(Reactor nuclear plant Confrentes. Image: C. N. Cofrentes.)

“Substantially increase controls on physical protection of facilities, nuclear materials and radioactive sources”, is the objective that includes the Royal Decree approved today by the Council of Ministers.

The law also reinforces international cooperation, especially in relation to urgent measures to take to locate and recover stolen nuclear material or smuggled, mitigate any radiological consequences of sabotage and trying to prevent and combat crime related to any possible these materials.

This Royal Decree, Spain adapted to the Spanish legislation on protection of nuclear materials-set by a Royal Decree of 1995 – the commitments made in the last amendment to the Convention on the Physical Protection of Nuclear Material in July 2005. States members of the Convention committed themselves to substantially strengthen controls on these materials.

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With 2014 as the horizon, the European Commission (EU) and New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organisation-NEDO (Japan) investigate on a common project for the development of concentration solar cells. The goal is to cells with an efficiency of converting sunlight into electricity 45%, surpassing the current 43.5% achieved by Solar Junction (USA), and achieve the highest efficiency in the world.

The research, bringing together the expertise and technologies in Japan and Europe also includes developing a roadmap to increase this efficiency to 50 and 40% respectively.

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The construction of these two additional blocks began in November 2008 and should take 50 and 58 months. Over the entire period, this represents about 15 million hours of work. According to Ladislav Kompan, 70% of the overall project is completed and remaining work concerns mainly the technological parts. Currently, 3,500 people work on site and once put into service, 350 permanent jobs will be created.

Unlike the blocks 1 and 2, the building blocks 3 and 4 uses many suppliers. Slovenske elektrarne SA has concluded more than a hundred contracts with different companies, including more than half are from Slovakia. Among suppliers include companies Atomstroyexport [3], Enseco [4], Inzinierske stavby as [5] (building engineering – Colas Group), SKODA JS-[6] and VUJE [7] which carry the nuclear part ; ENEL Ingegneria Innovazione e [8] which coordinates the non-nuclear, and finally, AREVA and Siemens are involved in the provision of instrumentation and control systems. Net installed power of each block will reach 471 MW (source [2]).

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At least I think Walter Kohn, University of California at Santa Barbara, who shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1998.

Today, oil and natural gas provide us with approximately 60 percent of global energy consumption.

However, as Kohn argues, the most widely accepted estimates of future global production of these two actions indicate that production will reach a peak within 10 to 30 years or so, followed by a rapid decline.

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“Our goal is to make each home is its own mini electric,” explains Daniel Nocera of MIT, one of the authors. “We are working to develop personal power generator that can be manufactured, distributed and installed at low cost. Certainly there are big obstacles to overcome, for example we need to improve solar cells and existing fuel. However, one can imagine people India and Africa can buy a cheap basic system before too long time. ”

Such a system would be solar panels on a roof to produce electricity for heating or air conditioning, and also, for example, to recharge the batteries of electric cars, cooking and lighting.

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Imagine, then, which means having to keep dust and dirt the objects that fill an area as large as 25 or 50 football fields. That is the problem faced by companies dealing with large arrays of solar panels. A team of scientists has developed a solution: self-cleaning solar panels based on technology developed for space missions to Mars.

The team of Malay K. Mazumder, University of Boston has adapted the above space. The result is a self-cleaning coating placed on the surface of solar cells, which could increase their efficiency in producing electricity from sunlight, and reduce maintenance costs for large arrays of solar panels.

This new technology, which can be used in photovoltaic systems both small and large, seems to be the only known automatic cleaning powder that requires no water or mechanical movement to fulfill its mission.

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Imagine using such exotic devices for lighting a house or recharge an electric car. And imagine using similar panels on the roofs of buildings to prevent the formation of lightning. Strange and typical of science fiction as it may seem that technology, a team of scientists already working in the early stages of a project to develop such devices.

The research, carried out by the team of Fernando Galembeck, University of Campinas, Brazil, could open the door that leads us to be able to use atmospheric electricity as a source of alternative energy in the future. Likewise in the domestic solar energy can help us get extra power without having to pay the electric company, this promising new energy source could have a similar effect.

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The Lofoten Islands , off the northwest coast of Norway , beyond the Arctic Circle , have many natural settings in favor of energy production such as marine currents, eddies , coastal , tides … thereby promoting the production of clean electricity. Indeed , the plant ” will be very respectful of the environment with very low CO2 emissions ” said the founder of Hydra Tidal , Svein Dag Henriksen.

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