Next Big Future: May 2007

May 31, 2007

Carbon nanotube pricing May 2007

Currently carbon nanotubes are sold on the world market for $100,000 to $800,000 per kilogram. However, Cheap tubes has reduced prices significantly in May 2007. They have 90% by weight SWNT CNT for $42,000 - 50,000 per kg. They have MWNT for as little as $350/kg. One ton orders have a 90 day lead time.

NASA Ames Research Center has inked a deal to use carbon nanotubes produced by the R & D Center under the Ho Chi Minh City Hi-Tech Park for aerospace application. The center’s products have won NASA’s confidence thanks to high quality and lower cost than Chinese and Japanese products. The materials used to make AFM tips are worth only US$10 but the price of a finished AFM tip is currently quoted at $600.

Washington Post reports China may build 300 nuclear plants by 2050

China intends to spend $50 billion to build 32 nuclear plants by 2020. Some analysts say the country will build 300 more by the middle of the century A Massachusetts Institute of Technology report said China may have to add as many as 200 nuclear power plants by 2050 to meet its needs. Academics from China's leading technical university, Tsinghua University, said the country might need more, equivalent to the output of 300 plants.

Two superconductor advances

Tiny, isolated patches of superconductivity exist within these superconducting substances at higher temperatures than previously were known, according to a paper by Princeton scientists, who have developed new techniques to image superconducting behavior at the nanoscale.

Caption: Using a customized microscope, Princeton scientists have mapped the strength of current-carrying electron pairs as they form in a ceramic superconductor. From the top left, the images show the same 30-nanometer square region of the ceramic at successively cooler temperatures. Red areas indicate the presence of superconducting pairs. Even at 10 degrees Celsius above Tc, the temperature at which the entire sample exhibits superconductivity, the electron pairs still exist in localized regions (top left image). Credit: Princeton University/Yazdani labs

The regions are only a few nanometers wide, but they appear in some materials at up to 50 degrees above the critical temperature. Ali Yazdani, senior author of the research paper, said that understanding why these minuscule patches of superconductivity exist at higher temperatures -- and how to create a material that exhibits the property everywhere -- may be the key to enhancing superconductivity.

Another superconductor discovery
A team of University of British Columbia researchers has contributed to the greatest advancement in superconductor research in a decade by "growing" the purest samples of superconductors to date.

"Up to now, it was unclear whether these materials were metals or insulators," said UBC Physics Prof. Douglas Bonn, adding that the materials are extremely sensitive to contamination - the slightest trace of dirt or impurity can alter their properties completely.

"We were able to supply our collaborators with the purest sample ever developed, leading to the discovery of quantum oscillations," said Bonn. "This provides unequivocal proof that these materials are metals."

"The results are crystal clear," said Louis Taillefer. "High-temperature superconductors were discovered in 1987, and only now do we finally have concrete knowledge about their deep nature. This discovery gives both theorists and experimentalists something real to work with.

Single spinning nuclei in diamond offer a stable quantum computing building block

At room temperature, carbon-13 nuclei in diamond create stable, controllable quantum register.
Surmounting several distinct hurdles to quantum computing, physicists at Harvard University have found that individual carbon-13 atoms in a diamond lattice can be manipulated with extraordinary precision to create stable quantum mechanical memory and a small quantum processor, also known as a quantum register, operating at room temperature. The finding brings the futuristic technology of quantum information systems into the realm of solid-state materials under ordinary conditions.

They found that nuclear spins associated with single atoms of carbon-13 -- which make up some 1.1 percent of natural diamond -- can be manipulated via a nearby single electron whose own spin can be controlled with optical and microwave radiation. The excitation of an electron by focusing laser light on a nitrogen vacancy center, a stable defect in a diamond lattice where nitrogen replaces an atom of carbon and develops an electronic spin in its ground state, causes the single electron's spin to act as a very sensitive magnetic probe with extraordinary spatial resolution.

Using the nitrogen center as an intermediary, a single carbon-13 atom's nuclear spin is cooled to near absolute zero, creating in the process a single, isolated quantum bit with a coherence time that approaches seconds. The controlled interaction between the electron and nuclear spins allows the latter to be used as very robust quantum memory.

The Harvard physicists also observed and manipulated coupling between individual nuclear spins, thus demonstrating a way to increase the number of qubits working in the quantum register. Because the electron spin and nuclear spin are controlled independently, the experiments lay the groundwork for development of larger, scalable systems in which such quantum registers are connected via optical photons.

"Beyond specific applications in quantum information science," the authors write, "our measurements show that the electron spin can be used as a sensitive local magnetic probe that allows for a remarkable degree of control over individual nuclear spins."

May 30, 2007

Alberta researchers create new nanotechnology field - spinplasmonics

Dr. Abdulhakem Elezzabi and his colleagues have applied plasmonics principles to spintronics technology and created a novel way to control the quantum state of an electron's spin.

The new technology, which the researchers call spinplasmonics, may be used to create incredibly efficient electron spin-based photonic devices, which in turn may be used to build, for example, computers with extraordinary capacities.

"We've only just begun to scratch the surface of this field, but we believe we have the physics sorted out and one day this technology will be used to develop very fast, very small electronics that have a very low power consumption," said Elezzabi, the Canada Research Chair in Ultrafast Photonics and Nano-Optics and an electrical and computer engineering professor at the U of A.

Elezzabi's work addresses a number of challenges that, to this point, have hindered further advancement in computer electronics, such as in the creation of smaller devices. One such challenge is that as traditional, silicon-based semiconductor devices approach the nanoscale, the laws of quantum physics take control over their performance (specifically the flow of charges—i.e. electrons) and render them inoperable.

"With the development of this technology I envision a move from semiconductors [silicon chips] to metal based electronics with light-driven circuits," Elezzabi said.

Researchers in the field of spintronics have tried to address this problem by building metal-based devices that harness the magnetic quantum properties of the spin of electrons. Although the spintronics field is barely a dozen years-old, some devices that incorporate spintronics technology are already on the market.
The field of plasmonics, which is even younger than spintronics, involves the transfer of light electromagnetic energy into a tiny volume, thus creating intense electric fields—a phenomenon that has many scientists rethinking the laws of electromagnetics on a nanoscale. The plasmonics field has many wide-ranging applications, from guiding light through metal wires, to bio-sensing, to making objects invisible to the eye.

Applications for aligned nanowires

To demonstrate the usefulness of the technique [aligned nanowires using bubbles], the researchers transferred the films to silicon wafers, then used conventional techniques to deposit electronic contacts on the films. The nanowires bridged the contacts, serving as semiconducting channels for working transistors.

Lieber says that early applications could include accurate home tests for illnesses such as cancer, influenza, and sexually transmitted diseases. In such a device, a protein biomarker for prostate cancer, for example, would connect to the nanowires, changing the wires' conductivity and registering the protein's presence. Nanowires provide three-orders-of-magnitude-greater sensitivity than current tests, Lieber says. And because the nanowires directly detect the proteins by generating an electronic signal, such tests would provide results right away, making it unnecessary for researchers to wait for results to come back from the lab. What's more, tests for multiple biomarkers can easily be combined on a chip. An array of hundreds of nanowires, each chemically modified to react with a specific protein, could be used to create a highly accurate cancer test.

The nanowires could also be used in flexible displays to turn pixels on and off. Conventional high-speed transistors require fabrication temperatures that would melt the plastic substrates used in flexible displays. But nanowires can provide the same performance without the need for high temperatures.

The researchers are now studying the process to find ways of packing the nanowires closer together, which could allow for applications beyond those for sensors and displays, such as for memory. Before the process can be used for manufacturing, though, it will need to be automated, possibly in ways similar to the blown-bubble techniques now used for high-volume production of plastic bags. Lieber says that the method could be used in nanodevice manufacturing within one to two years.

The new technique involves blowing bubbles made of an epoxy polymer mixed with either nanowires or carbon nanotubes. The researchers pour the mixture onto a circular surface equipped with a small hole; the polymer-nanowire mixture forms a membrane over the surface. The researchers then force nitrogen gas through the hole, expanding the membrane until it forms a bubble about 25 centimeters wide and 50 centimeters tall. A metal ring stabilizes the bubble as it grows, with the polymer material stretching to become a 200-to-500-nanometer-thick film containing evenly spaced nanowires or carbon nanotubes lined up and facing in approximately the same direction. The researchers speculate that sheer forces caused by the growth of the bubble make the nanowires line up.

The resulting film can be transferred to a number of surfaces, including silicon and flexible plastic. To do this, the researchers position silicon wafers or other materials so that when the bubble inflates, the surface of the bubble presses against them.

Nanowerk also has information on the process

In the present process, relatively low concentrations of CNTs and nanowires, less than 1%, are dispersed in the polymer suspension. As a result, the distance between individual nanostructures is relatively large (greater than 2 µm). "You need at least 4-5% by weight to get a good mechanical structure, but this is quite achievable, for example using surfactants or alternative polymers. There should now be real advances made quickly by learning from other areas" says Lieber.

Generally, this technique would allow fabrication of large-area thin film products with all types of nanoscale components. The bubble films could be further processed to make arrays of nanoelectronic or optical devices, sensors, and field emitters for flat panel displays. Bubble films coated on plastic substrates could be fabricated into flexible micro/nano systems. Introducing nanomaterials could also produce reinforced plastic films with better mechanical properties. The regular alignment of CNTs within the film would give it high tensile strength, potentially higher than Kevlar, and would make this an intriguing material for many materials applications, from airplane wings to protective clothing and armor.

Cao says that the team is now exploring several areas, including fabrication of nanosystems with distinct electrical or optical properties, and use of different polymers to facilitate subsequent device fabrication. "For example, we have developed photopolymer (PMMA) based bubbles that can be directly integrated into modern microfabrication technique to pattern electrodes."

He also cautions that there are challenges facing their research in the near future: "A better understanding of the mechanism of nanostructure alignment during bubble blowing process is necessary for further optimizing the process, and materials and instrumentation need to be developed for large scale production."

Wealth funds of nations

China has established a large national fund for investment but other nations have large funds as well. The largest is the ADIA fund of the UAE which has US$875 billion in assets Singapore, Saudi Arabia Norway have $300-330 billion funds.

Recently, Japan, Russia and India have reportedly been considering setting up funds along similar lines. Some estimates put the size of the funds at $2.5 trillion by the end of this year (in contrast, hedge funds are thought to have a mere $1.6 trillion), with another $450 billion in transfers from reserves being added annually. Including capital appreciation, the amount could swell to $12 trillion by 2015.

The world's entire supply of shares is $55 trillion, and bonds account for a similar amount. Sovereign-wealth funds could soon become the most important buyers of such assets, and many others besides. If so, the world will witness the intriguing spectacle of its largest private companies being owned by governments whose belief in capitalism is often partial.

The last time governments were this involved in sinking money into private assets, the process tended to be called nationalisation. Now the funds are invested both abroad and domestically. A new term will have to be coined: internationalisation, perhaps.

the Blackstone deal:

“Crony capitalism? It is a marriage made in heaven—a partnership that does not want investors to ask questions with a country whose firms do not want investors to ask questions.

It is widely believed that by having China as a partner, Blackstone will receive preferential access to China's market (as well as providing China with experience it clearly covets on how to set up its own domestic private-equity industry).

May 29, 2007

Carbon nanotubes align and spread evenly on bubbles

Nanotubes on the surface of a bubble will align and spread evenly on the surface.

This finding fits in nicely with the concept of giant space bubbles that was reported on this site. If the two ideas can be combined then space bubbles made from carbon nanotubes would be possible. This would allow for stronger and lighter walls. It could also be a means of forming large carbon nanotube solar sails.

Bubbles of epoxy mixture containing nanowires or nanotubes line the materials up neatly, and can be caught on flat plates (Image: Nature)

Bubbles were produced by pouring the epoxy mixture over a metal plate with a gas inlet at the centre. Turning on the gas creates a bubble and a metal ring above the plate catches hold as it grows. As the bubble expands to more than 25cm wide and 50cm tall, portions of film are deposited on surrounding pieces of flat silicon or plastic.

The nanomaterials contained in the mixture were found to have aligned themselves vertically, towards the top of the bubble. Varying the concentration of tubes or wires in the mixture altered the density of nanomaterials but not their alignment.

Exactly why the tubes line up is not known, although the researchers suspect that stress generated on the surface of the bubble, as it expands, pulls the tubes and wires into line. They add that having a simple way to align nanowires and nanotubes with a particular density could help integrate such components into electronic and optical devices.

To prove this, the team created arrays of transistors using bubbles containing silicon nanowires. Electrodes and an additional layer of insulator were patterned onto a plate coated using the bubble technique to make many field effect transitors that exploit the semiconductor properties of the nanowires.

China's One child policy status

There has been rioting over enforcement of China's one child policy

The central authorities had asked for positive financial incentives to support the population growth reduction plans. Local officials had forced some abortions.

The one child policy always had gaps and was intended for only one generation. It has reduced the population growth by 400 million by some estimates.

The growing wealth of the Chinese population appears likely to see the policy to continue to fade.

"The number of rich people and celebrities having more than one child is on a rapid increase, and nearly 10 percent of them even have three," Xinhua cited a survey by the Family Planning Commission as saying. A Chinese health official has also said that rural women were risking maternal heath by delivering babies in violation of the restrictions at home or in unregulated clinics.

"Some policy-breaking pregnant women, who dared not apply any financial aid of childbearing for fear of legal punishment, chose to deliver babies at home or in substandard private clinics," Xinhua quoted Vice Minister of Health Jiang Zuojun as saying in a separate report.

Under the family planning policies -- which aim to control the world's largest population of 1.3 billion -- China's urban dwellers are
generally allowed to have one child, while rural families can have two
if the first child is a girl.

In recent years, violations of the policy had been dealt with by smaller fines of up to 5,000 yuan, locals said. Up to 60,000 yuan per extra child.

Fine details

From wikipedia:

In reality, having one child has been promoted as ideal and the law
has been strongly enforced in urban areas, the actual implementation
varies from location to location.[1] In most rural areas, families are
allowed to have two children, if the first child is female, or
disabled.[2] Second children are subject to birth spacing (usually 3
or 4 years). Additional children will result in large fines.

The one child policy was designed from the outset to be a one
generation policy.[5] The one-child policy is now enforced at the
provincial level, and enforcement varies; some provinces have relaxed
the restrictions. Some provinces and cities such as Beijing permit two
"only child" parents to have two children. Henan province, with a
population of about 100 million, does not allow this exception

Households with 25000-40000 yuan per year. They can afford the lower fines.
2007 41 million households (20%) out of 205 million
2009 73 million households (32%) out of 220 million
2011 96 million households (40%) out of 240 million
2015 140 million households (50%) out of 280 million

Those with 40000-100000 yuan per year
2007 21 million households (10%) out of 205 million
2009 24 million households (11%) out of 220 million
2011 29 million households (12%) out of 240 million
2013 39 million households(15%) out of 260 million
2015 59 million households (21.2%) out of 280 million
2025 224 million households (60%) out of 373 million

Those who are richer 100,000+RMB/ year in household income are 0.6% in
2005 or about 1 million households. In 2015, they will be 6% or about
28 million households. In 2025, they are projected to be about 11% or
about 40 million household. The highest fines are no problem for this group.

Broadband speed in different countries

Here is a post on a survey of average broadband speed in different countries Japan and Canada have significantly higher broadband download speeds—61Mbps and 7.6Mbps. Hong Kong is not on the chart but is also a lot faster.

Economists value actual loss of income from bereavement

A british study calculates the average change in income earned caused by the loss of a loved one

For a typical person, that level of unhappiness equated to the following necessary financial amounts in compensation for bereavement.

