Science & Environment
Dominion is discussing small nuclear reactors with other tech companies
The Dominion coal burning power plant is seen in Saint Paul, Virginia on Tuesday, February 7, 2023. Community leaders in Southwestern Virginia are giving serious consideration to the idea of utilizing formerly mined coal sites to house small modular nuclear reactors.
Mike Belleme | The Washington Post | Getty Images
Dominion Energy is talking with other tech companies about developing small modular nuclear reactors, after the Virginia utility entered into an agreement with Amazon last month to look at advancing the next generation technology .
“It’s very encouraging to see large power users, including technology companies, express a willingness to invest, partner and collaborate to bring this exciting base load carbon free technology into fruition,” Dominion CEO Robert Blue told investors on the company’s third-quarter earnings call Friday.
Dominion and Amazon have signed a memorandum of understanding to explore developing a small modular reactor near the utility’s North Anna nuclear station in Louisa County, Virginia. The small reactor would bring 300 megawatts of power to Virginia.
Virginia is one of the most nuclear friendly states in the nation with strong bipartisan support for next-generation nuclear initiatives, Blue said.
“It’s not surprising that our large customers would be interested as they think about us as a good operator of nuclear, to work together on maybe advancing those kinds of technologies,” the CEO told investors.
“So we’ve been talking with Amazon obviously and others,” the CEO said.
Tech companies are investing in nuclear power as they hunt for carbon-free, reliable electricity to support the growing energy needs of artificial intelligence data centers. Dominion serves the largest data center market in the world, northern Virginia.
Earlier this year, Amazon bought a data center campus from Talen Energy that will be powered by the Susquehanna nuclear plant in Pennsylvania. Microsoft has signed an agreement to purchase power from Three Mile Island as Constellation Energy aims to restart the plant in 2028. And Alphabet‘s Google agreed last month to purchase power from the startup Kairos Power, a developer of small modular reactors.
Small modular reactors promise to reduce capital costs and speed the deployment of nuclear plants. They have a smaller footprint than large reactors, making them easier to site in principle, and promise a simpler manufacturing process.
But the technology has struggled to reach the commercial stage. There is no operating small modular reactor in the U.S. right now.
Mass-shifting particles have finally been spotted
LAGUNA DESIGN/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY
Strange particles that have mass when moving one direction but no mass when moving in another were first theorised more than a decade ago. Now, these mass-shifting particles have been glimpsed in a semimetal exposed to extreme conditions.
“This [particle] is very bizarre. You can imagine walking on the streets of New York and if you go straight, you are super light, you are massless. But turn 90 degrees east or west, and you become super massive,” says …
Have we found a new limit on the universe?
kkssr/Shutterstock
A newly proposed cosmic speed limit may constrain how fast anything in the universe can grow. Its existence follows from Alan Turing’s pioneering work on theoretical computer science, which opens the intriguing possibility that the structure of the universe is fundamentally linked to nature of computation.
Cosmic limits are not a new idea. While studying the relationship between space and time, Albert Einstein showed that nothing in the universe can exceed the speed of light, as part of his special theory of relativity. Now, Toby Ord at…
The outcome of the U.S. presidential election on Nov. 5 won’t affect oil production levels in the short- to medium term, Exxon CEO Darren Woods told CNBC on Friday.
Former President Donald Trump has called for unconstrained oil and gas production to lower energy prices and fight inflation, boiling his energy policy down to three words on the campaign trail: “Drill, baby, drill.”
“I’m not sure how drill, baby, drill translates into policy,” Woods told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” Friday after the largest U.S. oil and gas company reported third-quarter results.
Woods said U.S. shale production does not face constraints from “external restrictions.” The U.S. has produced record amounts of oil and gas during the Biden administration.
Over the past six years, the U.S. has produced more crude oil than any other nation in history, including Saudi Arabia and Russia, according to the Energy Information Administration.
Output in the U.S. is driven by the oil and gas industry deploying technology and investment to generate shareholder returns based on the break-even cost of production, the CEO said.
