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Submission + - Doctor Who Legos On Shelves This Christmas (dailymail.co.uk) 2

Submitted by WillgasM
WillgasM writes: "Lego has signed a deal with the BBC to create a Dr Who set with mini-figures, the Tardis and representations of many of the enemies he has taken on and defeated." It hasn't yet been decided exactly which characters will be released, but potential characters include "various doctors, including David Tennant and Tom Baker, alongside Billie Piper, K9 the robot dog, and versions of the Daleks, Cybermen and Weeping Angels." So...how exactly are they going to make the Tardis bigger on the inside?

Submission + - Why the nuclear industry targets renewables instead of gas (midwestenergynews.com) 3

Submitted by mdsolar
mdsolar writes: Cheap natural gas has upended the nation’s energy landscape and made aging nuclear power plants increasingly uncompetitive.

Yet the nuclear industry, which generates almost a fifth of the nation’s energy, has declared war not on gas but on wind and solar, which represent about 4 and 0.2 percent of our energy mix, respectively.

Nuclear generators have successfully fought against renewable and energy efficiency standards on the state level, and lobbied against tax incentives for wind and solar on the federal level. They’re in the process of securing changes in regional capacity markets that would benefit nuclear and harm solar and wind.

And as states develop their Clean Power Plans to fulfill the federal mandate to reduce carbon emissions, nuclear is often pitted against renewables.

In deregulated states like Illinois, Ohio, Michigan and Pennsylvania, nuclear generators have found it increasingly difficult to sell their power at a profit on open markets, because of competition primarily from gas but also from wind.

Meanwhile, energy efficiency and distributed solar generation have reduced demand for electricity and are part of a fundamental shift which could significantly shrink the role of large, centralized power plants.

Submission + - Norway is the first country in the world to divest from fossil fuels (qz.com)

Submitted by mdsolar
mdsolar writes: Norway, the nation with the largest sovereign fund in the world, is withdrawing from its investments in fossil fuels. A number of universities, cities, and religious institutions have joined the so-called “divestment” movement, but Norway is the first nation to do so officially.

“It’s not the first time a country’s fund has sold off companies,” Jamie Henn, co-founder of the international climate-change advocacy group 350.org, told Quartz. “But it’s definitely the first time they’ve done so in the context of climate risk and environmental concerns.”

Norway is divesting from 32 coal companies, most of which are linked to either high carbon emissions or deforestation. It’s also pulling out of investments in tar sands and cement. Moral high ground aside, investing in these companies—like the fossil fuels they generate—may be unsustainable. While Norway can now boast that it has made a bold move toward a cleaner planet, it has in the process also shed assets that are inherently risky.

Submission + - H1B Records Being Destroyed by Feds

Submitted by Foofoobar
Foofoobar writes: On the tail of 100,000 layoffs by IBM, the Feds are deleting all long term electronic records associated with the H1B program. No reason was given and this would never have been noticed until the Labor Dept posted a note saying those records were no longer available. This directly inhibits ANY research on companies using these. What is the government trying to hide?

Submission + - False solution: Nuclear power is not 'low carbon' (theecologist.org)

Submitted by mdsolar
mdsolar writes: The UK government is committed to massively subsidising new nuclear reactors, based on the claim that they generate 'low carbon' electricity.

But what is the carbon footprint of nuclear power? I have trawled the literature and found that there is no scientific consensus on the lifetime carbon emissions of nuclear electricity.

Remarkably, half of the most rigorous published analyses have a carbon footprint for nuclear power above the limit recommended by the UK government's official climate change advisor, the Committee on Climate Change (CCC).

According to the CCC, if we are to avoid the worst effects of climate change, by 2030 all electricity should be generated with less than 50 grams of carbon dioxide emitted for each kilowatt-hour (50 gCO2/kWh).

Submission + - Well, That Didn't Work: The Segway (wired.com) 1

Submitted by turkeydance
turkeydance writes: We were all supposed to be riding Segways by now. The company was supposed to be rolling in cash, the scooter’s inventor a modern day Jay Gatsby (minus the bootlegging and murder). It didn’t happen: Today, the Segway is a punch line, a way for mall security guards to prevent sore feet. So what happened?

It’s not that it didn’t work: Envisioned as a way for people to get from home to work in urban areas, the Segway is a technological marvel. It can maintain its balance better than a human and is much more fuel efficient than a car, which are a pain to drive and park over a short journey. No, the problems that sank the Segway weren’t technological. They were social.

Submission + - Interest Rates Have Gone Negative in Europe

Submitted by HughPickens.com
HughPickens.com writes: Matthew Yglesias writes at Vox that something really weird that economists thought was impossible is happening now in Europe where interest rates have gone negative on a range of debt — mostly government bonds from countries like Denmark, Switzerland, and Germany but also corporate bonds from Nestlé and, briefly, Shell. As in you give the owner of a Nestlé bond 100 euros, and four years later Nestlé gives you back less than that. "In the most literal sense, negative interest rates are a simple case of supply and demand. A bond is a kind of tradable loan," says Yglesias. "If there isn't much demand for buying the bonds, the interest rate has to go up to make customers more willing to buy. If there's a lot of demand, the interest rate will fall."

But why would you want to buy a negative interest rate loan? The question itself seems absurd – the very idea that anyone should have to pay someone to keep their money safe rather than demand an interest payment for the use of their money is counter-intuitive. But according to Yglesias, very rich people and big companies need to do something with their money and most European banks only guarantee 100,000 euros.Plowing the money into negative-yielding government bonds can appeal to banks when the alternative is to pay even more to store cash on deposit. J.P. Morgan calculates there is currently 220 billion euros of bank reserves subject to negative interest rates, which looks set to grow exponentially because of the European Central Bank’s forthcoming colossal bond-buying program. "It may be the case that if governments push the negative interest rates thing too far the entire economy would become a cash based system," says Merryn Somerset Webb. "But that might take a while to get to."

Submission + - Sony plan to pull out of MPAA revealed (nytimes.com)

Submitted by Earthquake Retrofit
Earthquake Retrofit writes: The New York Times is reporting: "... Sony Pictures chairman Michael Lynton last month told industry colleagues of a plan to withdraw from the movie trade organization, according to people who have been briefed on the discussions. He cited the organization's slow response and lack of public support in the aftermath of the attack on Sony and its film “The Interview,” as well as longstanding concerns about the cost and efficacy of the group."

Submission + - Progressing Being Made in Renewable Energy Storage Technologies (vancouversun.com) 2

Submitted by dave562
dave562 writes: As astute Slashdot commentators frequently mention when renewable energy is discussed, the biggest challenge faced by renewable energy is its inability to provide stable baseline power. Progress is being made to address those concerns, and companies who can deliver successful are trying to tap into a market that has been valued at $10.5 billion dollars.

From the article,

"The problem for a lot of renewable power sources — wind and solar farms, run-of-river hydro — is that they often pump out the most power when utilities don’t need it, but dim down when they really want it.

For electric utilities, balancing those peaks and valleys from intermittent energy sources is a major challenge to integrating them into the grid, which is why some B.C.-based firms are hoping to cash in on the development of energy-storage technologies.

ZincNyx’s technology, the so-called flow battery, is a regenerative fuel-cell system that takes in electricity when the power isn’t needed and uses it to create fuel out of zinc-oxide that is stored in a tank, and which is then run through a fuel cell that converts it back into electricity when it is needed."

Is this the answer to the challenge faced by renewable power? What other hurdles still remain?

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