Loss of a Partner £312,000
Loss of a Child 126,000
Loss of a Mother 22,000
Loss of a Father 21,000
Loss of a Friend 8,000
Loss of a Sibling 1,000

Ex-China drug regulator to be executed

China's former top drug regulator was sentenced to death Tuesday for taking bribes to approve untested medicines, as the country's main quality control agency announced its first recall system targeting unsafe food products.

Clearly this shows that China is serious about cleaning up corruption and food and drug quality. It may shrink the pool of candidates to be the next food and drug regulator. A bad performance review would send you looking for a ticket out the country. No attaboy Brownies in China (the Katrina FEMA guys getting pats on the back.)

May 28, 2007

More nuclear oilsands - water

This is a follow up to several articles on the Canadian oilsands and using nuclear reactors to power the oil separation process.

Past articles are here (details on the deal) and here (where I first discuss the whatif the nuclear oilsands are scaled up)

Of the total water allocated in the province, the oil and gas sector actually uses less than half of one per cent for water and steam injection processes (enhanced oil recovery). Water used for these purposes has declined from 88.7 million cubic metres in 1973 to 47.5 million cubic metres in 2001 – 37 million cubic metres of this was non-saline (fresh) water, 10.5 million was saline or brackish water. (Source: Water Use for Injection Purposes in Alberta report, Alberta Environment, 2003)

A CANDU reactor would (700MW) would generate 420,000 barrels per day of steam. A cubic meter is 8.38 barrels. Therefore, the (700MW) reactor would generate 18.3 million cubic meters of steam per year. 57.4 million cubic meters of steam for the 2.2 GW twin reactors. Water expands to 1700 times its volume in steam.
So the 2.2 GW reactor would be using 33,800 cubic meters of water for that amount of steam. Scaling up that amount of water usage 100 times would be well within the bounds of the water allocated for steam and water injection. The steam for the nuclear plants does not seem to be the limiting factor. Also, as I not further down this article 90% of the water can be recovered and recycled in the SAGD process.

The oil and gas industries complete allocation is 432.4 million cubic meters of water. (4.6% of 9.4 billion cubic meters of water).

The oil and gas industries gets 178.6 million cubic feet of water for steam and water injection. (1.9% of 9.4 billion cubic metres of water). This amount could get increased if needed.

If agriculture had to give up some of its water allocation, then in theory 33% of the the 9.4 billion cubic meters of water might go to oil and gas. The re-allocation can be reduced by using wastewater (the city people use the water and then the waste can be used by the oil industry) from the 11% of the water (1 billion cubic meters) that is used for Municiple water. The oilsands industry could be scaled up 65 times from 2001 levels even still using the same wasteful methods as used in 2001.

Up to the end of 2001, Alberta had allocated over 9.4 billion cubic metres of water annually for a variety of uses. Allocations from surface water sources account for 98 per cent of this total; the remaining two per cent are from groundwater sources.

For 2001, the oil and gas sector was licensed to use 4.6 per cent of all the water allocated in Alberta; less than half (1.9 per cent) of this water is allocated for water and steam injection operations. By comparison, the agriculture sector (including irrigation) was licensed to use the largest amount of water of any economic sector, at approximately 46 per cent. Municipal water supplies accounted for 11 per cent.

On page 25 of this report (Technology roadmap for the oilsands), it has chart which shows that thermal (steam) extraction of oilsands was using about 7 million cubic meters of water. This produced 125000 bpd. Scaled up 200 times. It would be 1.4 billion cubic meters of water. 15% of Alberta's water. It would mean re-allocating water or re-using wasteawater or recycling more of the SAGD water and being more efficient, but it is feasible. Especially if there was great need because of any potential peak oil situations.

A criticism of some of this is that "even the oil industry is not looking at more than 4 million bpd from the oilsands". That is because the oil industry does not believe in peak oil. They are looking at 4 million bpd and thinking about new markets they would need to find to sell it.

So in summary, (since all the dots connections have to be spelled out):

1. There is enough water in Alberta to scale up, even if water inefficient
processes from 2001 are scaled up.
2. The water/steam for the nuclear reactors is not that large a demand
and can be scaled up and the nuclear reactor/SAGD process is more
water efficient than current oilsand methods
3. The steam from cooling any nuclear reactor used for SAGD can be 90% recycled
4. The water for the nuclear reactors can be wastewater
5. The SAGD process is more water efficient than other methods
currently in use in the oilsands.
6. It would be better for more efficient water methods to be used so that scaling up is comfortable using the current water allocation (178.6 million cubic meters/year) or the current allocation plus wastewater (1 billion cubic meters/year)

Also reviewing the other points that I have made in a thread on the oildrum:

In March 2006, href="http://www.canducanada.ca/eng/team.html">Canada's leading private sector companies in the nuclear and power plant field, Babcock & Wilcox Canada, GE Canada, Hitachi Canada and SNC-Lavalin Nuclear joined together with Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (AECL) to create Team CANDU. The financial backing from those companies means that cost overruns will be borne by them and not by the Canadian tax
payer.

The project (the first 2.2 GW twin reactors) is expected to cost C$5.5 to 6.2 billion.

The 6 most recent CANDU reactors in S Korea and China were on time and on budget.

the CANDU reactor in Qinshan

Another point is that a CANDU reactor href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Candu#Fuel_cycles" target=blank>Can
generate 30-40% more energy from Light water reactor "waste" or unburned fuel and CANDU reactors can also breed Thorium.

CANDU fuel cycles

May 25, 2007

Uranium from coal flyash waste

A company Wildhorse is going to study extracting Uranium from coal flyash. From the 50 million tons/year of flyash that is generated in Europe, there is 100 to 300 ppm uranium. This would be 5,000 to 15000 tons of Uranium that could be recovered.

The US generates over 100 million tons of flyash each year

China military will naturally be big, modern and global

A bunch of articles in the regular press are like this one from the International Herald Tribune. They talk about US defence concerns about China's military spending and modernization

I have already laid out a reasonable, plausible and I think likely scenario where China becomes the number one world economy on an exchange rate basis by 2020.

China economic trajectory naturally lets it accumulate friendships with country and hanger on countries.

All kinds of countries and companies are tying themselves to China's rising economic star. (ASEAN etc...) China also seeks out places (Iran, Nigeria) for resources (oil)

A 25% increase in currency valuation looks like a super slam dunk over the next 3 years. The potential of the trade surplus going to 400 billion will force China to revalue the Yuan more quickly to offset the speculative pressure and prevent harm to their own economy.

If my predictions on China's economic size are right then China and the US would become : like Japan-US (China being a distant number 2, initially a co-number 2 with Japan) from 2008-2013; then more like EU - US (roughly the same size) from 2015-2024; then if it continues where the US is half the size of China it becomes like Japan-US with the roles reversed and the US as the junior partner.

The pre-emptive strategy and force projection talk looks like it is coming from US defence and intelligence interests and think tanks. I see it all as posturing and ensuring that their own [US] budgets are larger.

If China expands to 70-100% of the size of the US in straight currency in 2015-2020.
then Military spending proportionally increases and modernization (buy new military toys) also happens.

Current defence budget is estimated at $45-100 billion for China.
25% currency bump (3 years) pushes those numbers to $60-125 billion.
Plus a three year economic growth of about 30%.
Same proportion would put spending at $78-165 billion.

The EU had an extra 65% runup in military spending when compared in US$ over the last seven years. It is what happens when your currency turns to crap.

I am projecting China in 2015 to have a 11.1 trillion economy including Hong Kong.
A proportional military spend would have China at about $200-300 billion.

The US will be about 17 trillion.
Military spending could be at $500-700 billion for the USA.

In 2020, China would be at 21 trillion and the US at 20 trillion.
Military spending would be about $400-500 billion for China and the US at $600-900 billion. China's technology is also catching up to the US. China will have three petaflop class supercomputers and a supercomputer grid in 2010 This will be comparable to what the US will have at that time.

From 2015 through 2020, then China would naturally have a pretty spiffy military and have force projection capabilities of global reach. However, why would either side start a war ? The US and China would be each others biggest trading partner. China would hold trillions in US assets. Owning 10-20% of so of the US would not be inconceivable. Why fight to take it over if the other guy is selling it to you at bargain prices ? There will be tense moments when the two are in competition for scarce resources like two neighbors in a mall at Christmas time jostling over a toy.

Taiwan, as indicated (in the previous article) looks headed to becoming a common market partner with China in 2008-2012. (Check and see if KMT Ma wins next year).

India would also be projected to catch up in 2030-2040 timeframe.
Post 2015-2025 could be different because of the changes in technology that I am projecting from technologies like molecular nanotechnology.

The US can defer this scenario by getting its financial house in order. The US can stop falling back by strengthening its currency. The US can no longer be sloppy and expect to stay on top or eventually near the top. (Although population wise the US could head to 500-600 million with loose immigration basically absorbing 20-40% of Mexico and a higher birthrate. 33-45% of China's population)

Losing economic strength will translate over a decade or so into lost military dominance. The USSR showed that a place can overachieve military status relative to economic strength for 4 decades or so against a 3 to 1 economic size disadvantage. But doing that just screws you up long term. Again there would be no point if neither side would gain anything in a fight. Plus the translation time for economic status to military status could be shorter with a transitioning technology scenario (see all of the molecular nanotechnology and other technology tracked and projected on this site).

A China economy that is nearly equal or greater than the USA will mean that China will have a military that is nearly as big or bigger than the USA. It will be modern because they will have bought or built everything new. It will have global reach because why would a country about the same size as the USA not have global reach. For that matter, even interplanetary reach with China's space program

The US needs to have more competent leadership, spending discipline, financial discipline if it wants to stay at number one or near number one. 2015-2025 real competition for world number one. Fortunately a likely economic and technology only competition.

Ultra Short Pulse Lasers

Business Week has an interesting article about the applications and potential of ultra-short pulse lasers (USP)

USP lasers switch on and off at impossibly high rates--as quickly as once every femtosecond, or a billionth of a millionth of a second. Those concentrated blasts can obliterate any material by literally knocking electrons out of an atom's neighborhood. That means the lasers can do their job a few atoms at a time if need be, without heating up surrounding material. Since the zapped material is ablated into oblivion, there's nothing to heat up or melt.

Raydiance is one of a half-dozen companies, including IMRA America and Fianium, that have brought USP products down to the size of window air conditioners. Raydiance has developed software to make it easier for all kinds of companies to apply the technology to their businesses, even if their tech team isn't populated with optical engineering PhDs. "It's the difference between operating a mainframe and a Macintosh," says Goldblatt, who has since left the Pentagon and joined Raydiance's board.

Raydiance, a startup, has cranked its lasers up to 200 watts, more than 40 times the power of current USP models. If it pulls off its plan to hit 1000 watts or more, a Raydiance box on a piloted plane or drone cruising at 10,000 feet could scan the sides of a road to detect concealed bombs, says Les Lyles, a retired four-star general who once oversaw the Air Force's Star Wars missile defense efforts. Because its rays are invisible and generate no heat, such a laser could be programmed to identify the bits of sub-atomic detritus it ablates from a target to determine its composition, "and no one would know," says Lyle, who is an investor in Raydiance. Ultimately, it's possible the lasers could be dialed up to higher power levels to serve as "photon missiles," to fry the electronic trigger in the roadside bomb, he adds.

The first machine Raydiance built was shipped to the Food & Drug Administration, whose researchers are trying to further improve LASIK eye surgery. Heat generated from the use of conventional lasers sometimes causes harmful deformations in a patient's cornea--a less likely side-effect with USP lasers. Raydiance is also working with Silicon Valley startup EpiRay, which hopes to use USP lasers to remove unwanted tattoos. After all, there are some 10 million Gen Y-ers who might someday be candidates.

The FDA and others are exploring various cancer therapies, and Southwestern Medical Center at the University of Texas is studying whether Raydiance's technology could be used to treat burn victims, says professor of surgery Ahamed Idris. The idea is to ablate the scorched tissue to inhibit toxic cell secretions that amplify a burn victim's pain and that can trigger organ failure, Idris' team believes. He has applied for grants with the U.S. Army to find ways to treat soldiers at MASH units quickly and painlessly before sending them to hospitals. "We're often reluctant to give general anesthesia" to badly burned people, he says. With this approach "we might be able to get away with intravenous pain medicine."

Clinton proposes preventive medicine focused plan

Hillary Clinton proposes a health plan with a focus on better preventive medicine to save 120 billion per year. This sounds like a good plan.

China looking at a population growth rebound

A wealthier China has more people who can ignore the fines and have more children

Rate of Urbanization has been underestimated in China

In 2004, it was estimated that China would be 58 to 60 percent urban 2020, and the urban population would hit 800 to 900 million. The urbanization rate was 37.7 percent in 2002. More recent figures suggest urbanization is at 42% in 2004, so urbanization is happening faster. A more recent university study indicates that China will be 50% urban in 2007. At a total population of 1.33 billion that means 665 million urban dwellers. 36-40 million people have been moving to the cities every year since 2002.

By 2015, at the rate of 35 million people per year moving to the cities, China would have 900 to 950 million in the cities and towns and 65-68% urbanization.

I believe the faster than expected rate of urbanization is also driving the growth of China's economy at faster than expected rate.

The small towns will accommodate 200 to 300 million, and the other 600 million will go to cities. To accommodate the 600 million people, 200 big cities, each holding over 300 million, or 300 cities each supporting 200 million are needed," predicts Lian Yuming, Director of the Beijing International Institute for City Development at the Beijing Summit of China City Forum.

The law of city development in the world indicates that urbanization process will start to accelerate in a country when its per capita GDP exceeds US$ 1,000; as the per capita GDP exceeds US $ 3,000, the development will rise rapidly.

More recent statistics show that small town populations increased 27.5% from 2000 to 2005

China is expecting 24 million new job seekers in cities and towns this year However, only 60% of the population is employed. So the young people moving to the cities and towns could find a job and then a fraction of them could move non-employed family over. Again consistent with about 30-35 million people moving to the cities and towns each year.

Here is a discussion on how to invest to benefit from China's development and urbanization

China's urban workers had a 17.8% wage gain over 2006

April 2007 statistics for China

A discussion of world urbanization is here at open the future

May 24, 2007

Lithium Iron Phosphate batteries could make better Hybrids

Lithium Technology Corporation (OTC: LTHU.PK) claims that they have created the largest lithium iron phosphate (LiFePO4) battery cells.

The 7 kWh battery comprised of 63 of LTC’s iron phosphate cells has achieved 125+ MPG. LTC’s large format technology allows for more reliable battery systems with a significantly lower number of cells. The battery management system (BMS) is more precise monitoring fewer cells, keeping them in balance for best performance and preventing damage to the battery due to over voltage, under voltage, over temperature and short circuit

Batteries made of LTC's cells can provide 3000 charging cycles, which would be able to do 150,000 miles to 80% capacity for a 100 km or 60 mile all electric range plug in hybrid, which no other technology can claim," said Dr. Andrew Frank, Professor, Mechanical and Aeronautical Engineering at the University of California, Davis . "The new cells from LTC provide improved safety with the iron phosphate chemistry while delivering the impeccable performance they are known for, which is what the auto makers have been in search of; this is a Company that is seriously committed to making hybrid, plug-in hybrid and electric vehicles an affordable reality for the consumer."

China's economy could pass USA in 2020 on exchange basis

Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch say the yuan will gain 9.6 per cent to about 7 per US dollar within 13 months. China's economy in 2008 would then be US$3.7 trillion. This does not include Hong Kong and Macau which would increase the size of the economy to $3.9 trillion.

Various economists say that the Yuan is undervalued by 40%

The big mac index (Purchasing power parity) indicates that the Yuan should be 3.42. The World Bank had calculated 1.8.

