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U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright says it’s critical that the nation be out in front when it comes to artificial intelligence, and that means having reliable and affordable sources of electricity to meet the growing demands of the technology sector.Wright made the comments Tuesday before touring Sandia National Laboratories. On Monday, he visited Los Alamos National Laboratory, home to the top secret project during World War II that created the atomic bomb.A fossil fuel executive and graduate of MIT, Wright highlighted the labs’ legacies and said they will play a role in what he described as this generation’s Manhattan Projecta critical scientific undertaking that will change the course of the world in ways yet to be imagined.To win the AI race, he said the nation needs reliable and affordable electricity and the infrastructure to move it around.“I’m a believer,” Wright said, adding that nuclear power will be part of the solution. How big is the nuclear piece of the energy pie? Federal energy analysts say the U.S. has generated more nuclear electricity than any other country and that plants here have supplied close to 20% of the nation’s total annual electricity since 1990. That’s enough to power more than 70 million homes.Nuclear power makes up less of the world’s portfolio when it comes to generating energy than other sources, Wright said. That’s despite plants having small footprints and running on small amounts of material that pack a big punch.“It’s playing a shrinking role in our energy pot,” he said. “That doesn’t square.”However, many states are looking to nuclear energy to fill the gap as more data centers come online and tech companies develop more energy-thirsty AI tools.Arizona already is home to one of the nation’s largest nuclear plants and utilities there have teamed up to explore the potential for building more. Meanwhile, California extended the life of its last operating nuclear plant with the help of more than $1 billion in federal funding. Officials say the Diablo Canyon plant is vital to California’s power grid.In Wyoming, TerraPower, a company started by Bill Gates, broke ground last summer on what officials say will be one of the first advanced reactors to operate in the U.S. What does it take to feed nuclear power plants? Nuclear power plants are fueled with uraniumthe mining and milling of which is a major sticking point for environmentalists who point to legacy contamination from early operations in western U.S. states and on Native American lands. Concerns still swirl today, with some groups criticizing the revival of mining near the Grand Canyon.The back end of the fuel cycle also is an issue, with commercial reactors across the country producing more than 2,000 metric tons of spent fuel annually, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. Most of the waste remains at the sites that produce it because there’s nowhere else to put it.Private companies plan to temporarily store spent fuel in New Mexico and West Texas. In the case of Texas, the U.S. Supreme Court is weighing whether federal regulators have the authority to grant licenses for such facilities to operate.Barring a permanent solution, both Republican and Democratic leaders in the two states have said they don’t want to become the nation’s nuclear dumping ground.Wright acknowledged the challenge of spent fuel, saying there are “some creative ideas” on the horizon that could lead to long-term storage solutions at multiple sites around the U.S. Is there a clear path for more nuclear power? U.S. President Donald Trump has set the stage, signing executive orders aimed at stoking American innovation when it comes to AI, declaring a national energy emergency, and establishing a national council that will be focused on “energy dominance.”The administration also supports a multibillion-dollar venture by OpenAI, Oracle, and SoftBank that involves building data centers and the electricity generation needed for further AI development.The Biden administration, too, had touted nuclear power as a way to meet demands without emitting greenhouse gases. The administration last year set a target of at least tripling nuclear power in the U.S. by 2050.Standing in a corner of the national nuclear science museum in Albuquerque, Wright noted that the nation’s nuclear history began in large part in New Mexico with the development of the atomic bomb.There are many reasons for the lack of progress over recent decades, including government regulations he called overly burdensome. Beyond ensuring human safety, he said the high bars that have been set have stifled the development of next-generation nuclear power.“Our goal is to get that out of the way, bring private businesses together, and figure out what kind of nudge we might need to get shovels in the ground and next-generation small modular reactors happening,” he said. “I think they will be part of the solution.” Susan Montoya Bryan, Associated Press
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A new federal lawsuit in Maryland is challenging a Trump administration memo giving the nation’s schools and universities two weeks to eliminate “race-based” practices of any kind or risk losing their federal money.The lawsuit, filed Tuesday by the American Federation of Teachers union and the American Sociological Association, says the Education Department’s February 14 memo violates the First and Fifth Amendments. Forcing schools to teach only the views supported by the federal government amounts to a violation of free speech, the organizations say, and the directive is so vague that schools don’t know what practices cross the line.“This letter radically upends and re-writes otherwise well-established jurisprudence,” the lawsuit said. “No federal law prevents teaching about race and race-related topics, and the Supreme Court has not banned efforts to advance diversity, equity, and inclusion in education.”The memo, formally known as a Dear Colleague Letter, orders schools and universities to stop any practice that treats people differently because of their race, giving a deadline of this Friday. As a justification, it cites a Supreme Court decision banning the use of race in college admissions, saying the ruling applies more broadly to all federally funded education.President Donald Trump’s administration is aiming to end what the memo described as widespread discrimination in education, often against white and Asian American students.At stake is a sweeping expansion of the Supreme Court ruling, which focused on college admissions policies that considered race as a factor when admitting students. In the February 14 memo, the Education Department said it interprets the ruling to apply to admissions, hiring, financial aid, graduation ceremonies, and “all other aspects of student, academic and campus life.”The lawsuit says the Education Department is applying the Supreme Court decision too broadly and overstepping the agency’s authority. It takes issue with a line in the memo condemning teaching about “systemic and structural racism.”