2/19/2013 The nuclear reactor in your basement

Source: PhysOrg
Date: February 19, 2013
by: Bob Silberg

How would you like to replace your water heater with a nuclear reactor? That's what Joseph Zawodny, a senior scientist at NASA's Langley Research Center, hopes to help bring about. It would tap the enormous power of the atom to provide hot water for your bath, warm air for your furnace system, and more than enough electricity to run your house and, of course, your electric car.

If your thoughts have raced to Fukushima or Three Mile Island or Chernobyl, let me reassure you. Zawodny is not suggesting that you put that kind of reactor in your house. What he has in mind is a generator that employs a process called Low-Energy Nuclear Reactions. (The same process is sometimes called Lattice Energy Nuclear Reactions. We'll just call it LENR.) So what is LENR and how might it one day fill all your energy needs without risk of blowing up, melting down, or irradiating the neighbors?
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8/9/2011 Japan Tsunami Broke Off Icebergs in Antarctica

Source: Wired Science
Date: August 9, 2011 11:54 am
by: Dave Mosher


New space-based images show the same tsunami that devastated Japan also caused a series of giant icebergs to break off halfway around the world in Antarctica.
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Despite Solar Options, NASA-Nuclear Alliance Continues Plutonium-Powered Missions

Source: Truthout
Date: Wednesday 10 August 2011
by: Karl Grossman

What is the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) future now that Atlantis has landed and the shuttle program is over? If NASA persists in using nuclear power in space, the agency's future is threatened.

Between November 25 and December 15, 2011, NASA plans to launch for use on Mars a rover fueled with 10.6 pounds of plutonium, more plutonium than ever used on a rover.

The mission has a huge cost: $2.5 billion.

But if there is an accident before the rover is well on its way to Mars and plutonium is released on Earth, its cost stands to be yet more gargantuan.

NASA's final environmental impact statement for what it calls its Mars Science Laboratory mission says that if plutonium is released on Earth, the cost could be as high as $1.5 billion to decontaminate each square mile of "mixed-use urban areas" impacted.

What's the probability of an accident releasing plutonium? The NASA document says, "the probability of an accident with a release of plutonium" is 1 in 220 "overall."
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