waiting—and waiting—for the giant leap to solid-state batteries, a nimble step to silicon anode cells is well underway. That transitional stage includes a key ingredient made in the U.S., not China.

Sionic Energy today…