A steady 7.5% strengthening of the Yuan versus the dollar seems likely as China would gradually shift its currency to allow time for its companies to adjust Heading to 3 Yuan (RMB) exchange to the US dollar also seems reasonable for 2020.

In trillions of dollars:

Year	GDP(yuan)	Yuan per USD	China GDP	US GDP
2006	20.94	7.8	2.7	13.2
2007	23.24	7.4	3.1	13.6
2008	25.57	6.9	3.7	14.0
2009	28.12	6.4	4.4	14.4
2010	30.66	6.0	5.2	14.9
2011	33.11	5.5	6.0	14.9
2012	35.76	5.1	6.9	15.8
2013	38.62	4.8	8.1	16.2
2014	41.7	4.5	9.4	16.7
2015	45.0	4.1	10.9	17.2
2016	48.2	3.9	12.5	17.7
2017	51.9	3.6	14.2	17.7
2018	54.2	3.3	16.2	18.3
2019	57.4	3.1	18.5	19.4
2020	60.9	2.9	21.1	20.0

Following that trajectory for another decade would have the Chinese economy at about twice the size of the US economy in 2030. In the projection above China's growth slows to 6% per year and US growth is steady at 3% throughout. China's economic size passes Japan's economy in 2010 or 2011.

This is also a recognition of the weakness of the US dollar which has fallen 65% against the Euro over the last seven years.

China has indicated that they will stop accumulating US dollars

This means that the Yuan will grow as a reserve currency, because China with the largest reserves will be investing a significant chunk of reserves in Yuan assets.

Others such as the Center for Economic and Policy Research have noted the imminent passing of China's economy over the USA on a purchasing power parity (PPP) basis The PPP parity passing of China past the USA is in 2010.

The passing of the US economy on both those basis and the squandering of political capital and financial strength by the US is accelerating the shift to a truly multipolar world.

China's Anti-satellite capabilities and credible nuclear deterrent means that military conflict between the major powers is off the table.

I believe that the Taiwan situation will be resolved peacefully.

Former KMT Chairman and Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou has stated that Taiwan should form a common market with China and establish direct transportation links. A 5/10/2007 poll released by the United Daily News shows Ma's lead over Hsieh (DPP) at 43% to 28%. I believe that Ma will win and establish that common market by 2012. Taiwan is a $355 billion economy (2006).

The DPP candidate (current ruling party) is Frank Hsieh As premier, Hsieh sought engagement with China and a gradual opening of economic links. So even if Hsieh wins, Taiwan and China seem on a path to EU style union.

An interesting scenario is if China and Taiwan go beyond that to a NATO style military cooperation. China would get access to 160 F16s and Patriot missiles among other assets. In the longer term this is not really relevant because China's larger economy and advancing technology means that they will be perfectly capable of developing technologically competitive systems on their own.

A 2003 report by Goldman Sachs has been used as the basis of many future scenarios. They projected China overtaking the US economy in 2040. They projected a lower growth rate for China for 2005-2010 of 7.2%. China grew 10.2% in 2005, 10.7% in 2006 and is on track for 10.9% in 2007. Projections vary for 2008 but 9-11% seems likely. The 17% underassessment of China's economy before the 2004 census was not available. Goldman projected 268% currency appreciation over 47 years. The Goldman projections looks like it will be underestimating China's GDP by 50% in 2010.

The Economist Intelligence Unit predicted China surpassing the US on an exchange rate basis in 2026 Changing the currency appreciation to 7.5% instead of 5% accelerates the date of overtaking from 2026 to 2020. They must also predict a slower growth rate of about 6-7% per year.

Higher growth rates combined with currency appreciation would mean a pass as early as 2019. The growth rate would have to be 9.5% (combined with 7.5% currency appreciation) to move it to 2018.

The 2.9 RMB to 1 USD combined with relatively strong growth would have the Chinese economy passing the US (assuming about 3% growth for the US in the 2018-2025 timeframe.)

If the growth rate is between 7.5-9.5% and the currency appreciation between 5.5%-7.5% per year and the US grows at 3% per year then China passes the USA beteen 2019 and 2022.

A 2005 internet discussion on possibilities and timeframes for China overtaking the US economy

Optical Microscope with 1-2 nanometer resolution

RESOLFT (reversible saturable optical fluorescent transitions) technology is breaking the century-old diffraction resolution barrier in conventional microscopy and allows for resolution of the size order of a dye molecule, i.e. a sharpness of one or two nanometers.

RESOLFT (reversible saturable optical fluorescent transitions) technology, a method providing molecular scale resolution with visible light and regular lenses for use in microscopy. While a number of technologies such as electron microscopy exist to visualize virus particles, subcellular structures and macromolecules, RESOLFT fluorescence microscopy for the first time enables researchers to observe these structures inside of living cells without destroying them.

a team of researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry in Göttingen led by Prof Dr Stefan Hell invented a method to overcome this barrier. The trick is done by using fluorescence marker molecules and two different light sources.

Fluorescence markers can be excited by light to send out fluorescent light, but light also can be used to extinguish ("quench") the fluorescence. In RESOLFT (reversible saturable optical fluorescent transitions) microscopy this principle is applied by illuminating a spot and subsequently quenching the fluorescence sent out by this spot in a way that the fluorescing area is reduced. This can be accomplished by over-saturating the quenching intensity.

As an example, the principle is applied in STED (Stimulated Emission Depletion) microscopy: A spot exciting fluorescence markers in a probe is superimposed by a doughnut-shaped quenching beam. As a result, the fluorescence is quenched everywhere in the focal spot except in the doughnut hole. By increasing the intensity of the doughnut-shaped beam, the fluorescent spot can be progressively narrowed down, in theory, even to the size of a molecule. For imaging, a probe is scanned by the ultra-sharp spot and the fluorescence intensities are then assembled by software.

Physorg discussed this work in 2005

Xirrus shows Wifi with speeds up to 4.8 Gbps

Xirrus, maker of high capacity long range Wi-Fi access points, is showing a new, faster array that uses 802.11n to provide gigabit throughput.

The new access point modules for 11n require an upgrade to Xirrus' ArrayOS platform software. When upgraded, each radio in the array will be able to handle speeds up to 300M bps. Each array can handle up to 16 radios.

The array includes a switching fabric designed to handle the 11n speeds with the software upgrade. The fabric will handle up to 2G bps, and the array includes two Gigabit Ethernet ports for access to the wired network.

Xirrus also announced two related developments. One is a power over Gigabit Ethernet solution that makes installation of the Xirrus arrays easier because it eliminates a separate power run to the device.

Carbon nanotube body armor

The New Scientist reports that Nanocomp, a start-up based in New Hampshire, has made carbon nanotube into light weight body armor.

Nanocomp graphic of target applications

Nanoyarn

Nanofelt

"The trick is that our nanotubes are much longer than usual - millimetres in length rather than micrometres," says Peter Antoinette, who heads the company.

Antoinette says that using longer nanotubes allows them to bind together more effectively. Although Nanocomp has not revealed precise details of its manufacturing process, it has disclosed that the tubes are made through chemical vapour deposition, which involves condensing carbon out of a gas.

The resulting nanotubes form a kind of unwoven matting, which is treated chemically so that the tubes are aligned, giving the material has extra strength in the direction of alignment.

The company's prototype production method can make sheets roughly 1 metre by 3 metres, but it hopes to be able to make bigger sheets within a year or so. The company can also make nanotube thread by spinning nanotubes during chemical vapour deposition, instead of simply letting them settle.

David Lashmore, the company's co-founder and chief technical officer, says the textile is seven times stronger than steel of the same weight.

The US Army's Natick Soldier Center in Massachusetts, US, which part-funds Nanocomp, hopes to use the textile to reduce the weight of bulletproof armour and make it better at resisting heat. Antoinette also suggests that aerospace companies might reduce the weight of aircraft by replacing conventional wiring with nanotube threads.

This is still fourteen times weaker than the 100 times stronger than steel potential of carbon nanotubes.

Superthread fibers may be far closer to full strength carbon nanotubes Others are also working on carbon nanotube textiles such as Rice University.

Ray Baughman, director of the Nanotech Institute at the University of Texas at Dallas, has been a leader in nanoyarn

May 23, 2007

Beyond the Three Gorges Dam more Hydro projects in China

According to official chinese government figures, total national hydro generating capacity will reach 270GW by 2020 China’s total hydroelectric generating capacity stood at 115GW in 2006, before the first phase of the Three Gorges hydro power plant was completed. The 155GW of hydro power to be added between 2006-2020 is the equivalent of adding 1.2 Three Gorges dam every two years. Once the entire project is completed, probably in 2008, it will have generating capacity of 18.2GW, far higher than any other hydro venture. The 26 power generating units, which each have generating capacity of 700MW, are designed to produce a total of 84.7BkWh/year. Electricity produced by the Three Gorges hydro power plant goes on stream at a price of 0.25 yuan per kWh.

China rivers

The Yellow River Hydroelectric Development Corporation’s scheme on the Yellow river will become the world’s second biggest hydro scheme with capacity of 15.8GW. Centred on a 250m high dam in Qinghai Province, which will be finished in 2010, the venture will generate 10BkWh of electricity a year.

Construction work on the 12.6GW Xiluodu project on the Jianshajiang river began in December 2005. The scheme has been developed to increase electricity supplies to Yunnan and Sichuan provinces in the west of the country, although new transmission links are planned that will enable surplus electricity to be marketed in the more industrialised east. Development costs are put at 50.34B yuan (US$6.2B), with the first turbine due to be installed by June 2012 and the entire project completed by 2015.

The Jianshajiang, which is a tributary of the Yangtze and which is also known as the Jinsha, will also host another major hydro project. The 6GW Xiangjiaba venture in the southwest of the country was originally proposed in 1957 and work was scheduled to begin at the end of 2005 but construction did not commence until November 2006. Investment costs are estimated at US$3.68B and around 89,000 people will have to move, as villages and farmland will be lost to make way for the project’s reservoir. Xiangjiaba, which is also being developed by CTGPC, is scheduled for completion in 2015 and production is expected to reach 31BkWh a year.

Wei Xikan, the deputy director of CTGPC’s planning and development department, has revealed that apart from the Xiangjiaba and Xiluodu projects, twelve other hydro schemes are planned for the middle and upper reaches of the Jianshajiang before 2020, including the Wudongde and Baihetan projects. Total additional generating capacity from the twelve is estimated at 58GW. Indeed, Chinese media sources insist that 100 new hydro schemes will be built on the upper reaches of the Yangtze and its tributaries in the long term. If these various ventures are actually put in place, they will make the river one of the most heavily developed in the world

The Renewable Energy Law, which came into force in January 2006, sets a target of producing 10% of all electricity by renewable means by 2020, but even if that is achieved the hydro sector will continue to account for far more low emission capacity than all solar, wind and biomass projects combined.

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Nuclear is projected to account for 4% of electricity at about 40GW in 2020.

CapGemini projects that China will have 1230GW of electrical power by 2020. Up from about 600GW in 2006

According to Capgemini, China’s electricity market will require an investment of $590 billion to deliver a total installed capacity of 1230 GW by 2020.

While utility sector investment may present some barriers, opportunities for equipment suppliers are plenty. The need for 48 GW of new capacity each year means that China will continue to be a key market.

By 2020 the country aims to have installed 30 GW of wind power, but this, says Capgemini, is unrealistic, requiring an annual growth rate of over 25 per cent.

There is also potential for the development of natural gas fired capacity in China, says Capgemini, which believes that the exploitation and transportation of gas in China will have moved on by 2020, allowing the capacity of gas fired power plants to have risen to 85 GW, or 6.9 per cent of total installed capacity.

To achieve its stated objective of 40 GW of nuclear capacity by 2020, China requires an investment of $49 billion. More than 25 sites are planned for the next 15 years, with each site consisting of 4-6 units, each above 1000 GW.

China would have about 35% power from non-fossil fuel sources in 2020. 270GW Hydro, 40GW nuclear, 123GW from renewables if targets are reached. 42% of power would be from non-coal sources if natural gas usage is increased as projected.

Projected spending in China on power by source until 2020 in billions of USD

The Jinshajiang River is a main sand producer in the Yingtze River. So the dam there is projected to reduce by 34% sand buildup in the Three Gorges area

China also has a goal of increasing river shipping from 10 million tons per year to 50 million on the Yangtze

River shipping cheaper and more efficient (544-1290 ton miles per gallon) than rail (400-500 ton miles) and can be over 10 times cheaper than trucks (60-80 ton miles)

China Economy until 2015 and beyond

China may allow the yuan to appreciate at 7.5% per year which would be faster than the 5.5% rate allowed since September, 2006 The yuan has moved from 8.27 to 7.6 since it was floated in July 2005.

China GDP stood at 20.94 trillion yuan (USD2.7 trillion) at the end of 2006.

Color coded view of the current economy of China's provinces. richer provinces are darker green, poorer are lighter green and transition to yellow.

Projected China's economy with a 7.5% annual strengthening of the yuan. With the current 11% growth rate easing to 8%.

Year	GDP(yuan)	Yuan per USD	GDP trillionUSD
2006	20.94	7.8	2.7
2007	23.24	7.4	3.1
2008	25.57	6.9	3.7
2009	28.12	6.4	4.4
2010	30.66	6.0	5.2
2011	33.11	5.5	6.0
2012	35.76	5.1	6.9
2013	38.62	4.8	8.1
2014	41.71	4.5	9.4
2015	45.04	4.1	10.9

Guangdong, a southern chinese province near Hong Kong, is projected to have a 4 trillion yuan economy in 2011 This would be USD722 billion at the projected exchange rate of 5.5. This is in the range of the current size of the Australian or Mexican economies.

The Energy Information Adminstration (EIA) has to project economic growth in order to project future energy usage. They have scenarios which project China to grow as follows (PPP is in trillions of USD) The World Bank has the PPP equivalent of 1.8 Yuan equal to one USD in 2003. The 7.5% appreciation rate would have the Yuan converge to that PPP rate in 2027-2029. According to the EIA projection China will have a larger economy (PPP) than North America (USA, Canada and Mexico) in 2015. A slight extrapolation of the EIA numbers shows China's economy exceeding the USA + OECD Europe in 2035. China would be larger than India and the USA combined in 2030.

Year	Low PPP China	Low US	High PPP China	High US	High World
2010	12.8	12.4	13.2	13.2	73.9
2015	17.2	13.8	18.7	15.6	92.4
2020	22.5	15.7	25.6	18.5	114.7
2025	28.4	17.4	33.9	22	141.3
2030	35.3	19.3	44.3	25.8	173.6

Current GDP per capita of China's provinces. The darker the red the higher the GDP per capita.

China would be moving up to 22,000 to 30,000 per capita PPP by 2030. The US would be at 50,000 to 60,000 per capita PPP. The Japanese yen appreciated from 360 yen to the USD in 1971 up to 83 yen to the USD in 1995. More than a 400% increase and an almost solid appreciation before floating between 90 and 140 yen to the USD.

China will be the largest trading nation and will move up to 25% of the world economy in 2030. The Yuan will be on par with the Euro and the USD as reserve currencies.

I think Taiwan will cut an economically prudent deal within 8 years with China. I think it is in both of their best interests. A slightly tighter coupling than the European Union arrangement makes sense.

Current and recent space launch costs

Here is pdf that reports on the status, activity and prices of the commercial space launch industry

Long March 3A, 3B and 4B rocket launches had $50 million prices for the vehicle.
The Long March 3B can get 11.2 tons to LEO A $2030/lb price to LEO.
The Long March 5 will be able to launch 25 tons into LEO.

Proton M rocket price is listed at $70 million.

