Sunday, October 27th, 2024

Time	Event
4:34a	Nvidia Passes Apple to Become the World's Most Valuable Company - Powered by Demand for AI Chips "Nvidia dethroned Apple as the world's most valuable company on Friday..." reports Reuters, "powered by insatiable demand for its specialized artificial intelligence chips." Nvidia's stock market value briefly touched $3.53 trillion, slightly above Apple's $3.52 trillion, LSEG data showed... In June, Nvidia briefly became the world's most valuable company before it was overtaken by Microsoft and Apple. The tech trio's market capitalizations have been neck-and-neck for several months. [Friday] Microsoft's market value stood at $3.18 trillion, with its stock up 0.8%... Nvidia's shares hit a record high on Tuesday, building on a rally from last week when TSMC, the world's largest contract chipmaker, posted a forecast-beating 54% jump in quarterly profit driven by soaring demand for chips used in AI. The article points out that by the end of the day Friday, Nvidia's valuation had dropped to $3.47 trillion, while Apple had risen to $3.52 trillion... Read more of this story at Slashdot. (Comment on this)
2:34p	UK Nuclear Site's Clean-Up Costs Rise To £136 Billion The cost of cleaning up the U.K.'s largest nuclear site, "is expected to spiral to £136 billion" (about $176 billion), according to the Guardian, creating tension with the country's public-spending watchdog. Projects to fix the state-owned buildings with hazardous and radioactive material "are running years late and over budget," the Guardian notes, with the National Audit Office suggesting spending at the Sellafield site has risen to more than £2.7 billion a year ($3.49 billion). Europe's most hazardous industrial site has previously been described by a former UK secretary of state as a "bottomless pit of hell, money and despair". The Guardian's Nuclear Leaks investigation in late 2023 revealed a string of cybersecurity problems at the site, as well as issues with its safety and workplace culture. The National Audit Office found that Sellafield was making slower-than-hoped progress on making the site safe and that three of its most hazardous storage sites pose an "intolerable risk". The site is a sprawling collection of buildings, many never designed to hold nuclear waste long-term, now in various states of disrepair. It stores and treats decades of nuclear waste from atomic power generation and weapons programmes, has taken waste from countries including Italy and Sweden, and is the world's largest store of plutonium. Sellafield is forecast to cost £136bn to decommission, which is £21.4bn or 18.8% higher than was forecast in 2019. Its buildings are expected to be finally torn down by 2125 and its nuclear waste buried deep underground at an undecided English location. The underground project's completion date has been delayed from 2040 to the 2050s at the earliest, meaning Sellafield will need to build more stores and manage waste for longer. Each decade of delay costs Sellafield between £500m and £760m, the National Audit Office said. Meanwhile, the government hopes to ramp up nuclear power generation, which will create more waste. "Plans to clean up three of its worst ponds — which contain hazardous nuclear sludge that must be painstakingly removed — are running six to 13 years later than forecast when the National Audit Office last drew up a report, in 2018... " "One pond, the Magnox swarf storage silo, is leaking 2,100 litres of contaminated water each day, the NAO found. The pond was due to be emptied by 2046 but this has slipped to 2059." Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader AmiMoJo for sharing the news. Read more of this story at Slashdot. (Comment on this)
5:34p	Iceland's Plan to Drill Into a Volcano to Test 'Limitless' Supercharged Geothermal Energy In Iceland, "a volcanic system has awoken after an 800-year slumber," according to a multimedia CNN Special Report. "But in another part of Iceland, scientists and engineers are hoping to harness magma's immense power to solve the planet's biggest problem..." It all started in 2009 when Bjarni Pálsson, an engineer with Iceland's national power company, accidentally drilled into a magma chamber. "Armed with new technology and know-how, he is going back in..." The ambition of the geothermal experts and volcanologists that comprise the Krafla Magma Testbed is to convert the immense heat and pressure into a new "limitless" form of supercharged geothermal energy — a tantalizing prospect as the world struggles to end its relationship with planet-heating fossil fuels. "This has never been done before," said Hjalti Páll Ingólfsson, director of the Geothermal Research Cluster, which developed the project.... If all goes to plan, the first borehole will be completed in 2027 and will mark the first time anyone has ever implanted sensors directly into a magma chamber... If the first drilling experiment succeeds, the team will move onto the second borehole, due to be completed in 2029 — and this could be the global gamechanger. It's here the team will attempt to harness the intense heat of magma to produce a new kind of extreme geothermal energy, many times more powerful than conventional... If they succeed, the implications could reverberate around the world, Ingólfsson said. There are an estimated 800 million people living within roughly 60 miles of an active volcano. The report includes a map showing volcano sites around the earth where similar drilling could theoretically unleash the same intense magma-powered extreme geothermal energy. Iceland's plan is to drill down 1.2 miles — about 2 kilometers — into a magma chamber that's around 1,800 Fahrenheit (nearly 1,000 degrees Celsius). The engineering feat "won't be easy," the article acknowledges. "But as humans heat the planet at record speed with fossil fuel pollution, there is increasing pressure to perform moonshot feats of engineering to save us from ourselves." Read more of this story at Slashdot. (Comment on this)

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