With the aim to overcome the problems of climatic changes and rising ocean levels, one option is to produce large-scale sustainable energy by nuclear fusion of hydrogen and other very light nuclei similar to the energy source of the sun. Sixty years of worldwide research for the ignition of the heavy hydrogen isotopes deuterium (D) and tritium (T) have come close to a breakthrough for ignition. The problem with the DT fusion is that generated neutrons are producing radioactive waste. One exception as the ideal clean fusion process – without neutron production – is the fusion of hydrogen (H) with the boron isotope11B11 (B11). In this paper, we have mapped out our research based on recent experiments and simulations for a new energy source. We suggest how HB11 fusion for a reactor can be used instead of the DT option. We have mapped out our HB11 fusion in the following way: (i) The acceleration of a plasma block with a laser beam with the power and time duration of the order of 10 petawatts and one picosecond accordingly. (ii) A plasma confinement by a magnetic field of the order of a few kiloteslas created by a second laser beam with a pulse duration of a few nanoseconds (ns). (iii) The highly increased fusion of HB11 relative to present DT fusion is possible due to the alphas avalanche created in this process. (iv) The conversion of the output charged alpha particles directly to electricity. (v) To prove the above ideas, our simulations show for example that 14 milligram HB11 can produce 300 kWh energy if all achieved results are combined for the design of an absolutely clean power reactor producing low-cost energy.

HB11 Energy’s mission is to realize large-scale electricity generation from the fusion of hydrogen with boron-11 (the HB11, or “proton-boron”, reaction) without the environmental problems normally associated with nuclear energy. A non-thermal approach is taken in the initiation of the reaction using high-peak-power lasers, which was the pursuit of HB11 Energy founder Prof. Heinrich Hora’s career as a theoretical physicist. In the 1980s, the invention of Chirped Pulse Amplification (CPA) of laser pulses by Donna Strickland and Gerard Mourou (Nobel Prize 2018) enabled the possibility of experimentally validating the earlier theoretical predictions. Several experimental demonstrations of the HB11 reaction using CPA lasers inspired the establishment of HB11 Energy and with it, the possibility of realizing an aneutronic nuclear energy source with easily accessible and safe fuel resources that could last thousands of years. Like all quests for fusion energy, there are significant scientific challenges remaining. HB11 Energy Holdings Pty Ltd, an Australian company, was established as the best vehicle to co-ordinate a global collaborative research effort to address these challenges and build capacity to host large-scale public private partnerships, such as those now recommended by the US National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine (NASEM) (US National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine in Bringing Fusion to the U.S. Grid,: National Academies Press, Washington, D.C, 2021). If net-energy-gain can be achieved through HB11 Energy’s concepts, there are many engineering benefits over traditional DT fusion that will see a dramatically simpler and safer reactor being produced. A technoeconomic assessment of such a reactor is also discussed which presents many engineering challenges that will need to be met before commercial HB11 fusion can be deployed on a large-scale.

Despite substantial gains facilitated by Artificial Intelligence (AI) in recent years, it has to be applied very cautiously in sensitive domains like medicine due to the lack of explainability of many methods in this field. We aim to provide a system to overcome these issues of medical AI applications by means of our concept of medical operational AI detailed in this paper. We make use of various methods of AI and utilize knowledge graphs in particular. The latter is continuously updated by medical experts based on medical literature such as peer-reviewed papers and standard online sources such as UpToDate. We thoroughly derive a multi-level system tackling the corresponding challenges. In particular, its design encompasses (i) holistic diagnostic assistance on a macro level, (ii) predicitions and detailed suggestions for specific medical domains on a micro level, as well as (iii) AI-based optimizations of the overall system on a meta level. We detail practical merits of medical operational AI and discuss the state of the art beyond our solution.

To avoid the > 50 million degree temperatures in pressures for fusion, the goal has now been reached that higher pressures from picosecond CPA-laser pulses of more than 10 PW power can ignite nuclear fusion at modest temperatures in a power reactor for generating electricity. Gerard Mourou, who was honoured with the 2018 Physics Nobel Prize, was involved to solve this crucial problem of fusion energy with the reactor design as co-authors (Hora, H.

Pressures created by non-thermal forces from picosecond CPA laser pulses of extreme power can be higher than the hundred million °C temperatures for the usual ignition of fusion of clean and abundant laser boron fusion.