Tag: Nuclear Energy
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Gotham Gal –
The last two years were just strange. Life moved on, but the constant white noise hits home every time you have to put the mask on. It’s pretty incredible how we have adapted. At first, Trump appeared to be a nightmare that we would never wake up from (although we seem to still be in the aftershocks). Then a global pandemic showed up at our doors. It felt so apocalyptic. But the interesting thing is, humans are pretty adaptable because the alternative is worse.
With that in mind, think of all the things we could adapt to in order to save our planet. There will be short-term pain, and the cost could be high, but the benefit will outweigh the road to getting there in the long term. If all the technology and products were there for us just to decide, it would have to be from the President and the United Nations because there are too many muppet heads out who don’t see reality.
The list is endless. Through these past two years, so much has come to light that needs to change. Let’s start with the easiest. Nobody can drive a gas car anymore. There are simply no more gas stations. We will need to rethink the lithium in batteries, but I am sure somebody is on that. All of our homes would be fueled with either solar or nuclear energy. Plastic bags are no longer made, even my favorite zip-locks. Industrial farming ceases to exist. We eat less food, and it comes from local farms. Livestock is produced in smaller, more humane ways. We spent billions on transportation, especially in urban cities. Pesticides and weed killers would be made from natural products. Bottled water is banned. Fashion is continuously recycled, and we all start consuming less because there will be less to consume. Fast fashion is over. Ecommerce must be shipped in biodegradable boxes. Let’s just start here even though are so many more things we could do.
If this actually happened, and we had no choice, there is no doubt that we would adapt. The bigger problem is that it would kill our economy in the short term. Years ago, remember when Sears brought on a new CEO named Eddie Lampert? He happened to own the majority of shares in the business. It is clear that he killed Sears. What is also clear is that although he didn’t seem to know how to run a retail operation or have any vision for where Sears could go and forgot to mention to his shareholders that his ideas would plummet the sales and leave the business with less capital to move the business into the next century, he did try to do something new. That is more than most department stores appear to be doing these days. Maybe it would have worked but he wasn’t given more time. The pain was too great for the shareholders.
I call these problems “the golden handcuff.” Everything works, and it works, and everyone is making money, so why change? It is evident from the constant weather disasters that we need to try and follow many of the things on the list above, although once again, keep in mind; short-term disaster = long-term gains.
Something to think about as we enter the ongoing masked pandemic in 2022. Happy New Year!
AR system shows nuclear reactor damage in real time
The system uses microscopy data to detect and quantify radiation-induced problems such as defects and swelling. The researchers hope the system could speed up the development of components for advanced nuclear reactors, which may play a critical role in reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
“We believe we are the first research team to ever demonstrate real-time image-based detection and quantification of radiation damage on the nanometre length scale in the world,” said Professor Kevin Field, a Michigan nuclear engineer and VP of machine vision start-up Theia Scientific.
The new technology was tested at the Michigan Ion Beam Laboratory. By directing beams of ions at material samples, the lab can quickly emulate the damage sustained after years or decades of use in a nuclear reactor. The team used an ion beam of the noble gas krypton to test a radiation-tolerant sample of iron, chromium, and aluminium of interest for use in fission and fusion reactors.
“If radiation exposure makes your metal like Swiss cheese instead of a good Wisconsin cheddar, you would know it’s not going to have structural integrity,” said Field.
The krypton ions create radiation defects in the sample; in this case, a plane of missing or extra atoms sandwiched between two ordinary crystal lattice planes. They appear as black dots in the electron microscope images. The lab is able to observe the development of these defects with an electron microscope, which runs during the irradiation process, producing a video.
“Previously, we would record the whole video for the irradiation experiments and then characterise just a few frames," said Dr Priyam Patki, who ran the experiment with Christopher Field, president of Theia Scientific. "But now, with the help of this technique, we are able to do it for each and every frame, giving us an insight into the dynamic behaviour of the defects in real time."
To assess radiation-induced defects, researchers would typically download the video and count every defect in selected frames. With the hundreds, or even thousands, of images or video frames created by modern microscopes, much of the detailed information would be lost, as counting the defects manually in every frame is so laborious.
Instead, the team used Theia Scientific's software to detect and quantify the radiation-induced defects instantaneously during the experiment. The software displays the results in graphics overlaid on the electron microscope imagery, which label the defects (giving size, number, location and density) and summarise this information as a measure of structural integrity.
“The real-time assessment of structural integrity allows us to stop early if a material is performing badly and cuts out any extensive human-based quantification,” said Field. “We believe that our process reduces the time from idea to conclusion by nearly 80 times.”
Theia’s software uses a convolutional neural network, a type of artificial neural network often used for interpreting images, to analyse the video frames. The neural network achieved high speed and robust interpretation across samples of varying quality, and this in turn enabled the leap from manual interpretation to real-time machine vision.
It is hoped that the interpretation technique could be adapted for other types of image-based microscopy. Field commented: “We see clear pathways to accelerate discoveries in the energy, transportation and biomedical sectors.”
Greenidge plans to expand mining operations to South Carolina
According to the crypto mining firm, the South Carolina facility has been capable of drawing 80 megawatts of power, two thirds of which is produced from zero carbon energy sources.
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