Saturday, August 30th, 2025

Time	Event
6:34p	Fusion Power Company CFS Raises $863M More From Google, Nvidia, and Many Others When it comes to nuclear fusion energy, "How do we advance fusion as fast as possible?" asks the CEO of Commonwealth Fusion Systems. They've just raised $863 million from Nvidia, Google, the BIll Gates-founded Breakthrough Energy Ventures and nearly two dozen more investors, which "may prove helpful as the company develops its supply chain and searches for partners to build its power plants and buy electricity," reports TechCrunch. Commonwealth's CEO/co-founder Bob Mumgaard says "This round of capital isn't just about fusion just generally as a concept... It's about how do we go to make fusion into a commercial industrial endeavor." The Massachusetts-based company has raised nearly $3 billion to date, the most of any fusion startup. Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS) previously raised a $1.8 billion round in 2021... CFS is currently building a prototype reactor called Sparc in a Boston suburb. The company expects to turn that device on later next year and achieve scientific breakeven in 2027, a milestone in which the fusion reaction produces more energy than was required to ignite it. Though Sparc isn't designed to sell power to the grid, it's still vital to CFS's success. "There are parts of the modeling and the physics that we don't yet understand," Saskia Mordijck, an associate professor of physics at the College of William and Mary, told TechCrunch. "It's always an open question when you turn on a completely new device that it might go into plasma regimes we've never been into, that maybe we uncover things that we just did not expect." Assuming Sparc doesn't reveal any major problems, CFS expects to begin construction on Arc, its commercial-scale power plant, in Virginia starting in 2027 or 2028... "We know that this kind of idea should work," Mordijck said. "The question is naturally, how will it perform?" Investors appear to like what they've seen so far. The list of participants in the Series B2 round is lengthy. No single investor led the round, and a number of existing investors increased their stakes, said Ally Yost, CFS's senior vice president of corporate development... The new round will help CFS make progress on Sparc, but it will not be enough to build Arc, which will likely cost several billion dollars, Mumgaard said. "As advances in computing and AI have quickened the pace of research and development, the sector has become a hotbed of startup and investor activity," the article points out. And CEO Mumgaard told TechCrunch that their Sparc prototype will prove the soundness of the science — but it's also important to learn "the capabilities that you need to be able to deliver it. It's also to have the receipts, know what these things cost!" Read more of this story at Slashdot. (Comment on this)
7:57p	Wave Energy Projects Have Come a Long Way After 10 Years They offer "a self-sustaining power solution for marine regions," according to a newly published 41-page review after "pioneering use in wave energy harvesting in 2014". Ten years later, researchers have developed several structures for these "triboelectric nanogenerators" (TENGs) to "facilitate their commercial deployment." But there's a lack of "comprehensive summaries and performance evaluations". So the review "distills a decade of blue-energy research into six design pillars" for next-generation technology, writes EurekaAlert, which points the way "to self-powered ocean grids, distributed marine IoT, and even hydrogen harvested from the sea itself..." By "translating chaotic ocean motion into deterministic electron flow," the team "turns every swell, gust and glint of sunlight into dispatchable power — ushering in an era where the sea itself becomes a silent, self-replenishing power plant." Some insights: - Multilayer stacks, origami folds and magnetic-levitation frames push volumetric power density...three orders of magnitude above first-generation prototypes. - Frequency-complementary couplings of TENG, EMG and PENG create full-spectrum harvesters that deliver 117 % power-conversion efficiency in real waves. - Pendulum, gear and magnetic-multiplier mechanisms translate chaotic 0.1-2 Hz swells into stable high-frequency oscillations, multiplying average power 14-fold. - Resonance-tuned structures now span 0.01-5 Hz, locking onto shifting wave spectra across seasons and sea states. - Spherical, dodecahedral and tensegrity architectures harvest six-degree-of-freedom motion, eliminating orientational blind spots. - Single devices co-harvest wave, wind and solar inputs, powering self-charging buoys that cut battery replacement to zero... Another new wave energy project is moving forward, according to the blog Renewable Energy World: Eco Wave Power, an onshore wave energy technology company, announced that its U.S. pilot project at the Port of Los Angeles has successfully completed operational testing and achieved a new milestone: the lowering of its floaters into the water for the first time. The moment, broadcast live by Good Morning America, follows the finalization of all installation works at the project site, including full installation of all wave energy floaters; connection of hydraulic pipes and supporting infrastructure; and placement of the onshore energy conversion unit. With installation completed, Eco Wave Power has now officially entered the operational phase of its U.S. excursion... [Inna Braverman, founder and CEO of Eco Wave Power] said "This pilot station is a vital step in demonstrating how wave energy can be harnessed using existing marine infrastructure, while laying the groundwork for full-scale commercialization in the United States...." Eco Wave Power's patented onshore wave energy system attaches floaters to existing marine structures. The up-and-down motion of the waves drives hydraulic cylinders, which send pressurized fluid to a land-based energy conversion unit that generates electricity... The U.S. Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory estimates that wave energy has the potential to generate over 1,400 terawatt-hours per year — enough to power approximately 130 million homes. Eco Wave Power's 404.7 MW global project pipeline also includes upcoming operational sites in Taiwan, India, and Portugal, alongside its grid-connected station in Israel. Long-time Slashdot reader PongoX11 also brings word of a company building a "simple" floating rig to turn wave motion into electricity, calling it "a steel can that moves water around" and wondering if "This one might work!" The news site TechEBlog points out that "Unlike old-school wave energy systems with clunky mechanical parts, Ocean-2 rocks a modular, flexible setup that rolls with the ocean's flow." At about 10 meters wide [30 feet wide. and 260 feet long!], it is made from materials designed to (hopefully) withstand the ocean's abuse, over some maintenance cycle. It's designed for deep ocean, so solving this technically is the first big challenge. Figuring out how to use/monetize all that cheap energy out in the middle of nowhere will be the next. "Ocean-2 works with the ocean, not against it, so we can generate power without messing up marine life," said Panthalassa's CEO, Dr. Elena Martinez, according to TechEBlog: Tests in Puget Sound, done with Everett Ship Repair, showed it pumping out up to 50 kilowatts in decent conditions — enough juice for a small coastal town. "We're thinking big," Martinez said in a press release. "Ocean-2 is just the start, but we're already planning bigger arrays that could crank out gigawatts..." Looking forward, Panthalassa sees Ocean-2 as part of a massive wave energy network. By 2030, they're aiming to roll out arrays that could power whole coastal cities, cutting down on fossil fuel use. Read more of this story at Slashdot. (Comment on this)
10:09p	Intel Get $5.7 Billion Early. What's the Government's Strategy? Intel amended its deal with the U.S. Department of Commerce "to remove earlier project milestones," reports Reuters, "and received about $5.7 billion in cash sooner than planned." "The move will give Intel more flexibility over the funds." The amended agreement, which revises a November 2024 funding deal, retains some guardrails that prevent the chipmaker from using the funds for dividends and buybacks, doing certain control-changing deals and from expanding in certain countries. The move makes the Wall Street Journal wonder what, beyond equity, the U.S. now gets in return, calling government's position "a stake without a strategy." The U.S. has historically shied away from putting money into private business. It can't really outguess the market on where the most promising returns lie. Yet there are exceptions. Sometimes a company or industry risks failing without public support, and that failure would hurt the whole country, not just its shareholders and employees. Intel meets both conditions. It isn't failing, but it is losing money, its core business is in decline, and it lacks the capital and customers needed to make the most advanced semiconductors. If Intel were to fail, it would take a sizable chunk of the semiconductor industrial base with it. At a time of existential competition with China, that is a national emergency... [U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick] said as a shareholder, the U.S. would help Intel "to create the most advanced chips in the world." And yet the deal doesn't provide Intel with new resources to accomplish that. Rather, to get the remaining $9 billion, Intel had to give the U.S. equity. This is more like a tax than an investment: Shareholders gave up a 10th of their ownership in return for money the company was supposed to get anyway... Some of the administration's forays into private business do reflect strategic thinking, such as the Pentagon's 15% stake in MP Materials in exchange for investment and contracts that help make the company a viable alternative to China as a supplier of rare-earth magnets for products such as automobiles, wind turbines, jet fighters and missile systems. But more often, companies recoil from government ownership... Though the U.S. stake dilutes Intel's existing shareholders, its stock has held up. There could be several reasons. It eliminates uncertainty over whether the remaining $9 billion in federal funds will be forthcoming... [B]ecause Washington has a vested interest in Intel's share price, investors believe it may prod companies such as Nvidia and Apple to buy more of its chips. But that only goes so far, the article seems to conclude, offering this quote from an analyst Bernstein investment research. "If Intel can prove they can make these leading-edge products in high volume that meets specifications at a good cost structure, they'll have customers lined up around the block. If they can't prove they can do it, what customer will put meaningful volume to them regardless of what pressure the U.S. government brings to bear?" CBS News also notes the U.S. government stake "is being criticized by conservatives and some economic policy experts alike, who worry such extensive government intervention undermines free enterprise." Thanks to Slashdot reader joshuark for sharing the news. Read more of this story at Slashdot. (Comment on this)

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