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- I think we’ll have to wait a few days or weeks to see what other folks have to say about these mini-nuclear plants.   The promoters make them sound good but, of course, they got a stake in the matter so they are only going to spin the positive side.   I’m going to wait to hear all sides before I come to any conclusions.

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Mini nuclear plants to power 20,000 homes

Nuclear power plants smaller than a garden shed and able to power 20,000 homes will be on sale within five years, say scientists at Los Alamos, the US government laboratory which developed the first atomic bomb.

The miniature reactors will be factory-sealed, contain no weapons-grade material, have no moving parts and will be nearly impossible to steal because they will be encased in concrete and buried underground.

The US government has licensed the technology to Hyperion, a New Mexico-based company which said last week that it has taken its first firm orders and plans to start mass production within five years. ‘Our goal is to generate electricity for 10 cents a watt anywhere in the world,’ said John Deal, chief executive of Hyperion. ‘They will cost approximately $25m [£13m] each. For a community with 10,000 households, that is a very affordable $250 per home.’

More…

- Research thanks to David D.

History moved tonight.   It is not given us to feel many such moments in our lives.   The assassination of John F. Kennedy, Neil Armstrong stepping onto the moon, the fall of South African Apartheid are some of the ones that have touched me.

Tonight I watched Barack Obama give his victory speech and I felt something I haven’t felt in some time - hope.   And I was deeply moved.

The world has been moving into darker and darker spaces for some time now.   Profits over people, production over conservation, greed over common sense.   A parade of stupidity to take your breath away and to make you fear for all of our futures.

I think this man sees all of that and sincerely wants to deal with it.   And he has secured the most powerful office in the world to work from.   The fact that he’s won?   It’s not the answer, it’s not the solution, and it’s not necessarily the way out of the mess we’re in.   But it is the best thing that could have happened at this time in history.

I pray that the desire for change that elected Obama President will begin to loosen the grip that materialism, short-sightedness, greed, fundamentalism and disrespect for nature have had on the United States.

We’ve dug ourselves into a very deep hole with respect to our economy and with respect to the environment.  And it will take a very large amount of effort and focus to dig our way out again.   But at least someone I can believe in seems to have stepped up to the plate.

God’s speed, Barack Obama.

- I suppose this is a case of good news / bad news.

- The good news is there is oil to be pumped and used and the world sorely needs more oil.

- The bad news is that we can now get at this oil because of global warming.

- The bad news is that it isn’t clear who ‘owns’ this oil as I wrote about here in September of 2007 and this may lead to political and military confrontations.

- The bad news is that finding more oil means that we can continue to dodge the energy bullet and continue to burn oil and put more CO2 into the atmosphere.

- Perspective is always good. Here’s some:

- As of 2005, we were using 30 billion barrels of oil per year. At that rate, these new arctic supplies will last three years.

- Is this discovery significant? Yes, as of 2005, only about 4 billion barrels of new oil per year were being discovered.

- This information is from here:

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The Arctic holds as much as 90bn barrels of undiscovered oil and has as much undiscovered gas as all the reserves known to exist in Russia, US government scientists have said in the first governmental assessment of the region’s resources.

The report is likely to add impetus to the race among polar nations, such as Russia, the US, Denmark, Norway and Canada, for control of the region.

The US Geological Survey believes the Arctic holds 13 per cent of the world’s undiscovered oil, while 1,669,000bn cubic feet of natural gas is equivalent to 30 per cent of the world’s undiscovered gas reserves.

“The extensive Arctic continental shelves may constitute the geographically largest unexplored prospective area for petroleum remaining on earth,” the USGS said.

Last August Russia planted its flag on the seabed 4km under the North Pole raising fears of a rush to grab the Arctic’s mineral resources, particularly its oil and gas deposits. Denmark in May called a summit of the five Arctic powers in Ilulissat, Greenland, to try to restrain competition and reiterate the countries’ joint commitment to the United Nation’s Law of the Sea Convention that governs territorial waters.

Commercial interest in exploiting the Arctic has also increased, with Royal Dutch Shell, the Anglo-Dutch energy group, pushing to help Russia develop gas from the Yamal region, and Total winning the right to do so at Russia’s giant Shtokman gas field.

