NEI Nuclear Notes

A Greenpeace initiative that’s actually kind of interesting is its drive to get large scale data centers – such as those run by Google, Facebook and Apple – to use more renewable energy to run them. They call it Clicking Clean . Greenpeace operates in an area where the practical -  which, after all, is what electricity is – intersects with the idealistic, if one defines idealism fairly narrowly, i.e., as what Greenpeace favors. That’s where data centers come in. There’s a cluster of them in North Carolina, which, in part, has to do with the state’s efforts to foster high-tech development. I’ve had a couple of friends migrate to the Research Triangle (Raleigh-Durham) to pursue their careers, so it’s having an impact on the east coast at least. But it likely also has something to do with plentiful electricity But here’s the problem for Greenpeace. Greenpeace says Duke’s Green Source Rider, proposed in 2013 at the urging of Google and Facebook as a way to sell green...

Sort of a silly article from the New York Times: Internet companies often cloak themselves in an image of environmental awareness. But some companies that essentially live on the Internet are moving facilities to North Carolina, Virginia, northeastern Illinois and other regions whose main sources of energy are coal and nuclear power, the report said. Virginia generates 36 percent of its electricity from nuclear, 35 percent from coal; North Carolina, 56 percent coal, 31 percent nuclear; and Illinois, 47 percent nuclear, 46 percent coal. So, where clean energy is concerned, internet companies are doing reasonably well given the world we live in. And some want to improve their profile further: Apple immediately disputed the report’s findings, saying that the company planned to build two huge renewable energy projects at its recently opened data center in North Carolina that would eventually offset much of the coal-fired and nuclear energy use. To me, this sounds like th...

Internet search engine giant Google announced Tuesday that it is investing in a mammoth project to build an underwater "superhighway for clean energy" that would be able to funnel power from offshore wind farms to 1.9 million homes without overtaxing the already congested mid-Atlantic power grid. Why? While the project is outside of Google's normal focus , officials said, "We believe in investing in projects that make good business sense and further the development of renewable energy." Well, that makes enough sense as not to matter. If Google wants to do this, and its shareholders don’t raise objections, why not? It certainly has a good profile. Some of what I’ve read raises questions, though not really about the utility of the project. There’s this: Consumers who would receive electricity through the grid would help fund the project, Mitchell added, although he said at this point, "It's hard to say what will be the impact on t...

We’re sure all of us would like to live in a world where nuclear energy and renewable energy sources – and some natural gas and maybe even some coal with carbon sequestration – powered our lives. But that’s not the world we live in – yet – and most of us have rather limited choices about living our lives in a carbon-free environment. This would be true even if you could hear windmills in the morning or see the nuclear plant’s cooling towers off in the misty distance. Electricity providers can help with carbon offsets, but for the most part, how electricity whips through the grid and gets to your house is difficult to quantify by source except in general terms. So this gave us pause: As the internet grows as a platform — a place where more things are done, not only stored away — the IT industry's hunger for energy will increase. Efficiency is a hot topic in IT, but improving energy efficiency is only part of the solution, the industry also needs to take responsibility for...

Even with an early release, Microsoft's new search engine, Bing , has been surprisingly bug-free (save those hovering mouse concerns and itchy IE 6 trigger ) and is receiving rave reviews. Apple's Steve Wozniak is a fan . CNET's Rafe Needleman said, " the new engine won me over ." And the Motley Fool folks have even gone on to declare Bing, " the first serious threat to Google's long-dominant search franchise. " While I think it's a bit early to assess Bing's impact on Google, I can say that, as a user, I've been impressed by site's functionality. I am less than satisfied, however, with their nuclear-related search results. (Solipsism alert!) A Google search for "nuclear energy" has NEI in the first position - ahead of Wikipedia - on the search engine results page (SERP). On Bing ? NEI is #2. And a search for "nuclear power" results in even more significant position changes: NEI is second on Google and in eig...

Dr. Joe Bonometti, with the help of thorium expert Kirk Sorensen , gave about an hour long "tech talk" at Google discussing liquid fluoride thorium reactors. Here's the video: Slowly but surely thorium is gaining greater and greater interest in the country. Atomic Insights has some thoughts on how to keep it going.

As part of its 10-year anniversary celebration, Google is regifting all sorts of online widgets and indexes. The latest present to users offers the ability to search Google as it was back in 2001 . And while the search results for all permutations of " nuclear " and " nucular " were interesting enough, this moment provides an opportunity to plug a favorite non-Google widget: the Way Back Machine . Just pop in a URL and see how a site looked way back when . Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you, NEI.org , from November 1996.

Nope, Google isn't moving into the online gaming space but they are looking to add a new page to a renewable energy portfolio. The Times [UK] is reporting that Google has filed for a patent to place its supercomputers on barges that are powered, and cooled, by waves. The company is considering deploying the supercomputers necessary to operate its internet search engines on barges anchored up to seven miles (11km) offshore. The “water-based data centres” would use wave energy to power and cool their computers, reducing Google’s costs. Their offshore status would also mean the company would no longer have to pay property taxes on its data centres, which are sited across the world, including in Britain. In the patent application seen by The Times, Google writes: “Computing centres are located on a ship or ships, anchored in a water body from which energy from natural motion of the water may be captured, and turned into electricity and/or pumping power for cooling pumps to carry heat...

I'm a big fan of almost all things Google, although their new browser, Google Chrome , has yet to impress me enough to make the switch from Firefox. There appear to be plenty of Chrome converts here on the NNN blog, however. Market Share has been tracking Chrome usage worldwide: on Sunday, Chrome's usage peaked at 1.42% of the world's HTTP requests. On the NEI blog yesterday? 4% of visitors viewed the site in Chrome. Who knew Notes readers were such early adopters? On a somewhat-related note: Happy 10th Anniversary , Google. Whenever you were born.

I've been spending some time recently with a great little Google widget (redundant, no?) called Google Trends . More robust than Google Zeitgeist , GT (acronyms abound!) allows the user to see keyword search results over time. Even better, one can break searches out by country, state, and city. After plugging in the phrase, "Washington Capitals, best team in the NHL," and coming up empty, I searched "nuclear energy." Connecticut tops the list in 2008. (The full results from 2008 YTD searches can be found here .) What jumped out was Pennsylvania's place at #4. Indeed, going back to 2004 , residents of PA rank #8 of those searching Google for information on nuclear energy. How often have we heard nuclear energy policy discussed by the presidential candidates in the run up to the Pennsylvania primary? Or Ohio? Or Michigan? Not much. A Nexis and Westlaw search confirms this. In a presidential campaign where personality appears to matter more than policy, how of...

Looney Dunes cracks the code when it comes to where Google is building its data centers .

Stewart Peterson, the mind behind the blog Nuclear is our Future , has created a specialized Google search engine just for the nuclear energy industry . Here's how he describes it : 've tried to make the information as reliable as possible; it searches neither LaRouchies nor Greenpeace-type sites, but focuses on informational (neutral and pro-nuclear; if there were an anti-nuclear site with reliable information I'd include it, but then it probably wouldn't be anti-nuclear) and government websites. Please try it out and tell me if it works for you--or if you can't find things; there's no point in me linking to something that doesn't work. In other words, this is still a work in progress. So stop by , kick the tires, and if you have any suggestions, send them Stewart's way.