science & technology
2012/02/25 06:29 – Osaka Gas, SunEdison Jump On Megasolar Bandwagon
OSAKA Nikkei–Osaka Gas Co. 9532 and U.S. firm SunEdison plan to get involved in the construction of large solar power plants in Japan, highlighting the strong interest in this growing field as the country promotes renewable energy with various policy incentives. Companies are investing on the view that the market is set to expand in [...]
2012/02/24 00:01 – Panasonic Introduces Residential Solar Power Package
OSAKA Nikkei–Panasonic Corp. 6752 on Thursday unveiled a solar power management and storage system for homes with the capacity to meet essential electricity needs for roughly two days. The package includes a 4.65kwh lithium ion storage battery and a power station that regulates the solar cells and battery. The battery is priced at 1.21 million [...]
Nuclear Reactor Shutdowns Hitting Local Govt Budgets
At the end of last year, a friend sent me an email saying, “Apparently, all those nuclear power stations are not so vital after all”, after most of them went offline and the sky didn’t fall. Think I should forward this article to my friend? TOKYO (Nikkei)–With no prospect for the resumption of idle reactors, [...]
2012/02/15 05:06 – Toshiba, Others Bringing Small Generators To Market
Three cheers for the entrepreneurs (and for supply and demand in a free market)! But how do they do it without government support? (Jus’ kidding Sinfonia Technology Co. (6507) plans to release this spring a small energy generation system that combines solar, wind and water power, in addition to having lead batteries capable of storing [...]
Japan Utilities Facing Supply Crunch As Mercury Drops
TOKYO Nikkei–The cold wave sweeping across Japan is pushing electricity companies close to the edge, with power demand surging to the danger zone of above 90% of capacity at six utilities.At Kyushu Electric Power Co. 9508, power demand on Friday peaked at 14.77 million kilowatts between 6 p.m. and 7 p.m. The second-highest so far [...]
They’re back! (Well, will be soon) – the Fukushima robots
TOKYO Nikkei–The Chiba Institute of Technology has built two improved versions of a robot designed to help with the cleanup efforts at the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, the school announced Monday. The Quince No. 2 and No. 3 nuclear-cleanup robots are more rugged than their predecessor.Dubbed Quince No. 2 and No. 3, the [...]
GE-Hitachi Proposes to Burn U.K. Plutonium Stockpile | The Energy Collective
GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy has proposed to the U.K. government to build an advanced nuclear reactor that would consume the country’s stockpile of surplus plutonium. The technology is called PRISM, which stands for Power Reactor Innovative Small Module. If accepted, it would be very different than the other proposals to process plutonium, including those that [...]
New Take on Impacts of Low Dose Radiation « Berkeley Lab News Center
I first heard about the LNT (linear non-threshold theory) of the health effects of radiation exposure via Prof. Lenz’s blog (I couldn’t find a search function on the blog, but here are a couple of items that came up in a Yahoo search: Bernard Cohen on LNT junk science and Nobuo Ikeda on LNT and [...]
Effizienzhaus plus: German electric vehicle house | Lenz Blog
Prof. Lenz blogs indefatigably on the subject of solar energy production and other alternatives or emerging energy technologies. It’s all fascinating stuff, the stuff of dreams. Here’s just one recent extract. I learned that “inductive charging” means having your electric vehicle charge automatically, eliminating the need to mess around with cables. You just park it [...]
Global Village construction set – TED talk
Ivan Illich wrote Deschooling Society in 1971. In it, he suggested that the cars 90% of the people of the world really need, are not hi-tech, but lo-tech – cars, trucks, simple forms of transport that can handle the rough, unpaved roads (for example) and that are easily repaired with tools and parts that the [...]