In the US, companies are pushing ever further into the Arctic regions of Alaska, while Denmark has attracted a number of large companies interested in exploring for oil and gas off the coast of Greenland.

More…

- This sure looks like good news for alternative energy. Let’s hope it is for real and that the folks who control it don’t slow its introduction down by attempting to squeeze every last penny out of it. Let’s hope as well that big oil and coal don’t buy it up and bury it.

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In a revolutionary leap that could transform solar power from a marginal, boutique alternative into a mainstream energy source, MIT researchers have overcome a major barrier to large-scale solar power: storing energy for use when the sun doesn’t shine.

Until now, solar power has been a daytime-only energy source, because storing extra solar energy for later use is prohibitively expensive and grossly inefficient. With today’s announcement, MIT researchers have hit upon a simple, inexpensive, highly efficient process for storing solar energy.

Requiring nothing but abundant, non-toxic natural materials, this discovery could unlock the most potent, carbon-free energy source of all: the sun. “This is the nirvana of what we’ve been talking about for years,” said MIT’s Daniel Nocera, the Henry Dreyfus Professor of Energy at MIT and senior author of a paper describing the work in the July 31 issue of Science. “Solar power has always been a limited, far-off solution. Now we can seriously think about solar power as unlimited and soon.”

Inspired by the photosynthesis performed by plants, Nocera and Matthew Kanan, a postdoctoral fellow in Nocera’s lab, have developed an unprecedented process that will allow the sun’s energy to be used to split water into hydrogen and oxygen gases. Later, the oxygen and hydrogen may be recombined inside a fuel cell, creating carbon-free electricity to power your house or your electric car, day or night.

More from MIT…

and more from Forbes…

- Sometimes, in spite of our best efforts to gain a global focus, we can get too caught up in, and too influenced by, the view from our home country.

- After reading the excerpt from Zakaria’s book, The Post American World, below, I have to admit I may have this problem.

- My view of the world and its problems is much too U.S. centric and there’s an entire other way of looking that things that I’ve been missing.

- I encourage you to read the excerpt from Zakaria’s book, below, and to share your thoughts on it.

- Here is also a review of the book:

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It’s true China is booming, Russia is growing more assertive, terrorism is a threat. But if America is losing the ability to dictate to this new world, it has not lost the ability to lead.

by Fareed Zakaria

Americans are glum at the moment. No, I mean really glum. In April, a new poll revealed that 81 percent of the American people believe that the country is on the “wrong track.” In the 25 years that pollsters have asked this question, last month’s response was by far the most negative. Other polls, asking similar questions, found levels of gloom that were even more alarming, often at 30- and 40-year highs. There are reasons to be pessimistic—a financial panic and looming recession, a seemingly endless war in Iraq, and the ongoing threat of terrorism. But the facts on the ground—unemployment numbers, foreclosure rates, deaths from terror attacks—are simply not dire enough to explain the present atmosphere of malaise.

American anxiety springs from something much deeper, a sense that large and disruptive forces are coursing through the world. In almost every industry, in every aspect of life, it feels like the patterns of the past are being scrambled. “Whirl is king, having driven out Zeus,” wrote Aristophanes 2,400 years ago. And—for the first time in living memory—the United States does not seem to be leading the charge. Americans see that a new world is coming into being, but fear it is one being shaped in distant lands and by foreign people.

Look around. The world’s tallest building is in Taipei, and will soon be in Dubai. Its largest publicly traded company is in Beijing. Its biggest refinery is being constructed in India. Its largest passenger airplane is built in Europe. The largest investment fund on the planet is in Abu Dhabi; the biggest movie industry is Bollywood, not Hollywood. Once quintessentially American icons have been usurped by the natives. The largest Ferris wheel is in Singapore. The largest casino is in Macao, which overtook Las Vegas in gambling revenues last year. America no longer dominates even its favorite sport, shopping. The Mall of America in Minnesota once boasted that it was the largest shopping mall in the world. Today it wouldn’t make the top ten. In the most recent rankings, only two of the world’s ten richest people are American. These lists are arbitrary and a bit silly, but consider that only ten years ago, the United States would have serenely topped almost every one of these categories.

