• Diamond battery able to power devices for thousands of years unveiled

    Scientists and engineers from the UK Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) and the University of Bristol have teamed up to create the world’s first carbon-14 diamond battery. One of the biggest challenges in developing clean and low-carbon technologies is the batteries required to power them. Many of these batteries require rare minerals – and then there is the issue of how to environmentally dispose of or recycle them at the end-of-life. With this in mind, UKAEA and materials researchers at the University of Bristol have collaborated to create a diamond battery that has the potential to power devices for thousands of years. Having such a long-lasting energy source could drastically reduce the waste batteries tend to generate. Sarah Clark, director of tritium fuel cycle at UKAEA, said: “Diamond…

  • Researchers combine data and digital tech to identify First World War wreck in the Irish Sea

    Researchers at Bangor University are confident they have identified the wreck site of HMS Stephen Furness, sunk in 1917 after being torpedoed, with the loss of over 100 lives. For more than a century, the precise resting place of HMS Stephen Furness in the Irish Sea has remained a mystery. The research team, from the university’s School of Ocean Sciences, combined existing marine archives and scientific data with new digital techniques. They are now say the ship’s remains have been located 10 miles off the east coast of Northern Ireland. The ship was en route to Liverpool for repairs. But it didn’t reach its destination as a torpedo from a German U-boat hit the starboard side of the vessel, causing it to sink within three minutes. Of the more than 100 sailors on board, only 12 survived…

  • Lifespan extensions announced for four of the UK’s ageing nuclear power stations

    EDF has extended the lifespan of four nuclear power plants in the UK as part of efforts to boost domestic energy security. Heysham 2 (Lancashire) and Torness (East Lothian) will keep producing zero-carbon electricity for an additional two years, until March 2030, while Heysham 1 (Lancashire) and Hartlepool (Teesside) will produce power until March 2027, an extension of one year. EDF said it made the decision to extend after inspecting the four stations’ graphite cores and judging that it was safe to extend their operating lifespan. The decision comes as the Hinkley Point C project faces repeated delays. The project, which will be the UK’s first new nuclear plant in a generation, was originally estimated to begin operations by 2023. But EDF now says the first generator won’t be ready until…

  • Rail nationalisation: public ownership of first three operators announced for 2025

    The government’s plan to renationalise the UK’s railways has officially begun with the announcement that South Western Railway’s (SWR) services will be the first to transfer into public ownership next year. In its manifesto, the Labour Party committed to the creation of Great British Railways (GBR) – an effective renationalisation of the UK’s rail system that will happen gradually as existing private contracts elapse. The Department for Transport (DfT) has confirmed that SWR, which operates London commuter services from stations such as Farnham, Alton and Woking, will transition to public control once its current contract with FirstGroup and MTR expires in May 2025. Franchises C2C and Greater Anglia will also be transferred into public ownership next year, with C2C moving in July 2025…

  • Norway’s industrial-scale CCS plant to capture 400,000 metric tons of CO2 annually

    The Brevik CCS facility, which is based at Heidelberg Materials’ cement facility in Brevik, Norway, is expected to become operational in 2025. While researchers warn that carbon capture and storage (CCS) is not expanding fast enough to meet the 2°C climate target set out in the Paris Climate Agreement, there are organisations around the world where this technology is becoming operational. For instance, at the end of September 2024 Norway’s Northern Lights project announced that its commercial service offering CO2 transport and storage – which it refers to as “CCS as a service” – was officially open. Now, another Norway-based carbon capture plant – Brevik CCS – has announced it will be operational in 2025. Based at Heidelberg Materials’ cement facility in Brevik, Norway, this industrial…

    E+T Magazine
    E+T Magazine

  • UK’s biggest defence company invests £1bn in early-career jobs

    BAE Systems is set to hire thousands of new apprentices and graduates in 2025 as its investment in skills is expected to reach £1bn. Since the start of the decade, the firm has recruited thousands of apprentices and graduates each year. This will continue into 2025 with the company announcing it will recruit a further 2,400 trainees. This will bring the total number of young people in training at the company to 6,500, who make up approximately 15% of BAE’s UK workforce. Training these newcomers will see BAE invest a further £230m in education and skills, bringing the total investment in skills to over £1bn since 2020. The funding is spent primarily on UK apprentices, graduates and experienced employees, as well as education outreach. Many of its early-career recruits are trained at its…