A Proton M can launch 3 to 3.2 tonnes (6600 to 7050 lbm) into geostationary orbit or 5.5 tonnes (12,100 lbm) into a geostationary transfer orbit. It can place up to 22 tonnes (48,500 lbm) in low Earth orbit with a 51.6-degree inclination.
The price to LEO is $1443/lb.

Proton rockets seem to cost about 70 million per launch

Proton SL-12 is listed at $72.5 million and can launch about 20 tons to LEO.

Soyuz 2 is listed at $40 million

Ariane 5 ECA is listed at a price of $140 million. It can lift 21,000kg to LEO. This is a price of $3,030/lb to LEO.

Here is a chart of prices from 2001 to get to LEO

Information on the Delta IV rocket

Here is a one page pdf that shows that the Delta IV heavy can be expanded to 100 tons to LEO

Here is a discussion of possible SpaceX plans for heavy lifters

Some other rocket musings from the ambivalent engineer blog

Norway plans Thorium nuclear reactors

Norwegian companies, Bergen Energi, have applied for licenses to build a Thorium-based nuclear power plant.

Hat tip to Nuclear notes

UK plans ten new nuclear reactors

The United Kingdom turns around from plan to phase out nuclear power and will build ten new generation reactors for a cost of £1.2 billion ($2.4 bn) each.

Electricity grid connections make Hinkley Point and Sizewell the two sites best suited to accommodate either a 1600-megawatt single reactor, or a 3200-MW twin-reactor station. Seven other coastal sites are also given the green light for single reactors: Bradwell, Dungeness, Hartlepool and Heysham in England, Hunterston and Torness in Scotland, and Wylfa in Wales.

Previous projections in May for 266 reactors does not include any in the UK and counts at least ten fewer plants than India plans to build by 2020 It seems that about 50 new reactors are being planned every 3 months in 2007. It will be interesting to see how the numbers actually work out for projects to be built and completed by 2020 and 2030. I think a doubling of the current 437 reactors by 2020 is possible.

May 22, 2007

Canada nuclear oilsands update

Royal Dutch Shell PLC is looking at nuclear power to support its experimental oil sands ambitions, on which it has already placed a bet of more than half a billion dollars.

Note: This looks like a done deal. Shell is the customer. The local town does not oppose it. The provincial and federal government on board. The 60 billion barrels in this one area is close to the level of Venezuela's oil reserves. Four times bigger than Qatar's 15 billion barrels

Theoildrum has posted my article on Canada's nuclear oilsands

This is further follow up to a study of how many nuclear reactors will be needed by the oilsands

The company, through a secretive Calgary-based subsidiary called Sure Northern Energy Ltd., is working to unlock an estimated 60 billion barrels of raw bitumen - more than 100 kilometres west of the oil sands epicentre around Fort McMurray in northeastern Alberta.

The prize Royal Dutch is chasing is bitumen trapped in hard-rock limestone, rather than the conventional oil sands around Fort McMurray where bitumen is mixed with dirt and sandstone.

Royal Dutch is working on electric heaters below ground to loosen up the gooey bitumen to draw it to the surface through wells.

The firm is trying to commercialize what it calls a "novel thermal recovery process" invented by Shell's technology arm.

Husky Energy Inc., which has publicly expressed an interest in harnessing nuclear power, is the other major player in the area, and has said it wants to partner with Royal Dutch, which is leading the new technology.

Royal Dutch's Sure Northern unit didn't return several calls seeking comment. It is the only company actively working on bitumen in limestone. Other firms in the conventional oil sands, such as Total SA of France, have expressed interest in nuclear power.

One unnamed company is looking to take 70 per cent of the output from Energy Alberta's proposed $6.2-billion twin nuclear reactor that would start producing 2,200 megawatts in 2016. The reactor design exists only on a drawing board and the amount of power is equal to about a fifth of Alberta's electricity supply.

Industry players have wondered about those locations, given their distance from Fort McMurray, but both sites are relatively close to Royal Dutch's limestone ambitions.

Last week, Energy Alberta held a public meeting on the proposed plant in Whitecourt, drawing about 300 people, with less than five dissenters among the crowd, according to Mr. Henuset. A nuclear reactor promises construction jobs for about 2,000 people with as many as 1,000 permanent, high-tech jobs.

India and China's nuclear power

30 Gigawatts by 2020 is considered achievable (supply chain constraints) but 40 gigawatts by 2020 is the target India and Brazil have 80% of the known Thorium reserves and Thorium nuclear fission is India's long term energy strategy.

Funding projects would not be a problem as NPCIL is currently sitting on cash reserve of Rs 10,000-11,000 crore. We are earning four-figure net profit (Rs 1,571 crore for the year ended March 2007) and we are confident we will continue this way till 2020.

If India is able to achieve the 30 GW target that would exceed the current projections that the world Nuclear Association (WNA) has for India of about 21GW The WNA projections are for 266 reactors that are being built (30), planned (74) or proposed (162).

Those May, 2007 projections are an increase from february, 2007 of 3 being built, 12 planned and 32 proposed. A 21% increase from February. 266 reactors versus 219 reactors are now in the development pipeline.

China will invest US$50 billion in nuclear power until 2020 to achieve the goal of nuclear power supplying 4% of China's electrical energy needs China is close to a deal with Westinghouse for 4 nuclear reactors to be operating by 2013 China plans to have 28 more nuclear reactors operating by 2020 to go with the fifteen that are in use or under construction.

Wired has similar conclusions of NASA problems

Wired has an article by Gregg Easterbrook which discusses the problems of NASA I mostly agree with his analysis but his 4th place recommended priority Figure out a way to replace today's chemical rockets with a much cheaper way to reach Earth orbit should be first.

I also believe that laser arrays (preferrably with mirrors), magnetic launch systems (coilguns, magnetic rails, magbeam for orbital boost) and tether systems are the technologies that should be pursued I believe that the laser arrays take advantage of the rapid improvement in lasers. Solid state lasers that had less than 15 KW of maximum power in 2003 will have about 100kw in 2007

The space review also has an article indicating the importance and need for space based solar power However, I believe we can skip the development of lunar mining by using te simplified construction methods of inflation of structures (magnetically or with gas) and formation flying. This allow for simple but large thin film structures to be fully constructed on earth and launched and deployed in orbit.

May 21, 2007

Biological computers able to decode and mark cellular activity

From nanowerk, Harvard and Princeton researchers have developed steps toward biological computers These machines can convert cellular signals and activity into easily detectable markers.

1. The entire computer (device able to perform boolean logic) is “encoded” by genes made of engineered DNA molecules.
2.The genes enter the cell using special delivery techniques and interact with the existing cellular activity.
3. Components of the computer, generated from its genes, are short hairpin RNA molecules known as shRNA and messenger ribonucleic acid molecules known as mRNA.
4. Both mRNA molecules generate the same output protein. shRNA molecules are designed to target and destroy the mRNA molecules using short color-coded mRNA stretches (sequences). They “hitchhike” on the biological mechanism known as RNA interference (RNAi).
5. Dicer enzyme, present in the cell, binds to shRNA and cleaves the loop-shaped tail
6. Another cellular enzyme, called RISC, binds to the dicer-processed shRNA and unwinds it, capturing one of the two strands
7. RISC bound to the RNA strand may now bind to the target region in the mRNA. The nucleotide sequence of the RNA strand guides RISC to its destination
8. Combination of RISC activity and other cellular mechanisms lead to the degradation of the mRNA.
9. All three shRNAs are engaged in a similar process, and each of them targets a different region within mRNA molecules, as indicated by black blunt-end arrows
10. Ultimately, any logic algorithm may be implemented using appropriate extensions.

Evaluating Boolean logic equations inside cells, these molecular automata will detect anything from the presence of a mutated gene to the activity of genes within the cell. The biocomputers’ “input” is RNA, proteins and chemicals found in the cytoplasm; “output” molecules indicating the presence of the telltale signals are easily discernable with basic laboratory equipment.

“Currently, we have no tools for reading cellular signals,” Yaakov Benenson says. “These biocomputers can translate complex cellular signatures, such as activities of multiple genes, into a readily observed output. They can even be programmed to automatically translate that output into a concrete action, meaning they could either be used to label a cell for a clinician to treat or they could trigger therapeutic action themselves.”

Benenson and his colleagues demonstrate in their Nature Biotechnology paper that biocomputers can work in human kidney cells in a culture. Research into the system’s ability to monitor and interact with intracellular cues such as mutations and abnormal gene levels is still in progress.

Further info:
Here is animation of the molecular automata

Surveying expected Hard Drive Improvements

Toshiba claims they will be able to increase harddrive density by 10 times over 5 years using Nanocontact Magnetic Resistance, or NC-MR NC-MR uses an enormous difference in magnetoresistance which is achieved when two magnetic materials are situated close together and connected by a contact point that narrows to around 1nm. A prototype thin-film NC-MR structure fabricated by the research group exhibited a magnetoresistance ratio of 140% a room temperature.

Fijitsu claims that they will increase hard drive density by 5 times over 2 years using a new vertical magnetic recording tech based on crystalline magnesium oxide.

Seagate is promising the start of a transition to 37.5 terabyte drives starting in 2010 using HAMR(heat-assisted magnetic recording)

Other sources indicate the transition to HAMR will not start until 2012

Hard drives need to improve rapidly to stay ahead of faster and more energy efficient flash memory from Samsung and others

China learning how to invest

China's state investment company announced on Sunday it would take a $3 billion stake *just under 10%) in Blackstone Group LP Blackstone is one of the leading global private investment firms.

China will learn how to structure and value private equity deals, as well as gaining a network of well connected people. "The Blackstone deal is as much about education on how to invest as it is about the actual investment itself," Oberweis [president of Oberweis Asset Management Inc] said. "From the perspective of Blackstone, what better way to increase your penetration into the fastest-growing, major economy in the world than to have that government invested in you?"

This is following up the establishment of China's investment fund

Secure superconducting power grids

The EEtimes reports that a secure superconducting power grid is being piloted and developed for New York

Superconducting cable

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) will provide up to $25 million of the total project cost of $39.3 million to develop technology for "Secure Super Grids." The new grids will use customized HTS wires, power cables and ancillary controls to deliver more power while suppressing power surges that can disrupt service.

Testing of the first secure grid system is scheduled to be completed by the end of 2008. The project's next phase will focus on deployment of the first grid system at an undisclosed New York City location.

American Superconductor will supply HTS wire, known as 344 superconductors, for the project, and will contract with Southwire Co. for cable and termination designs as well as the manufacture of superconductor cable. Commissioning of the 13-kilovolt HTS cable system is expected in early 2010

Superconducting grid

Videos that describe project hydra are here

Here is a pdf that describes the benefits of a superconducting power grid. Up ten times the power can be transmitted when the current copper wire is replaced with the same size superconducting cable. Power can be switched in milliseconds.

Related reading:
A past article discussed the benefits of superconducting motors and generators

May 20, 2007

Early nanomedicine helping to regenerate nerves

Nanofiber scaffolds can help nerves grow 4 millimeters in 5 days and
a method developed at the University of Miami shows how magnetic nanoparticles (MNPs) may be used to create mechanical tension that stimulates the growth and elongation of axons of the central nervous system neurons.

Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley have developed a technology that has the potential to serve as a better alternative than currently available synthetic nerve grafts. The graft material is composed entirely of aligned nanoscale polymer fibers. These polymer fibers act as physical guides for regenerating nerve fibers. They have also developed a way to make these aligned nanofibers bioactive by attaching various biochemicals directly onto the surfaces of the nanofibers. Thus, the bioactive aligned nanofiber technology mimics the nerve autograft by providing both physical and biochemical cues to enhance and direct nerve growth.

This technology has been tested by culturing rat nerve tissue ex vivo on our bioactive aligned nanofiber scaffolds. When the nerve tissue was cultured on unaligned nanofibers there was no nerve fiber growth onto the scaffolds. However, on aligned nanofiber scaffolds, they not only observed nerve fibers growing from the tissue but the nerve fibers were aligned in the same orientation as the nanofibers. Furthermore, when there were biochemicals present on the nanofibers, the nerve fiber growth was enhanced 5 fold. In a matter of just 5 days, nerve fibers had extended 4 millimeters from the nerve tissue in a bipolar fashion on the bioactive aligned nanofiber scaffolds. Thus, this technology can induce, enhance and direct nerve fiber regeneration in a straight and organized manner.

May 18, 2007

Scarcity will not be completely eliminated

This is an interesting lengthy article about the net economy and scarcity in general Brad deLong points to the last part of the first ariticle,that describes why scarcity will not be completely eliminated

The scarcity could be greatly reduced using advanced technology such as molecular nanotechnology.

This is expanding upon the cornucopian view

Here is a discussion of the Cornucopian versus New Malthusian perspectives.

I would be classifid as a Cornucopian. I agree that there are physical limits, but they are a lot farther off than New Malthusian's believe. I also think the steady state on earth plan that the New Malthusian's promote is a very bad idea.

With advanced technology we are not near the population carrying capacity of the earth. I believe that the carrying capacity of the earth is over 100 billion people This would be a carrying capacity where most of the area on the earth can be left for nature. We would and should change the primary energy infrastructure to improved nuclear fission (thorium molten salt), nuclear fusion or space based solar power. We would should also use nanotechnology and other means to reduce pollution and waste to neglible levels.

We could also drastically lower the footprint and sustainability by using superior food production. Scale up test tube meat to industrial levels and create superior hydroponics for consumed plants and create sustainable aquaculture.

I believe that we will be able expand into the solar system to allow for a carrying capacity of 10 quadrillion (10^15) people.

We will be able to get into space

The technology will be there. We still have to do a lot of hard work and make the right choices.

Aluminum instead of gasoline to power cars

There is a proposal to use aluminum to power cars instead of gasoline. The plan is to use pellets of aluminum to generate hydrogen as needed to power a fuel cell. The aluminum gets converted to alumina in the process. The alumina can be recycled from aluminum to alumina. Based on the info the mileage is 1 mile per pound of aluminum.

This is a poor proposal. If we scale it up to all cars we would be moving 140 million tons of aluminum per week to and from cars and charging facilities. To get the aluminum part of the system cost competitive with gasoline we need expensive fuel cells. It would be better to get plug in hybrids and transition to all electrical.

There was also a storage system breakthrough for holding gases of most any kind. It stores a target of 180 times the volume at about 500psi. The gas storage system is based on corn cobs turned into brickets.

A midsize car with a full tank of aluminum-gallium pellets, which amounts to about 350 pounds of aluminum, could take a 350-mile trip and it would cost $60, assuming the alumina is converted back to aluminum on-site at a nuclear power plant."

If I put gasoline in a tank, I get six kilowatt hours per pound, or about two and a half times the energy than I get for a pound of aluminum. So I need about two and a half times the weight of aluminum to get the same energy output, but I eliminate gasoline entirely, and I am using a resource that is cheap and abundant in the United States. If only the energy of the generated hydrogen is used, then the aluminum-gallium alloy would require about the same space as a tank of gasoline, so no extra room would be needed, and the added weight would be the equivalent of an extra passenger, albeit a pretty large extra passenger."

For 800 million cars one would need 140 million tons of aluminum for full tanks for all cars. So the actual amount of aluminum/alumina in a system of rotating material some in tanks, some being charged) would need to be three to five times as much, but their can be home or "gas station" recharging. Ideally you do not want to be transporting a lot of alumina/aluminum back and forth large distances to centralized recharging stations. If we did then the recharging stations should be in every city, town, community.

About 27 million tons of aluminum are produced each per year The aluminum is not consumed in the proposed process but is transmuted into alumina.

There are globally 23 billion tons of bauxite reserves

Aluminum production is energy intensive process but it would only be done once. Then the aluminum would be part of a closed loop process to make hydrogen in cars and then get recharged and stripped of the extra oxygen.