These factoids reflect a seismic shift in power and attitudes. It is one that I sense when I travel around the world. In America, we are still debating the nature and extent of anti-Americanism. One side says that the problem is real and worrying and that we must woo the world back. The other says this is the inevitable price of power and that many of these countries are envious—and vaguely French—so we can safely ignore their griping. But while we argue over why they hate us, “they” have moved on, and are now far more interested in other, more dynamic parts of the globe. The world has shifted from anti-Americanism to post-Americanism.

More…

- Research thanks to John P.

- This book review is from the NY Times and they insist that folks have an ID and a PW in order to read their stuff. You can get these for free just by signing up. However, a friend of mine suggests the website bugmenot.com as an alternative to having to do these annoying sign ups. Check it out. Thx Bruce S. for the tip.

- Excellent post over on The Sietch Blog replete with great maps showing the abundance of the difference types of renewable energy across the U.S.    Highly recommended.

Click here to see the article: 

Jonathan G. Dorn

After emerging in 2006 from 15 years of hibernation, the solar thermal power industry experienced a surge in 2007, with 100 megawatts of new capacity coming online worldwide. During the 1990s, cheap fossil fuels, combined with a loss of state and federal incentives, put a damper on solar thermal power development. However, recent increases in energy prices, escalating concerns about global climate change, and fresh economic incentives are renewing interest in this technology.

Considering that the energy in sunlight reaching the earth in just 70 minutes is equivalent to annual global energy consumption, the potential for solar power is virtually unlimited. With concentrating solar thermal power (CSP) capacity expected to double every 16 months over the next five years, worldwide installed CSP capacity will reach 6,400 megawatts in 2012—14 times the current capacity. (See data.)

Unlike solar photovoltaics (PVs), which use semiconductors to convert sunlight directly into electricity, CSP plants generate electricity using heat. Much like a magnifying glass, reflectors focus sunlight onto a fluid-filled vessel. The heat absorbed by the fluid is used to generate steam that drives a turbine to produce electricity. Power generation after sunset is possible by storing excess heat in large, insulated tanks filled with molten salt. Since CSP plants require high levels of direct solar radiation to operate efficiently, deserts make ideal locations.

Two big advantages of CSP over conventional power plants are that the electricity generation is clean and carbon-free and, since the sun is the energy source, there are no fuel costs. Energy storage in the form of heat is also significantly cheaper than battery storage of electricity, providing CSP with an economical means to overcome intermittency and deliver dispatchable power.

The United States and Spain are leading the world in the development of solar thermal power, with a combined total of over 5,600 megawatts of new capacity expected to come online by 2012. Representing over 90 percent of the projected new capacity by 2012, the output from these plants would be enough to meet the electrical needs of more than 1.7 million homes.

More…

- I like stories like this. They are great examples of what human beings can do. And there are many such stories around, if one looks.

- But, I fear stories like this as well - least they lead us into a false sense that ‘things are coming together‘.

- What matters in the end, is how things are on balance. And for every inspiring story, for every person working for a better world, there are a thousand who don’t care or who are in denial that there is a problem. And that’s the real problem that we need to steel ourselves to look at squarely.

- If you live in a community like the one in this story, if you work for an environmental group and spend your days with folks that live and breath this stuff, or if you live in a community that’s usually on the cutting edge, like Eugene Oregon, then it is easy to be seduced by what’s going on around you and think it represents the whole.

- But just step back and ask yourself what you would see, what you would find, if you simply reached down into the Earth’s population and took any random sample of 1000 people and looked to see how they feel and what they are doing - on balance. That’s where the rubber hits the road.

- This thing that’s happening, which will affect us all, has so far only concerned a few of us deeply and the rest are still living in a dream.

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A Danish community’s victory over carbon emissions.

