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New, modular nuclear plant ready for U.S. introduction

Fri, 20 Jan 2012 16:17:57 -0800

Public Radio International - By Living on Earth - Jan. 20 - The Nuclear Regulatory Commission gave the nuclear energy industry a Christmas present late last year. In December, the governmental body approved Westinghouse's AP 1000 reactor for use in the United States. No commercial reactors have been built in the United States in more than 30 years but Westinghouse, a subsidiary of Toshiba hopes this new technology, which is already being used extensively in China, will jump start the industry. Leslie Kass, a Senior Director at the Nuclear Energy Institute, said the new design, known as advanced passive, has no features to make it safer than ever before. "The AP 1000 reactor doesn’t require power or operator action to maintain safe shutdown for up to 72 hours," she explained. "And in the case of a Fukushima-like accident, you wouldn’t have a fuel melt because you don’t require any of the off-site power that they so desperately needed." Approval didn't come without controversy. NRC Safety Engineer John Ma told the commission he was worried the building around the reactor could "crack like a glass cup." Kass said Ma's concerns were reviewed extensively both by the commission and industry to make sure the design would stand up. After a four year review, the reactor gained approval. The big step forward with this technology is that instead of each reactor being built from the ground up on site, reactors will now start their lives in a factory, where conditions can be more closely monitored while moving faster than with an on-site build. The plan is "to have a standardized fleet of reactors worldwide, which is good for regulators," Kass said. "It’s less systems to learn and comprehend, it’s good economics because it’s repeat build, and it’s easier maintenance because you have similar components and designs." Some are utilities in five southern states looking to build 14 of these new advanced passive reactors. The NRC has streamlined the process to build a new reactor so, in theory, it's easier to get a permit and build a plant. Now a construction and operating permit is issued at the same time. It also reduces the likelihood of a successful lawsuit to halt operations of a plant — once it's been built. "There’s a very high bar to show prima facie evidence that the licensee has not conducted the construction in accordance with their license, that there were true defects," Kass said. "So frivolous lawsuits are kept out." The new plants aren't cheap. A utility in Georgia is expecting to spent about $14 billion for two reactors. In South Carolina a consortium is looking at two reactors for $12 billion. The costs are fully load, for transmission and land acquisition and permitting. Each pair of reactors would generate eneough power for 1.6 million homes. The Obama administration wants to provide about $50 billion in loan guarantees to utilities who build new nuclear plants. "We’re getting off to a slow start here in the United States," Kass said. "And I think, do a few carefully and then move forward. So once we prove the technology and the licensing process, it should certainly get easier to obtain financing." Kass said the loan guarantees are worth it, and necessary, because nuclear power is so expensive and electric utilities are actually quite small. One of the largest electric utilities in the country has a total value of just $50 billion, so these companies are risking insolvency if the power plants can't be built. Plus, she said, these plants provide thousands of construction jobs as well as hundreds of well-paying jobs for operators. But the question remains of where the nuclear waste will go, once these new plants are operational. "Politically, it’s a big problem. Technically, it’s not a big problem. We have the fuel securely stored at our sites," Kass said. "it’s not that large a problem — if you took all the used fuel from the 50 years of commercial operation of reactors here in the U.S., you’d have one football field about ten yards high." Kass said this approval, along with approval to develop smaller reactors, anywhere from 25 to 300 megawatts, could lead to the long-discussed nuclear renaissance. "There are 63 nuclear reactors under construction worldwide, and you see countries like China and India and Russia and several different countries in Europe moving forward with new reactors," Kass said. "Here in the U.S., again, we’re going to start slowly, but I think you’ll see as demand increases and as folks look to diversify their energy portfolio, nuclear certainly is an attractive option."

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Automakers in a race for buyers of mid-size family cars

Wed, 11 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

Los Angeles Times - By Jerry Hirsch - Jan. 11 (News Report) - Ford, GM, Honda and Nissan are all rolling out revamped models this year, with added features and better gas mileage.