“Certainly we wouldn’t see a change based on a political change but more on an economic environment,” Woods said. “I don’t think there’s anybody out there that’s developing a business strategy to respond to a political agenda,” he said.
While shale production has not faced constraints on developing new acreage, there are resources in areas like the Gulf of Mexico that have not opened up due to federal permitting, the CEO said.
“That could, for the longer term, open up potential sources of supply,” Wood said. In the short- to medium term, however, unconventional shale resources are available and it’s just a matter of developing them based on market dynamics, he said.
Exxon Mobil shares in 2024.
The vast majority of shale resources in the U.S. are on private land and regulated at the state level, according to an August note from Morgan Stanley. About 25% of oil and 10% of natural gas is produced on federal land and waters subject to permitting, according to Morgan Stanley.
Vice President Kamala Harris opposed fracking during her bid for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination. She has since reversed that position in an effort to shore up support in the crucial swing state of Pennsylvania, where the natural gas industry is important for the state’s economy.
An Exxon gas station is seen in the Brooklyn borough of New York City on Oct. 6, 2023.
Michael M. Santiago | Getty Images
Exxon Mobil beat third-quarter earnings expectations, as the oil major reached its highest production level in more than four decades.
Here is what Exxon reported for the third quarter compared with what Wall Street was expecting, based on a survey of analysts by LSEG:
- Earnings per share: $1.92 adjusted, vs. $1.88 per share expected.
- Revenues: $90 billion, vs. $93.94 billion expected
The oil major booked net income of $8.61 billion in the quarter, or $1.92 per share, down about 5% compared to $9.1 billion, or $2.25 per share, in the year-ago period. Exxon’s profits have declined as refining margins and natural gas prices have pulled back from from historically high levels in 2023.
The company returned $9.8 billion to shareholders in the quarter and increased its fourth-quarter dividend to $0.99 per share.
Exxon said it has reached its high production level in more than 40 years at 3.2 million barrels per day.
The oil major’s stock rose about 1% in pre-market trading.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
A new material can bend light
University of Glasgow
Scientists have discovered a technique whereby light can be bent around corners, inspired by the way clouds scatter sunlight. This type of light-bending could lead to advances in medical imaging, electronics cooling and even nuclear reactor design.
Daniele Faccio at the University of Glasgow, UK, and his colleagues say they are shocked this type of light scattering wasn’t noticed before. It works on the same basis as clouds, snow and other white materials that absorb light: once photons hit the surface of such a material, they are scattered in all directions, barely penetrating at all and getting reflected out the way they came. For instance, when sunlight hits a tall cumulonimbus cloud, it bounces off the top, making this part of the cloud appear bright white. But so little light reaches the bottom of the cloud that this part appears grey – despite being made up of the same water droplets.
“The light bounces around and sort of tries to get in, and it’s bouncing off all the molecules and the defects,” says Faccio. “And eventually what happens is it just gets reflected back because it can’t get in. This is this scattering.”
To replicate this process, the team 3D printed objects from opaque white material while leaving thin tunnels of clear resin within. When light is shone at the material, it travels into these tunnels and is scattered – just as light is on snow or clouds. However, instead of scattering randomly in every direction until they are evenly dispersed, the photons are directed to return to the resin tunnel by the opaque material. The team put this to use, creating a range of objects that steer light in an organised way.
3D-printed white blocks with curved channels guide scattering light
University of Glasgow
These 3D-printed objects are functionally similar to fibre optic cables, which route light along their length, but they operate on fundamentally different principles. Fibre optic cables steer light by infinitely reflecting internally. When photons attempt to leave a cable’s inner core of plastic or glass, they hit another material with a lower refractive index and are reflected back inside. In this way, light can be carried for kilometres at a time, even around bends.
The researchers say their material boosts light transmission by more than two orders of magnitude compared with solid blocks without the same clear tunnels, and also allows it to be directed around curves. This is much less efficient than fibre optic, and will therefore struggle to achieve the great distances that it does, but it is also very simple and cheap.
This method of light-bending could make use of existing tunnels of translucent material, such as tendons and fluid in the spinal column, to provide new ways to carry out medical imaging. Faccio says the exact same principle also works to direct heat and neutrons, and could therefore also find use in a range of engineering applications such as cooling systems and nuclear reactors.
