nuclear

Energy Department awards supercomputing time

Look at who's logging supercomputing time these days and you are likely to get a glimpse of some major innovations on the horizon.

The U.S. Department of Energy announced today it has just granted the largest award ever of the department's supercomputing time through it's Innovative and Novel Computational Impact on Theory and Experiment (INCITE) program, now in it's sixth year.

The large award, a total of 1.7 billion hours distributed over 57 projects, was partially attributed to the fact that the Energy Department has been expanding its supercomputing capacity, and, therefore, simply has the means to grant more time. But it also reflects a growing interest in using computer modeling now that it has increased in sophistication, according to the Energy Department.

The INCITE program is somewhat like the lottery in that everyone has a chance. The Energy Department has an open application process in which any scientist, whether working in the academic or commercial world, is welcome to submit a request to win supercomputing hours, and it's not restricted to energy-related science.

The winning hours are divided between two supercomputers, the IBM Blue Gene/P supercomputer at Argonne National Laboratory aka "Intrepid," and the Cray XT5 supercomputer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory aka "Jaguar," which recently lost its first place status to China's Tianhe-1A as the world's most powerful supercomputer.

Among these latest 57 recipients, are large companies like Boeing and General Electric that are going to use the time for sophisticated modeling of potential designs for jet engines and wind turbines, respectively. There are also the climate change and earthquake prediction simulation projects, as one might expect.

Most interesting to the energy sector perhaps is the Lithium/Air Battery Project led by Jack Wells, group leader of the Computational Nanotechnology Group at the Center for Engineering Science Advanced Research at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. His team will be running simulations of lithium/air battery reactions. A successful version of the air battery would be capable of storing 10 times the amount of energy as a lithium ion battery of the same weight. Such a battery might make electric cars more competitive compared to gas-powered cars since it would offer greater driving range on a single charge than current models.… Read more

Nukes 101: Up close and personal with nuclear power

SEABROOK, N.H.--After a period of stagnation, the U.S. nuclear power industry is pushing for another chance--both to build new power plants and to reshape popular opinion.

Earlier this week, I took a tour of the Seabrook Station nuclear power plant on the New Hampshire coast, just north of the Massachusetts border. I got to see some impressive engineering, relearn the physics of nuclear fission, and ponder the future of nuclear power.

In a way, the Seabrook Station reflects the crossroads that nuclear power in the U.S. finds itself at. Construction of the plant, located on a … Read more

RIM BlackPad today?

Links from Monday's episode of Loaded: Research in Motion venturing off to the tablet world Stuxnet corrupted Iran's first nuclear power plant iPhone 4 on sale in China Ping, Apple's social music service, gets an update

CERN to seek antimatter in space

The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, a module that will go into space to conduct particle physics experiments, is set to leave CERN for the Kennedy Space Center on Tuesday.

The AMS module is being prepared for its transportation to the space center in Florida on board a U.S. Air Force Galaxy transport aircraft, CERN--the European Organization for Nuclear Research--said in a statement Wednesday. Once launched, AMS-02 will operate as an external module on the International Space Station (ISS). It will look for antimatter and dark matter while measuring cosmic ray composition, in a series of experiments designed to complement the … Read more

Report: Carbon cap to spur nukes, gas, renewables

About half of the electricity in the U.S. is made by burning coal, but a limit on carbon emissions from utilities would lead to a shift toward nuclear, natural gas, and renewable energy, according to a report.

Research and consulting company ICF International released one of its periodic Energy Outlook reports last week, projecting a change in the fuel used for generating electricity in the U.S. if Congress passes an energy and climate bill.

After months of political wrangling, Senate Democrats in recent weeks have decided to pursue a scaled-down energy and climate bill that would put a … Read more

Gates-backed nuclear outfit TerraPower funded

TerraPower, a company seeking to commercialize a novel nuclear-power technology which has the enthusiastic backing of Bill Gates, has raised $35 million in venture funding.

Seattle-based TerraPower said on Monday that Charles River Ventures led the series B round, which also had money from Khosla Ventures.

TerraPower was spun out of Intellectual Ventures, the intellectual-property licensing company headed by Nathan Myryvold, to commercialize traveling-wave nuclear reactors.

The basic idea behind traveling-wave reactors is to use a small amount of enriched uranium and spent uranium fuel from traditional nuclear-power plants to produce electricity. Rather than needing to refuel every several years, … Read more

Nuclear power: Friend or foe to renewable energy?

LAGUNA NIGUEL, Calif.--As renewable energy gains steam, environmentalists are increasingly being asked whether to support their longtime enemy: nuclear power.

At the Fortune Brainstorm Green conference here, nuclear power has frequently entered the discussion over the future of clean energy. Prompted by government policies, utilities are investing in wind and solar power but there are limits to what renewable power can do, say people in the industry.

When environmentalists say that clean energy can supply all electricity needs in the near future, they're being idealistic, said David Crane, the CEO of utility NRG Energy, which has invested in … Read more

Toshiba eyes nuke alliance with Gates start-up

Toshiba is in talks with a company backed by Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates to jointly develop advanced nuclear reactors, the Japanese electronics maker said Tuesday.

The Japanese electronics maker, which is also the world's No. 3 chipmaker behind Intel and Samsung Electronics, added it will restart plans to build a factory to make NAND flash memory chips as the global economy recovers.

Toshiba, which owns U.S. nuclear firm Westinghouse, said it was in preliminary talks with the Gates-backed firm TerraPower to develop so-called traveling-wave reactors, which are designed to use depleted uranium as fuel and thought to hold … Read more

Woman, fearing apocalypse, tries to halt collider

Sooner or later, it will all end. Hopefully, this will be before the "Singularity" folks fulfill their metallic dreams.

A woman in Germany, however, fears the end really is very nigh indeed. So, according to the Telegraph, she went to her country's most exalted court to get its judges to understand just how nigh our final breaths are.

The court didn't disclose her name, nor is there any evidence that she was wearing a sandwich board during her appeal. Her fears, though, surround the Large Hadron Collider, situated beneath the border of France and Switzerland. This … Read more

Utilities: Green tech good for planet, bad for business

More than 70 percent of U.S. electric utilities have implemented, or have plans to implement, wind and solar projects within the next three to five years, despite concerns about when they will pay off, according to the results of a survey released this week by Black & Veatch.

About 79 percent of survey participants said their utility had a wind power project already in development or planned within the next three to five years, while 73 percent said the same of solar projects.

The investment choice makes sense, given the fact that wind energy ranked second as the technology … Read more