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Google's Social Move Attracts Critics - NYTimes.com

Tue, 10 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

New York Times - Jan. 10 (News Report) - After Google announced that it was integrating material from Google+ into its search results, the Web shot back, attacking the company and accusing it of pushing aside competing social networks, including Twitter and Facebook.

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How will technology influence the news in 2012?

Thu, 29 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

The Guardian - By Dan Gillmor - Dec. 29 (Opinion) - Predicting the next year's news is a fool's errand, but looking at technological trends could give us a hint At the beginning of 2011, aging dictators ruled Egypt and Libya, and despotism was the nearly unquestioned reality in most of the Middle East. The eurozone was seeing trouble at its edges, but wasn't heading toward collapse. News International had successfully covered up most of its rampant bad acts, and Rupert Murdoch was on the verge of even greater control over British media and politics. Anyone who might have predicted how utterly and rapidly those realities would change might have been branded a lunatic. Which is one reason why the annual journalistic ritual of making predictions about the year ahead is a fool's errand. With that in mind, let me offer instead some observations about the technology and media trends we've seen in past months, and how they might play out in 2012. In many cases, the trajectory is deeply worrisome. But I remain an eternal optimist in the face of ...

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How news orgs are reaching millions through Facebook’s new apps

Wed, 30 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Poynter Institute - By Jeff Sonderman - Nov. 30 (News Analysis) - It has been over two months since Facebook announced a new class of social news applications — ones that automatically share links to everything a person reads. Now we are learning more about the readership, strategies and effects of these “open graph” or “frictionless sharing” apps. Here are the six big lessons so far.

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Restoring Factchecking

Tue, 29 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0800

San Francisco Chronicle - By Craig Newmark - Nov. 29 (Opinion) - Recently, Jeff Jarvis at the City University of NY held an event on restoring factchecking to the news business. He did a really good job getting a bunch of players in this arena to play well together.

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The Apologies of Zuckerberg: A Retrospective

Tue, 29 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Wall Street Journal - By Liz Gannes - Nov. 29 (News Analysis) - At this point, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s pattern on privacy is clear. Launch new stuff that pushes the boundaries of what people consider comfortable. Apologize and assure users that they control their information, but rarely pull back entirely, and

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True Or False? Automatic Fact-Checking Coming To The Web – Complications Follow

Tue, 29 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0800

TechCrunch - By Devin Coldewey - Nov. 29 (Opinion) - The social layer has settled on the web like a dusting of multicolored snowflakes, gracing every story with a little menagerie of sharing counts and buttons. Once basic standards of content publishing were established, basic standards of sharing had to be as well, the internet being as it is a medium of information transmission. First you get the content, then you move it around. We’re still working on the moving around part.

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Occupy PressThink: Tim Pool

Mon, 21 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Press Think - By Jay Rosen, Alexis Madrigal - Nov. 21 (Opinion) - “Being a livestream he acts as ‘eyes and ears’ for the viewers. Literally. People will tell him to move the camera somewhere and he’ll do it. They’ll ask for interviews with someone, and Tim will go over and do so… The viewers will ask him questions and he won’t rest until he gets them their answers.” Recently, Alexis Madrigal, the technology editor of The Atlantic and pretty much the smartest young journalist ’round these parts, re-described occupy Wall Street as an API, or Application Programming Interface.

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#Occupy: The Tech at the Heart of the Movement

Wed, 16 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Atlantic Monthly - By Alexis Madrigal - Nov. 16 (Opinion) - With the police raids in the past few days of camps from Oakland to New York, the Occupy movement is at a key juncture. We want to step back and look at the role of technology in the protests' establishment, spread, and future. This essay inaugurates a series of stories on the ways that protesters have shaped technologies to fit their needs -- and how technologies opened up new space for their messages. Let's start with what seems self-evident, but what I'm sure is more complex than it appears: Occupy is different from the protests that preceded it. To be honest, I'm not sure anyone can explain why. The list of factors contributing to its outstanding run is long: economic circumstances, a distance from the enforced patriotism that followed 9/11, disappointment on the left with Obama's presidency, the failure to adequately regulate banks, the neverending foreclosure crisis, the Adbusters provenance, severe cuts to social programs at the state and local level, the language of occupation, and the prolonged nature of the engagement.

