Fukushima, Chernobyl, CT Scans, etc.
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Tag Archives: energy
What is really happening at the Fukushima nuclear power plants
See the MIT NSE Nuclear Information Hub. Via this post by mdlbear, who also linked to this summary and warning about media hype. The summary dates from early yesterday, but the updates from MIT so far seem to be consistent with it.
Know Nukes
Energy and the Environment: A view from Asia
John Baez reports on the 2010 Singapore Energy Lecture, given by Lee Hsien Loong, the Prime Minister of Singapore.
Carbon is forever
From Nature
After our fossil fuel blow-out, how long will the CO2 hangover last? And what about the global fever that comes along with it?
Cap-and-trade in China?
Azimuth reporting on Carbon trading in pipeline
A new meaning to “one for the road”
Scottish scientists develop whisky biofuel
Using samples from the Glenkinchie Distillery in East Lothian, researchers at Edinburgh Napier University have developed a method of producing biofuel from two main by-products of the whisky distilling process – “pot ale”, the liquid from the copper stills, and “draff”, the spent grains.
The new method developed by the team produces butanol, which gives 30% more power output than the traditional biofuel ethanol. It is based on a 100-year-old process that was originally developed to produce butanol and acetone by fermenting sugar. The team has adapted this to use whiskey by-products as a starting point and has filed for a patent to cover the new method. It plans to create a spin-out company to commercialise the invention.
Via Slashdot.
Superconductivity
High-Temperature Superconductivity is something I worked on at Stanford back in 1973-75. The world has changed. Now “high-temperature” means “above the boiling point of liquid Nitrogen” (77oK/-321oF). Back then it meant “above the boiling point of liquid Hydrogen” (20oK/-423oF), and it was still an unattained goal. We had to use liquid Helium. Still, some things remain the same:
- Dimensionality matters. Back then I was working with thin films, thin enough to act in some ways like two-dimensional objects. This is still important.
- The Ginzburg-Landau macroscopic theory seems to still work. The more detailed BCS Theory goes beyond G-L to a give a microscopic description of superconductivity and is very successful at liquid Helium temperatures. However, it appears to be in trouble at higher temperatures.
Hold the hysteria
Methane bubble “doomsday” story debunked.
Via Bad Astronomy, with the note “…this ecological disaster sucks enough without adding hysteria to it.”
From Hilbert Space to Dilbert Space, and beyond 