Future Energy Debate Version Of Carnival Of Space #151

Welcome to WeirdSciences and future energy debate version of carnival of space #151. If you have no idea, what a carnival of space is, take a quick guide to it at UniverseToday. As title states this is future energy debate version of carnival of space. So, before starting carnival of space, I would like to introduce future energy debate in few lines. I have reviewed some problems involved with accepting Uranium as a future energy source, which are discussed here. Next Big Future described it as:

1. too much energy to mill lower grades of uranium ore. No net energy for low grades. 100 parts per million.
2. critics point out that uranium is an abundant element; there is plenty of it in the earth’s crust and in seawater. But in both cases the energy needed to extract it would be more than could ever be recovered.
3. there is the argument that we could use uranium more efficiently by developing breeder reactors, which would be 100 times as efficient as today’s thermal reactors. But after 50 years of extremely expensive research, they are still not technically feasible.

Next Big Future presented counter argues:

The Rossing mine has a lower Uranium concentration (0.03% vs 0.05% by weight) than Olympic Dam and the discrepancy is even larger in the case of Rossing. Here SLS (Storm Van Leeuwen and Smith) predict Rossing should require 2.6 Giga-Watt-Years of energy for mining and milling. The total consumption of all forms of energy in the country of Namibia is equivalent to 1.5 GigaWatt-Years, much less than the prediction for the mine alone. Furthermore, yearly cost of supplying this energy is over 1 billion dollars, yet the value of the Uranium sold by Rossing was, until recently, less than 100 million dollars per year. Since Rossing reports it’s yearly energy usage to be 0.03 GigaWatt-years, SLS overestimates the energy cost of the Rossing mine by a factor of 80.

Japanese plans for Uranium from Seawater would be to place the uranium collection system in the path of ocean currents. Kuroshio current moves 520,000 tons of uranium every year.

• At a regular meeting of the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) on June 2, the Japan Atomic Energy Agency (JAEA) and the Central Research Institute of the Electric Power Industry (CRIEPI) reported on technology for collecting uranium from seawater. According to the two organizations, the total amount of uranium contained in seawater – as one of the 77 elements dissolved therein – measures some 4.5 billion tons, about one thousand times more than is known to exist in uranium mines. Even if Japan could collect just 0.2% of the 520,000 tons of uranium transported every year by the Japan (Kuroshio) Current that flows in the Pacific Ocean, it could easily meet its annual need of 8,000 tons.

Have a full read to both articles.

Your Carnival Of  Space #151 starts from here:

• Emily at Planetary Society Blog has estimated a timeline for Hayabusa’s return.
• Robert Pearlman at CollectSpace has  wonderful article for you with image galleries. Space shuttle Atlantis moves to launch pad for final planned flight. Enjoy Image galleries of Atlantis and astronauts at the pad. Atlantis has left the building, so cool and clear images.
• Kim at Chandra Blog has presented a demonstration of visuals for bubbles (soap bubble, bubble nebula, galaxy cluster bubbles) across different scales.
• CC Petersen of The Spacewriter’s Rambling talks about her experience in the  past weekend at StarFest, a convention put on each year by StarLand.com.
• Alice of Alice’s Astroinfo has an entry about cloud chambers. They’re totally cool and make it possible to see cosmic rays!
• Alen Versfeld of Urban Astronomer is trying to debunk the nonsense, without the snobby superior attitude that skeptics have such a hard time avoiding! I loved these lines from articles. And finally, there is no evidence to suggest that the ancient Mayan’s themselves attached any significance to the end of their calendar.  There’s no reason to believe that the Long Count wouldn’t just reset, as makes sense for a cyclical system and as even our own annual calendar does.  After all, December 31 is usually followed by January 1, not the end of the world! You can try to hit my entry about Nibiru. What a nonsense!
• Listen to this podcast talking about the solar cycles from  Steve Nerlich of Cheap Astronomy.
• Brian Wang at Next Big Future presents Vastly Improved direct Imaging of exoplanets via Vector Vortex Coronograph and Launch Concepts Overview. An excellent article about future propulsion technologies. In launch concept overview , he talked about Photonic Laser propulsion. It is more efficient.If they can use the MIT dielectric mirrors those are supposed to reflect 99.999% of the light which would have 100,000 times amplification.
  Scaling it up for more power.
  130 millinewtons per kilowatt (0.13 N/kw)
  But 10 MW lasers would give 1300 newtons.
• His second article is all about Future Energy Debate with WeirdSciences continued from Carnival of Space 150 as I’ve alredy introduced you about that. My reply to his article is here. Next Big Future has replied to my third article which can be found here.
• David Portree from BeyondAppolo is suggesting to reuse skylab. I think reusing giant speedy thing could solve space junk problem to some extent.
• John Williams at StarryCritters explores the light and dark face of  Gum 19 image from the European Southern Observatory. Or does it look like an angelfish? Or an arrowhead? Or a jellyfish?
• Chris Dann from WeirdWarp has an excellent article about space dust.
• Paul Gilster of Centauri Dreams is again talking about Dyson Sphere and their signature from type II civilization. Though I think it would be easy to colonize galaxy with ease of self replicating probes.
• Ian Musgrave from Astroblogger is suggesting to use the Gimp for astrophotography. How to use a free software program to
  get great sky shots with simple digital cameras? Full article is here.
• Dr. Bruce Cordell at 21st Century Waves is talking about Obama’s New Space Policy and the Spirit of Apollo. Really an stunning article.
• Rita from We all Are In The Gutter Blog is talking about the CMB cold spot and telling:

1) The Cold Spot was formed at the last-scattering.

2) The Cold Spot was formed during the photon’s path to us.

3) The Cold Spot is an instrumental artifact.

4) The Cold Spot is a data-reduction artifact.

Full article is here.

• WeirdSciences has article talking about Implications Of Self Replicating Machine at cosmological level. Could we use them to colonize galaxy?
• As usual WeirdSciences is again talking about space time and its realization. Now WeirdScinces is trying to envision motions of a four dimension entity and exploring what would he see? An excellent article by Rob Bryanton.
• Stuart Atkinson from AstroPoetry has presented A poetic trubute to SDO and its “First Light” images… and also has an excellent visualization here at the road to endeavour blog.

This time Carnival Of Space ends up here. Looking Forward to meet you again. I thanks to  Fraser Cain for this week’s carnival of space.  Enjoy FOLKS!!

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