Aluminium electrolysis with the Hall-Héroult process consumes a lot of energy, but alternative processes were always found to be less viable economically and/or ecologically. The world-wide average specific energy consumption is approximately 15±0.5 kilowatt-hours per kilogram of aluminium produced from alumina. (52 to 56 MJ/kg). The most modern smelters reach approximately 12.8 kW·h/kg (46.1 MJ/kg). Reduction line current for older technologies are typically 100 to 200 kA. State-of-the-art smelters operate with about 350 kA. Trials have been reported with 500 kA cells.

Recovery of the metal via recycling has become an important facet of the aluminium industry. Recycling involves melting the scrap, a process that uses only five percent of the energy needed to produce aluminium from ore.[8] Recycling was a low-profile activity until the late 1960s, when the growing use of aluminium beverage cans brought it to the public consciousness.

Fuel cells are still over $3000/kw If I need fuel cells to allow me to go 80 miles in one hour. Then the fuel cell would need to provide 200 kWh. So the fuel cells still look too expensive. If it was part of hybrid system then hydrogen fuel cell part could be shrunk. The costs of this approach would need to be reduced for all components for it to be viable.

How much water is needed to provide the hydrogen for the alumina to convert?

The most accurate way to determine this would be to use the gas law. Start with the amount of hydrogen needed and then convert to the equivalent amount of water.

I will shortcut this and use the standard that 180 times the volume of the gas tank is needed. A site with possibly useful conversion rates on hydrogen from water 34 pounds of hydrogen has the energy content of 15 gallons of gasoline

1.2 tablespoons (one mole of water) makes 22.42 liters of H2 gas and
11.21 liters of O2 gas.

250 liters of gas to fill a 60 gallon tank.
11 tablespoons to fill the tank but multiply by 180 concentration.

256 tablespoons to a gallon
So about 8 gallons of water to equal a 15 gallon gas tank.

Artificial and adjustable nanofluid channels

Nanowerk has a spotlight on artificial adjustable nanofluid channels

Flow of fluorescein molecules through an array of five tunable elastomeric nanochannels and their accumulation at an air-filled microscale compartment. Running horizontally at the top is an air-filled microchannel. The nanochannels are triangular and are 80 nanometers high from base to top corner and 600 nm wide at the base (Image: Dr. Takayama)

"Our method of fabricating nanochannels is very simple" Dr. Shuichi Takayama explains to Nanowerk. "We do it by stretching a piece of surface treated rubber. People may have similar experiences where they have stretched an old rubber band and seen cracks form. We just do this in a finer, more controlled manner to make nanochannels. It does not require any of the typical expensive equipment needed to create nanostructures, such as e-beams or cleanrooms. Our tuneable nanochannels are unique in being able to adjust its cross-sectional size."

"We believe that our approach can be extended to higher levels of functionality through the integration of parallel and serial operations, sophisticated optics and a wealth of polymer chemistry" Takayama concludes.

Trillion pixel image created

Aperio makes first trillion pixel image created

Consisting of a 225 pathology slides of breast tissue, the 143GB image vastly exceeds the 4GB limit imposed by the original TIFF format while retaining backwards compatibility. The new format will be open source.

The company says the technology’s stupendous image resolution makes it possible to create spectacularly detailed images of blood, tissue and bone marrow and has been compared to Google Earth when zooming in and out.

Scanning obviously requires specialised technology, in this case Aperio's ScanScope slide scanning system is used to create the digital images of entire microscope slides at gigapixel resolutions. The company says this process takes only minutes and produces digital slide images with dimensions that routinely exceed 100,000 x 100,000 pixels.

In related news, 2,045 images were stitched together to make a 13 gigapixel panorama A camera perched on the roof of a building at 7th Avenue and 110th Street in New York City panned and tilted, capturing the skyline from 4:43 p.m. to 6:53 p.m.

A website harlem 13 gigapixels presents the result

Related articles:
Avoiding jpeg compression to get 10 times better resolution

A survey of currently available high resolution cameras

A chip with 111 million pixels

Long range laser surveillance

Laser surveillance of reflective tags offers high precision and long range tracking alternative to short range RFIDs

Using low-cost reflective tags placed on objects, LBIMS maps the precise location of high-value items. The laser can scan many points per second and can detect small changes - less than a centimeter - in the reflected signal, meaning tampering can be immediately detected.

The precision of the system is made possible by a high-resolution two-axis laser scanner capable of looking at a 60-degree field of view in 0.0005-degree increments, dividing the field of view into more than 10 billion individual pointing locations. A camera with comparable resolution over the same field of view would require a 10,000-megapixel detector.

Tests performed at the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, Austria, and at the Joint Research Center in Ispra, Italy, have shown LBIMS to be relatively impervious to various attacks designed to foil the system. The Joint Research Center is involved in the development and testing of highly sophisticated laser scanning systems for a variety of applications. Even tests in highly reflective rooms such as one with stainless steel walls proved no challenge for LBIMS.

Comparing the added energy from non-fossil fuel sources

Nnadir at dailykos has another great observation which compares the increased power per year from 1993 to 2005 of non-fossil fuel sources in the United States

The rate of increase in units of energy, delivered as electrical power per year in the period between 1993 and 2005 (12 years). The units of this calculation will be thousand megawatt-hours/per year.

Wood (biomass): 96 thousand megawatt-hours/per year.

Waste: - 259 thousand megawatt-hours/per year. Negative number.

Geothermal: - 190 thousand megawatt-hours/per year. Negative number.

Solar: (Usually everybody's favorite): +8

Wind (Another favorite): 1345 thousand megawatt-hours/per year.

Overall, renewable energy in the United States has increased at a rate of 1000 thousand megawatt-hours/per year.

The nuclear energy figure is 16,203 thousand megawatt-hours per year for nuclear even without building a new plant. Where did all this energy come from if no new plants were built? Improved operations mostly.

So nuclear power has been the fastest way to displace fossil fuels by a large margin. It will and should still be a major part of the solution to the problem of displacing fossil fuel.

Recent work from MIT indicates that existing nuclear plants could be modified to safely generate 50% more energy. This can be done by changing the shape of the fuel from rods to cylinders and by adding nanoparticles to the water. A power uprating application takes about a 18-24 month to be processed.

A robust infrastructure

An interview on wired about creating a robust society that is able to resist system shocks The key is to create community infrastructure in a box. Enable the quick replacement of infrastructure and for the grid to be able to contain failure to small regions.

New Toyota cars will be 100% hybrid in 2020

Toyota plans to go 100% hybrid by 2020 Takimoto also made the bold claim that by 2020, hybrids will be the standard drivetrain and account for “100 percent” of Toyota’s cars as they would be no more expensive to produce than a conventional vehicle.
Masatami Takimoto, who said cost cutting on the electric motor, battery and inverter were all showing positive results and by the time Toyota’s sales goal of one million hybrids annually is reached, it “expect margins to be equal to gasoline cars”.

Resource investor discusses the impact of a large shift to hybrids using the likely materials of lithium-ion and cobalt

In 2006, Toyota made a record-setting 9.3 million vehicles including a little more than 300,000 Priuses. All other manufacturers together made enough hybrids so that the total produced globally was around 500,000. Last year, the world’s production of new lithium for all uses was in balance with demand. If we assume that in 2020 Toyota, alone, will produce 12 million vehicles and that all of them will be powered by a hybrid system using a lithium-ion technology battery pack, and, if we assume that those battery packs each contain, for argument’s sake, 20 pounds of lithium, then Toyota alone in 2020 will require around 240 million pounds of lithium annually or 120,000 tonnes per year. In addition each lithium-ion battery pack, if it were built today, would need a few pounds of cobalt. Even one pound per car or truck will require 6,000 tonnes per year just for Toyota’s production in 2020.

The world’s largest producer of lithium today is Chile’s SQM [NYSE:SQM]. Also there’s MetallGesellschaft's (MG) American subsidiary Foote Mineral (or Cyprus-Foote Mineral) in Nevada.

Today’s entire world production used primarily for chemical use, not batteries, would only be fraction, perhaps as large as third, of just Toyota’s needs under their announcement for 2020. There is no way that the world’s other car companies could allow Toyota to be the sole producer of high performance hybrid vehicles, so we should multiply the needs of the global OEM automotive industry in 2020, under this scenario, by around 8.

That means if all of the world’s OEM automotive manufacturers were to begin now and to, as Toyota has announced, ramp up their changeover from pure internal combustion engine power trains to hybrids by 2020 the world would need an additional amount of lithium each year beginning around 2012 of as much as is being today produced annually! Under this scenario the world would run out of known reserves in 2020. We would have used up all of the world’s recoverable lithium

So the battery technology must continue to be improved and made more efficient with things like virus-batteries for nanostructured batteries. or carbon nanotube ultracapacitors

If Toyota delivers and the other car makers follow then most of world's production of cars could be hybrid or even plug-in hybrid in 2020. By 2035-2040 most of the worlds cars could be converted as the older cars are retired. One important issue will be the drivetrain of the new $2000-5000 cars being made in China and India. I believe that those cheap cars will also be converted to high efficiency since the owners would not be able to afford high operating costs.

Current reserve estimates are 6.2 million tons of lithium, with about half located in Bolivia

Alternative batteries are sodium nickel chloride and zinc-air, both of which offer comparable or greater energy density than lithium without the attendant safety or resource depletion issues. After iron, aluminum and copper, zinc is the most commonly used metal by modern society. A 2005 USGS estimate placed American zinc reserves a 30,000,000 metric tons and world reserves, excluding the US, at 220 million metric tons.

Here is an 8 page pdf of the 2005 US geological survey report on Lithium

May 17, 2007

Polariton Superfluid: Laser version of superconductors in new form of matter

Physicists at the University of Pittsburgh have demonstrated a new form of matter that melds the characteristics of lasers with those of the world's best electrical conductors - superconductors.

This is another example of more than one new state of matter being created every year The most familiar examples of states of matter are solids, liquids, and gases; the most common state of matter in the universe is plasma. Less familiar phases include: quark-gluon plasma; Bose-Einstein condensates and fermionic condensates; strange matter; superfluids and supersolids, and possibly string-net liquids.

The new state (polariton superfluid) is a solid filled with a collection of energy particles known as polaritons that have been trapped and slowed, explained lead investigator David Snoke, an associate professor in the physics and astronomy department in Pitt's School of Arts and Sciences.

Using specially designed optical structures with nanometer-thick layers-which allow polaritons to move freely inside the solid-Snoke and his colleagues captured the polaritons in the form of a superfluid. In superfluids and in their solid counterparts, superconductors, matter consolidates to act as a single energy wave rather than as individual particles.

In superconductors, this allows for the perfect flow of electricity. In the new state of matter demonstrated at Pitt-which can be called a polariton superfluid-the wave behavior leads to a pure light beam similar to that from a laser but is much more energy efficient.

The polariton superfluid is more stable at higher temperatures, and may be capable of being demonstrated at room temperature in the near future.

Snoke's polariton trap was devised with a technique similar to that used for superfluids made of atoms in a gaseous state known as the Bose-Einstein condensate.

Further reading:
Wikipedia discusses polatitons as quasiparticles resulting from strong coupling of electromagnetic waves with an electric or magnetic dipole-carrying excitation.

Wikipedia discusses polaritronics as an intermediate regime between photonics and sub-microwave electronics. In this regime, signals are carried by an admixture of electromagnetic and lattice vibrational waves known as phonon-polaritons, rather than currents or photons.

Nanoglue could be used for smaller computer chips

Nanoglue, self assembled layers for connecting two objects, could help make extremely tiny computer chips. The organic-based nanolayers are about a 1,000 times thinner than the thinnest organic-based glues. The glue has a backbone of carbon molecules. On one end of the chain is silica and oxygen, and on the other end is sulfur. These different-end molecules act as hooks that bind with other surfaces.

Ramanath topped off the chain with a thin layer of copper that acts as a protective coating to help keep the molecules intact.

This is a follow up to this article on the nanoglue

China is building three petaflop supercomputers by 2010

China is moving to front of supercomputing by going for at least two, most probably three, Petaflop supercomputers by 2010.

Beijing, will have one, most probably under the patronage of Chinese Academy of Science, where Lenovo is an incumbent with a large 1000-CPU Itanium Quadrics system right now. This will probably come on line first, since it is the central node of China National Grid.

The financial capital of Shanghai has a the go-ahead for another Petaflop, at its supercomputer centre. The incumbent there is (far less known) Dawning. Each of these is going ahead with 100+ TFLOP 'pilot' systems this year.

Galactic computing, set up by the well-known Steve Chen of ex-Cray fame, uses its base in the ever-prosperous city of Shenzhen, now the richest city of Guangdong province together with the capital Guangzhou.

Espected major nodes of China's supercomputer grid. Shenzhen is not on the plan but are funding their own supercomputer

There are several other national supercomputer grid projects.

The second stage of ChinaGrid project is from 2007 to 2010, covering 30 to 40 key universities in China. The focus will extend from computational grid applications to information service grid (e-information), including applications for a distance learning grid, digital Olympic grid, etc. The third stage will be from 2011 to 2015, extending the coverage of the ChinaGrid project to all the 100 key universities. The focus of the third stage grid application will be even more diverse, including instrument sharing (e-instrument).

The EU has the phase II of the EGEE Grid. It is built on the EU Research Network GÉANT and exploits Grid expertise generated by many EU, national and international Grid projects to date.

Japan has the National Research Grid Initiative NAREGI.

The USA has Teragrid. The TeraGrid 2005-2010: In August 2005, NSF's newly created Office of Cyberinfrastructure extended support for the TeraGrid with a $150 million set of awards for operation, user support and enhancement of the TeraGrid facility.

A list of completed grids is here
A Chinese company red Neuron has announced the completion of the Tensor MPU2016 High Performance Computing technology demonstration and development platform. It is a key part in reducing the cost of a gigaflop/sec to $250-750 by 2009.

The Tensor MPU2016, with 16 processor cards containing Freescale 8641D SoC (system on chip) processors and Xilinx Virtex-4FX FPGAs, is an ideal platform for companies which may be working on the development of high performance solutions for the embedded systems market. MPU or, Master Processing Unit, is a novel approach that provides high density and reliability while preserving CPU and interconnect flexibility. Initial performance tests resulted in achieving a HP Linpack benchmark score of 32 Gigaflops for a single chassis configuration, which triples the performance demonstrated by the prototype Tensor MPU1016 system produced by Red Neurons in the first quarter of 2007.

South Korea and Japan are also working on petaflop machines

LANL's plans to scale the IBM "Roadrunner" to petascale Linpack performance in a couple of years. Argonne National Laboratory has a 280-teraflop Blue Gene/L and intends to advance to a peak petaflop in a few years. So in 2010, China should have three petaflop supercomputers, Japan and the USA could each have two.

U.S. Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) selected IBM to design and build the world's first supercomputer to harness the immense power of the Cell Broadband Engine (Cell B.E.) processor aiming to produce a machine capable of a sustained speed of up to 1,000 trillion calculations per second, or one petaflop.

India is also developing a supercomputer that can reach one petaflop. The project is under the leadership of Dr. Karmarkar who invented the Karmarkar's algorithm. The Tata group of companies are funding the project.[14] CDAC is also building a supercomputer that can reach one petaflop by 2010

Folding@home is close to a petaflop of power

Japan already has MD-Grape 3 the worlds first petaflop+ computer

Singapore has put S$150 million into a quantum computing center.

Further reading:
Steve Chen is planning and being funded to build a supercomputer grid across China

Part II on Steve Chen

Here is information on what it will take and when we should expect zettaflop computing

Other petaflop computing projects in the USA and other places

The USA is making time on existing supercomputers more available

May 16, 2007

Water World Found In Front Of Nearby Star

A hot ice Neptune sized world with water has been found

The star GJ 436, a diminutive star (red dwarf) 30 light-years from the Sun, was known since 2004 to harbour a 22-Earth mass planet, orbiting 4 million kilometers from the star (0.03 Astronomical Units).

