'Eliminating Energy Blockade Top Priority' As Cuba Confirms Direct Talks With US

US Nuclear Fusion Startup To Build Radioactive Batteries For Use In Space Authored by Ameya Paleja via Interesting Engineering, Avalanche Energy, a fusion energy startup, has won a $5.2 million contract to build radioactive batteries that can power a laptop-class system for months. The contract is part of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s Rads to Watts Program, which aims to build next-generation, compact, resilient nuclear batteries with higher densities.  An early prototype of Avalanche Energy’s radiovoltaic converter for the DARPA Rads to Watts program is exposed to high-energy ion-beam irradiation.Avalanche Fusion Radioactive...

AI Is "New Front Door To Commerce" As Consumers Ditch Google For Chatbots Shoptalk, one of the retail and e-commerce industry's top U.S. conferences, took place in Las Vegas last week, where Goldman analysts had one key takeaway for clients on Monday morning: AI is beginning to reshape how consumers shop.  Analysts Brooke Roach and Kate McShane, among others, attended the conference and listened to retailers, consumer brands, and technology vendors focus on the evolving consumer space in the era of AI. Their top takeaway was that AI is emerging as a...

The US Shows A Way Out Of Germany's Energy Trap Submitted by Thomas Kolbe Big developments are underway in Tennessee and Alabama. Over the next five years, the joint Japanese-American project will bring several so-called small modular reactors (SMRs) of the BWRX-300 type online. Almost one percent of U.S. electricity production—slightly more than three gigawatts—will be added to the existing energy mix by reactors designed by Hitachi and GE Vernova. A caveat for purists of market economics: this is a hybrid project. While the majority is privately financed, export support from Japan...