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What If Government Were More Like an iPod?

Sat, 05 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Wall Street Journal - By Scott Adams - Nov. 05 (Opinion) - If Congress had a 9% approval rating while George Washington was still alive, he would have shoved his wooden dentures in his mouth, assembled a militia and marched on the Capitol. The nation's founders weren't big fans of dysfunctional governments. I'll bet we could solve our energy problem by connecting a generator to John Adams's corpse, which I assume is spinning in its grave.

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Why Parents Help Tweens Violate Facebook's 13+ Rule

Tue, 01 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Huffington Post - By Danah Boyd - Nov. 01 (Opinion) - "At what age should I let my child join Facebook?" This is a question that countless parents have asked my collaborators and me. Often, it's followed by the following: "I know that 13 is the minimum age to join Facebook, but is it really so bad that my 12-year-old is on the site?" While parents are struggling to determine what social media sites are appropriate for their children, government tries to help parents by regulating what data internet companies can collect about children without parental permission. Yet, as has been the case for the last decade, this often backfires. Many general-purpose communication platforms and social media sites restrict access to only those 13+ in response to a law meant to empower parents: the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). This forces parents to make a difficult choice: help uphold the minimum age requirements and limit their children's access to services that let kids connect with family and friends OR help their children lie about their age to circumvent the age-based restrictions and eschew the protections that COPPA is meant to provide.

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The Limits of Magical Thinking

Wed, 26 Oct 2011 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Maureen Dowd - Oct. 26 (Opinion) - Steve Jobs, the mad perfectionist, even perfected his stare. He wanted it to be hypnotic. He wanted the other person to blink first. He wanted it to be, like Dracula’s saturnine gaze, a force that could bend your will to his and subsume your reality

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Do mobile, the cloud and social spell the end of the PC era?

Mon, 24 Oct 2011 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - By Jean-Louis Gassée - Oct. 24 (Opinion) - These are the three interdependent forces that power the biggest wave of growth, change, and destruction I've seen since I have been allowed to take part in the high-tech industry. In the beginning (or mine, anyway), back in 1968 when I was, miraculously, offered a salary to be part of HP France there was the mainframe. IBM – "The Company" – reigned supreme, a dynasty that seemed unassailable. The IBMer wore a suit and tie when approaching the punch card feeder. Big Blue's competitors, the BUNCH, were also called the Seven Dwarves because their combined market share couldn't compare to IBM's dominance.

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Details of Steve Jobs' life emerge before launch of official biography

Fri, 21 Oct 2011 00:00:00 -0700

OpenGlobe - By Fetchcomms, OpenGlobe contributors - Oct. 21 (News Report) - New details of Steve Jobs' life have emerged as advance copies of his official biography, due to go on sale Monday, were released to media organizations. The 630-page book by Walter Isaacson, "Steve Jobs," sheds new light on Jobs' personal life, thoughts, and philosophies, as well as his relationships with major political figures and other companies.

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Filthy Phones: 1 In 6 Cell Phones Have Traces Of E. Coli Bacteria

Sun, 16 Oct 2011 00:00:00 -0700

huffingtonpost.ca - Oct. 16 (News) - About one in six cellphones tested in the U.K. had traces of E. coli bacteria from fecal matter, a new study released for Global Handwashing Day suggests.

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Kindle Fire or iPad? | Poll

Thu, 29 Sep 2011 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - Sep. 29 (Opinion) - Amazon's Jeff Bezos is taking on Apple's iPad with the company's touchscreen tablet: the Kindle Fire. Which one is more likely to seduce you?

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Amazon's Kindle Fire just nuked the tablet market: Winners and losers

Wed, 28 Sep 2011 00:00:00 -0700

ZDNet - By Larry Dignan - Sep. 28 (News Report) - Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos took the stage Wednesday to unveil an arsenal of devices that are going to disrupt rivals like Barnes & Noble as well as Android tablet makers.