Measurements show that the planet has a diameter of about 50,000 km, four times that of the Earth. From the size and mass of the planet, the astronomers could infer that it is mainly composed of water. If the planet contained mostly hydrogen and helium – like Jupiter or Saturn – it would be much larger, and if it was made up of rock and iron like Earth, Mars and Venus, it would be much smaller.

This water world can either be surrounded by a light envelope of hydrogen and helium, like Neptune and Uranus, or be entirely surrounded by water, like most of Jupiter’s satellites. As the planet is close to its host star, its surface temperature is expected to be at least 300 C (600 F). The water in its atmosphere would therefore be in the form of steam. Inside, the water is crushed under intense pressure and adopts states unknown on Earth, except in physicist’s laboratories. Says Frédéric Pont: "water has more than a dozen solid states, only one of which is our familiar ice. Under very high pressure, water turns into other solid states denser than both ice and liquid water, just as carbon transforms into diamond under extreme pressures. Physicists call these exotic forms of water 'Ice VII' and 'Ice X'.

Centauri Dreams has coverage

Inexpensive, universal, super nanoglue

A new method allows a self-assembled molecular nanolayer to become a powerful nanoglue by "hooking" together any two surfaces that normally don’t stick well.

Unprotected, a nanolayer (green ball: silicon, blue: sulphur, red: carbon, white: hydrogen) would degrade or detach from a surface when heated to 400 degrees Celsius. But when topped with a thin copper film that binds strongly with the nanolayer, heat causes the nanolayer to form strong chemical bonds to the silica underlayer -- hooking or gluing the copper-silica "sandwich" together. This technique produces a sevenfold increase of the thin film sandwich’s adhesion strength and allows the nanolayer to withstand temperatures of at least 700 degrees Celsius. Both features are unexpected and unprecedented. This new ability to bond together nearly any two surfaces using nanolayers will benefit nanoelectronics and computer chip manufacturing. Other envisioned applications include coatings for turbines and jet engines, and adhesives for high-heat environments.

Because of their small size, these enhanced nanolayers will likely be useful as adhesives in a wide assortment of micro- and nanoelectronic devices where thicker adhesive layers just won’t fit.

Another unprecedented aspect of Ramanath’s discovery is that the sandwiched nanolayers continue to strengthen up to temperatures as high as 700 degrees Celsius. The ability of these adhesive nanolayers to withstand and grow stronger with heat could have novel industrial uses, such as holding paint on hot surfaces like the inside of a jet engine or a huge power plant turbine.

“The molecular glue is inexpensive – 100 grams cost about $35 – and already commercially available, which makes our method well-suited to today’s marketplace. Our method can definitely be scaled up to meet the low-cost demands of a large manufacturer,” he said.

Better genetic engineering and study of intracellular processes of plants

A team of Iowa State University plant scientists and materials chemists have successfully used nanotechnology to penetrate plant cell walls and simultaneously deliver a gene and a chemical that triggers its expression with controlled precision. Their breakthrough brings nanotechnology to plant biology and agricultural biotechnology, creating a powerful new tool for targeted delivery into plant cells.

Currently, scientists can successfully introduce a gene into a plant cell. In a separate process, chemicals are used to activate the gene’s function. The process is imprecise and the chemicals could be toxic to the plant. "With the mesoporous nanoparticles, we can deliver two biogenic species at the same time," Wang said. "We can bring in a gene and induce it in a controlled manner at the same time and at the same location. That’s never been done before."

And in the future, scientists could use the new technology to deliver imaging agents or chemicals inside cell walls. This would provide plant biologists with a window into intracellular events.

Carbon Nanotube Aeroegel Made with Optimizable Strength, Shape and Conductivity

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have created low-density aerogels made from carbon nanotubes, CNTs, that are capable of supporting 8,000 times their own weight.

The new material also combines the strength and ultra-light, heat-insulating properties of aerogels with the electrical conductivity of nanotubes. Aerogels are novel, semi-transparent, low-density materials created by replacing the liquid component of a gel with gas and are normally constructed from silicon dioxide or other organic polymers. They are currently used as ultra-light structural materials, radiation detectors and thermal insulators. The team also maintained control of the density, microscopic structure and shape of the CNT aerogels. The addition of polyvinyl alcohol created a more even dispersion of CNT throughout the aerogel, adding strength.

Grazing the scalp combined with Wnt proteins could cure baldness

Grazing the scalp and Wnt proteins could cure baldness.

The team cut out a square centimetre of skin from the backs of mice two weeks after their hair follicles had formed. After 14 to 19 days the wounds had closed and formed new. When the researchers added Wnt proteins - signalling molecules usually involved in embryonic development - the number of follicles doubled and the skin healed with less scarring. This suggests that wound healing may trigger an embryonic state in skin, says Cotsarelis. Surprisingly, the new follicles originate from stem cells that are not usually involved in creating hair follicles.

May 15, 2007

Engines of Creation predictions are not fanciful

An updated version of Engines of Creation is online

The Center for Responsible Nanotechnology (CRN), has an article that points out that the term "molecular nanotechnology" has been associated almost invariably with fantastic notions

like bloodstream nanobots, true universal assemblers (“meat machines”), and theoretically ubiquitous “utility fog.” Such concepts admittedly are fascinating to consider and someday may become reality, but they seem to be further in the future than are the middle-period developments that concern CRN.

I believe those who think of those things as fantastic notions are not aware of developments using current technology that are bringing them about.

From New Scientist, diodes could power bloodstream microbots

A new form of propulsion that could allow microrobots to explore human bodies has been discovered. Velev's diodes are millimetre-sized but any robot designed to work within the human body would have to be an order of magnitude smaller. In the past, attempts to shrink propulsive mechanisms have run up against a fundamental barrier in fluid dynamics: fluids become progressively more viscous on smaller scales. "It's like moving through honey," says Velev. But extrapolations of the team's measurements indicate the propulsive force will work just as well at smaller scales. "The propulsive force scales in exactly the same way as the drag. That's quite significant," says McKinley.

The first surgical microbot could be ready by 2009

A capsule insertable robot has been made in Japan

Nanoparticles have been used as drug delivery systems. They are more crude than the nanobot vision but they can be remotely guided to the tumor and then triggered from the outside to release material. So they are simple machines.

Similarly mini-bacteria cells are performing similar functions

Cellular repair is becoming possible as well. Magnetically assembled nanotube tips are being added to devices that can inject or remove organelles from cells

These things are not as capable as the Chromallocyte recently designed by Robert Freitas but it shows that such things are clearly not fanciful.

Meat Factories can be made using stem cells. There is existing work with test tube meat.

Step towards utility fog are being made by Intel with work on claytronics

Current claytronics components which are planned to be shrunk to about one millimeter

Projecting rapid manufacturing capabilities from current rapid prototyping, rapid manufacturing and fabbing could be not that far from the Engines of creation view of universal assemblers.

Combining the ovonic quantum control device with PRAM and other polymer components could enable more fabbable all flat (reel to reel) printing of computers and solar power cells.

Lasers, combined with metamaterials, nanoparticles and superlens could enable additive rapid manufacturing with 2 nanometer precision.

Non-molecular nanotechnology (microelectronics), pre-molecular nanotechnology (nanoparticles, nanomaterials), DNA nanotechnology, synthetic biology, graphene, fullerene nanotechnology, advanced chemistry, robotics, rapid manufacturing are making possible what was believed would require molecular nanotechnology. When full-blown diamondoid arrives what will actually be possible will be confounding to those who have not been paying attention or who are in denial.

We only will need molecular nanotechnology because we are not being creative enough with what we can already do or on the way to doing very soon. If we were not flushing money on the Shuttle and the Iraq War we could have mastery of space. If we were not confused about nuclear power we could have clean energy.

Establishing a Global scale thorium fuel cycle

There is an paper by Kazuo Furukawa et al, "A Road Map for the Realization of Global-scale Thorium Breeding Fuel Cycle by Single Molten-Fluoride Flow"
Hat tip to energy from thorium discussion board

If fission industry were to achieve the replacement of the present fossil fuel industry the doubling–time of nuclear energy should be less than 10 years, preferably 5-7 years. The liquid metal cooled fast breeder reactors (LMFBR) have the best breeding criteria but the doubling time exceeds 20 years.

The development and launching of THORIMS-NES requires the following three programs during the next three decades: (A) pilot plant: miniFUJI (7-10 MWe): (B) small power reactor: FUJI-Pu (100-300MWe). (C) fissile producer: AMSB for., globally deploying THORIMS-NES.

The growth rate should be about 10 years in doubling time, and its peak output about 10 TWe (30 times bigger than the present) achieving by 2065, considering factors such as population and economical growth, etc.

Here is a look at the past and possible future of energy

On a somewhat related topic, I have revamped my recent nuclear energy for oilsands article Check it out as it has technical and financial specifics from a peer reviewed article form the journal of Nuclear Energy.

May 14, 2007

Nasa space challenges: Lunar lander and lunar mining

Rocket company Armadillo Aerospace has just completed a 3-minute hover test of its vehicle Pixel, positioning itself to win the most challenging level of the $2 million Lunar Lander Centennial Challenge in October 2007.

Armadillo Aerospace's Pixel vehicle hovered for a record 192 seconds on Saturday, but the tethered flight was not a good test of its landing gear, which played a key role in the company's failure to win the 2006 lunar lander challenge (Image: Armadillo Aerospace)

Four teams of backyard inventors vied to dig as much simulated lunar soil as possible in half an hour at NASA's Regolith Excavation Challenge on Saturday, but no one scooped up the $125,000 first prize.

The teams were trying to excavate 150 kilograms of the mock soil, or "regolith", using no more than 30 watts of power – enough to run a refrigerator light bulb – and dump the soil in a bin. Technology Ranch of Pismo Beach, California, was the only one to run 30 minutes on its first attempt, scooping up 75 kilograms (although 10 kilograms missed the collection box). Intended as a two-year programme, the top prize for the second year of the competition was originally going to be $250,000. But this year's unclaimed prize will be added to it to make a total award of $375,000 in 2008.

Masafumi Iai, a student at the University of Missouri at Rolla, makes adjustments to the Lunar Miner, his team's entry in the competition (Image: Dana Mackenzie)

All of the NASA centennial challenges are listed here

The astronaut glove challenge was one

My take on Shaping the Future

Science Fiction author Charlie Stross talks about "Shaping the Future" He wrote Accelerando and Singularity Sky among other books.

He notes how progress used to measured by top speed, but how that stopped between 1950-1970. I believe that speed will become a useful measure of progress again. I believe that we can and will burst through the roadblocks that have stalled progress to faster speed Lasers, magnets, nuclear fusion, new production (molecular nanotechnology) and new materials will help break things wide open. I believe that superior room temperature superconductors will be created. Which could be used to ground launch a magnetic sail

Charles Stross also mentions how the convergence of technology makes things less predictable. I believe that the convergence of our progress with lasers, magnets, materials and molecular nanotechnology will result in easy and cheap access to space and high acceleration up to significant fractions of light speed.

Energy will also be transformed. Mass produced and cleaner nuclear fission is possible in the form of molten salt thorium reactors, nuclear fusion (z-pinch version or Bussard fusion or another version), and massive solar space power.

Zettaflop and faster classical computers and Quantum computers combined with artificial intelligence, artificial neurons and brain-computer interfaces will help accelerate the transformation.

The relative stability of the infrastructure and makeup of civilization for the past 30-60 years is about to change in a major way over the next 30-100 years. Unless we totally screw up the future we will defintely have a radically different scope and capability in 2050+. I think it can happen even sooner.

Quantum computers and classical annealing

Highly technical discussion about the Dwave quantum computer system, claims and other quantum computer papers.

This was triggered by a post by Geordie Rose of Dwave

Bill Kaminsky provides interesting comments

Not directly related but on quantum computers in general:
Scott Aaronson has some general questions and answers related to his view of the field of quantum computing

May 11, 2007

Nuclear powered oil sands follow up

UPDATE:A Globe and Mail article appears to show that the business and political pieces are in place. Formalities of approval are still needed. Shell will buy 70% of the power. Local support (300 to 5), provincial and federal support are in line

In order for nuclear power to replace the burning of natural gas to power the extraction of oil from the oilsands involves about 4.4 GW of nuclear power per million barrels per day of oil extracted (according to Wayne Henuset,director of Energy Alberta Corporation. estimate of a 2.2 GW reactor separating 500,000 bpd). 10 million bpd would take about twenty 2.2 GW twin reactors. A detailed analysis is provided from the Nuclear Energy journal. It was written by Atomic Energy Canada and Canadian Energy Research Institute scientists.

A paper "Opportunities for CANDU for the Alberta Oilsands" from journal of Nuclear Energy (peer reviewed) is probably the definitive word on how much oil would be separated using a CANDU reactor

SAGD can recover over 50% of the initial volume of crude bitumen in place.
An average steam/oil ratio of 2-3 is required.
Working from output levels of high quality steam of 62400 m**3/day, a cumulative steam/oil raio of 2.5, operating capacity of 93%, the results was consistent with a 146,000 barrel per day bitumen production.

A typical advanced CANDU reactor

Configuration of a reactor as part of oilsands project

A 728 MWe (gross) nominal electric output ACR-700 design generates 1983 MW (thermal).
The CANDU reactor can be adapted to provide steam of 2-6 MPa.
An ACR700 would provide in one configuration 140MWe (net), 420,000 barrels/day/steam and supply pressure of 2.2 MPa. The production rate of bitumen using this steam would depend on the steam/oil ratios required in the SAGD wells. For steam/oil ratios of 212.4-224 degrees celsius the bitument production rates would be 168,000-210,000 bbl/day. The project would achieve a 10% advantage in steam cost even if natural gas were at USD3.25/mmbtu

The twin 2.2 GWe reactor proposal would generate 507,000 to 634000 bbl/day in a similar configuration with similar assumptions.

Cost Sensivity of the project

One reactor (would be) in 2016 and the second one would be in 2017 ... We're taking it to where we feel there's less resistance (from the public)," corporation director Wayne Henuset told Reuters.

"We hope to site it and talk to the communities in the next two months," he said in an interview on the sidelines of a nuclear industry seminar.

Two further reactors are planned for a later unspecified date.

Canada's Natural Resources Minister Gary Lunn told Reuters in January that, in theory, he liked the idea of nuclear power for the oil sands.

Henuset said Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. -- the government-owned manufacturer of the Candu -- estimated it could build the first reactor in 36 months.

He also said he hoped that nuclear waste from the plant would be stored either on site or in special chambers until it could be reused.

Shell Canada Ltd. Chief Executive Clive Mather told Reuters in January that although he was not ready to buy into the nuclear concept, it could offer a price advantage over time. Shell is a major oil sands operator.

The World Nuclear Association estimates natural gas is 60 percent of an oil-sands facility's operating costs.

A new Steam Assisted Gravity Drainage (SAGD) process has been developed and proven in Canada during the last decade. It is compatible with the steam conditions from CANDU reactors would release about 0.10 tonnes/barrel for extraction and upgrading of bitumen from much deeper deposits.

Reviewing the short history of oil sands production suggests that, based on current production and past rates of growth, production in 2050 would reach about 1.5 billion barrels/year (4 million bpd). About half would come from in situ projects. Presuming the production rate increases at a higher than historical rate of 5%/year, compounded annually, results in production of 3 billion barrels/year (8 million bpd) by 2050.

