HOME

Solar plants versus nuclear plants

Tue, 09/28/2010 - 13:39 — green

According to the Duke University, for the first time, thanks to scale economy and latest technology, solar plants become economically more performant than nuclear plants. Read more at : http://inhabitat.com/2010/07/29/solar-power-is-cheaper-than-nuclear-for-...

This exemple will redraw the political context for choosing or not to develop nuclear plants. Nations will not be able anymore, soon, to use the excuse of greenhouse gas emissions to substantiate this form of energy production. Instead they will have to explain their choice solely with regard to nuclear weapon technology development and research in clean nuclear fusion.

SUGAR Volt Aircraft Concept requires 70% Less Fuel

Sun, 08/08/2010 - 18:22 — green

Boeing new aircraft design forecast for launch in 2035 will allow 70% fuel saving. SUGAR (Subsonic Ultra Green Aircraft Research) uses an hybrid system ; electric battery and gas turbine propulsion. The total energy use will be reduced by 55 percent.

Environmental impact from the industry

Fri, 07/23/2010 - 13:08 — green

This chart shows the different types of damages caused by industry (Greenhouse gases, Air pollution, Water abstraction, Natural resources, General waste, Volatile organic compounds, Heavy metals). Published by Yale university (http://e360.yale.edu/content/images/0710-teeb-biodiversity.html). We may notice that oil and gas usage does not only has a big impact on electricity generation but as well just in their productions.

About energy and large scale ideas

Mon, 07/19/2010 - 02:10 — green

In this speech at TED.com Juan Enriquez explains how to shift from brute force to biologic tools to make the most of our remaining fossil fuel during the necessary transition to alternative energies. His last very interesting idea is to propose to fix oil price (in Europe and USA) at a stable level so that alternative solutions being developed by companies are not impacted by fuel price fluctuation, wasting millions of dollars of research and investments when company go belly up because of these price fluctuations.

False ideas about Foie Gras

Fri, 07/16/2010 - 17:32 — green

In this very cool speech Chef Dan Barber tells his encounter with an atypical Foie Gras producer who has been rewarded by one of the most famous award for food product.

Wood - product certification

Sun, 07/11/2010 - 15:34 — green

How forest can be both maintained and used to produce wood.

http://www.fsc.org/multimedia.html

How to re-think the way we produce - Success story

Sat, 03/27/2010 - 14:20 — green

What if we were clever and pragmatic enough to stop wasting our planet. Hope this will inspire company pioneers.
In this video we see how Nike, Ford and China are heading toward recycling design and how they consider it as good BUSINESS !!!!

The powerful idea about Cradle to Cradle is : It is stupid to think we will handle industry footprint if we reduce our ambition to "less" pollution, less waste ... considering how earth population and socio-economic level increase. "Less" is not the solution, the solution is to engineer or grow product which are totally recyclable, and the technology is already ready for that.

MacDo for eternity

Sun, 02/28/2010 - 01:20 — green

This video is impressive and talk for itself. You can wonder how much time in average the list of chemical product in this food takes to provoke a cancer of the stomach, but as says the dictum : what does not kill you makes you stronger, of course you will need to mutate for that.

Is fusion energy safe and clean ?

Wed, 02/24/2010 - 12:50 — green

First of all, if theoretically clean, in the sense that it does not generate direct radioactive pollution, the fusion, has however, an indirect effect which is to produce high energy neutrons which can themselve trigger radioactivity when impacting confinement walls. This drawback represents a challenge in the current experimentation at ITER in France where many countries have joined their effort to setup the first fusion reactor prototype.
 

The main topics are ;

- no risk of nuclear chain reaction
- confining the reaction (high energy plasma) by using magnetic fields
- confining neutrons and reduce radioactivity, which is likely to be done in order of magnitude with the next generations of reactors
- unlimited fuel availability
 

An important field of interest is magnetic confinement technology, which could lead up to new applications in science.

Considering all these facts it makes sense to say that "Fusion is one of the most important challenge of our time."

read more at : http://www.engineeringchallenges.org/cms/8996/9079.aspx
and : http://www.iter.org/

Next