Hasta La Gadget!

Prefab nuclear power plants might sound straight out of a 1950’s vision for the nuclear age, but the technology may be on its way to laboratories across the country. The New York Times is reporting that the Obama administration’s budget, which will be officially proposed tomorrow, includes funding for research into low-cost, modular nuclear plants that can be quickly assembled and shipped without the overhead of traditional designs. Designed to be deployed at first in large-scale national laboratories, like the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, the plants cost up to $2 billion, a small fraction of the $10 billion price of a typical nuclear reactor, but offer about 1/20th of the output. The use of these reactors is expected to help the Energy Department lower its carbon footprint by 28 percent before 2020.

In the long-term, this research is expected to yield the ability to mass-produce these power plants, assembly-line style, allowing them to replace existing coal plants already on the grid. According to the Times, this type of modular reactor saves utilities from the large start-up costs associated with building a traditional reactor, allowing for more options when it comes time to replace older, less environmentally-friendly plants. They also produce roughly the same amount of power as older coal plants from the middle of the century that are now nearing retirement.

The administration will likely be asking for $500 million over five years, which will pay for half of the design costs for two reactors.

[via New York Times, image via Flickr: Bagalute, CC-BY]

Tomorrow marks the 202nd anniversary of Charles Darwin’s birth. The scientist, best known for introducing the concept of natural selection in his 1859 book, On the Origin of Species, led a fairly interesting life outside of his scientific work, as well. After the jump, check out some fascinating facts about the scientist you thought you knew.

Today marks the 15th anniversary of chess champion Gary Kasparov’s first match against IBM’s Deep Blue. Between this anniversary and the fact that next week mark’s the long awaited match between the company’ Watson computer and two of Jeopardy’s winningest champions, it’s a good time to reflect on some of the more important moments in mankind’s battle against technology.

“A hundred years ago, Jules Verne wrote a book about a voyage to the Moon. His spaceship, Columbia, took off from Florida and landed in the Pacific Ocean after completing a trip to the Moon. It seems appropriate to us to share with you some of the reflections of the crew as the modern-day Columbia completes its rendezvous with the planet Earth and the same Pacific Ocean tomorrow.”

Those are the words Apollo 11 commander Neil Armstrong recited for an entranced public as his ship returned from its mission to the moon. Armstrong was right to mention Verne’s 1865 sci-fi classic. There are, in fact, some oddly prescient details in From the Earth to the Moon–even for an author so forward thinking as Verne.

Armstrong points out the similarities between its name and the name of the Apollo 11’s command module–that part’s actually only part right. The name of the space cannon used to launch the ship was the Columbiad, named for a real U.S. cannon that was used heavily in the war of 1812.

Verne estimated that the mission would have cost his day’s equivalent to $12.1 billion. Surprisingly spot on–the Apollo program up through Apollo 8 (the first manned vehicle to circumnavigate the moon) cost $14.4 billion. As with the book, that mission also a crew of three astronauts. Verne’s were named Ardan, Barbicane, and Nicholl–Apollo 8’s were Anders, Borman and Lovell.

The launch occurred 132 miles from the site of Verne’s prediction. As the above shot illustrates, the two ships also shared a number of physical properties.