“It is not clear how a school could teach a fulsome U.S. History course without teaching about slavery, the Missouri Compromise, the Emancipation Proclamation, the forced relocation of Native American tribes,” and other lessons that might run afoul of the letter, the lawsuit said.The department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.In the memo, Craig Trainor, acting assistant secretary for civil rights, had said schools’ and colleges diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts have been “smuggling racial stereotypes and explicit race-consciousness into everyday training, programming, and discipline.“But under any banner, discrimination on the basis of race, color, or national origin is, has been, and will continue to be illegal,” Trainor wrote in the memo.The lawsuit argues the Dear Colleague Letter is so broad that it appears to forbid voluntary student groups based on race or background, including Black student unions or Irish-American heritage groups. The memo also appears to ban college admissions practices that weren’t outlawed in the Supreme Court decision, including recruiting efforts to attract students of all races, the lawsuit said.It asks the court to stop the department from enforcing the memo and strike it down.The American Federation of Teachers is one of the nation’s largest teachers unions. The sociological association is a group of about 9,000 college students, scholars and teachers. Both groups say their members teach lessons and supervise student organizations that could jeopardize their schools’ federal money under the memo. The Associated Press’ education coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org. Collin Binkley, AP Education Writer
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The World Health Organization (WHO) has confirmed that a worrying mystery illness is spreading in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). The unknown disease has so far sickened hundreds and killed dozens since reports of it first emerged in early January. Heres what to know about the outbreaks so far. What is the disease? At this time, health officials do not know what the disease is. In the WHO’s weekly bulletin for the February 10- 16 period, the agency says the unknown disease poses a significant public health threat. The disease is currently active in two regional clusters, according to the report, and worryingly, of those who have died from it, nearly half of the deaths happened within just 48 hours of symptoms emerging. The first regional cluster where the disease made itself known is in the Boloko Village, in the Bolomba Health Zone region of the DRC. In that village, three children reportedly died from the disease between January 10-13. Then in early February, the disease reportedly spread to its second regional cluster in Bomate Village, Basankusu Health Zone, located in the northwest of the DRC. Initially, there were 20 reported deaths from the disease there between January 30 and February 9. As Reuters reports, WHO spokesperson Tarik Jasarevic told a briefing on Tuesday that “The outbreaks, which have seen cases rise rapidly within days, pose a significant public health threat. The exact cause remains unknown. How many people have died or become sick? Unfortunately, health authorities now say that both the number of cases and the number of deaths have risen sharply since the first initial reports came in for both outbreak clusters. WHO says that as of February 15, a total of 431 people have become sick across both clusters. In total, there have been 53 known deaths from the illness. That represents a case fatality rate (CFR) of 12.2%. When breaking down the illnesses and deaths by regional clusters, 12 cases and 8 deaths have occurred in the Bolomba Health Zone, where the disease was first reported. That means that in that single zone, the disease has a case fatality rate of 66.7%. But it is the second cluster, in the Basankusu Health Zone, where the majority of cases and deaths have occurred. In the Basankusu Health Zone, there have been 419 cases with 45 deaths, representing a case fatality rate of 10.7%. How far has the disease spread? As of the WHOs bulletin, the unknown disease has only been reported in the Bolomba Health Zone and Basankusu Health Zone in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The two areas are relatively close to each other and are located in the northwestern portion of the country. Currently, the disease is not reported to have spread to any other areas of the DRC or neighboring countries How does the disease spread? It is currently unknown how the disease spreads. Health authorities have reported that trace-back data shows the outbreak is thought to have first happened in the Bolomba Health Zone. Multiple children became sick with the disease. According to WHO, Reports indicate that the children had consumed a bat carcass prior to onset of signs and symptom.” This suggests that the disease may be spread by the consumption of animals that are harboring it, but this is not a certainty. It is unknown if researchers have discovered a direct link between bat consumption and the outbreak of the disease. Diseases can also have multiple routes of transmission. What are the symptoms of the disease? The WHOs bulletin states that the children who first came down with symptoms after eating the bat suffered from the following: fever headache diarrhoea fatigue Those symptoms later transitioned into: subconjunctival haemorrhage epistaxis haematemesis However, the range of symptoms across all cases is more broad. Health authorities say infected persons may produce a number of symptoms, including: fever chills headache myalgia body aches sweating rhinorrhea neck stiffness cough vomiting diarrhoea abdominal cramps Could this be the start of another pandemic? It is much too early to say whether the mystery illness that has broken out in the DRC could be the beginning of the next pandemic. Health authorities simply know too little about the disease and how it spreads at this time. However, its worth noting that in December, there were reports of another mystery illness in the DRC, and that disease was later found out to be severe malaria, reported Reuters. In other words, just because the disease is a mystery right now, doesnt mean it’s not simply an existing illness that health officials have previously identified. However, WHO does say that tests have ruled out other diseases, including Ebola and Marburg. The exclusion of these diseases raises concerns about a severe infectious or toxic agent being behind the as-of-yet-unknown disease. Other possibilities for the mystery disease include malaria, viral haemorrhagicfever, food or water poisoning, typhoid fever, and meningitis, according to WHO. Or it could turn out to be something totally new. For now, health authorities simply need more time to determine what it is.
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