Archive for May, 2011

New Unity Pushing Hard on Jobs

by Editors @ Friday, May 27th, 2011. Filed under Environment, Green Industry, Youth

BlueGreen Alliance, Apollo Alliance

Merge To Strengthen Push for Green Jobs

By James Parks
SolidarityEconomy.net via AFL-CIO blog

May 26, 2011 - The BlueGreen Alliance and Apollo Alliance today announced a merger to strengthen and unify the movement to build a clean energy, good jobs economy to fuel U.S. job creation. The newly unified organization will call on Washington to focus anew on creating good jobs, securing America’s energy future and preserving the environment for future generations.

Beginning July 1, the two organizations will combine to become the BlueGreen Alliance, which will be home to the Apollo Alliance project. United Steelworkers President Leo Gerard and Sierra Club Chair Carl Pope will continue as co-chairs, and David Foster will continue as executive director.

Earlier this year, the BlueGreen Alliance launched Jobs21!, a nine-state grassroots campaign calling for a national jobs plan to put America back to work building the industries of the 21st century here in the United States. This initiative will be strengthened through coordination with the Apollo Alliance’s strong network of state and local affiliates–now dubbed BlueGreen Apollo Alliances.

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Hidden Costs: Why Building Nukes Is a Bad Idea

by Editors @ Thursday, May 26th, 2011. Filed under Environment, Green Energy

EnergySolutions Dismantles Zion Nuclear Reactor in a First-Of-Its-Kind Transfer

By Kevin Gray

SolidarityEconomy.net via Fast Company

JUST AS JAPAN wrestles with fears of a meltdown at tsunami-battered nuclear reactors, an American company is tearing down what was once the world's largest nuclear-power supplier -- the Zion, Illinois, plant just outside of Chicago. '

When it started up in 1973, Zion provided power to roughly 2 million homes. Exelon Corp. shut it down in 1998 because it was no longer profitable. For the past 12 years, Zion has sat in mothballs as Exelon paid about $10 million annually to babysit it. Now the federal government is allowing Exelon, in a first-of-its-kind deal, to transfer custody to EnergySolutions, a nuclear-waste-disposal outfit.

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Clean Coop Power for the Grid: How About Urban Worker-Owned Firms to Install and Lease Them?

by Editors @ Saturday, May 14th, 2011. Filed under Environment, Green Energy, Green Industry

How the IMPLUX might look atop a building

How the IMPLUX might look atop a building

IMPLUX: Omni-directional, Vertical Axis

Wind Turbine for Urban Environments

By Darren Quick

Gizmag.com

When most people think of wind power they think of large-scale wind farms with fields of huge three-bladed horizontal axis turbines. With such farms requiring lots of room they are generally unsuitable for placement in or even near large cities. Smaller turbines tailored for urban environments such as AeroVironment's Architectural Wind System, the Honeywell Windgate and the Windspire represent a growing sector though, and the latest to catch our eye is the IMPLUX – a vertical axis turbine designed to harness the power of the wind blowing from all directions.

The key to the IMPLUX, which was designed by inventor Varan Sureshan, is the omni-directional shroud that forms the outer covering of the turbine and directs the wind from all directions up through the unit to turn an aerofoil propeller rotor like that used on horizontal axis wind turbines. The shroud, which wouldn't look out of place in The Jetsons, consists of a series of fixed horizontal blades that are shaped to capture the wind and accelerate it up into the central chamber to turn the turbine rotor.

To stop the wind simply blowing straight through the shroud, the horizontal blades are angled to direct the wind upwards. Sureshan says the wind entering the bottom-most opening, which has the highest focusing ability, forms a "fluid dynamic gate" – essentially an air curtain – that blocks the wind entering on one side from escaping out the other, instead forcing it up a past the rotor.

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Why High Design Matters: Clean Electricity From Salt and Water

by Editors @ Thursday, May 5th, 2011. Filed under Economy

 

New Type of Rechargeable

Battery – Just Add Water

 

The mixing entropy battery could be used to build power plants at estuaries where fresh wa...

The mixing entropy battery could be used to build power plants at estuaries where fresh water rivers join the ocean (Image: NASA)

By Alan Brandon

SolidarityEconomy.net via Gizmag,com

May 5, 2011 - Scientists at Stanford have developed a battery that uses nanotechnology to create electricity from the difference in salt content between fresh water and sea water. The researchers hope to use the technology to create power plants where fresh-water rivers flow into the ocean. The new "mixing entropy" battery alternately immerses its electrodes in river water and sea water to produce the electrical power.

Making electricity from the difference in salinity (the amount of salt) in fresh water and sea water is not a new concept. We've previously covered salinity power technology, and Norway's Statkraft has built a working prototype power plant. But the Stanford team, led by associate professor of materials science and engineering Yi Cui, believes their method is more efficient, and can be built more cheaply.

Other fresh/salt water power plants work by releasing energy through osmosis (the passing of solvent molecules through a membrane). The Stanford team's approach harnesses entropic energy from the interaction of the fresh water and salt water with the battery's electrodes.

The mixing entropy battery works by exchanging the electrolyte (a liquid that contains ions or electrically charged particles – in this case water) between when the battery is charged and when it is discharged. The ions in water are sodium and chlorine, which are the elements of ordinary table salt. The saltier the water is, the more sodium and chlorine ions there are, and the more voltage that can be produced.

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