In the early 1950s, a huge hole was dug into the Cumbrian coast and lined with concrete. Roughly the length of three Olympic swimming pools and known as B30, it was built to hold skip loads of spent nuclear fuel. Those highly radioactive rods came from the 26 Magnox nuclear reactors that helped keep Britain's lights on between 1956 and 2015. When B30 was first put to work, it was designed to keep the fuel rods submerged for only three months before reprocessing work was carried out. But when 1970s miners' strikes shut down coal power stations and forced greater reliance on nuclear plants, more spent fuel than could be quickly reprocessed was generated.

Japanese Internet services and e-commerce group, Rakuten's India unit, is opening a new office in Bengaluru on Thursday, in a bid to expand globally. The new facility houses product, engineering, and advanced research and is Rakuten Group's "largest outside Japan," according to the company. The hub will further enhance the company's capability for deep-tech innovation and research and development (R&D) in areas such as e-commerce, fintech, content and entertainment, as well as artificial intelligence (AI) in computer vision, speech, and natural language processing (NLP), the company said in a statement. Rakuten's online shopping platform is not available in India, but the $15 billion company already has an India office in Bengaluru that was set up in 2014, which, according to the company, was "the largest among its nine technology hubs outside Japan". It currently has around 2,000 employees, responsible for developing software for the company's online brokerage arm, as well as running a 24-hour security operation.

Lakeland, Florida-Researcher at Florida Institute of Technology Advanced Mobility Institute We are starting a new phase of work on self-driving car testing and verification. The study is moving from software testing to hardware testing at a new on-campus simulation facility, partially funded by a $ 350,000 grant from the National Science Foundation. The highlight of the project, the deceived autonomous Ford Fusion sedan, has recently arrived in Florida Poly. The car is equipped with sophisticated electronics and has been transformed into a drive-by-wire autonomous test vehicle. "Drive-by-wire means that electronic signals can control steering, acceleration, and braking," said Dr. Onur Toker, an associate professor and researcher in electrical and computer engineering.

Plans for a European base on the moon have taken a major step forward. The European Space Agency revealed it has signed up rocket maker ArianeGroup to develop plans for a moon base that could be used to mine material from the lunar surface. The project will'examine the possibility of going to the Moon before 2025 and starting to work there' - and could trigger a new space race as countries rush to harness lunar resources. The European Space Agency revealed it has signed up rocket maker ArianeGroup to develop plans for a moon base that could be used to mine material from the lunar surface. The project will'examine the possibility of going to the Moon before 2025 and starting to work there'.

Researchers are planning to recreate the conditions of the lunar surface right here at home. A new facility in the works at ESA's Astronaut Centre in Cologne, Germany will soon serve as a three-part moon analogue environment on Earth, the agency announced this month. There, scientists will simulate lunar soil and a moon habitat, powered by systems that could one day be used to support a real base on the moon. Researchers are planning to recreate the conditions of the lunar surface right here at home. A new facility in the works at ESA's Astronaut Centre in Cologne, Germany will soon serve as a three-part moon analogue environment on Earth.

Deep-pocketed Korean conglomerate Samsung today announced it will open a massive AI research center, based in leafy (and deeply tech-centric) Cambridge. The Samsung AI Center, Cambridge (SAIC-Cambridge) will be lead by Professor Andrew Blake, who is one of Britain's leading academics in the AI space. Are you doing business in Amsterdam in May? Blake previously headed up Microsoft Research's Cambridge laboratory, and is a former director of the Alan Turing Institute. The new facility is the fifth owned by Samsung outside of Korea and the US, and is a major coup for the British tech scene, particularly as it tries to position itself as a world leader in artificial intelligence. The UK already has a solid pedigree in AI.

