Windlens Three Times More Efficient Wind Turbine Developed in Japan

After the Fukushima disaster wiped out the future of nuclear energy, wind energy has taken on a new swing: a wind turbine that could generate twice or even three times the energy that regular turbines put out so far.

Ever since March last year, a team at the Kyushu University have been testing their “Windlens” – turbine units with a capacity of 70 to 100 kW (blade diameter of 12.8) – in an attempt to bring down wind power costs so it can rival coal and nuclear energy.

The idea behind them is to introduce to the Japanese and eventually the global market a brand new wind turbine concept, since previous models left a lot of users and policy makers disappointed: the turbines were underdeveloped, which led to a short, inefficient and noisy life.

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2011 was, it’s generally agreed, a crappy year. There were tornados in the US, flooding in Asia, an oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico, and financial turmoil in Europe. Even the Arab Spring, which we’ve all been so excited about, has yet to produce any definitively democratic governments.

But here’s a statistic to feel a bit warmer about: 2011 was the year renewable energy overtook nuclear energy in the US.

You might recall the milestone was first reported back in July, when the Energy Information Administration released figures for power generation in the first three months of the year. They showed that renewable sources were providing around 12% of the US’ energy production. Nuclear was only providing 2%.

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Solar power is being used at oil wells to power drilling operations these days. Apparently, it is also being used at nuclear power plants, ironically.

“In an order valued at nearly $400,000 USD, a large US power utility in the Southwestern United States has selected the EverGEN 1530 solar LED outdoor lighting system for the second installment in a perimeter fence security lighting project,” Carmanah, the developer of the solar LED outdoor lighting system reports.

As noted in the title, the reason for going solar is “to increase the security… by providing backup safety lighting in the unlikely event of power failure, allowing the facility to maintain critical security functions that are mandated by Homeland Security”

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Nuclear power is expensive, and the costs always seem to go up. And not just because of environmental catastrophes. The latest nuclear news out of the UK backs this statement up yet again.

“The taxpayer will have to stump up almost £250m more to bail out the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority in the next financial year after falling asset sales and rising expenditure cut its income by 17.5%,” The Guardian notes.

“The shortfall is revealed in the NDA’s just-published draft business plan for 2012-15, which shows the impact of being unable to offload land to the private sector for new nuclear plants and the end of the contracts to supply Japan with mixed-oxide fuel.”

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Germany Uses More Renewable Energy Than Ever Before, Surpassing Nuclear

Among the world’s most developed countries, Germany seems to be on the right track concerning renewable energy production. The country’s renewable resources have been used more than the classic ones this year, reports BDEW, Germany’s Federal Association of Energy.

Therefore, nuclear power dropped to 17.4 percent after Chancellor Angela Merkel had decided to show down the oldest eight reactors, as a reaction to the disaster at Fukushima, Japan. Plans are that by 2022 they’ll have phased out all of the nuclear power plants today in function.

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Gates-backed TerraPower pitches new nuclear tech

To leap to the next generation of nuclear power technology, Bill Gates-backed start-up TerraPower is approaching countries rather than individual utilities or financiers.

Gates last week disclosed that he brought up TerraPower’s fourth-generation nuclear power technology with government officials at the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology during a visit to China. “TerrPower is having very good discussions with [China National Nuclear Corporation] and various people in the Chinese government,” Gates told the Associated Press.

Bellevue, Wash.-based TerraPower then said that the company has visited energy experts in the U.S. France, India, Japan, Korea and Russia, but that “there were no deals to at this time.”

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While Germany and Japan are backing away from nuclear power, the United Kingdom is looking in completely the opposite direction – 8 new nuclear plants are scheduled to be built. As a close neighbor, Germany has a number of words on the topic (all of them polite, but not particularly flattering).

Germany’s announcement of zero nuclear was prompted by the Sendai quake and the Fukushima nuclear meltdown last spring, as Clean Technica readers may remember, but those phase-out plans were already in place. The announcement gave rise to fears of insufficient power feeding into the grid anyway. However, Jochen Flasbarth, president of Germany’s EPA, pretty much thinks the entire idea is ridiculous, and furthermore that nuclear power is not the answer to a stable power supply:

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How nuke power bested solar in latest Mars mission

Heading off on a long journey to Mars on Saturday is NASA’s new Curiosity Mars Science Laboratory which, once it lands on the Red Planet, will be powered by nuclear energy. Unlike previous Mars rovers — the Spirit and the Opportunity — which were powered by the sun and couldn’t work in dark crevasses, on the wrong side of mountains or at night, the Curiosity will power through all of those times and spaces like a champ. Slated to have a 23-month stay, the Curiosity’s engine could theoretically last a few decades.

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If you thought the Fukushima disaster derailed nuclear power worldwide, look again.

Evacuations and the havoc caused by meltdowns at four reactor cores at the Fukushima power plant earlier this year prompted Japan to shift away from nuclear power and recatalyzed a nuclear phase-out in Germany. But many countries remain enthusiastic about nuclear power, and interest in newer technologies has increased because they are safer, according to a panel of industry professionals here at the MIT Energy Finance Forum on Friday.

“Our investors have a very long time horizon and the reason they supported it is the long-term societal implications and the potentially significant returns from that (so) we haven’t seen any wavering of support,” said Tyler Ellis, a project manager at TerraPower. “Our development partners are trying to accelerate the time scale (of building plants) due to the energy security and safety.”

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India's New Nuclear Build


Protest at Jaitapur over planned construction of two new nuclear reactors.

A series of protests that began in October have delayed the hot start of two Russian 1000- MW VVER reactors in the Tamil Nadu state on India’s southernmost coastline. Additional protests, some of them violent, have set back the start of construction of two French 1650-MW EPR reactors in the Maharashtra state on India’s west coast some 400 km (250 miles) south of Mumbai.

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