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Fear of Repression Spurs Scholars and Activists to Build Alternate Internets

Sun, 18 Sep 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Chronicle of Higher Education - By Jeffrey R. Young - Sep. 18 (News) - one weekend each month, a small group of computer programmers gathers at a residence here to build a homemade Internet—named Project Byzantium—that could go online if parts of the current global Internet becomes blocked by a repressive government.

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Twitter Reaches 100 Million Active Users

Fri, 09 Sep 2011 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Nick Bilton - Sep. 09 (Opinion) - Twitter says 100 million people actively use the service. The company also discussed goals to eventually reach people on two billion devices.

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Google+ launch: search giant closes 10 products

Mon, 05 Sep 2011 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - By Josh Halliday - Sep. 05 () - Internet firm focuses on new social network Google Plus by ridding company of 'inefficiencies' Google is to shut down 10 products, including the search company Aardvark, bought for $50m last year, as the internet giant focuses on new social network Google+ ahead of its public launch. The "fall spring clean" follows a pledge by Larry Page to rid the company of inefficiencies after he took over as chief executive in April. The products listed for closure include Aardvark , Desktop , Fast Flip , Google Maps API for Flash, Google Pack , Google Web Security , Image Labeler , Notebook , Sidewiki and Subscribed Links . Alan Eustace, Google's senior vice-president for engineering, announced the closures on the company's official blog . "Technology improves, people's needs change, some bets pay off and others don't. So, as Larry previewed on our last earnings call, today we're having a fall spring clean at Google. Over the next few months we'll be shutting down a number of products ...

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Fracking Caused the Virginia Earthquake, NOT!

Wed, 31 Aug 2011 00:00:00 -0700

The Writing Corner - By Beth Wellington - Aug. 31 (Interview) - Hurricane Irene, and before that Virginia's August 23 5.8 earthquake with its epicenter only eleven miles as the crow flies, from Dominion Energy's North Anna nuclear plant in Virginia. That date, with life imitating art, the Twitterverse and other social media, spread news of a faster than the quake itself. Unfortunately, the same media also spread misinformation, attributing the quake to fracking. The culprits included Alternet, Open Salon, OpEdNews, and the blog of the author (Stuart Jeanne Bramhall), The Most Revolutionary Act. And it spread from there.

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Justice Department Sues to Block AT&T's Takeover of T-Mobile

Wed, 31 Aug 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Wall Street Journal - By Thomas Catan, Brent Kendall - Aug. 31 (News Report) - The U.S. Justice Department on Wednesday sued to block AT&T Inc.'s proposed $39 billion takeover of T-Mobile USA, saying the combination of the second- and fourth-largest U.S. cellphone companies would hurt competition and likely raise prices. The antitrust challenge comes shortly after the Obama administration also blocked Nasdaq OMX Group's proposed offer for NYSE Euronext and shows its desire to put new teeth into antitrust enforcement after what it says was lax enforcement under the previous administration.

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The Earthquake and North Anna

Wed, 24 Aug 2011 00:00:00 -0700

The Writing Corner - By Beth Wellington - Aug. 24 (Opinion) - I already knew that nuclear power presented problems with waste disposal and potential terrorism. Now I know about earthquakes.

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First Details About Lift, the Next Social Network From the Founders of Twitter

Wed, 24 Aug 2011 00:00:00 -0700

ReadWriteWeb - By Marshall Kirkpatrick - Aug. 24 (News Report) - The recently-departed co-founders of Twitter who are now working together again under the old Obvious Corp. name (Ev Williams, Biz Stone and Jason Goldman) announced their first official partnership today, with a stealth alpha app called Lift. It's described as simple app for achieving goals through positive reinforcement. It sounds like Twitter and from what I've seen (which is more than I've seen reported about elsewhere yet) it looks a lot like Twitter too - but with more structure. What's called Lift today was apparently called Mibbles just weeks ago and was described then as "a very simple tracking and...

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