In his year-end letter, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates says his to-do list for 2019 includes persuading U.S. leaders to regain America’s leading role in nuclear energy research and embrace advanced nuclear technologies such as the concept being advanced by his own TerraPower venture. From a report: “The world needs to be working on lots of solutions to stop climate change,” Gates wrote in the wide-ranging letter, released Saturday night. “Advanced nuclear is one, and I hope to persuade U.S. leaders to get into the game.” Gates acknowledged that tighter U.S. export restrictions, put in place by the Trump administration, have virtually ruled out TerraPower’s grand plan to test its traveling-wave nuclear technology in China. “We had hoped to build a pilot project in China, but recent policy changes here in the U.S. have made that unlikely,” Gates wrote. He said “we may be able to build it in the United States” if regulations are updated and the investment climate for nuclear power improves.

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Source: Slashdot – As China Option Fades, Bill Gates Urges US To Take the Lead in Nuclear Power, For the Good of the Planet

A computer virus hit newspaper printing plants in Los Angeles and at Tribune Publishing newspapers across the country. From a report: Tribune Publishing said Saturday night that malware affected its ability to print newspapers across its chain of outlets, including the Chicago Tribune, the New York Daily News, the Baltimore Sun and the Orlando Sentinel. Many subscribers to the Los Angeles Times and San Diego Union-Tribune, which were previously owned by Tribune Publishing and still share some production technology with the company, stepped into a chilly sunny morning Saturday only to find empty doorsteps. The computer malware was detected Friday and “impacted some back-office systems which are primarily used to publish and produce newspapers across our properties,” said Marisa Kollias, Tribune communications vice president, in a statement.

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Source: Slashdot – Computer Virus Hits Newspapers Coast-to-Coast, Affects Printing

Long-time Slashdot reader reporter shared this article from NPR:
The former chairman and two vice presidents of the Tokyo Electric Power Co. should spend five years in prison over the 2011 flooding and meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, Japanese prosecutors say, accusing the executives of failing to prevent a foreseeable catastrophe. Prosecutors say the TEPCO executives didn’t do enough to protect the nuclear plant, despite being told in 2002 that the Fukushima facility was vulnerable to a tsunami….
“It was easy to safeguard the plant against tsunami, but they kept operating the plant heedlessly,” prosecutors said on Wednesday, according to The Asahi Shimbun. “That led to the deaths of many people.” Former TEPCO Chairman Tsunehisa Katsumata, 78; former Vice President Ichiro Takekuro, 72; and former Vice President Sakae Muto, 68, face charges of professional negligence resulting in death and injury….
All three have pleaded not guilty in Tokyo District Court, saying they could not have predicted the tsunami.

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Source: Slashdot – Fukushima Nuclear Disaster: Prosecutors Request Prison Time For Executives