    E+T Magazine
    E+T Magazine

  • Jaguar finally unveils electric-powered concept car after online backlash

    Jaguar has finally unveiled concepts for its upcoming electric car, following a controversial advertising campaign. The firm faced backlash online last month after it released a 30-second teaser trailer that featured models walking around an alien-looking landscape but with no sight of the redesigned vehicle itself. According to one study by Junk Car Medics, the campaign was so poorly received it led to broad falls in the resale price of Jaguar vehicles in recent weeks. But the firm has now shown off its new four-door electric GT, dubbed the Type 00. The aerodynamic design features a long hood, sweeping roofline and a fastback-style rear. The car rides on 23-inch alloy wheels and incorporates distinctive details like a panoramic glass roof and a ‘glassless’ tailgate. The interior uses…

  • EE named UK’s best mobile operator for 10th year in a row

    EE has been named the best mobile operator in the UK for the 10th time in an annual study assessing network coverage. According to engineering consultancy Umlaut, EE has the best coverage and data rates in both big cities and smaller towns, and along the UK’s transport network, including road and rail. The results show EE coming out on top in almost every metric tested, with the other networks Virgin Media O2 (VMO2), Vodafone and Three vying for second place depending on the test. Since the merger between Virgin Media and O2 in June 2021, VMO2 is the biggest mobile operator in the UK, with around 45 million mobile connections, with EE servicing around 26 million customers. Vodafone and Three are in third and fourth place. But despite VMO2’s size, its network infrastructure was ranked…

  • Feeding cattle with seaweed shown to cut methane emissions by 40%

    Feeding cattle with seaweed helps to reduce their methane emissions by nearly 40% without affecting their health or weight, a study has found. Livestock accounts for 14.5% of global greenhouse gas emissions, with the largest portion coming from methane that cattle release when they burp. Grazing cattle also produce more methane than feedlot cattle or dairy cows because they eat more fibre from grass. In the US, there are nine million dairy cows and over 64 million beef cattle. Researchers at the University of California, Davis, found that feeding grazing beef cattle a seaweed supplement in pellet form reduced their methane emissions by almost 40%. While this is the first study to test seaweed on grazing beef cattle, it follows research that showed seaweed can cut methane emissions 82% in…

  • ‘World’s largest’ seawater heat pump starts operations in Denmark

    An industrial-scale seawater heat pump from MAN Energy Solutions located at the port of Esbjerg in Denmark, has started delivering sustainable heating to 25,000 households. The Swiss company has developed a 70MW heat pump plant to help Denmark in its transition away from fossil fuel reliance. The plant will replace Esbjerg’s coal-fired power plant, which has ceased operations, and help the city achieve the goal of being carbon neutral by 2030. Operated by multi-utility company DIN Forsyning, the plant is set to supply approximately 280,000MWh of heat, enough to cover the heating needs of 25,000 households in Esbjerg and the neighbouring town of Varde. Utilising renewable energy from nearby wind farms and seawater as a heat source, MAN Energy Solutions estimates that the plant will reduce…

  • E+T Off The Page: E+T Podcast: Episode 8 | Trump's America - what does it mean for the global tech sector?

    Few modern day politicians are as divisive as Donal Trump - but what does his forthcoming presidency mean for the tech sector, both in the US and around the world? Will import tariffs kill trade and result in hyper inflation? Or will they stimulate the tech manufacturing sector within the USA? Will removing red tape help innovation, particularly in areas such as AI, where a tech race is on with China? And will the climate change process take a hit if Trump pulls America out of the Paris Agreement. Regulars Tim Fryer and Tanya Weaver form the E+T editorial team discussed all this with Paul Dempsey, long-time American correspondent and geopolitical expert on the technology and engineering sector.

    E+T Magazine
    E+T Magazine

  • Welsh semiconductor industry given a boost with further £51m in Newport Wafer Fab

    US semiconductor manufacturer Vishay Intertechnology is investing £51m in Newport Wafer Fab, the UK’s largest semiconductor facility. The wafer fabrication facility based in Newport, Wales, has had a turbulent past in terms of ownership. Built in 1982 by British semiconductor company Inneos, the facility has been bought and sold numerous times over the intervening years. Located on 28 acres, the 200mm semiconductor wafer fab has a capacity to produce more than 30,000 wafers per month. Most controversially, in 2021 Dutch chip firm Nexperia, which is wholly owned by Shanghai-based Wingtech, confirmed plans to acquire the production facility in a deal valued at £63m. However, in May 2022 this acquisition was called in for a full national security assessment by the UK government. MPs had…

  • Will online voting make the UK more democratic?