Jørgen Tranberg is a farmer who lives on the Danish island of Samsø. He is a beefy man with a mop of brown hair and an unpredictable sense of humor. When I arrived at his house, one gray morning this spring, he was sitting in his kitchen, smoking a cigarette and watching grainy images on a black-and-white TV. The images turned out to be closed-circuit shots from his barn. One of his cows, he told me, was about to give birth, and he was keeping an eye on her. We talked for a few minutes, and then, laughing, he asked me if I wanted to climb his wind turbine. I was pretty sure I didn’t, but I said yes anyway.

We got into Tranberg’s car and bounced along a rutted dirt road. The turbine loomed up in front of us. When we reached it, Tranberg stubbed out his cigarette and opened a small door in the base of the tower. Inside were eight ladders, each about twenty feet tall, attached one above the other. We started up, and were soon huffing. Above the last ladder, there was a trapdoor, which led to a sort of engine room. We scrambled into it, at which point we were standing on top of the generator. Tranberg pressed a button, and the roof slid open to reveal the gray sky and a patchwork of green and brown fields stretching toward the sea. He pressed another button. The rotors, which he had switched off during our climb, started to turn, at first sluggishly and then much more rapidly. It felt as if we were about to take off. I’d like to say the feeling was exhilarating; in fact, I found it sickening. Tranberg looked at me and started to laugh.

Samsø, which is roughly the size of Nantucket, sits in what’s known as the Kattegat, an arm of the North Sea. The island is bulgy in the south and narrows to a bladelike point in the north, so that on a map it looks a bit like a woman’s torso and a bit like a meat cleaver. It has twenty-two villages that hug the narrow streets; out back are fields where farmers grow potatoes and wheat and strawberries. Thanks to Denmark’s peculiar geography, Samsø is smack in the center of the country and, at the same time, in the middle of nowhere.

For the past decade or so, Samsø has been the site of an unlikely social movement. When it began, in the late nineteen-nineties, the island’s forty-three hundred inhabitants had what might be described as a conventional attitude toward energy: as long as it continued to arrive, they weren’t much interested in it. Most Samsingers heated their houses with oil, which was brought in on tankers. They used electricity imported from the mainland via cable, much of which was generated by burning coal. As a result, each Samsinger put into the atmosphere, on average, nearly eleven tons of carbon dioxide annually.

Then, quite deliberately, the residents of the island set about changing this. They formed energy coöperatives and organized seminars on wind power. They removed their furnaces and replaced them with heat pumps. By 2001, fossil-fuel use on Samsø had been cut in half. By 2003, instead of importing electricity, the island was exporting it, and by 2005 it was producing from renewable sources more energy than it was using.

More…

- Research thanks to LA

- This article is from the NY Times and they insist that folks have an ID and a PW in order to read their stuff. You can get these for free just by signing up. However, a friend of mine suggests the website bugmenot.com as an alternative to having to do these annoying sign ups. Check it out. Thx Bruce S. for the tip.

New Zealand has reported the fastest growth in sales of Fairtrade products in the world - a 45-fold increase in just four years.

Barry Coates, executive director Oxfam NZ, said there had been a huge increase in Fairtrade sales here, from $200,000 a year in 2004 to annual sales of about $9.13 million.

He said it was the fastest growth rate in the Fairtrade market of any country. That was partly explained by the mainstreaming of products such as coffee, tea and chocolate into supermarkets and cafes, as well as speciality stores. “They used to only be available in Trade Aid shops … now they are even served up in some government departments.”

More…

… since he crossed the delegate threshold to become the Democratic presidential nominee, Sen. Barack Obama’s mark on the party is already being felt.

On Good Morning America Thursday, ABC News’ Chief Washington Correspondent George Stephanopoulos reported “the Democratic National Committee will no longer accept contributions from federal lobbyists, will no longer take contributions from PACs” in keeping with Obama’s well-publicized policy.

UPDATE: DNC issues a statement:

“The DNC and the Obama Campaign are unified and working together to elect Barack Obama as the next president of the United States. Our presumptive nominee has pledged not to take donations from Washington lobbyists and from today going forward the DNC makes that pledge as well,” said Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean. “Senator Obama has promised to change the way things are done in Washington and this step is a sure sign of his commitment. The American people’s priorities will set the agenda in an Obama Administration, not the special interests.”

To the original on the Huffingtonpost: