Datacenter. Thorium. Biofuel. Escocia. Creating serendipity: Using knowledge transfer ... 7 January 2011Last updated at 00:20 By Kabir Chibber Technology of business reporter, BBC News Knowledge transfer has helped connect Welsh farmers with cutting-edge developments in genetics In the 1960s, small machines suddenly started appearing by the streams and rivers in some of the remotest parts of Nepal.
These micro-hydro machines resembled small pumps, and used the flow of the water coming down from the hills to generate cheap and renewable power for villages and farmers. The technology was first brought to the country by foreign organisations in the 1960s and 1970s, including the Swiss Association for Technical Assistance. "Almost all micro-hydro was installed in remote parts of the country not accessed by the national grid or with no possibility of grid extension in the coming five years," says Shirish Singh, who heads infrastructure access for the Nepalese arm of Practical Action, a charity that uses technology to fight poverty. 'Most innovative' 'Ten year's ahead' Small becomes big.
Tepco admits to new partial fuel rod meltdowns at ... 24 May 2011Last updated at 04:59 The problems with the Fukushima nuclear plant have raised questions over Tepco's future Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco) has confirmed the meltdown of extra fuel rods in reactors at its damaged Fukushima nuclear power plant. The company said that the rods were in its Number 2 and Number 3 reactors. Tepco has been trying to contain radiation from the plant, crippled by the 11 March earthquake and tsunami. The company said that it planned to stick to its timetable of getting the radiation under control by January. Tepco's announcement came on the same day that a team from the United Nations' atomic watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), kicked off a visit in Japan. 100 hours Continue reading the main story “Start Quote Based on our analysis, we have reached the conclusion that a certain amount of nuclear fuel has melted down.”
End QuoteKen MatsudaTepco Earlier this month, Tepco had revealed that rods at its Number 1 reactor melted down. Analysis. Algal Biofuels - Diesel - History. For nearly 20 years, a government laboratory built a living, respiring library of carefully collected organisms in search of something that could grow quickly while producing something precious: oil. But now that collection has largely been lost.
National Renewable Energy Laboratory scientists found and isolated around 3,000 species algae from construction ditches, seasonal desert ponds and briny mashes across the country in a major bioprospecting effort to find the best organisms to convert sunlight and carbon dioxide into fuel for cars. Despite meager funding, the Aquatic Species Program (.pdf), initiated under President Jimmy Carter, laid the scientific foundation for making diesel-like fuel from the fat that microscopic algae accumulate in their cells.
Fifty-one varieties were carefully characterized as potential high-value strains, but fewer than half of those remain. The program was part of the huge investment that Jimmy Carter made into alternative energy in the late 1970s. Newcastle borehole drilling starts in search of heat. 23 February 2011Last updated at 17:22 Professor Paul Younger on the first project of its kind to look for low carbon energy in a city centre Engineers have started drilling a hole deep below Newcastle in the search for a renewable energy source. The Newcastle and Durham Universities team plans to sink a hole 2,000m (6,562ft) below the planned Science Central site, in the city centre.
Scientists hope the £900,000 project will result in water at a temperature of about 80C (176F) being pumped out. The plan is the water could be used to heat the site and surrounding city centre buildings. The project, which started on Wednesday, is expected to last six months with the team hoping to pump out the first hot water in June. 'Elevated temperatures' Newcastle Institute for Research on Sustainability director Professor Paul Younger said: "Our aim is to rise to the challenge of putting a novel form of deep geothermal energy at the very heart of city centre regeneration.
Business | Bolivia holds key to electric car future. High in the Andes, in a remote corner of Bolivia, lies more than half the world's reserves of a mineral that could radically reduce our reliance on dwindling fossil fuels. Lithium carries a great promise. It could help power the fuel efficient electric or petrol-electric hybrid vehicles of the future. But, as is the case with fossil fuels, it is a limited resource. Lithium carbonate is already in the batteries of laptop computers and mobile phones. It is used because it allows more energy to be stored in a lighter, smaller space than most alternatives.
And as the auto industry rushes to produce new fuel efficient and electric cars, it too is turning to lithium batteries as its first choice to boost the power of their new models. GM has one in its new hybrid Volt, Toyota is testing one in its next generation hybrid Prius. And Nissan-Renault, Mitsubishi and VW are all rushing to buy or produce enough of the batteries to power their future models. More is needed But there is a problem. Scheme to 'pull electricity from the air' sparks debate. 27 August 2010Last updated at 10:02 By Jason Palmer Science and technology reporter, BBC News The claim of electricity from the air as a renewable resource is controversial Tiny charges gathered directly from humid air could be harnessed to generate electricity, researchers say.
Dr Fernando Galembeck told the American Chemical Society meeting in Boston that the technique exploited a little-known atmospheric effect. Tests had shown that metals could be used to gather the charges, he said, opening up a potential energy source in humid climates. However, experts disagree about the mechanism and the scale of the effect. "The basic idea is that when you have any solid or liquid in a humid environment, you have adsorption of water at the surface," Dr Galembeck, from the University of Campinas in Brazil, told BBC News. "The work I'm presenting here shows that metals placed under a wet environment actually become charged. " Charged debate Continue reading the main story “Start Quote. Sao Paulo unleashes Brazilian creative energy.
28 May 2010Last updated at 10:09 By Camilo Rocha Sao Paulo Street art: a section of the graffiti in Sao Paulo's Vila Madalena district It is known as Batman's Alley and on Google Maps it looks like any of the hundreds of narrow inner streets that twist and turn within Sao Paulo's blocks. What makes it different and cannot be seen from above is that every single wall in its 100m extension is covered top-to-bottom with graffiti of all shapes and colours. The graffiti here are not the average large-letter tags, although there is a lot of that. Batman's Alley or Beco do Batman, in Portuguese, resembles more an open-air street art gallery, where abstract, surreal, psychedelic and geometric paintings colourfully co-exist.
Continue reading the main story You only need to drive for a few blocks in Brazil's biggest city to encounter its thriving graffiti culture. It is the most visible expression of a new, creative, buzzing Sao Paulo that has emerged in the last 10 years. Continue reading the main story. Clear Nuclear Energy. Photo: Thomas Hannich The thick hardbound volume was sitting on a shelf in a colleague’s office when Kirk Sorensen spotted it.
A rookie NASA engineer at the Marshall Space Flight Center, Sorensen was researching nuclear-powered propulsion, and the book’s title — Fluid Fuel Reactors — jumped out at him. He picked it up and thumbed through it. Hours later, he was still reading, enchanted by the ideas but struggling with the arcane writing. “I took it home that night, but I didn’t understand all the nuclear terminology,” Sorensen says. He pored over it in the coming months, ultimately deciding that he held in his hands the key to the world’s energy future. Published in 1958 under the auspices of the Atomic Energy Commission as part of its Atoms for Peace program, Fluid Fuel Reactors is a book only an engineer could love: a dense, 978-page account of research conducted at Oak Ridge National Lab, most of it under former director Alvin Weinberg.
And the online upstarts aren’t alone.