    Only 52% of people voted in the UK general election this year. Is that enough in a democracy, and – if not – is online voting the answer to making Britain’s voting system more democratic? Nothing stirs a nation like an election, and for most of 2024 – in over 60 countries – politicians, political parties and their supporters have been at loggerheads as unprecedented numbers of people headed to the polls. Internationalists have faced off against nationalists, liberals against conservatives, confederates against unionists, and wokesters against bigots. In the UK, Keir Starmer’s new Labour government is frequently derided by an enraged far right for being too liberal, while ardent socialists say Starmer is too conservative. In the US, the new President is either a villain or a warmonger, depending…

  • Norway postpones controversial deep-sea mining plan amid environmental backlash

    Norway has suspended plans to open up its seabed and start giving licences for deep-sea mining in 2025. ‘Green technologies’ – including wind, solar and electric vehicle batteries – require critical minerals and metals. These include manganese, nickel and cobalt. While these metal deposits can be extracted from the earth, many can be found on the deep ocean floor, having built up into nodules over millions of years. As such, commercial interest in deep sea mining – which involves the use of gigantic machines to scoop deposits from the sea floor – has been gaining increasing support. Norway, with its vast hydrocarbon reserves, took a lead role in the global race to mine the ocean floor for metals. Its government announced in June 2023 that it was proposing to open up an area of its waters…

  • Nuclear clampdown after Chernobyl increased global carbon emissions by 6% – report

    The global rejection of nuclear power in the wake of the Chernobyl disaster has led to carbon emissions that are 6% higher than they otherwise would have been, the Tony Blair Institute (TBI) has said. The 1986 incident had a significant impact on the construction of new nuclear power plants worldwide as it heightened public fears about the safety of nuclear energy and led to increased scrutiny and criticism of nuclear power plant designs and procedures. As a result, many countries became more cautious about building new nuclear plants, and some even decided to phase out existing ones. The think tank estimates that global carbon emissions would have been 6% lower if energy grids had not instead opted to run on higher-carbon forms of energy generation like natural gas. It said that was roughly…

  • Comment: Industrial metaverse adoption grows as manufacturers invest in a digital future

    Is the industrial metaverse proving to be more than just a promising concept? Tom Cash, director of industrial parts supplier Foxmere, explains the current state of play. 81 per cent of industrial companies globally are using, testing or planning to adopt industrial metaverse technologies. That’s according to a survey by S&P Global Market Intelligence’s 451 Research in partnership with Siemens, involving 900 respondents from 16 industries in seven countries. Siemens remains a major driver of this evolution of the metaverse. In July of last year, Siemens invested €500M in a new technology campus in Erlangen, Germany, to help develop its vision of the industrial metaverse. The company intended to create a blueprint for the future — a real-time, photorealistic virtual representation of the…

  • Car tyres shed a quarter of all microplastics in the environment, research reveals

    With 2 billion tyres produced globally every year, research is calling for urgent action to be taken to tackle tyre pollution. Tyre wear creates airborne particulate matter that can have negative health impacts on humans. As tyres degrade, they release a range of particles, from visible pieces of tyre rubber to nanoparticles. Every year, billions of vehicles worldwide shed an estimated six million tonnes of tyre-wear particles. These tiny flakes of plastic, generated by the wear and tear of normal driving, eventually accumulate in the soil, in rivers and lakes, and even in our food. In London alone, 2.6 million vehicles emit around nine thousand tonnes of tyre-wear particles annually. Many researchers have been carrying out studies into the scale of the problem, including a recent international…

  • UK car making continues to falter as firms struggle with transition to EVs

    UK car manufacturing output has fallen for the eighth month in a row as firms continue to struggle with the shift to electric vehicles (EVs). The latest figures published by the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) showed that 77,484 units left factory gates in October – 14,037 fewer than in the same month the previous year. The body, which represents the UK’s manufacturers, said the sector collectively announced £20bn of investment last year to drive their transition to EV production. But weak markets for new cars in the UK and EU are continuing to take their toll, with total output for 2024 expected to be around a third down from pre-pandemic levels. “If planned UK zero emission model launches stay on track and consumer demand improves, there is potential to get above one…

  • ChatGPT consumes one 500ml bottle of water per 100-word request, according to research