“It wasn’t obvious that this would work at all. We were shocked,” says Faccio, who believes the phenomenon could easily have been discovered decades or even centuries ago. “It’s not like we’ve created or found some really niche, weird equation with some weird properties.”
Topics:
Jaap Arriens | Nurphoto | Getty Images
Chevron beat third-quarter earnings and revenue expectations, returning a record amount of cash to shareholders.
Shares were up 2.6% in the premarket following the report’s release.
The oil major’s quarterly profit, however, declined substantially compared to the year-ago period due to lower margins on refined product sales, lower prices and the absence of favorable tax times.
Chevron is aiming to streamline its portfolio, with asset sales in Canada, Congo and Alaska expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2024. The company is also target $2 billion to $3 billion in cost reductions from 2024 through the end of 2026.
Here is what Chevron reported for the third quarter compared with what Wall Street was expecting, based on a survey of analysts by LSEG:
- Earnings per share: $2.51 adjusted, vs. $2.43 expected
- Revenue: $50.67 billion, vs. $48.99 billion expected
Chevron’s net income came in at $4.49 billion, or $2.48 per share, down 31% from $6.53 billion, or $3.48 per share, in the third quarter of 2023. When adjusted for foreign currency impacts, the company reported earnings of $2.51 per share, solidly topping Wall Street’s expectations for the quarter.
Chevron booked revenues of $50.67 billion, also beating Street expectations but declining 6% from the $54.1 billion reported in the third quarter last year.
The oil major returned a record $7.7 billion to shareholders in the quarter, including $4.7 billion in share buybacks and $2.9 billion in dividends.
Chevron produced 3.36 million oil-equivalent barrels per day in the quarter, a 7% increase over the third quarter of 2023, driven by record output in the Permian Basin.
Chevron’s stock is largely flat for the year, underperforming the S&P 500 energy sector which has gained more than 6%. Shares have struggled to gain ground as uncertainty looms over the company’s pending $53 billion acquisition of Hess.
The Federal Trade Commission has cleared the deal, though it prohibited John Hess from joining Chevron’s board.
Chevron remains locked in a dispute with Exxon Mobil, which is claiming a right of first refusal over Hess Corp.’s lucrative oil assets in Guyana. If an arbitration court rules in Exxon’s favor, Chevron’s acquisition of Hess would fail to close.
-
Science & Environment1 month agoHow to unsnarl a tangle of threads, according to physics
-
Technology1 month agoIs sharing your smartphone PIN part of a healthy relationship?
-
Science & Environment1 month ago‘Running of the bulls’ festival crowds move like charged particles
-
Science & Environment1 month agoHyperelastic gel is one of the stretchiest materials known to science
-
Technology1 month agoWould-be reality TV contestants ‘not looking real’
-
Science & Environment1 month agoMaxwell’s demon charges quantum batteries inside of a quantum computer
-
Science & Environment1 month agoX-rays reveal half-billion-year-old insect ancestor
-
Science & Environment1 month agoSunlight-trapping device can generate temperatures over 1000°C
-
Sport4 weeks agoBoxing: World champion Nick Ball set for Liverpool homecoming against Ronny Rios
-
Technology1 month agoUkraine is using AI to manage the removal of Russian landmines
-
Technology4 weeks agoGmail gets redesigned summary cards with more data & features
-
Football1 month agoRangers & Celtic ready for first SWPL derby showdown
-
Science & Environment1 month agoLaser helps turn an electron into a coil of mass and charge
-
Science & Environment1 month agoPhysicists have worked out how to melt any material
-
