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In an entertaining “alternate history” article from The Economist posted online on July 4, a turning point in human history may have occurred on March 6, 1974. That was the day that French prime minister Pierre Messmer made an announcement that “may have saved the world from a dangerous rise in temperatures—an obscure phenomenon known in scientific circles as ‘global warming,’” noted the article. The article, What if nuclear power had taken off in the 1970s? gives a fictional account of what might have happened around the world had nuclear energy been more widely accepted decades ago.

According to a recent story published by AAAS, researchers from the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams Laboratory at Michigan State University have taken a major step toward a theoretical first-principles description of neutrinoless double-beta decay.

Scientists have called the extremophile bacterium Deinococcus radiodurans “a robust generalist” capable of persevering amid prolonged exposure to everything from toxic chemicals and corrosive acids to desiccating desert heat and subzero temperatures. Colonies of the bacteria have been found occupying the coolant water tanks of nuclear reactors and thriving on the weathered granite of Antarctica’s dry valleys. They have faced exposure to solar radiation and the vacuum of space onboard a European Space Agency satellite and have survived punishing simulations of life on Mars at the German Aerospace Center in Cologne.

An artist’s impression of what a nuclear thermal ship built to take humans to Mars could look like. Photo: NASA

There are a lot of reasons that a faster spaceship is a better one, and nuclear-powered rockets are a way to achieve this, according to an article posted on the Conversation website on May 20.

3D-printed components for the prototype reactor. Photo: Britanny Cramer/ORNL/U.S. Department of Energy

A 3D-printed nuclear reactor core prototype being developed at Oak Ridge National Laboratory is a step toward reaching the goal of creating an advanced, full-sized, 3D-printed reactor by 2023 at the lab.

According to the federal government, certain critical infrastructure industries have a special responsibility during the coronavirus pandemic to continue operations, including the nuclear power industry.