    Large Language Models (LLMs), such as ChatGPT, consume just over one 500ml bottle of water per 100-word request, research by the IET has found. ChatGPT has turned two. On 30 November 2022, OpenAI released a statement on its website saying “we’ve trained a model called ChatGPT, which interacts in a conversational way”. The chatbot quickly garnered attention for its detailed responses and articulate answers across many domains of knowledge. Two years on and the IET has carried out research to uncover just how many people are using this AI tool. The study found that almost half of the UK public surveyed (49%) use it casually, with two in five (39%) using it regularly at work. The findings show that on average we use it once a week for tasks including writing emails (50%), creating presentations…

  • Reintroducing trams in UK cities would cut the carbon cost of transport, campaigners say

    The government has been urged to prioritise the reintroduction of trams in the UK’s towns and cities by introducing planning reforms and devolving the approval process to elected mayors. While trams were commonplace at the beginning of the twentieth century, by the 1960s they were considered outdated. Many of the routes were shuttered as part of the post-war push to modernise the UK’s transportation systems. However, in recent years, cities across Europe have started returning to trams as an affordable mass transit solution that fits into efforts to lower the carbon impact of transportation. However, despite their advantages, only a handful of cities have been able to introduce trams in the last 25 years. One of the main barriers to installing more tram systems in Britain is the cost…

    E+T Magazine
    E+T Magazine

  • IET comment: Will GB Energy deliver?

    Professor Peter Bannister, chair of the IET Sustainability and Net Zero Policy Centre, says Labour has bold plans for the energy sector but they must be part of an integrated climate change strategy. We want to see government accelerate the delivery of renewables infrastructure, meet the UK’s net zero targets, and strengthen energy security and resilience. The £8.3bn GB Energy investment can contribute to that if it is underpinned by a collaborative whole-systems approach to climate change. That approach must consider generation and transmission infrastructure, energy demand, regulation, skills and the future effects of climate change. This will require delivering substantial changes to how the UK approaches the energy system as well as close work with local, regional and devolved governments…

  • Reddit overtakes X in the UK, while Gen Z women spend longer online than men

    Reddit is now more popular than X (formerly Twitter) in the UK, while Gen Z women (aged (18-24) are spending over an hour longer each day online than men of the same age, new data from Ofcom has shown. In its annual report into the nation’s digital habits, the regulator found that Reddit had become the fastest-growing large social media platform in the UK, reaching more than half of online adults by June 2024. The news aggregation platform experienced a 47% year-on-year increase in its number of users, overtaking both X and LinkedIn to become the fifth highest-reaching social media service among adults. The report showed that while X remains the highest-reaching microblogging service, its average monthly adult reach continues to decline, from 27.9 million in 2021 to 26.5 million in 2022…

    E+T Magazine
    E+T Magazine

  • Nasa’s Europa Clipper deploys first instruments on 1.8bn-mile journey to Jupiter’s icy moon

    Nasa has reported that all is going to plan with its Europa Clipper mission, which launched on 14 October 2024 to study Jupiter’s icy moon Europa. Scientists think Europa has a salty ocean beneath its icy crust, which may have existed for the entirety of our Solar System’s history – approximately four billion years. Where there is ocean, there is often life. Europa Clipper’s mission is to find whether this internal ocean does harbour organic compounds, which are essential chemical building blocks for life. Europa Clipper, the largest spacecraft Nasa has ever developed for a planetary mission, lifted off from Nasa’s Kennedy Space Centre atop a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket on 14 October 2024. Soon after launch it deployed its massive solar arrays, which will help power the spacecraft on…

  • China and Bolivia sign $1bn deal to build two production plants in the ‘Lithium Triangle’

    Bolivia has signed a $1bn deal with Chinese consortium CBC to build two lithium carbonate production plants in the country’s largest salt lake. In recent years, demand for lithium has skyrocketed following the growth in electric vehicle (EV) production. Often dubbed ‘white gold’, this lightweight metal plays a key role in the cathodes of the lithium-ion batteries that power EVs. Ramping up production of EVs means there also needs to be an increase in lithium extraction.Lithium is extracted in two ways: the lithium found in brines underground is pumped to the surface where the water evaporates, leaving lithium behind; or, more traditionally, it is pit mined. Lithium-rich brines are typically found in Argentina, Bolivia and Chile, in an area known as the ‘Lithium Triangle’. These brine…

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