Science & Environment1 month agoLiquid crystals could improve quantum communication devices
-
Technology1 month agoRussia is building ground-based kamikaze robots out of old hoverboards
-
Technology4 weeks agoSamsung Passkeys will work with Samsung’s smart home devices
-
Sport4 weeks agoAaron Ramsdale: Southampton goalkeeper left Arsenal for more game time
-
Science & Environment1 month agoQuantum ‘supersolid’ matter stirred using magnets
-
News4 weeks agoWoman who died of cancer ‘was misdiagnosed on phone call with GP’
-
MMA1 month agoDana White’s Contender Series 74 recap, analysis, winner grades
-
MMA4 weeks ago‘Uncrowned queen’ Kayla Harrison tastes blood, wants UFC title run
-
TV4 weeks agoসারাদেশে দিনব্যাপী বৃষ্টির পূর্বাভাস; সমুদ্রবন্দরে ৩ নম্বর সংকেত | Weather Today | Jamuna TV
-
Money4 weeks agoWetherspoons issues update on closures – see the full list of five still at risk and 26 gone for good
-
Science & Environment1 month agoA new kind of experiment at the Large Hadron Collider could unravel quantum reality
-
Technology1 month agoEpic Games CEO Tim Sweeney renews blast at ‘gatekeeper’ platform owners
-
News4 weeks ago‘Blacks for Trump’ and Pennsylvania progressives play for undecided voters
-
Technology4 weeks agoMicrosoft just dropped Drasi, and it could change how we handle big data
-
News4 weeks agoNavigating the News Void: Opportunities for Revitalization
-
Technology1 month agoWhy Machines Learn: A clever primer makes sense of what makes AI possible
-
Science & Environment1 month agoWhy this is a golden age for life to thrive across the universe
-
News4 weeks agoMassive blasts in Beirut after renewed Israeli air strikes
-
News1 month agoRwanda restricts funeral sizes following outbreak
-
MMA4 weeks agoPereira vs. Rountree prediction: Champ chases legend status
-
MMA4 weeks ago‘Dirt decision’: Conor McGregor, pros react to Jose Aldo’s razor-thin loss at UFC 307
-
Business4 weeks agoWhen to tip and when not to tip
-
News4 weeks ago▶ Hamas Spent $1B on Tunnels Instead of Investing in a Future for Gaza’s People
-
News4 weeks agoCornell is about to deport a student over Palestine activism
-
Football4 weeks agoWhy does Prince William support Aston Villa?
-
Technology4 weeks agoCheck, Remote, and Gusto discuss the future of work at Disrupt 2024
-
Technology1 month agoMicrophone made of atom-thick graphene could be used in smartphones
-
Business1 month ago
how UniCredit built its Commerzbank stake
-
Technology4 weeks agoMusk faces SEC questions over X takeover
-
Sport1 month agoChina Open: Carlos Alcaraz recovers to beat Jannik Sinner in dramatic final
-
Science & Environment1 month agoITER: Is the world’s biggest fusion experiment dead after new delay to 2035?
-
Science & Environment1 month agoQuantum forces used to automatically assemble tiny device
-
Science & Environment1 month agoA slight curve helps rocks make the biggest splash
-
Business4 weeks agoWater companies ‘failing to address customers’ concerns’
-
MMA4 weeks agoKayla Harrison gets involved in nasty war of words with Julianna Pena and Ketlen Vieira
-
Sport4 weeks ago2024 ICC Women’s T20 World Cup: Pakistan beat Sri Lanka
-
Business4 weeks ago
DoJ accuses Donald Trump of ‘private criminal effort’ to overturn 2020 election
-
MMA4 weeks ago‘I was fighting on automatic pilot’ at UFC 306
-
Sport4 weeks agoWales fall to second loss of WXV against Italy
-
Science & Environment1 month agoNuclear fusion experiment overcomes two key operating hurdles
-
News2 months ago▶️ Hamas in the West Bank: Rising Support and Deadly Attacks You Might Not Know About
-
Womens Workouts1 month ago3 Day Full Body Women’s Dumbbell Only Workout
-
Business1 month ago
Bank of England warns of ‘future stress’ from hedge fund bets against US Treasuries
-
News4 weeks agoHull KR 10-8 Warrington Wolves – Robins reach first Super League Grand Final
-
Sport4 weeks agoCoco Gauff stages superb comeback to reach China Open final
