By 2015, China will have a high-speed railway network that will encompass almost all its cities with a population of more than 500,000, the State Council said on Tuesday. The State Council issued a plan for building a comprehensive transportation network. The plan says China should complete the construction of a high-speed railway network with …
1. Businessweek – Kazakhstan, the world’s biggest uranium producer, increased second-quarter output of the radioactive metal by 9 percent from the previous three months to 5,040 metric tons, state-owned Kazatomprom said. Kazatomprom’s share of production totaled 2,896 tons, also a gain of 9 percent from the first quarter. The company produced a total of 19,450 …
Kansai Electric Power Co said its 1,180-megawatt No. 4 reactor at its Ohi nuclear plant resumed supplying electricity to the grid on Saturday, Japan’s second nuclear unit to regain power since last year’s Fukushima crisis led to the shutdown of all units. The move came three days after the unit was restarted, and the reactor …
The Carnival of Space 252 is up at Venus Transit. Centauri Dreams looks at the question of whether our civilization would be detectable from another star, assuming a level of technology not much higher than our own. The upcoming Square Kilometer Array may help make detecting other civilizations more likely, but will it be as …
The Carnival of Nuclear Energy 107 is up at Idaho Samizdat Atomic Insights – Exaggerated myths about nuclear accidents CAUSE negative health effects. A video was produced by the World Nuclear Association (WNA). It shows that the predicted health consequences of nuclear accidents are often orders of magnitude greater than the actual, measured health consequences …
Scientia Sinica Physica – Graphene control cutting using an atomic force microscope based nanorobot The electrical properties of graphene strongly rely on its size,geometry and edge structure.Therefore,the ability of fabricating graphene into desired configuration is one of the enabled techniques to manufacture graphene-based nanodevices and push it into practical applications.However,there is no effective way to …
Argonne National Laborartory – nanoparticles based on what is known as a “core-shell” configuration, in which a solid outer coat protects an inner layer that can melt above a certain temperature will be mixed with the coolant water of a thermal power plant (coal, natural gas or nuclear). Once dispersed in the plant’s water supply, …
Arxiv – Photo-driven Molecular Wankel Engine (4 pages) Technology Review – Clusters of boron atoms should behave like rotary Wankel engines when bathed in circularly polarised light. Nanotechnologists have identified many molecular motors and even a few rotary versions (ATP springs to mind). What makes this one special is that the polarised light doesn’t excite …
Apple Inc. (AAPL)’s next iPad, expected to go on sale in March, will sport a high-definition screen, run a faster processor and work with next-generation wireless networks, according to three people familiar with the product. UPDATE – March 7, 2012. Apple confirmed the new screen resolution and 4G versions of iPad 3. They also announced …
Nexans, a worldwide leading expert in the cable industry, has successfully commissioned the world’s first resistive superconducting fault current limiter (SFCL) based on second-generation superconductor tapes. The SFCL, equipped with superconducting elements developed in cooperation with the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, has been installed on behalf of Vattenfall Europe Generation AG to provide short-circuit protection …
The smallest wires ever developed in silicon – just one atom tall and four atoms wide – have been shown by a team of researchers from the University of New South Wales, Melbourne University and Purdue University to have the same current-carrying capability as copper wires. Experiments and atom-by-atom supercomputer models of the wires have …