Aug

27

Solucar energy puts forth innovative power-plant

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NPR did a story on Europe’s first solar thermal power plant, the PS-10, outside Seville, Spain. Over 600 mirrors concentrate sunlight onto a tower in the center of the plant. Heat from the sunlight turns water into steam that turns a turbine, creating enough power for roughly 6,000 houses. The project is expanding, and by 2013 is expected to power up to 180,000 households

The company is already setting up new plants in Morocco and Algeria, with plans to expand its operations across North Africa and the American West.

Imagine the benefits to Europe and the Mediterranean rim if more such power facilities were to be constructed, funded as part of both the European Union’s energy framework and in accordance with it’s environmental policy. As the facilities proliferate in sunny regions, the 1.5 billion price tag would steadily decrease while the energy generation would increase, all with no greenhouse gases. Regional conflicts that may have arisen over dwindling energy resources could be prevented and Europe’s neighbors made more stable, all the while generating power for rainy, gray northern Europe.

Aug

24

Packard Campus for Audio-Visual Conservation

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In an excellent move by the American Library of Congress, a former storage facility for U.S. currency in reserve for the aftermath of a nuclear war has been transformed to store the Library’s 6-million+ item audio/visual collection. Currently housed in four states and Washington, DC, the material consists of everything from delicate early-film reels and wax-cylinder audio recordings to LPs, VHS cassetes and CDs. Material that is in the public domain will be available on the internet. People in possession of old audio/visual material of interest can send an offer of donation to the library for preservation.


The Packard Campus currently offers select, online materials for free. The website is neat and tidy, but typically confusing to navigate, with alternating color schemes, formats and overly complicated titles. You can make your way quickly to the Recorded Sound Reading Room, Motion Picture and Television Reading Room and Moving Image Collections.

Aug

23

Fusion Power

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NPR, this week, released a story about a project in Southern France that is attempting to create a working fusion reactor. The Project, ITER or International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, is a joint project of EURATOM, Japan, China, India, Korea, Russia and the USA.

Fusion reactions have the potential to provide limitless, green power with almost no resources, by the “fusing” of atoms and the release of high-energy neutrons. Said NPR reporter David Kestenbaum,”

“Take the lithium from a laptop battery and a bathtub full of water, and you’ve potentially got enough fuel to cover your energy needs for life”

Proponents of the Fusion experiment have stated that the ITER is not dangerous, that a breach of the containment walls of the reactor would actually stop the entire process by cooling the plasma used to generate energy. Essentially, the runaway reactor theory associated with fission works in reverse; its actually very hard to get a fusion reaction going at all. Too, the amount of nuclear waste, if any, would be significantly less than with conventional nuclear reactors.

Objections to the ITER have been raised by environmental groups, such as Greenpeace, which called the ITER a “dangerous toy“that will not affect energy production for decades, and that will only exacerbate the problems that already exist with nuclear fission. Critics charge that the 10 billion Euro price tag – roughly half of which is covered by the European Union – would be better allocated to create enormous offshore wind farms.

The Greens have a point. Current energy needs do need to be met by renewable energy as soon as possible, and misallocated tax revenue might certainly be used to pay a percentage of it. But it should not come at the expense of fusion research, which has the potential to not only provide for our energy needs, but also for out technological discretion in the future.

Aug

14

On the Beach in the arctic north

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This article was originally published on here on AttiCusInk, but has been migrated to my Newsvine column.

On the Beach was one of the few mandatory books I read in high school. As Nevil Shute’s radioactive, WWIII cloud crept towards Melbourne I felt, for the first time, the tension of imagining death as a real possibility. I remember marveling at the complacence of the characters who, though they knew the end was nigh, continued to pursue the nuanced pleasures of everyday life as if nothing were amiss. The radioactive cloud creeps south. Meanwhile, in Melbourne, Moira Davidson began taking classes in typing and shorthand and the Holmeses plant a garden, and Vladimir Putin has a titanium flag erected in Russia’s garden pond….

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Aug

13

No more than a theory

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This article was originally published on here on AttiCusInk, but has been migrated to my Newsvine column.

In February, 2006, MEP Caroline Lucas asked Andris Piebalgs about the European Commission’s strategy for dealing with peak oil production. Piebalgs responded by saying that peak oil production constitutes “no more than a theory” and stated that the Commission would look into a “policy framework which should lead to a sustainable and highly efficient long-term energy profile….” Perhaps Mr. Piebalgs was unaware that he’d offered the Christian Creationist argument so often used to refute evolution – that it’s “just a theory,” and that the implications of his dismissal sounded every bit as uninformed. That the EU Commissioner for Energy seemed not to have a strategy, over a year ago, to deal with the advent of Peak Oil should be cause for alarm….

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