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Category: sustainability – Page 497

  • The floating power unit Akademik Lomonosov has arrived at the port of its permanent location in Pevek, Chukotka, in Russia’s Far East, where it is being docked to start operations by the end of this year.
  • Once commissioned, it will become the world’s first operational nuclear power plant based on small modular reactors (SMRs) technology and a ‘working prototype’ for reliable source of low-carbon energy supply in remote areas.

“It’s maybe one small step for sustainable development in the Arctic, but it’s a giant leap for the decarbonisation of remote off-grid areas, and a watershed in the development of small modular nuclear power plants in the world,” said Rosatom CEO, Alexey Likhachev.

Director General of the World Nuclear Association, Agneta Rising, commented: “To meet the nuclear industry’s Harmony goal of supplying at least 25% of the world’s electricity by 2050 we will need to bring the benefits of nuclear energy to more people in a wider range of locations.

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Solar power is on the rise. You can see the evidence on rooftops and in the desert, where utility-scale solar plants are popping up. The picture is not all rosy, but if the recent past is any indication, solar power is going to help lead the transition to a carbon-free future, and it might do it faster than we all expected.

Elon Musk and Tesla promised solar roof tiles in 2016, but the industry might not need an upgrade as its grown significantly with the solar panels currently available. You can see the evidence both on individual rooftops and in the utility-scale solar plants increasingly popping up in deserts across the country. In the United States, of all about 30% of the new power capacity added to the grid in 2018 was from solar.

But the picture is not all rosy. Solar power (and sunshine) is intermittent and the price of lithium ion batteries, one of the most popular current storage solutions, is still relatively high.

These are real problems that the industry needs to tackle if solar is going to reach its potential. However, if the recent past is any indication, solar power is going to help lead the transition to a carbon-free future, and it might do it faster than we all expected. Watch the video to learn more.

Continue reading “The Rise Of Solar Power” | >

(Bloomberg) — For years, wind and solar power were derided as boondoggles. They were too expensive, the argument went, to build without government handouts.

Today, renewable energy is so cheap that the handouts they once needed are disappearing.

On sun-drenched fields across Spain and Italy, developers are building solar farms without subsidies or tax-breaks, betting they can profit without them. In China, the government plans to stop financially supporting new wind farms. And in the U.S., developers are signing shorter sales contracts, opting to depend on competitive markets for revenue once the agreements expire.

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Humans choose food based on the way it looks, smells, and tastes. But the microbes in our guts use a different classification system — one that is based on the molecular components that make up different fibers. In a study published September 19 in the journal Cell, investigators found particular components of dietary fiber that encourage growth and metabolic action of beneficial microbes in the mouse gut.

The research aims to develop ways to identify compounds that can enhance the representation of health-promoting members of the gut microbial community. The goal is to identify sustainable, affordable dietary fiber sources for incorporation into next-generation, more nutritious food products.

“Fiber is understood to be beneficial. But fiber is actually a very complicated mixture of many different components,” says senior author Jeffrey Gordon, a microbiologist at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. “Moreover, fibers from different plant sources that are processed in different ways during food manufacturing have different constituents. Unfortunately, we lack detailed knowledge of these differences and their biological significance. We do know that modern Western diets have low levels of fiber; this lack of fiber has been linked to loss of important members of the gut community and deleterious health effects.”

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A team of scientists has developed a computational model that uses artificial intelligence to find sites for hydropower dams in order to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Hydropower dams can provide large quantities of energy with carbon footprints as low as sources like solar and wind. But because of how they’re formed, some dams emit dangerously high levels of greenhouse gases, threatening sustainability goals.

With hundreds of currently proposed for the Amazon basin—an ecologically sensitive area covering more than a third of South America—predicting their in advance could be critical for the region, and the planet.

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Daimler has just announced that it is halting all future development of gasoline engines. The automaker will solely focus on electric cars from here on out. This implies that Mercedes-Benz is taking the same approach.

The future is electric. We all know that and so too does Daimler now with this move to electric-drive only for future vehicles.

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What might it take to feed a million people on Mars? Lab-grown meat, tunnel-grown crops and cricket farms, a new study finds.

When it comes to plans for crewed missions to Mars, NASA typically assumes round trips with only brief stopovers on the Red Planet. However, commercial space companies have emerged with the goal of colonizing outer space, with SpaceX specifically aiming to develop a civilization on Mars.

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Tesla owners who travel with kids can breathe an extra sigh of relief with the electric car maker’s V10 Update, as the company has introduced a new feature known as “Joe Mode.” The new feature will allow drivers to lower the volume of alerts and prompts that will are engaged while the vehicle is in motion.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk announced some details on V10’s “Joe Mode” earlier this year while replying to numerous followers who speculated about what new features will be coming to be new update. As one follower asked for a mode that would help keep his children asleep during drives, Musk replied with introductory information about the V10 feature.

Hoping to get “Joe Mode” into V10. The default, of course, is normal volume, but selecting “Joe Mode” would lower the volume of strident beeps & chimes by half.

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PARIS — The European Union’s equivalent of a foreign ministry is starting a new effort to promote the need for sustainable space operations, but that effort will not initially include any new regulation of European satellite operators.

Carine Claeys, special envoy for space and head of the Space Task Force for the European External Action Service, said in a Sept. 13 panel discussion at Euroconsult’s World Satellite Business Week that the Safety, Security and Sustainability of Outer Space (3SOS) public diplomacy initiative will promote “ethical conduct” in space amid concerns about orbital debris.

The acronym, she noted, has a second meaning. “It is also three times SOS,” she said, “to create the case and a sense of urgency.”

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