Saturday, December 13, 2014

Google's Suggestion for Climate Fix

Readers following LENR posts on EcatWorld and on Londont know that Industrial Heat and Brillouin target their initial reactors at the heating sector. These are transitional applications in retrofitting coal-fired electricity and heating plants' They will immediately impact CO2 emissions. BlackLight Power, with its novel plasma/photovoltaic technology goes directly for electricity generation.

Our readers also know that writers often make use of “selective quotations” to support their point of view. Therefore, without much ado (or original content), here is a selection of excerpts from a November 2014 article in IEEE Spectrum by a couple of Google engineers, Ross Koningstein and David Fork. Their title: “What it would really take to reverse Climate change.

They begin with the assertions, “Climate scientists have definitively shown that the buildup of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere poses a looming danger. Trying to combat climate change exclusively with today’s renewable energy technologies simply won’t work; we need a fundamentally different approach.”

The engineers suggest the template to use is from an aborted Google project to “produce a gigawatt of renewable power more cheaply than a coal-fired plant could, and to achieve this in years, not decades... The approach suggests that 70 percent of employee time be spent working on core business tasks, 20 percent on side projects related to core business, and the final 10 percent on strange new ideas that have the potential to be truly disruptive.”

Koningstein and Fork suggest reforestation for carbon sequestration and “exhort scientists and engineers to seek disruptive technologies.”

They write: “We’re not trying to predict the winning technology here, but its cost needs to be vastly lower than that of fossil energy systems... A disruptive fusion technology, for example, might skip the steam and produce high-energy charged particles that can be converted directly into electricity... disaster can be averted if researchers aim for goals that seem nearly impossible.”

So we’re issuing a call to action. There’s hope to avert disaster if our society takes a hard look at the true scale of the problem and uses that reckoning to shape its priorities.”

Given, the UN just extended its climate change summit in Lima, Peru, these excerpts might have put pressure on delegates to identify and agree on affordable solutions. As usual, the emphasis seems to have been on getting committments on emission reductions (posturing) rather than means of funding research to accomplish goals (action)

The Google engineers neglected to touch upon nuclear's radioactive issues or the emerging LENR solution; perhaps their editor wanted to leave that to the UN's Ban Ki-moon -and to Messrs Harper and Obama.

Back date
A 2012 essay by Peter Gluck that still resonates.
http://coldfusionnow.org/peter-gluck-inspired-by-defkalion-the-tortuous-way-toward-lenr-standards/
and a line from his latest EgoOut issue that really echos my assessment of the latest UN climate meeting in Lima: "...the fact that you actually do not solve a problem if your solution does not come fast enough."
Update
Response to an emailer who thought i was too hard on politicians whom he felt tended to wait for public consensus rather than lead, and in any case, did not pick winners in the current contest between hot nuclear researchers and cool experimenters:
Rather than defend party positions, astute politicians might look beyond fossil, solar, wind and not-so-benign nuclear. Indeed, they might drop a Solution Aversion stance and entertain the prospect of a more affordable and safer energy alternative ...albeit, a market-disrupting one.
Dec. 21, 2014 Update
Further to August post on the formation of LENR-Cities, Peter Gluck reports on his interview with CEO, Michel Vandenberghe on upcoming events in the UK and Italy, and on the translation of LENR acronym as "Low Energy Nanoscale Reaction." Vandenberghe claims LENR is more of a disruption in markets than in technology.
http://www.lenr-forum.com/forum/index.php/Thread/1005-Peter-Gluck-report-discussion-With-LENR-Cities-founder-Michel-Vandenberghe/

Monday, December 01, 2014

Open Letter to IAEA Director General & to UN Secretary General

Since email addresses for Drs Amano and Ki-Moon are not readily available, hopefully a reader will relay this post to intended receipients.


Dear Dr. Amano and Dr. Ban Ki-moon

Having just read The Way Forward for the Physical Protection of Nuclear Materials, I’m appalled at the task ahead, given the potential growth in plants and materials. Surely, it is obvious that the number of atomic power plants and the volume or radio-active wastes must be drastically reduced in order to cut exposure to more nuclear disasters and to keep on top of security concerns.

Yes, member nations need to invest in energy plants to support their growing populations. But, our little Blue Globe is at its limit of abuse by fossil and nuclear fuelled energy production.
Following disasters at Chernobyl and Fukushima, and now with drone surveillance of vulnerabilities at nuclear sites, inaction is not an option; indeed, the way forward has to be radically different.

Alternatives to hot fusion and hot fission quickly emerge under the labels of LENR(Low Energy Nuclear Reactions) and Cyclotron medical isotopes. LENR is a promising clean and non radio-active way of generating heat and electricity that also lends itself to transmutation of nuclear wastes and structural debris. A prototype of a production E-Cat heating unit is actually being fine-tuned at at an industrial site in the USA.

Alternative and distributed energy generation must be phased in without delay; else, real dangers posed by ageing atomic plants, their ever-accumulating wastes and legacy electrical grids will increasingly haunt utilities for generations to come.

Germany's example of setting a 2022 dead line for phase-out of nuclear reactors, points at a realistic way forward. Question is: "Is their time-line too long"?

Regardless, without UN leadership in pushing for broader consensus there may not be much of a future for endangered population centers. Still, due to self-preservation instincts, most political leaders are unlikely to resist (costly but necessary) changes.

Best Season's Wishes to all in New York and Vienna, and much success in the year ahead with identifying, planning and promoting urgent nuclear fixes.

Respectfully,
Jim Sweeney
Canada

PS
For suggested actions, see November 2014 posts at: http://www.londont.blogspot.ca/


Update #1 Responses to Friendly Flak From my Network

a. Letter format cannot include all details, but be assured UN receipients are well informed.
b. Cyclotrons can now produce medical isotopes without using uranium.
c. The take-away for those living/working in the shadows of atomic reactors is: Subversive drone surveillance of nuclear sites reguires strategic response.
d. For those readers dozing in the nether regions, the take-home is: Wake-up, safer alternatives to hot fission and hot fusion are now being perfected.
e. There is little evidence that LENR is clearly on the UN’s radar, or that it has identified drone technology as a threat to its member States.
f. If experimenters, politicians and scientists collaborate, nations might well realize a man-made solution to global warming, as well as mitigation of conflicts and hunger.
g. In addition to taking the time to scan embedded links, draining a class of mulled wine helps with clarifications.

Update #2 For Voracious LENR Link Lovers
Frank Ackland at E-CatWorld.com provides an excellent introduction to lawyer, Lawrence M. Glazer's long article, The Miraculous Machine.

Update # 3 July 2, 2015
All nuclear regulators in Europe, North America and at the UN should be keeping their eyes on a project at Japan's Tohoku University. Here researchers are working towards a Cold Fusion process to convert radioactive waste into safer substances while generating heat.
http://asia.nikkei.com/magazine/20150702-ASIA-S-STARTUPS-SWITCHED-ON/Tech-Science/Cold-fusion-A-solution-for-radioactive-waste

UPdate # 4 November 2015
US regulators introduce mandatory Drone Registration:
http://www.industryweek.com/emerging-technologies/landing-soon-mandatory-drone-registration