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Comment Re:As someone who is hoping for nuclear power ... (Score 1) 389

by mdsolar (#47418645) Attached to: Blueprints For Taming the Climate Crisis
It is actually mid-century, not 15 years for that, but a seven fold increase over 2010 begs the question of where such reactors might be sited. Tidewaters are out owing to sea level rise and rivers are already under heat stress. So, Lake Anna cools not just twelve new reactors to boost its output, but another dozen to cover for Calvert Cliffs? The lake will be boiling.

Comment summary misleading (Score 1) 389

by mdsolar (#47417873) Attached to: Blueprints For Taming the Climate Crisis
A portion was left out of the summary. It is by mid-century that we'd see a big change over it the type of generation, not in 15 years. For the US, a renewable heavy, carbon capture heavy and nuclear heavy scenario were looked at. The energy security heavy scenario developed in "Reinventing Fire" by Amory Lovins was not explored. http://www.rmi.org/electricity

Submission + - Cosmic Mystery Solved by Supersized Supernova Dust (discovery.com)

Submitted by astroengine
astroengine writes: How cosmic dust is created has been a mystery for some time. Although the textbooks tell us that the dusty stuff that builds the planets — and, ultimately, the complex chemistry that forms life (we are, after all, made of ‘star stuff’) — comes from supernova explosions, astronomers have been puzzled as to how delicate grains of dust condense from stellar material and how they can possibly survive the violent shock waves of the cataclysmic booms. But now, with the help of a powerful ground-based telescope, astronomers have not only watched one of these supernova ‘dust factories’ in action, they’ve also discovered how the grains can withstand the violent supernova shock. “When the star explodes, the shockwave hits the dense gas cloud like a brick wall,” said lead author Christa Gall, of Aarhus University, Denmark. “It is all in gas form and incredibly hot, but when the eruption hits the ‘wall’ the gas gets compressed and cools down to about 2,000 degrees. At this temperature and density elements can nucleate and form solid particles. We measured dust grains as large as around one micron (a thousandth of a millimeter), which is large for cosmic dust grains. They are so large that they can survive their onward journey out into the galaxy.” The surprising size of the measured dust particles means they can better survive the supernova's shockwave. This research has been published in the journal Nature.

Submission + - Blueprints for Taming the Climate Crisis (nytimes.com)

Submitted by mdsolar
mdsolar writes: "Here’s what your future will look like if we are to have a shot at preventing devastating climate change.

Within about 15 years every new car sold in the United States will be electric. In fact, by midcentury more than half of the American economy will run on electricity. Up to 60 percent of power might come from nuclear sources. And coal’s footprint will shrink drastically, perhaps even disappear from the power supply.

This course, created by a team of energy experts, was unveiled on Tuesday in a report for the United Nations that explores the technological paths available for the world’s 15 main economies to both maintain reasonable rates of growth and cut their carbon emissions enough by 2050 to prevent climatic havoc.

It offers a sobering conclusion. We might be able to pull it off. But it will take an overhaul of the way we use energy, and a huge investment in the development and deployment of new energy technologies. Significantly, it calls for an entirely different approach to international diplomacy on the issue of how to combat climate change."

Actual report (Brazil, Germany, and India still to come): http://unsdsn.org/wp-content/u...

Comment Re:Why subsidize energy? (Score 1) 385

Didn't mention global warming here. I was discussing the link between subsidies and energy security. However, solar power lighting is much less expensive than kerosene powered lighting, so renewable energy helps with that as well in addition to opening up the possibility of cell phone changing.

Comment Why subsidize energy? (Score 3, Insightful) 385

Energy is a lot like roads an bridges in the way it promotes prosperity by its very existence. One can imagine a world where energy does not need military protection or special tax treatment, but it would be a world where national rivalries in power and economics are much subdues compared to the present. We're not there yet, but a rapid transition to renewable energy could probably get us closer more than just about any other move. Let's make the switch.

Submission + - Aims of Donor Are Shadowed by Past in Coal (nytimes.com)

Submitted by mdsolar
mdsolar writes: In a "Washington Fought for the British" sort of piece, Coral Davenport, the NYT's new climate reporter begins to show her colors: "To environmentalists across Australia, it is a baffling anachronism in an era of climate change: the construction of a 4,000-acre mine in New South Wales that will churn out carbon-laden coal for the next 30 years.

The mine’s groundbreaking, in a state forest this year, inspired a veteran to stand in front of a bulldozer and a music teacher to chain himself to a piece of excavation equipment.

But the project had an unlikely financial backer in the United States, whose infusion of cash helped set it in motion: Tom Steyer, the most influential environmentalist in American politics, who has vowed to spend $100 million this year to defeat candidates who oppose policies to combat climate change."

Comment Ta Da (Score 1) 133

http://hardware.slashdot.org/s... "New Scientist reports that, faced with global warming and potential oil shortages, the US Navy is experimenting with making jet fuel from seawater by processing seawater into unsaturated short-chain hydrocarbons that with further refining could be made into kerosene-based jet fuel.

More here: http://blogs.discovermagazine....

Comment Treatment sort of worked (Score 5, Interesting) 299

by mdsolar (#47374739) Attached to: Site of 1976 "Atomic Man" Accident To Be Cleaned
His treatment sort of worked. He ended up with a lot of bad health effects, but kept alive until he was 75, eleven years later. You read about old people living near Chernobyl and now Fukushima. Perhaps their age related decline leads to fewer ways for radiation to be lethal. The quick onset of leukemia seems to affect children more, for example. http://www.rerf.jp/radefx/late...

Submission + - Site of 1976 'Atomic Man' accident to be cleaned (nzherald.co.nz)

Submitted by mdsolar
mdsolar writes: "Workers are finally preparing to enter one of the most dangerous rooms in the world — the site of a 1976 blast in the United States that exposed a technician to a massive dose of radiation and led to his nickname: the "Atomic Man."

Harold McCluskey, then 64, was working in the room at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation when a chemical reaction caused a glass glove box to explode.

He was exposed to the highest dose of radiation from the chemical element americium ever recorded — 500 times the occupational standard.

Hanford, located in central Washington state, made plutonium for nuclear weapons for decades. The room was used to recover radioactive americium, a byproduct of plutonium.

Covered with blood, McCluskey was dragged from the room and put into an ambulance headed for the decontamination center. Because he was too hot to handle, he was removed by remote control and transported to a steel-and-concrete isolation tank.

During the next five months, doctors laboriously extracted tiny bits of glass and razor-sharp pieces of metal embedded in his skin.

Nurses scrubbed him down three times a day and shaved every inch of his body every day. The radioactive bathwater and thousands of towels became nuclear waste."

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