Energy Cost Analysis 2008

Energy price estimates from Lazard. A June 2008 study. The energy costs here have adjusted alternative energy with tax credits. The nuclear energy price assumes that the facility lasts 20 years instead of 40 to 60 or more years which has been the actual experience. Assumptions in the Estimates Nuclear is the carbon friendly conventional …

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IBM Develops Electric Control of Light from Carbon Nanotubes

By fabricating an optical cavity around light-emitting nanotube mirrors at the bottom and top, wavelengths were confined to the desired 1.55-micron communications frequency. IBM researchers see a development path to light emitting nanotubes with no waste heat and a way to create a superlattice array of tubes for silicon photonic chips for optical computers. EETimes …

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Carnival of Space #67

Carnival of Space #67 is up at next generation blog at discovery.com Centauri Dreams looks at space anomalies and implications in regards to the search for extraterrestrial life This site contributed the article on progress to radiation protection 21st century waves considers the future of nasa and the economic impact of exploration There is a …

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George Church and the Personal genome project featured in Wired

George Church’s lab makes the gene sequencer Polonator G.007 — offered at the low price of $150,000. Church maintains that, while the Polonator isn’t up to whole-genome reads, it is clocking in at about one-third the cost of Applied Biosystems’ estimate ($60,000 for Applied Biosystems. So the Polonator is at $20,000 but needs to improve …

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China’s usage of cement

World cement usage in 2008 is 2.8 billion tons and is forecast to be 3.5 billion tons in 2012 China is using 1.3 billion tons in 2008 about 45% of the world total. The cement usage is mainly driven by the fact that China is adding a one to one and half Los Angeles worth …

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Seeds of a new manufacturing revolution

A transformation in the pace of economic growth can be achieved even without nanofactories. These pre-nanofactory methods would transition well to a world with nanofactories when they do arrive. A coordinated effort by research, companies and government could be made to plan and develop Rapid Automated Manufacturing by 2030. There could be an increase in …

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Blacklight Power claims 50KW prototype Hydrinos generator

Blacklight power claims a 50kw prototype device UPDATE: Wikipedia details the controversy and doubts about the Hydrino theory upon which Blacklight Power bases their device. Mills’ work is not accepted by the scientific community, and has been largely ignored by it (as of November 2007, only four papers discussing hydrinos were present in the arXiv …

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Enhanced geothermal energy

Enhanced geothermal systems (EGS), also sometimes called engineered geothermal systems, offer great potential for more than 100 GW of geothermal power which 40 times more than present geothermal power. Sandia national labs indicates ultimately geothermal global resources amount to 50,000 times the energy of all oil and gas resources in the world. Ormat Technologies (775 …

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