Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
Toggle light / dark theme

Blog

Category: sustainability – Page 481

To advance his vision, last week EIC launched the OPEN100 project, which Kugelmass says will provide open-source blueprints for the design, construction, and financing of a 100-megawatt nuclear reactor. He claims the reactor can be built for $300 million in less than two years, significantly decreasing the per-kilowatt cost of nuclear power.

“Nuclear power isn’t just part of the solution to addressing climate change; it is the solution,” Kugelmass said in a press release. “OPEN100 will radically change the way we deploy nuclear power plants going forward, offering a substantially less expensive and less complicated solution.”

The logic behind the idea is that the biggest barrier to the widespread use of nuclear is the cost of building reactors, which most experts would agree is a major problem for the industry. Kugelmass thinks that’s because we’ve been focused on large, overly complicated reactors that take far too long to build. His solution is to go back to tried and tested pressurized water reactors from the previous century, and bring their cost down even further through standardization and a focus on speedy construction.

Read more | >

A Bangalore-based company claimed on Sunday that it had used radio frequency waves to lower air pollution over parts of Delhi, surprising sections of scientists who say they have never heard of such technology.

Devic Earth had installed devices that broadcast ultrahigh frequency (UHF) radio waves at two sites in the capital, responding to requests from Procam International, the organisers of the Delhi half-marathon, a Devic official said.

Company officials and the organisers have claimed the devices helped lower levels of tiny particulate matter (PM) in the air and served as a protective umbrella for the marathon runners. The devices used on Sunday were paid for by the organisers.

Read more | >

When it comes to electric vehicles, Yamaha’s electric bicycle division has been charging into the future while its electric motorcycle division has been oddly quiet and unproductive — at least outwardly.

But now we’re getting a new look at a series of electric motors that Yamaha has been developing — motors that could rapidly progress Yamaha’s EV efforts.

Read more | >

Solar power, hydrogen fuel from seawater, automatic wingsails, a 6 year journey.

The Energy Observer set sail on a six-year world tour in 2017, testing new technologies, from onboard hydrogen electrolysis to fully-automated sails. It’s hoped the rugged ocean environment will prove the techs’ durability and usefulness at home.

CNET playlists: https://www.youtube.com/user/CNETTV/playlists
Download the new CNET app: https://cnet.app.link/GWuXq8ExzG
Like us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/cnet
Follow us on Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/cnet
Follow us on Instagram: http://bit.ly/2icCYYm

#EnergyObserver #Hydrogen #Toyota

Read more | >

Just a few years ago, low cost natural gas was the main force pushing coal out of the power generation market, and now low cost solar power is sneaking up on low cost natural gas. So far the competition is a trickle, not a flood. However, natural gas stakeholders don’t have much breathing room left, as indicated by the latest perovskite solar cell research.

Read more | >

Lithium (Li) batteries, or lithium metal batteries, use metallic lithium as an anode. Over the past few decades, rechargeable Li batteries have been used to power a wide variety of electronic devices, including toys, portable consumer devices and electric vehicles.

While these batteries typically achieve reliable performances at room temperature, their , power and cycle life tend to decrease significantly at temperatures below −10 °C. The inability to function well at low temperatures is a crucial drawback, as it greatly limits their use in regions with particularly cold climates. The main reason for this limitation is that at temperatures below −10 °C the solid-electrolyte interphase (SEI) becomes unstable and leads to what is known as the dendritic Li plating of the anode in the batteries.

A team of researchers at Pennsylvania State University and Argonne National Laboratory recently introduced a new design for Li metal batteries that could overcome this well-documented drawback. The resulting batteries, presented in a paper published in Nature Energy, were found to perform remarkably well at low temperatures compared to previously developed Li batteries.

Read more | >