Nuclear power Roundup October 21, 2008

1. Italy will make 8-10 nuclear reactors starting in 2013. Correcting a 50 billion euro mistake of ending nuclear power in Italy. The long term aim, according to Scajola, is to ‘rebalance the power generation in Italy’. By 2030 the Italian government would like to see nuclear power taking a 25% share in generation, with …

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Rowan University Study of Blacklight Power

Dr. Jansson, professor of engineering at Rowan University confirms BlackLight’s 50 kilowatt reactor [H/T to a reader Ron B.] Rowan Scientists confirmed BLP‟s 1 kW and 50 kW power source tests corresponding to 20 kilojules and 1.0 megajoules respectively. Chemical analysis of the reactant and product R-Ni powder could account for less than 1% of …

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Dwave Quantum Computer 128 qubits Weeks away

CTO of Dwave Systems has mentioned in comments on his site. They will also be showing entanglement related results. We’re tracking fairly well to our earlier projections in most aspects of the project. Our first cut at a 128 qubit processor (Rainier) is going to glass within the next 2 weeks. I’m going to be …

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Calera Cement Process Details and Operational Pilot Plant and Competitors

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is one of the main approaches that have been put forward for mitigating climate change. Norway’s Statoil saves hundreds of millions of euro in avoided carbon taxes by using CCS. Since 1996, the Sleipner gas field has stored about one million tonnes CO2 a year. A second project in the …

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One small wall crawling step for a bottle of coke, one giant leap to Spiderman-like wall crawling

4mm square of new carbon nanotube adhesive holds up a bottle of coke. Image: Science/AAAS Liming Dai, a professor of materials engineering at the University of Dayton, and Zhong Wang, director of the Center for Nanostructure Characterization at Georgia Tech have developed an adhesive made of carbon nanotubes whose structure closely mimics that of gecko …

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Producing Trillions of Copies of artificial DNA Nanotechnology Structures using Living Cell Factories

Biodesign Institute at Arizona State University researcher Hao Yan is making DNA based nanostructures inside a living cell. “Cells are really good at making copies of double stranded DNA and we have used the cell like a copier machine to produce many, many copies of complex DNA nanostructures.” DNA nanotechnologists have made some very exciting …

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Speculation 2015: Third and Fourth Helping Robotic Hands

Extra wearable robotic arms would be helpful. Above is a statue of Vishnu. If Rodney Brooks’ Heartland Robotics goal of low cost worker robots and robot arms were merged with the new bionic arm work at John’s Hopkins, then able bodied people could wear or use robotic arms that would function as an extra helping …

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Speculative Technological Convergence – Nuclear power for Ten Thousand Exoskeletons

Previously this site speculated on near term technology that would enable a powerful version of the science fiction Bolo supertank. Now the converged projection is that technology will soon enable effective exoskeletons with compact electric engines, mass-produced portable nuclear reactors, UAVs with electric engines, higher electrical density and longer lasting ultracapacitor/battery combinations. Hyperion Power Generation …

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Nanotechnology roundup: Graphene production and Copying Electric eel cells for implantable batteries

1. Two independent teams have shown that it is possible to produce stable suspensions of single-layer graphene from graphite crystals using chemical techniques. 2. A numerical model of a cell from the electric eel shows that artificial cells can be built to have higher power output densities and greater energy conversion efficiencies than natural cells, …

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Tsunami invisibility: Hiding structures like Oil Rigs from the effects of Waves

Laboratory experiments show that obstacles arranged in fluids in certain patterns can effectively make objects they surround invisible to waves. If it works as well in in scaled-up versions, it could lead to new ways to protect ocean-based platforms and coasts from devastating tsunamis. Credit: M. Farhat, S. Enoch, S. Guenneau and A.B. Movchan Structures …

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HP and Georgia Tech working towards Exascale Computers

Georgia Tech computer scientists are laying the groundwork for exascale machines that will process more than a million trillion – or 10^18 – calculations per second. Karsten Schwan recently received a 2008 HP Labs Innovation Research Award to work with HP Labs, HP’s central research arm, to help solve some of the key problems in …

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