New Scientist – Singapore, a tiny island country whose population would have no place to go in the event of a wide-scale evacuation, is giving buried nuclear reactors a closer look. The thinking is that you could bury a small reactor in a shallow layer of bedrock, perhaps 30-50 meters underground. Then, if things at …
There were only a handful of very tiny nuclear reactors before 1970. Almost all of the mined uranium went for nuclear weapons and not for generating power Here was a uranium mining tragedies during the 1940s through the early 1960s The competition with the Soviet Union to build atomic arsenals spurred a uranium boom. In …
BP recently released its annual Energy Outlook report, which projects the world energy future to the year 2030. Alfin has a theory as to why there is so little growth predicted for nuclear energy A number of things about BP predictions tend to jump off the page: * The extremely slow predicted growth for nuclear …
BMC Medicine – Advances in the field of nanooncology (nanotechnology against cancer) Nanooncology, the application of nanobiotechnology to the management of cancer, is currently the most important chapter of nanomedicine. Nanobiotechnology has refined and extended the limits of molecular diagnosis of cancer, for example, through the use of gold nanoparticles and quantum dots. Nanobiotechnology has …
Here is a summary of latest info that I have been tracking on oil, nuclear energy and hydroelectric power. Nuclear power could see an addition of 150-250 Gigawatts by the end of 2020 (the year not the decade, so before 2021). China alone could add 100 Gigawatt. Hydroelectric power should increase by 33% to 4000 …
There will be many important clinical trials of stem cells in 2011. They will test therapies to treat paralysis and blindness could reveal the therapeutic potential of human embryonic stem cells Human embryonic stem cells (HESCs) are unique in their ability to form all 200 tissues of the human body. In principle, cells derived from …
Jeremy Keith, one of the instigators of the first Science Hack Day, spent the weekend thinking about the space elevators, a beloved piece of not-yet-existing technology. His hack, Spacelift is an interactive table that compares the costs of getting spacecraft payloads into geosynchronous orbit using a space elevator instead of a traditional rocket. He writes, …
Economist – If you blow a lot of air bubbles under a ship, and keep them coming, “good things will happen”, says Steven Ceccio, an expert on bubbles at the University of Michigan’s mechanical-engineering department in Ann Arbor. When air is pumped rapidly out of small holes in a ship’s hull, the swarming bubbles will …
Researchers at Northwestern University, the Center for Integrated Nanotechnologies at Sandia and Los Alamos National Laboratories, and Binghamton University have found a way to dramatically improve the reliability of carbon nanotube-based nanoelectromechanical (NEMS) systems. Their results are published in the journal Small. * NEMS have a tendency to stick shut, burn or fracture after only …
QD Vision and LG Display have just announced a joint development agreement focusing on electroluminescent quantum dot LED (QLED) nanotechnology, which promises to sweep all display technologies before it, including OLED. QLED promises energy efficient displays that offer brighter, richer colors, can be printed on ultra-thin, transparent or flexible substrates and manufactured cheaply. QD Vision …
Eurocopter’s X3 has wings which support two propellers. At high speeds, those wings contribute 40 per cent of its lift, so the single rotor doesn’t have to work so hard. Like the Sikorsky X2, it has no tail rotor – so the pitch of the left and right propeller blades subtly adjust automatically in flight …