Inaugural Issue of EnergyWise: Latest Industry News on Green Power & Energy

[Anil Kshirsagar]

Can't wait for Milind's webpage where info such as this can be displayed....

Japan Gets Set to Burn Plutonium by Bill Sweet, June 2009 Two of the largest Japanese utilities, Kyushu Electric Power and Shikoku Electric Power, are preparing to fuel nuclear reactors with rods containing recycled plutonium starting this fall, John Boyd reports from Tokyo. In the middle of last month, two ships arrived from France with loads of mixed-oxide fuel (MOX) containing plutonium that originated in Japanese spent fuels, which Japan is contractually obligated to take back. The MOX consignment from France’s La Hague reprocessing complex weighed an estimated 1700 kilograms. The recycling of nuclear fuels has been intensely controversial for decades, mainly because of concerns that fuel containing plutonium could fall into the hands of terrorists. Well before Al Qaeda appeared on the scene and fanatics were killing themselves in bomb attacks, experts worried about the ease with which the plutonium in MOX could be separated from uranium, to provide the explosive material for an atomic bomb. Read more. @ IEEE Spectrum Online: North Atlantic Conveyor Bites Again Bioelectricity Beats Liquid Biofuels California’s Fuel-Efficiency Standards Go National North Atlantic Conveyor Bites Again Students of abrupt global warming used to worry obsessively about the possibility of changes in North Atlantic currents bringing on an ice age. Reports now say that even if Greenland ice melts at a lower rate than it has recently, the effect could be to raise sea levels along the coast of the American Northeast at global rates that are far greater than average. Read more and comment. Bioelectricity Beats Liquid Biofuels Recent research concludes that turning biomass directly into electricity—such as by burning it along with coal and then using the electricity to power electric vehicles—yields, on average, 80 percent more distance per hectare than turning the same amount of biomass into liquid fuel. Read more. California's Fuel-Efficiency Standards Go National A plan recently unveiled by the Obama administration will harmonize the U.S. federal government’s Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards with tougher tailpipe standards for carbon dioxide that will soon take effect in California and 17 other states. Meeting the California targets will be a tough challenge for automakers, but the new national standards are good news for developers of advanced automotive technology. Read more and comment.   To unsubscribe, click here. View our privacy policy Register at www.spectrum.ieee.org Copyright © 2009 IEEE Spectrum

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