Dyson, the technology company, is to undergo a dramatic expansion in the UK by opening a new 210 hectare (517 acre) campus as part of a £2.5bn investment that will support its development of new battery technologies and robotics. The company, led by the billionaire inventor Sir James Dyson, will increase its UK geographical footprint tenfold by developing the campus on a former Ministry of Defence airfield and intends to at least double its workforce of 3,500 over the next few years. The new facility in Hullavington, Wiltshire is part of a £2.5bn investment by Dyson in new technologies and will focus on research and development. The size of the campus and the company's work on batteries, robotics and artificial intelligence will increase speculation that Dyson is developing a driverless electric car. Theresa May said said: "This investment is a vote of confidence in our modern industrial strategy and our determination to cement the UK's position as a world leader in high-tech engineering. "Dyson's exporting strength and commitment to creating jobs in Britain is a real success story that demonstrates the opportunity that our plan to create a truly global Britain can present." The expansion plan is a boost for the government amid growing speculation about the future of other key industrial facilities. BMW is considering building its new electric Minis in Germany rather than its factory at Oxford. There are also concerns that jobs could be lost at Vauxhall's factories in Ellesmere Port and Luton if PSA Group, the owner of Peugeot, completes a deal to buy parent company General Motors' European business. Dyson was one of the most prominent business leaders to publicly support Brexit before the referendum in June. His company has developed from a business specialising in bagless vacuum cleaners into a fast-growing multinational technology company selling bladeless fans, air purifiers, hand-dryers, hairdryers and robotic vacuum cleaners. Dyson said he did not understand claims that the UK is suffering from economic uncertainty and that the prospect of the country leaving the EU had not dissuaded him from investing. "We have got the opportunity to export globally – Europe is only 15% of global trade and declining.

Michigan's new American Center for Mobility at the historic Willow Run one-time manufacturing complex broke ground this week, paving the way for the launch of the technologically advanced testbed for autonomous and connected vehicles. The 335-acre site will play host to a new facility designed to help automakers and other stakeholders globally test their cars, connected infrastructure tech, vehicle communication systems and more across a variety of conditions in the hopes of speeding up the roll-out of this tech for a safer driving future. The new test facility, which was announced earlier this year, is designed to help Michigan reaffirm its position at the head of the U.S. automotive industry, with an eye to the changing priorities of the field given the rapid improvements being made in autonomous driving tech. The Willow Run site will play host to a brand new facility designed not only for testing, but also for research, product development, education and more. It's also about helping create and maintain voluntary industry standards for autonomous and connected vehicle tech going forward.

The startup yesterday opened a new facility in National Harbor, Maryland, and along with it, a new range of miniature buses that can autonomously take passengers wherever they ask to go. Local Motors' new buses, which look a bit like ski lifts on wheels, are called Olli, and will be puttering around the greater Washington, D.C., area after their maiden voyage yesterday. The electric vehicles, which have a top speed of about 12 mph and a range of roughly 30 miles per charge, use similar technologies to Google's self-driving cars to see the world as they roll around. But they also use Watson, IBM's suite of artificial intelligence software, to understand what's around them as they move, as well as whatever their human passengers ask of them. Olli has the same speech recognition and language understanding built in that allowed Watson to beat a bunch of smart humans at the quiz show "Jeopardy!"

As Amazon Inc. moves to shrink delivery times from days to hours, it's spreading its enormous inventory across a growing network of fulfillment centers on the outskirts of the nation's biggest cities. Within this strategy, San Bernardino has emerged as a key player thanks to its abundance of affordable land, proximity to ports and access to one of the nation's biggest consumer markets. Amazon this week doubled down on the city 60 miles east of Los Angeles by announcing plans for its second fulfillment center there, a cavernous 1.1-million-square-foot facility that will briefly warehouse items such as books, electronics and toys while adding 1,000 new full-time jobs. "San Bernardino has proven to be an important part of Amazon's growth in California, and we are proud to continue creating jobs and helping support the economy here in the Inland Empire," Akash Chauhan, Amazon's vice president of North American operations, said in a prepared statement. The new facility will be Amazon's fifth fulfillment center in the Inland Empire and seventh in California.