Jun

29

Two & a Half Nations Start Thorium Nuclear Power Research

June 29, 2012 | 3 Comments

Mark Halper writing for SmartPlanet reports the U.S. Department of Energy is quietly collaborating with China on an alternative nuclear power design known as the molten salt reactor that should run on thorium for fuel. According to a March presentation at the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) on thorium molten salt reactors, Peter Lyons DOE’s [...]

Jun

28

Fusion That Works Better Than Expected

June 28, 2012 | 6 Comments

Since the 1940s science has been mesmerized by the potential of nuclear fusion to gain energy.  Ideas have came and went, some will not go away, and a small number of innovative thinkers have ideas that are gaining credibility with real results.  The world community has tossed tens of billions of dollar-valued wealth into the [...]

Jun

27

A Restart for an Old Battery Technology

June 27, 2012 | 4 Comments

The Edison battery, a rechargeable technology developed by Thomas Edison more than a century ago, to power electric vehicles went out of mind in the mid-1970s.  Now Stanford University scientists have breathed new life into the circa 1900 technology of nickel-iron batteries. Hongjie Dai, a professor of chemistry at Stanford University said, “The Edison battery [...]

Jun

26

Great News For Spent Nuclear Reactor Fuel

June 26, 2012 | 2 Comments

Al Fin spotted the news story at PhysOrg yesterday that describes a new method to recover the uranium in spent fuel enabling access to the nineteen times of the energy already produced to be used.  The process also deeply concentrates the very nasty actinides the justifiably worry so many folks and even that is back [...]

Jun

25

Another Catalyst to Replace Platinum in Fuel Cells

June 25, 2012 | 3 Comments

Engineers at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (UWM) have identified a catalyst of nitrogen-enriched iron-carbon nanorods that works in microbial fuel cells (MFCs) and microbial electrolysis cells (MECs) at 5% of the cost of platinum. One is beginning to think that some of these nitrogen enriched iron based catalysts are going to get to commercial scale. [...]

Jun

22

The First 100-Watt LED Bulb

June 22, 2012 | 6 Comments

Hitachi Appliances Inc. will release the LED light bulb, “LDA15D-G,” July 13, 2012, in Japan that’s claimed to be the industry’s first E26-base, wide light distribution type LED light bulb that emits the amount of light equivalent to that of a 100W incandescent light bulb.  This is quite a feat and offers some satisfaction for [...]

Jun

21

Is There A Better Choice Than Corn For Biofuel?

June 21, 2012 | 2 Comments

A group of researchers led by Purdue University scientists believes sweet and biomass sorghum would meet the need for next-generation biofuels to be environmentally sustainable, easily adopted by producers and take advantage of existing agricultural infrastructure. Those attributes point to potential adoptability for sorghum.  Scientists from Purdue, the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, University of Illinois and [...]

Jun

20

Algae Get a Better Diet

June 20, 2012 | Leave a Comment

Till now the understanding of the regulatory mechanisms controlling oil biosynthesis and storage in micro algae and details of the oil biochemistry was rather limited.  Brookhaven National Laboratory scientists are now showing corrections for two long-held misconceptions about oil production in algae by proving that ramping up the microbes’ overall metabolism by feeding them more [...]

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