-
News4 weeks agoGerman Car Company Declares Bankruptcy – 200 Employees Lose Their Jobs
-
MMA4 weeks agoKetlen Vieira vs. Kayla Harrison pick, start time, odds: UFC 307
-
Sport4 weeks agoWXV1: Canada 21-8 Ireland – Hosts make it two wins from two
-
Sport4 weeks agoMan City ask for Premier League season to be DELAYED as Pep Guardiola escalates fixture pile-up row
-
Technology1 month agoMeta has a major opportunity to win the AI hardware race
-
Football4 weeks ago'Rangers outclassed and outplayed as Hearts stop rot'
-
Sport4 weeks agoPremiership Women’s Rugby: Exeter Chiefs boss unhappy with WXV clash
-
Technology4 weeks agoLG C4 OLED smart TVs hit record-low prices ahead of Prime Day
-
Business1 month agoStocks Tumble in Japan After Party’s Election of New Prime Minister
-
Business4 weeks ago
Sterling slides after Bailey says BoE could be ‘a bit more aggressive’ on rates
-
Sport1 month agoSturm Graz: How Austrians ended Red Bull’s title dominance
-
Business4 weeks ago
The search for Japan’s ‘lost’ art
-
Entertainment4 weeks agoBruce Springsteen endorses Harris, calls Trump “most dangerous candidate for president in my lifetime”
-
Science & Environment1 month agoTime travel sci-fi novel is a rip-roaringly good thought experiment
-
Science & Environment1 month agoNerve fibres in the brain could generate quantum entanglement
-
News1 month ago▶️ Media Bias: How They Spin Attack on Hezbollah and Ignore the Reality
-
Technology1 month agoUniversity examiners fail to spot ChatGPT answers in real-world test
-
Business1 month ago
Top shale boss says US ‘unusually vulnerable’ to Middle East oil shock
-
TV4 weeks agoTV Patrol Express September 26, 2024
-
Technology4 weeks agoTexas is suing TikTok for allegedly violating its new child privacy law
-
News4 weeks agoFamily plans to honor hurricane victim using logs from fallen tree that killed him
-
Money4 weeks agoPub selling Britain’s ‘CHEAPEST’ pints for just £2.60 – but you’ll have to follow super-strict rules to get in
-
Technology4 weeks agoIf you’ve ever considered smart glasses, this Amazon deal is for you
-
Sport4 weeks agoNew Zealand v England in WXV: Black Ferns not ‘invincible’ before game
-
Money3 weeks agoTiny clue on edge of £1 coin that makes it worth 2500 times its face value – do you have one lurking in your change?
-
Sport1 month agoWorld’s sexiest referee Claudia Romani shows off incredible figure in animal print bikini on South Beach
-
Technology4 weeks agoJ.B. Hunt and UP.Labs launch venture lab to build logistics startups
-
Technology4 weeks agoSingleStore’s BryteFlow acquisition targets data integration
-
News4 weeks agoHarry vs Sun publisher: ‘Two obdurate but well-resourced armies’
-
Technology4 weeks agoThe best shows on Max (formerly HBO Max) right now
-
Entertainment4 weeks agoNew documentary explores actor Christopher Reeve’s life and legacy
-
Science & Environment1 month agoHow to wrap your mind around the real multiverse
-
Business1 month agoChancellor Rachel Reeves says she needs to raise £20bn. How might she do it?
-
MMA1 month agoJulianna Peña trashes Raquel Pennington’s behavior as champ
-
Politics4 weeks ago
Rosie Duffield’s savage departure raises difficult questions for Keir Starmer. He’d be foolish to ignore them | Gaby Hinsliff
-
Technology4 weeks agoOpenAI secured more billions, but there’s still capital left for other startups
-
Technology4 weeks agoThis AI video generator can melt, crush, blow up, or turn anything into cake
-
Technology4 weeks agoAmazon’s Ring just doubled the price of its alarm monitoring service for grandfathered customers
-
Technology4 weeks agoBest iPad deals for October 2024
-
Technology4 weeks agoQuoroom acquires Investory to scale up its capital-raising platform for startups
-
Technology4 weeks agoThe best budget robot vacuums for 2024
You must be logged in to post a comment Login