A single large dedicated CANDU 9 reactor could supply the steam and electricity to extract and upgrade about 600 million barrels of bitumen over a period of 30 years. The land area from which bitumen would be extracted is about 18 square miles requiring steam distribution and bitumen recovery piping from a centrally located 60,000 barrel/day plant of up to about 3 miles. Smaller reactors would be suitable for smaller production rates with shorter piping distance.

Henuset is quoted as saying that the 2.2 GW twin reactor would separate up to 500,000 barrels of oil a day.

In a speech to a high-powered business audience in New York last week, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said production from the oil sands — which now supply about one million barrels of crude a day — is now “on its way” to four million barrels by 2015, a target that exceeds the bullish 3.5 million barrels forecast used by the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers.

Here is a pdf of a Wayne Henuset speech

The National Energy Board has forecasted that the oil sands production would increase fourfold by 2015, largely using steam assisted gravity drainage. If all the SAGD projects planned were to use natural gas as the fuel in cogeneration systems that would see natural gas demands in the region skyrocket to over 3 billion cubic feet/day by 2015. That's more natural gas than all the rest of Alberta uses now. 375 million cubic feet/day is replaced by the 2.2GW reactor. USD1.095 billion/year for the 375 million cubic feet/day if natural gas is at $8 per 1000 cubic feet.

[1000 cubic feet of natural gas is equal to 293 kWh. 320 billion kWh per year in 2015. Twenty 2 GW reactors needed to fully replace the natural gas usage]

Putting the brakes on the oil sands development is not the answer. Canada needs the oil sands. Conventional oil and gas reserves are declining. Energy conservations are important and necessary but they won't eliminate the need for fossil fuels in our economy. In addition, oil sands activities will lead to significant economical impact not only to Albertans but across the nation with substantial increase in gross domestic product, employment generating over $123 billion in tax revenues.

It makes no sense to squander precious and declining reserves of natural gas to make oil in the oil sands. That's simply like burning gold to make coal. The answer for this is using nuclear power.

The first strategy is using CANDU nuclear electricity generation to extract the oil from the carbonate triangle involving potentially 450 [billion] barrels of bitumen. This is new. The second strategy is generating hydrogen electricity for the upgrading of the bitumen. The third is providing steam supply for the SAGD process in the oil sands; and finally, generating electrical needs for the utility companies in Alberta to keep up with our provinces projected growth.

One ACR1000 reactor would result in an annual displacement of around 500 million tons of CO2 compared to an equivalent gas fired generator accounting to a savings of $100 million, annually, of carbon dioxide cost if it was at $20.

So either you burn natural gas to get at oil from the oilsand OR you use new processes where you burn some of the oilsand to get oil from it OR you make a lot of nuclear reactors. If oil prices stay high and we go past peak oil and the prices go higher then it seems that making the nuclear reactors to extract the most oil for other purposes is the way to go. If all current conventional oil in North America had to be replaced with oil from the oilsands that would be about 24 million bpd. 9 billion barrels per year. if Henuset/AECL/CERI are correct in the 500,000-630,000 bpd estimate then 48 of the 2.2 GW twin reactors would be needed for the SAGD extraction process.

One way of viewing nuclear powered oil sands is to think of it as making a hybrid version of the global energy system.

Zyvex has interesting nanostructured materials planned

The Center for Responsible Nanotechnology talks about an interesting project that Zyvex has planned. They will create nanostructures with elements of molecular precision. This will help enable more powerful capabilities for controlling structures. The plans are to use silicon and silicon carbide and possibly other materials and created connected layers.

Nanostructured material control would enable memory 100 times faster than hard drives

Magnetic memory 100 times faster than current hard drives proven in the lab and needs better nanostructured material control for commercialization

whitespace wireless broadband: 80mbps Feb, 2009

The White Spaces Coalition (WSC) is a group of companies devoted to making use of white space in the analog television spectrum to offer wireless broadband. It's an impressive lineup: Microsoft, Google, Dell, HP, Intel, Philips, Earthlink, and Samsung are the group's public members; there are also a couple of Coalition members who prefer to remain unknown.

This article has links to petitions to ensure the freed spectrum is used for open wireless usage

May 10, 2007

Engines could be made 15-20% more efficient

New combustion engines in cars and other vehicles could be made 15-20% more efficient

In today's internal combustion engines, the pistons turn a crankshaft, which is linked to a camshaft that opens and closes the valves, directing the flow of air and exhaust into and out of the cylinders. The new method would eliminate the mechanism linking the crankshaft to the camshaft, providing an independent control system for the valves.

It would take 30-40 years for this kind of modification to filter through the cars we have running. 4% of cars each year are new cars. It would take 10 years or longer for the modification to be introduced into most of the new cars. Old cars without the modification would have to be taken off of the road. Still improvements like this are a good thing.

Scalable process for growing long arrays of carbon nanotubes

Carbon nanotube arrays grown that are 2cm long. More importantly the process can be scaled up A scalable process for building a lot of long carbon nanotubes could spin fibers into large components with most of the strength of carbon nanotubes. If we are able to make the light and strong carbon nanotubes cheaply for large objects then we get a lot of the early nanotechnology vision. Radically improved transporation and industry.

Internet lessons for space: Nasa's should only enable space infrastructure

Al Fin has two interesting articles :Mining space the gold rush that never ends and Making space launch more affordable. The articles also refer to my own article about using laser arrays that can be enhanced with mirrors to create a scalable modular space launch and infrastructure system.

There are lessons to be learned from the growth of internet infrastructure:
- What were the enabling elements in the explosive growth of internet infrastructure and which ones would be helpful in enabling explosive space infrastructure growth
- How could the internet service provider model be used to help create a space access provider model
- how commerce was enabled and private capital was used to leveraged government funds
- how standards were funded and managed
- how improvements were encouraged

DARPA primed the pump for the internet. The history of the internet NASA should prime the pump for space access and that should be its primary and maybe even sole purpose. Space access is a more capitally intensive task, so it justifies more focus.

What are some of the key design elements for the internet that should be followed for a good space infrastructure system.

1. The internet is about moving information but space access is about moving energy and matter. The internet drove down all sorts of costs associated with moving information. A revolution in space access needs to be architected to drive down the costs of getting more energy and matter.

2. Highly utilized tiered system that can be built modularly and incrementally

The internet has the backbone network and primary nodes and routers. It also has tiers of providers.

How internet infrastructure works

There are lessons to be learned in how the internet backbone was privatized to plan how a modular space infrastructure could be incentivized and maximum leverage achieved

Space access technology should look more preferentially on systems that are modularly expandable and scalable.

3. Most of the pieces of the internet infrastructure are automated with minimal configuration. The early internet also had a lot of manual work/configuration and knowledge barriers. Custom coding and configuration were costs and barriers. The space infrastructure should be cheap and automated.

4. As much as possible use commodity components and hardware that is used for other purposes. Computers were not just used for the internet. There was money and market forces already at play pushing the improvement of computers. This is an advantage to using laser modules. Lasers are being developed for military and industrial purposes. Lasers have a rapid improvement rate.

On the ground laser module:

Power module in space:

5. The build out of space infrastructure does not need to involve people in space. I am a huge proponent of space colonization and of a manned space program. However, those pieces should come after the space launch and energy generation systems are built (or from a separate pool of funding). Designs for space structures can be made to be completely automated and modular.

If something (commodized cheap module of the overall system) does not work then it should be thrown away. There should be redundancy. Every part is cheap and replaceable.

Google has over 450,000 servers built from commodity components Custom build or assemble only when it helps in the scaling process

The goal should be to drive $10,000/kg launches down to near the cost of the electricity needed to lift a kilogram into space ($5-10/kg). Then the modular space energy infrastructure should then drive down the cost of electrical energy as well.

Supplying power for space and back to earth is an infrastructure that could be built up without the complexity and cost of involving people. the low to no gravity of space means that we do not have to build structures -we just have to have the pieces stay positioned relative to each other. The systems that are put into space should avoid complicated construction. Systems using magnetic or photonic positioning and formation flying could avoid the need for costly astronaut construction. Space telescopes are also infrastructure that is amenable to floating/inflating in place non-construction construction.

Once the launch costs come down then the other activities will be justified. Space mining, colonization etc...

Comcast 150 mbps modem could launch in 2008

Comcast CEO Brian Roberts said his company plans to roll out a new cable modem that delivers 150 megabits per second (Mbps) of bandwidth. It seems a 2008 trial and start of rollout is likely It is a DOCSIS 3.0 modem. DOCSIS information is here at wikipedia A recent study predicted that by 2011, DOCSIS 3.0 CMTS use will be at 60% and DOCSIS 3.0 CPEs (modems, set-tops, eMTAs, etc.) will only be in 40% of cable broadband subscriber homes. Cablelabs is also accelerating DOCSIS 3.0 trials and efforts

Fiber is still four times faster and Verizon has already been rolling out its service. The speed of the fiber is being increased 4-8 times. Verizon could have over 1.5 million subscribers by the end of 2007 to FIOS

Currently in Verizon's network, a single fiber from a Verizon switching office has transmission speeds of 622 Mbps (megabits per second) downstream and 155 Mbps upstream. When the fiber reaches a neighborhood it is split up to feed multiple fibers, serving as many as 32 customers. With G-PON electronics, that same fiber from the switching office will have a downstream transmission speed of 2.4 Gbps (gigabits per second) and an upstream speed of 1.2 Gbps.

Comcast is sending a message that it intends to compete with Verizon's FiOS service at every step to woo customers with the fastest broadband in the land.

Verizon delivers more than 100 Mbps of bandwidth to customers connected to its $23 billion fiber optic FiOS network. However, in most FiOS markets, the top speed Verizon sells is 30 Mbps. In some markets where broadband competition is especially strong--like New York and New Jersey--a 50 Mbps service tier is available at the same price as the 30 Mbps tier sold elsewhere. FiOS-connected households number about 348,000 in 16 states.

While Verizon does have the fancier (fiber-optic) network, it's still pushing for better speeds. Verizon is now in the process of converting the network to a new and faster flavor of optical networking equipment.

Carnival of Space Week 2

Week 2 of the carnival of space is up at whyhomeschool

My post on laser arrays for low cost launches is part of the carnival

The pricing of the SpaceX Falcon 1 and 1E rockets is discussed by Space Transportation news.
The Falcon 1 can launch 670kg to Low Earth Orbit. So at a $7 million price tag that is $10,000/kg. The Falcon 9 variations at prices of $35-78 million to launch 8700kg to 24,750kg translates to pricing of about $3000-4000 per kg to low earth orbit. The Falcon should have test flights in 2009 and could be ready in 2010 or 2011.

Colony Worlds discusses the long term possibilities of Jupiters moon Ganymede There are a total of ten posts on space in the carnival of space week 2.

May 09, 2007

Thermoelectric nanostructure advances

From Nanowerk, Thermoelectric nanostructures could double the efficiency of engines and generators by converting wasted heat to electricity

Ted Harman at MIT's Lincoln Laboratory--building in part on Chen's earlier, unrelated work--showed that by using nanostructures, you can create materials that outdo nature: Some of Harman's materials, thanks to their unique heat-impeding qualities, are twice as efficient as their conventional cousins.

Chen says innovations like an exhaust-mounted energy-mining device for vehicles needn't wait until you hit Lincoln Lab realms of efficiency. "If you can reach a 10-to-15 percent conversion efficiency," he says, "that would be attractive for many applications." In fact, results he's had at that level are already drawing interest from companies.

Thermoelectric devices are energy converters. When they're producing electricity, this puts them in the same broad category as power plants and solar-generating systems. When outputting heat or its opposite, meanwhile, they're like heat pumps and air conditioners, respectively.

In design terms, thermoelectric devices have key pluses. For one, they're solid state: no liquid fuels, no moving parts. They're also easily scalable up or down.

"Cars are about 20 percent efficient," notes Chen, "and turning some of the energy wasted into electricity could increase that figure by as much as one-third."

'Exercise pill' switches on gene that tells cells to burn fat

By giving ordinary adult mice a drug - a synthetic designed to mimic fat - Salk Institute scientist Dr. Ronald M. Evans is now able to chemically switch on PPAR-d, the master regulator that controls the ability of cells to burn fat. Even when the mice are not active, turning on the chemical switch activates the same fat-burning process that occurs during exercise. The resulting shift in energy balance (calories in, calories burned) makes the mice resistant to weight gain on a high fat diet.

By permanently turning on this delta switch in mice through genetic engineering, he was able to create a mouse with an innate resistance to weight gain and twice the physical endurance of normal mice. Because they were able to run an hour longer than a normal mouse, they were dubbed "marathon mice."

Subsequent work in the Evans laboratory found that activation of PPAR-d in these mice also suppresses the inflammatory response associated with arthrosclerosis.

But the genetic metabolic engineering that created the marathon mouse is permanent, turned on before birth. While a dramatic proof of concept that metabolic engineering is a potentially viable approach, it offers no help to an adult whose muscles are already formed and who now would benefit greatly from having more active, fat-burning muscles.

That is why the potential of chemical metabolic engineering - possibly a one-a-day pill as opposed to permanent genetic metabolic engineering - is so exciting, says Dr. Evans. In today's society, too few people get an ideal amount of exercise, some because of medical problems or excess weight that makes exercise difficult. Having access to an "exercise pill" would improve the quality of muscles, since muscles like to be exercised, and increase the burning of energy or excess fat in the body. And that would result in less fatty tissue, lower amounts of fat circulating in the blood, lower blood glucose levels and less resistance to insulin, lowering the risks of heart disease and diabetes.

The ability to chemically engineer changes in metabolism also has given the researchers more insight into how the PPAR-d switch works, says Dr. Evans. Genetically engineering changes in metabolism in the marathon mice triggers both increased fat burning and increased endurance. Adult normal mice that receive the drug to switch on PPAR-d show increased fat burning and resistance to weight gain, but they do not show increased endurance. Dr. Evans says this suggests the delta switch can operate in different modes, and the laboratory is in the process of figuring out exactly how. He hopes his strategy will make it possible.

Silicon surface plasmonics could achieve terahertz

has shown how the use of laser pulses can create a surface plasmon resonance from a photonic crystal effect.

Surface plasmons can only exist in a metal/dielectric interface. They are electromagnetic waves that run along the surface of this interface. “What we wanted to do,” explains Zhang, “is start with a non-conductive material to see if we could excite surface plasmons in the terahertz region.” For their attempt, Zhang and his colleagues use silicon because of its properties as a semiconductor. “We used ultra-fast laser pulses that resulted in photodoping.”

Biomedicine is a field especially where terahertz systems can find good use. Terahertz radiation can be used to “look” deep inside organic materials, and they do it without causing the damage that X-rays do. Additionally terahertz radiation is being considered for use in screening airport passengers.

Zhang also points out that surface plasmon resonance to direct terahertz systems can also be used to enhance space communication: “This would be ideal for making tunable switches.” Indeed, astronomers are interested in using terahertz technology to study the particles that fall into the category of “far-infrared.”

“Because silicon is cheap, rigid, and tunable,” concludes Zhang, “this is an important and exciting finding. The applications for technology are just beginning.”

May 08, 2007

Lasers and magnetic launch for cheap launches within ten years

The $3000-10,000/kg cost of getting things into space has been crippling what is possible in space. Any low cost system will also need to have a high volume purpose. I discuss the best system that would still involve chemical propulsion and laser and magnetic launch systems. The focus is on laser launch array systems (and mirror reflecting enhancement). I believe there is no technical roadblock for the laser array launch system being developed within 10 years. As with any significant project it would take a coordinated effort and funding.

