In May 1972 in a uranium enrichment plant in France, scientists examining ore from a mine in Gabon, West Africa, discovered that a natural nuclear reactor had spontaneously manifested in that region in the Earth’s primordial past, churning out approximately 100 Kw worth of energy continuously for a few hundred thousand years about 1.7 billion years ago.
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Today I found out that during the height of the Cold War, the US military put such an emphasis on a rapid response to an attack on American soil, that to minimize any foreseeable delay in launching a nuclear missile, for nearly two decades they intentionally set the launch codes at every silo in the US to 8 zeroes.
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Whereas most ruins of decades past are often strictly off-limits, Russia’s Kildin island is a veritable petting zoo of the creepiest decaying military equipment you will ever get to see up close.
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Why do nuclear bombs make mushroom clouds? The phenomenon all comes down to a little something called the Rayleigh-Taylor instability, and by extension, convection. I’ll begin with the somewhat longer, but less geeky explanation before descending once again into extreme nerdery.
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The UK has set some very ambitious carbon reduction goals for itself—including the overall reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by a whopping 80 percent by 2050, but this goal is proving more challenging than anticipated. At this rate, the UK will have to go fully-carbon free by 2030. So to meet its environmental deadline, they’re building the biggest, safest—and first—nuclear power plant on the British Isles in nearly 25 years.
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Nuclear fusion, the same process that powers the sun, could provide us with limitless cheap energy—but experiments to date have always used more power than they created. Now, though, researchers have apparently tipped that balance, making fusion a real possibility.
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Japan’s nuclear agency wants to raise the severity level of the new radioactive water leak
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The 2011 meltdown
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The Uranium-235 and -238 we use in modern nuclear fission reactors are humanity’s single most energy-dense fuel source (1,546,000,000 MJ/L), but that potent power potential comes at a steep price—and not just during natural disasters. Its radioactive plutonium byproducts remain lethally irradiated for millennia. That’s why one pioneering Nordic company is developing an alternative fuel that doesn’t produce it.
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Welcome to Japanese Technology from the Future Friday!
It’s already Friday west of the international dateline – here in Japan, it’s totally the future. The weekly JTFF is our somewhat technosnarky coverage of 2-5 particularly important, specifically Japan-related tech stories. Get yourself hip to the micro & macro that went down while North America was sleeping – check in with Akihabara News every Friday morning and BOOM! Ahead of the game, you win.
:: JTFF – May 3, 2013 ::
• New Pacific Rim Trailer for Japanese Audiences
The JTFF doesn’t often jump into entertainment stories, but since this one’s 1. about giant robots fighting alien sea monsters (“kaiju,” Japanese for “monster”), and 2. directed by Guillermo del Toro, it’s not only wildly relevant (perhaps you’ve noticed our recent renaissance in robotics coverage?), but also promises to maybe, just maybe be a decent blockbuster-scale robot movie. Jump through to see what the suits up in marketing decided to aim at the Japanese.
[PACIFIC RIM JAPAN TRAILER – DIGITAL JOURNAL]
• How Robots are Changing the Way We Age
Interesting and very comprehensive coverage of why and how robots will be all up the developing world’s aging process. Of course anyone worth their Robo-Dorky merit badge knows Japan’s aging society is the vanguard of the “Yeah so we’re getting old really fast and who’s going to take care of us ummm okay let’s do robots” club, and this piece provides a very nice contextual framework for how the issue’s addressed both here and in the rest of the world. For a primer, you might want to begin with our own coverage here.
[GETTING OLD WITH ROBOTS & STUFF – FISCAL TIMES]
• Japan’s Taking Nuclear Energy Tech to the Middle East
Not only is Japan funding off-shore wind farms in the eastern United States, they’re also taking J-Tech nuclear energy know-how to the UAE and Turkey. After Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s pan-Arabian hobnobbing, a deal was inked for Japan to sell nuclear tech to the UAE, and this bodes well both for tech exports and maintaining Japan’s steady stream of UAE fossil fuels, for which it’s a platinum-level customer. Motivation and angles on the agreement with Turkey are not quite as easy to parse, but appear to be part of Japan’s ongoing efforts to boost technological exports in lucrative markets outside of the traditional electronics, automotive, etc.
[THINGS GO WELL FOR ABE IN THE UAE – UPI] – [TURKEY GETS SOME NUCLEAR J-TECH – JAPAN TIMES]
That was the JTFF, and live from the future – that is all!
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Reno J. Tibke is the founder and operator of Anthrobotic.com, where the JTFF was born.
Tokyo at Night image via PhotoEverywhere.
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
