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Fusion reactors could create ingredients needed to make a nuclear weapon in weeks. Plus: can genetically modifying a rare marsupial save it from extinction?

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Nuclear risk

Fusion reactors could allow a country to accelerate its development of nuclear weapons, producing the necessary radioactive ingredients in as little as a few weeks. Nuclear weapons need specific radioactive isotopes, normally uranium-235 or plutonium-239, that can be easily split to start a chain reaction. This so-called fissile material is rare in nature but can be produced artificially by a source that generates a lot of neutrons, such as a nuclear fission reactor of the kind in use today. Fission reactors take a year to produce enough fissile material to create nuclear weapons, but a fusion reactor may be able to do it in weeks. Read more.

Modifying a marsupial

The US-based “de-extinction” company Colossal Biosciences claims that a team it funds in Australia has taken “a major step” towards saving an endangered marsupial called the northern quoll. The plan is to genetically modify the animals to make them resistant to the toxin of the invasive cane toad. The toad secretes a toxin that kills many would-be predators in Australia, and this is devastating the quoll population. Resistance has evolved in a range of predators, from insects to hedgehogs, and now a team wants to edit the genome of the northern quoll to make it resistant too. Will it work? Read more.

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Chris Simms

Assistant news editor, New Scientist

Email me at [email protected]

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