Month: March 2023

Enlarge / An artist’s impression of a deep borehole for nuclear waste disposal by Sandia National Laboratories in 2012. Red lines show the depth of mined repositories: Onkalo is the Finnish one, and WIPP is the US DOE repository for defense waste in New Mexico. (credit: Sandia National Laboratories)

Deep Isolation, a company founded in 2016 and headquartered in California, launched a “Deep Borehole Demonstration Center” on February 27. It aims to show that disposal of nuclear waste in deep boreholes is a safe and practical alternative to the mined tunnels that make up most of today’s designs for nuclear waste repositories.

But while the launch named initial board members and published a high-level plan, the startup doesn’t yet have a permanent location, nor does it have the funds secured to complete its planned drilling and testing program.

Although the idea to use deep boreholes for nuclear waste disposal isn’t new, nobody has yet demonstrated it works. The Deep Borehole Demonstration Center aims to be an end-to-end demonstration at full scale, testing everything: safe handling of waste canisters at the surface, disposal, possible retrieval, and eventual permanent sealing deep underground. It will also rehearse techniques for ensuring that eventual underground leaks will not contaminate the surface environment, even many millennia after disposal.

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | Icon Sportswire )

YouTube TV is jumping up in price again. The cable TV replacement service launched in 2017 for $35, but it went up to $40 in 2018, $50 in 2019, $65 in 2020, and with this latest price increase, it's up to $72.99 a month. It's a cable TV replacement at cable TV prices.

YouTube made the announcement on Twitter, saying, "As content costs have risen and we continue to invest in our quality of service, we’ll be adjusting our monthly cost." You have to wonder if "content costs" means the massive NFL Sunday Ticket deal Google recently signed for $2 billion per year. Google will probably charge individual users $300 per year for its new NFL package, but the service is typically a money-losing endeavor even with those giant yearly bills, so raising the YouTube TV price for non-subscribers makes some financial sense.

The good news is that YouTube's announcement isn't all about higher prices. That $72.99 a month only gets you HD service, and an upgrade to 4K resolution has traditionally been available for $19.99 extra per month. The 4K add-on is now going down in price to $9.99 per month, so if you've been subscribed to 4K this whole time, your monthly bill will actually go down $2.

Enlarge / A raccoon dog at the Chapultpec Zoo in Mexico City on August 6, 2015. (credit: Getty | ALFREDO ESTRELLA/)

Newly obtained genetic data from the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (China CDC) links the pandemic coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 to animals—specifically raccoon dogs—at the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan, where the earliest COVID-19 cases centered, a group of independent scientists told the World Health Organization this week.

The genetic data came from environmental swabs collected at the market by China CDC in January of 2020. The existence of these swabs was previously known, as was the fact that they were positive for SARS-CoV-2 genetic material. But in late January of this year, scientists at China CDC uploaded—and then later removed—additional genetic data from these swabs to a public genetic database called GISAID, the WHO said. That additional data, which had not been previously disclosed, indicates that the SARS-CoV-2-positive swabs also contained genetic material from humans and animals, particularly large amounts of genetic material that closely matches that of raccoon dogs.

Raccoon dogs—foxlike animals whose faces closely resemble those of raccoons—are known to be susceptible to SARS-CoV-2 infection and were known to be sold at the market.

Enlarge / SpaceX CEO Elon Musk and T-Mobile CEO Mike Sievert at a joint event on August 25, 2022, in Boca Chica Beach, Texas. (credit: Getty Images | Michael Gonzalez )

The Federal Communications Commission says it wants to help satellite companies and mobile carriers partner up to close gaps in wireless networks. In a 4-0 vote, the FCC yesterday proposed "a new regulatory framework" designed to help satellite operators and wireless companies "leverage the growth in space-based services to connect smartphone users in remote, unserved, and underserved areas."

In August 2022, Starlink operator SpaceX and T-Mobile announced a plan to deliver space-to-ground service to mobile phones in areas not covered by T-Mobile's cellular network. SpaceX said this week that the companies plan to start testing the satellite-to-cell service sometime this year. Text messaging is expected to be the first supported service, with voice and Internet coverage to be added later.

The FCC said yesterday that "numerous such collaborations have launched recently, and the FCC seeks to establish clear and transparent processes to support supplemental coverage from space."