Climate Change and Nuclear Power in Australia - a speech by Dr Ziggy Switkowski

Recently I had the pleasure of attending a luncheon arranged by The Australian German Association where Dr Ziggy Switkowski was key speaker. Ziggy has previously been CEO of Telstra before the Sol era and is now chairman of ANSTO. The subject was climate change and the future of nuclear power in Australia. What follows is a summary of his speech.

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A new look at Solar

The Solé Power Tile system is the first building-integrated photovoltaic roofing product designed to blend in with curved roof tiles commonly found in the Pacific West and Southwest of the United States.

The triple-junction amorphous silicon thin-film technology incorporated within the Solé Power Tile is manufactured by United Solar Ovonic and allows the system to produce an estimated 8-20% more energy than incumbent crystalline silicon panels.

Any power generated by the system which is not used by the building (or stored in batteries if that option is chosen) is fed into the grid. Utility companies then give a credit for the amount of energy generated.

Source: Idea Connection

Could urine be the way forward for transportation?

New Products and Inventions

Researchers from Ohio University have developed an efficient way to produce hydrogen from urine. The technique could fuel vehicles while cleaning up wastewater from sewage plants.

Producing hydrogen from urine could be done at a fraction of the cost of producing it from water, as the hydrogen atoms are less tightly bound to nitrogen than they are to the oxygen atoms in water, thus taking less energy to break them apart.

However, urea quickly turns into ammonia, and produces emissions which can cause health problems such as chronic bronchitis and asthma attacks...

Source: Idea Connection

Have you reached the Twittersphere drop zone???

Where will the future of Twitter lead? Here is one example...