Researchers at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and LCW Supercritical Technologies have created five grams of yellowcake — a powdered form of uranium used to produce fuel for nuclear power production — using acrylic fibers to extract it from seawater. LCW, a Moscow, Idaho clean energy company with early support from PNNL through DOE’s Office of …
The US trucking industry is being pressured to deal with diesel emissions. California would require that NOx emissions from medium- and heavy-duty trucks be cut by about 90 percent relative to today’s cleanest diesel. India and China mostly do not use diesel cleanup systems, so their NOx emissions are about 10 times higher. China and …
Researchers from EPFL’s Photovoltaics Laboratory and the CSEM PV-center have developed an economically competitive solution to silicon solar cells. They have integrated a perovskite cell directly on top of a standard silicon-based cell, obtaining a record efficiency of 25.2 percent. Perovskite complements silicon. Perovskite converts blue and green light more efficiently, while silicon is better …
Bob Effendi, a native of Indonesia, helped ThorCon win its 2015 deals with Indonesian companies to work on thorium nuclear power. In 2015, three state-owned companies in Indonesia signed a memorandum of understanding with a U.S.-based firm called Martingale. They agreed to conduct a feasibility study on how Martingale’s design for a thorium salt reactor …
Permian basin oil production is forecast to reach 5.4 million b/d by 2023—more than current production from any single Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries member other than Saudi Arabia, IHS Markit said in a new report. The Permian Basin is a sedimentary basin largely contained in the western part of the U.S. state of Texas …
Tokamak Energy UK has reached its first ST40 prototype testing goal of plasma temperatures of 15 million degrees Celsius. Their 2018 target is to reach 100 million degrees – the temperature required to force together charged deuterium and tritium particles that naturally repel each other and get them close enough together to fuse. The spherical …
China is buying more nuclear reactors and nuclear technology from Russia. * four more VVER-1200 units at Xudabao and Tianwan * cooperation in the CFR-600 fast reactor pilot project * supply of the RITEG (Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator) parts for China’s lunar exploration programme. The design of the Tianwan plant is based on Russia’s AES-91 project …
Analysts at investment bank Berenberg have a $500 price target for Tesla. Tesla is currently trading at $320. * Original Equipment Manufacturers are not as threatening to Tesla because Tesla has technology advantages * Tesla’s centralized, integrated, technology-driven architecture enables flexibility and OTA (over-the-air) software-upgradeability across the entire domain. Traditional architectures have legacy infrastructure, resulting …
In 2014, the population of LDCs (Least Developed Countries) was 898 million—1/8 of the world’s total. The population in LDCs is expected to more than double between 2010 and 2050. In the same time period, the total world population is expected to grow less than 40%. However, the number of least developed countries will drop …
Elon Musk and Tesla announced that they are solving their Model 3 production in 2018 and will hit battery cost and other milestones which should translate to millions by 2023. In the near term in June, Model 3 production will be 5000 cars per week. Tesla will likely do better than 10,000 cars per week …
Elon Musk says Tesla will achieve a battery cell cost of $100 per kWh by the end of 2018 if commodity prices remaining stable. Elon Musk sees Tesla batteries becoming cheaper than $100 per kWh for the overall battery pack in less than two years. Tesla should achieve a 30% improvement in volumetric energy density …