After the 2011 disaster that shut down it's main reactor, Japan's Fukushima nuclear plant simply isn't going to make a comeback. Like several other reactors across the island nation, it's been shuttered and will likely remain so, leaving authorities there with a problem -- how do they continue to provide the energy that the plant once produced and that residents in the region depend on? This week, we got their answer: rather than reopening the nuclear plant, Japan is looking off their shores, announcing plans for a massive wind farm ten miles off the coast of the area affected by the Fukushima reactor meltdown.

Read More

Researchers at Brown University have found the anatomical and evolutionary basis behind the fact that some varieties of grass really are greener than others -- or at least why they're able to produce food for themselves via photosynthesis more effectively than their cousins. According to a study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a slight difference in the cellular structure around the veins in blades of grass can make the difference between a grass that is highly efficient and successful and one that just putters along.

Read More

Does pumping water at a very high pressure into cracks in a volcano to break up the bedrock around it and release heat from the earth sound like a safe thing to do? If it doesn't, you must not work for U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM), because that's exactly the process the agency just greenlit.  Seattle-based AltaRock Energy recently got permission from the BLM to hydrofrack the ground around Oregon's dormant Newberry Volcano, because there's no way that could possibly end badly.

Read More

The Indian government has approved a plan to invest $4.1 billion dollars -- or an even more impressive 230 billion rupees -- in helping to develop technologies that will make electric cars a viable choice for more Indian consumers. Their roads are getting more and more crowded with vehicles every year, thanks to a growing and vehicle hungry middle class. But that surge in vehicles on the road has contributed to making India's air the most polluted in the world, according to a study published earlier this year. The government is hoping to stop, or at least slow that pollution by putting 6 million electric vehicles on Indian roads by 2020, and is putting its money where its mouth is to spur innovation and investment in next generation batteries and fuel cells to power those vehicles.

Read More

A group of researchers, consisting of Tohoku University professor Eiji Saito, and researchers from JAERI and Technical University of Kaiserslautern, have successfully obtained a flow of magnetism, otherwise known as a spin current, from sound waves. In the experiment, electrodes generated electrical signals, which were then measured, while sound waves produced by a piezoelectric element were put directly into the interface between a metal layer and a layer made of magnetic material. Once the spin current is created and detected, the team used the reverse spin Hall effect to convert the spin current into an electrical voltage.

So, why does the research matter, aside from comic brook writers now being able to base their characters' sound-based powers on science? Because the research shows that it is possible to obtain electrical and magnetic energy from materials of all kinds, and considering sound is everywhere, one day researchers might be able to obtain energy from anything. Head on past the break to see a video of the experiment.

Read More

Shoot lasers at the moon, solve Earth's energy crisis. Boom. Done. Next global problem please, we're on a roll. This is the statement I wish Japan's Shimizu Corp. had released about their new energy plan, but alas they've simply just announced the details of a scheme to harvest solar power from panels on the moon. But, what a plan it is. Robots will build a belt of solar panels to encircle the moon. The panels will gather up energy from the sun, convert it to electricity and then channel the electricity by cable around to the Earth-facing side of the moon. From there the power will be zapped to large receivers on Earth's surface using lasers. Why did it take so long for someone to propose this?

Read More

Researchers at MIT have developed a new method for creating solar cells that is significantly easier and less-expensive than current production methods by directly printing the components of the solar cell onto pieces of paper or fabric. The technique is conducted in a vacuum, and layers special "inks" in a specific pattern onto the flexible substrate (the paper or fabric on the bottom). The printed solar cell can be bent or folded without losing its ability to conduct electricity. Led by Professor of Chemical Engineering Karen Gleason, Professor of Electrical Engineering Vladimir Bulovic, and graduate student Miles Barr, the researchers developed a solar cell creation method that differs from current methods in several ways. The printable way uses vapors and relatively low temperatures (less than 120 degrees Celsius) compared to the liquids and high heat needed with current methods.

Read More

Associate professors at the University of Calgary Schulich School of Engineering, Ian Gates and Michael Kallos, won a $100,000 grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's Grand Challenges Explorations initiative to help them produce electricity, fertilizer, heat, methane gas and purified water from human feces.

Read More

Each year, the U.S. throws away 27 percent of its edible food. Not only could that wasted food feed 20 million hungry people each day; it also represents a tremendous waste of energy. According to one recent study, all of that thrown-away food consumes 350 million barrels of oil yearly, as determined by the cost of growing and processing it, packaging it, and shipping it. That's 2% of the energy we consume in total each year, which might not sound like a lot, but compared to the amount of energy at stake in respect to other conservation methods, it's substantial.

Read More

CBS News reports that a massive explosion at the Kleen Energy Systems power plant in Hartford, CT at 11:17 this morning led to at least two deaths and 250 injuries. Early reports suggest that the explosion may have been caused by a gas leak.

Read More

Last year, scientists successfully teleported information between two atoms one meter apart, which was seen as a promising development for quantum computing.

Now, a Japanese physicist named Masahiro Hotta has devised a method that could allow us to teleport energy itself using the same set of principles.

Read More