Chemical rockets and incremental developments will take a long time to radically alter the cost equation for space as well as the volume of material that can be delivered into space. The best systems involving chemical propulsion would swap out the bottom stage with a magnetic boost and the top with either tethers (skyhooks) or magbeam. The chemical rockets would be made three times as efficient using hypersonic aircraft that took in oxygen from the atmosphere.
Scramjets are being actively studied but are unlikely to lead to the first working space launch system for 15-25 years. Then it would take longer to have frequent flights and scale up volume. (There was a pdf of a proposal for hypersonic project but it has been removed from the web. It had all of the project elements laid out and it would take about 25 years before scramjets were manned. The high volume economic motivation would be the $4 billion market for two hour package delivery around the world and that skiping a hypersonic passenger plane on the atmosphere would be twice as fuel efficient as current commercial jets.

Ultimately could achieve $100/kg. Might achieve $1000/kg to space at lower volume. Development costs and build up costs easily in the range of $100 billion to $1 trillion and taking 15-30 years to first system and 50 years to have scaled up infrastructure [unless nanotechnology is developed]

Starting with the laser array launch system

Proof of concept Scale model test vehicle for laser launch

Lasers in arrays could use cheap $7-10/watt lasers. This would allow full systems to be developed for about $2 billion. The first modules can be made at low risk

Each module would have the components above

Larger 67 kilowatt to 100 kilowatt systems are as pictured above

Laser photonic mirror system could launch things into orbit and could enhance the laser array launch system with mirrors to multiply efficiency by 1000 up to 100,000 times.

High volume magnetic launch (4000g) acceleration with ion propulsion at the top could bring launch costs down to $10/kg. High volume systems which have operational costs which are only the cost of electricity tend to converge to the $10/kg price. The laser launch and laser launch mirror systems also converge to those prices at high volume.

The high volume purpose should be space colonization and to tap into the resources of space.

Using magnetically inflated cable to capture solar energy in space

Larger 10 kilometer structures could generate 18GW, 15 times more than larger nuclear power plants

The systems that are put into space should avoid complicated construction. Systems using magnetic or photonic position and formation flying could avoid the need for astronaut construction.

Structures such as solar power arrays and telescopes can avoid complicated construction using modular systems. Large structures can also be made with less complex construction using inflation (magnetic or gas).

Arrays of lasers for a cheaper yet powerful launch system and inflated components for large, inexpensive and high capability space power systems and telescopes.

UPDATE:
Instead of $14-16 billion per year on the current limited NASA efforts. Build the non-chemical infrastructure over the next 10 years. The key is build a lot of power both for non-space program needs but also 20-50% dedicated to scaling up space infrastructure.

Gigawatts on the ground dedicated to launches. Situate near a nuclear reactor or large dam (much like Google is building server farms near cheap power). Also, choose cheap power that would be near an area requiring less power for launches.

Powering laser arrays. Mass produce the arrays.

Highly reusable power infrastructure on the ground and in space is the key.

As noted in the movie Apollo 13:

Gene! Gene! We gotta talk about power here, Gene.
- Whoa, whoa, guys!

Power is everything. Uh, power is everything.

- What do you mean?
- Without it, they don't talk to us; they don't correct their trajectory; they don't turn the heat shield around.

Power to launch. Power to build.

Launch magnetically inflating structures for space solar power. Whatever, size can be launched and then have them hold formation to direct lots of power to localed power collection on the ground.

Scale up to build more power as fast as possible for the space program and for power needs on earth. Also, launch other reusable power and launch infrastructure that has a low ratio of electrical power to kinetic energy generated.

Modular and scalable is what makes the internet work so well. Government money helped develop, subsidize and prove out the modules and protocols for the internet. That is what is needed for space as well. Modular and scalable power and launch systems. Companies can come in and buy and build the launch and power modules.

How internet infrastructure works

There are lessons to be learned in how the internet backbone was privatized to plan how a modular space infrastructure could be incentivized and maximum leverage achieved

FURTHER READING:
A solar powered magbeam could be more efficient as noted at crowlspace.

Fuel economy standards set to be increased

Legislation to increase fuel standards in the USA is in motion

Hopefully this legislation will lag changes in the market. As plug-in hybrids and all electric vehicles get become dominant over the next 20 years.

A plan to increase fuel efficiency standards to an average of 35 miles per gallon by 2020 won approval from a Senate panel Tuesday in a vote closely watched by automakers and environmental groups. The Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee approved the measure, hich would raise the nationwide fleet fuel economy average by about 40 percent from current levels of 25 mpg for cars and trucks. The bill, approved on a voice vote, would also increase standards by 4 percent a year from 2020 through 2030.

Fuel economy standards have made little progress in the past 20 years. Passenger cars are required to meet a fleetwide average of 27.5 miles per gallon while SUVs, pickup trucks and vans must meet a standard of 22.2 mpg.

Lawmakers said the bill was a compromise that would likely face a number of changes on the Senate floor. Sen. Ted Stevens of Alaska, the committee's top Republican, and Trent Lott, R-Miss., said they had concerns about how it might affect trucks and its overall fairness.

Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., meanwhile, said he would aim for a fleet increase of up to 40 mpg by 2020, while Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., wants to guarantee 31 mpg by 2015 and 35 mpg by 2020.

Alan Reuther, the United Auto Workers' legislative director, wrote Inouye that it would force manufacturers "to close more facilities, destroying tens of thousands of additional jobs and undermining the economic base of communities across this country."

Environmentalists said they were concerned that the proposal was weaker than one offered by President Bush, which would set a goal of a 4 percent annual increase while expanding use of alternative fuels.

"When you look at all the loopholes in this 35 mpg bill, it kind of looks like Swiss cheese," said David Friedman of the Union of Concerned Scientists.

China's economy

A pdf discussing China's statistics

Here is a pdf from Carlsten Holz that examines different China economic growth projections

The World Trade Organization data shows that China surpassed the USA in terms of trade in 2006.

China's global trade exceeded $1.758 trillion at the end of 2006.[12]. It first broke the 1 trillion mark ($1.15 trillion) in 2004, more than doubling from 2001. At the end of 2004, China became the world's third largest trading nation behind the United States and Germany [13]. The trade surplus however was stable at $30 billion. (>40 billion in 1998, <30 billion in 2003). China's primary trading partners include Japan, U.S., South Korea, Germany, Singapore, Malaysia, Russia, and The Netherlands. According to U.S. statistics, China had a trade surplus with the U.S. of $170 billion in 2004, more than doubling from 1999. Wal-Mart, the United States' largest retailer, is China's 7th largest export partner, just ahead of the United Kingdom. Out of the 5 busiest ports in the world, 3 are in China.

An article that makes a case for China's performance being exaggerated and that India will be close to catching China in 2025

World Bank analysis of China successes against poverty

Economic data by the regions in China

Projections of China, US, EU and OECD economies until 2030

Foresight's Technology roadmap for productive nanosystems to be revealed Oct 9, 2007 Arlington

The Technology Roadmap for Productive Nanosystems has examined what can be developed in labs today and then mapped out a step-by-step plan for the pathways of development that must take place to achieve productive nanosystems.

This has been a long anticipated event by those (like myself) who follow molecular nanotechnology.

Here is the Technology Roadmap page

21st Century will be a China Century

Al fin points an article by City Journal about flaws in China's success story. Yes, there are huge environmental challenges and yes there are a lot of people still below western standards of middle class. However, the extremely poor have mostly been raised to just poor.

I do not agree that china is not raising the standards of most of its populace.

Jeffrey Sachs (Author ofThe End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time) as well as various organizations such as the IMF and worldbank list china as being successful in raising people out of poverty.

People in the urban areas are wealthier and china is shifting more people into the cities.

China has started a $300 billion investment fund. This will be used to buy whole industries to continue to fuel china's growth. I predict that this fund will be successful and by 2010 it will be 500 billinon and by 2015 it will be a trillion dollar fund (or multiple funds totaling that amount.) China will have the best advisors in the world (Goldman, Solomans, Morgan Stanley and others helping them to run these funds)

China is spending to make a cleaner environment. China is spending on wind power. and cleaner coal

China has a rising middle class

Not all of china's transportation plans are bad and certainly more should be done.
But China is invested in public transportation and the chinese people are buying electric bicycles

India and Vietnam are also rising and will be successful in the 21st century.

May 07, 2007

Stable, high capacity rechargeable lithium batteries created

Double charge (greater than 250 mAh/g) stable rechargable lithium ion batteries created The technology is based on a new material for the positive electrode that is comprised of a unique nano-crystalline, layered-composite structure. In addition, by focusing on manganese-rich systems, instead of the more expensive cobalt and nickel versions of lithium batteries, overall battery cost is reduced. In larger batteries, the technology could be used in the next generation of hybrid electric vehicles and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles.

Mini-bacteria could reduce chemotherapy side effects over 1000 times and enable RNA interference

"Mini bacteria", or EnGeneIC Delivery Vehicles (EDVs) as the company has dubbed them, are cheap and easy to produce, and can be used as targeted drug delivery vehicles.

They could be adapted to target virtually any tumour tissue in the body, and could put an end to many of the toxic side effects associated with chemotherapy drugs because they do not release their payload until they are inside the target cell. This also means that far less drug is required.

The EDVs are able to selectively target different tissues thanks to bispecific antibodies attached to their surface. One arm of the antibody is specific to the EDV and is connected via a linker molecule to the second antibody, which is specific to a protein on the target tissue - for example, the Her2 receptor on breast cancer cells, which is also targeted by Herceptin.

Targeting is also aided by the fact that the blood vessels supplying cancer cells are often leaky, and by coincidence the 400 nanometre EDVs are the perfect size to fall through these holes into the tumour tissue. "Within 2 hours of intravenous administration greater than 30% of the dose ends up in the tumour microenvironment" says Brahmbhatt, who presented the findings at RNAi 2007 in Boston, Massachusetts, on 3 May.

Once EDVs bind to the correct cells, they are internalised and broken down - releasing the drug into the cell, where it can take effect.

EnGeneIC hopes to begin human trials towards the end of 2007.

"We haven't yet found a drug that you couldn't load," says MacDiarmid, and EnGeneIC believes EDVs could enable cancer patients to be given high doses of multiple drugs, thus increasing the chances of finding one that works for them. Oncologists are often reluctant to prescribe multiple drugs because of the risk of serious side effects - and if they do they will usually reduce the doses to limit the toxicity.

"The amount of drug given with EDVs is thousands of fold less than if they were given directly," says Bruce Stillman, director of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York, US, and an advisor to the EnGeneIc team. "This, coupled with the fact that you can also target the drugs directly to the target tissue, means that the reduction in side effects could be extraordinary."

Preliminary results in mice also suggest that EDVs could also be used to deliver novel therapies like RNA interference (RNAi), where one of the major hurdles is finding a targeted delivery method.

This would be a great advance for fighting cancer and to speed up and make RNA interference and gene therapies more effective.

Chris Phoenix discusses Computational Chemistry achievement

Chris Phoenix
writes about Rob Freitas and Ralph Merkle's computational chemistry work

May 06, 2007

India Looks To Make $10 Laptop, current design $47

The efforts thus far have yielded designs for a laptop that would cost about $47; a $10 system remains the ultimate goal. Negroponte's One Laptop Per Child Organization submitted a proposal to the Indian government under which the group would have worked to produce laptops for Indian students starting at $100. The OLPC organization has produced a reference design for a $100 laptop that features an AMD Geode processor, a range of open-source software, and an attached hand crank for power generation.

Times of India has more info

Sources say it would be another two years before the laptops become a reality.

“We do not want to rush into it. Many issues remain to be resolved like royalty to the designer after the design is patented. Prototyping would also take time. We would even conduct destructive testing and create a proper maintenance network,” said one official.

May 05, 2007

Better economy and government budgets by getting rid of coal

Wendell Cox has an analysis of using more rail instead of trucks to move freight This can be achieved without building more rail by switching away from coal power usage to nuclear power, efficiency programs and renewables to meet increasing energy demand and to eliminate the need for existing coal plants. Savings from reduced future highway spending and reduced oil imports could be used to offset a major buildout of alternative's to coal energy.

UPDATE: I spoke with Wendell Cox. Unfortunately there is less additional justification from tieing in the transportation aspect.
1. The traffic congestion is only helped by intermodal rail. So only the congestion that overlaps with long-haul freight would be helped with any shift in truck to rail freight.
2. The highway budget has already been largely repurposed for spending other than building highways. A small percentage might be justified but more likely it would be separate bond measures or new appropriations to get new funds. Highway funding to build actual highways is already lagging what is needed.
3. So what is left is that rail is 3-9 times more fuel efficient than trucks. So shifting some long haul freight with displaced coal capacity would save fuel based on the ton-miles that get shifted.

In 2005, railways were able to move 417 ton miles per gallon of diesel and trucks can move about 60 ton miles per gallon of diesel.

A pdf with rail freight statistics

Ton mile statistics for different kinds of transportation

In 2002, Coal used 562.5 bllion ton miles and the average shipment was 112 miles
If that coal could be displaced and freight that was otherwise sent via truck was shifted to rail in place of coal, then 8 billion gallons of fuel would be saved each year. At $3 per gallon that would be 24 billion dollars.

23 billion is being budgeted at the federal level to reduce congestion on highways in 2008 Each state also spends money on highways. California has budgeted about 11 billion on highways in 2007

If we were not using coal for energy we would not need to move 1.17 billion tons of coal each year to the power plants This is 40% of the freight rail traffic. With the extra freight rail capacity, state and federal governments could use policy to shift truck traffic to the rail capacity that is made available. 4.5 million trucks could be off the road during rush hour.

This is 200 million barrels of oil or about 10 days of total USA oil consumption (from rail efficiency). 3% of total oil consumption. It would be be 16 days of oil imports or 5% of total imported oil. It would reduce the trade deficit (58 billion per month) by about 2-3%.

Note: I recognize that more work policy wise and infrastructure wise would be needed to get the truck traffic shifted even as we reduced the coal usage. So more work would be needed to generate the savings. However, I believe that savings would result. Also, a highly detailed analysis of traffic and freight patterns, specific coal plant locations and actual coal flows would be needed to determine the extent and value of the savings.

Coal supplies 50% of Americas electricity and 20% of California's electricity.

For California: California uses a total of about 294 billion kWh of electricity So the 50 billion kWh coming from coal would need to be replaced.

California's 4 nuclear power plants provided 36.1 billion kWh in 2005 6 more nuclear reactors of the same size would provide 54 billion kWh.
California does not have coal and has to bring it in mainly from Utah This is an average of about 700 miles. It is bringing in about 5-8 million tons of coal (depending upon the year). California also brings in electricity from out of state coal plants The benefit to California would be only 500 million to 1 billion from annual transportation savings, since more of the coal activity is out of state. But that and health benefits and reduced health costs would justify a fast as possible conversion out of coal.

Here is link with the coal usage by region in the United states

The case is strongest for states in the East North Central (231.7 billion tons of coal), South Atlantic (178.9 billion tons of coal), West South Central (152 billion tons of coal), and the East South Central (117 billion tons of coal). The case is also pretty good for the Mountain and Middle Atlantic states. However, as I illustrated even California has a reasonable case in spite of low direct coal usage.

Those states have high coal usage, high population density or high population growth and high tranportation demands.

Here is the 2006 federal transportation analysis. and the 2008 transportation budget.

Highway congestion is worsening. To ease gridlock, the 2006 Budget proposed highway and transit infrastructure spending of $283.9 billion over six years. This marks a 35-percent increase over the TEA 21 six-year spending totals.

For 2001, Amtrak received $520 million in Federal funding. For 2005, Amtrak received $1.2 billion. It requires hundreds of millions of dollars in operating subsidies annually, particularly for its long distance trains, to remain solvent.

The U.S population is expected to grow by approximately 82.2 million people between 2000 and 2030 [I think this is a low estimate]. Seven states (Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia) account for over 47 percent (38.7 million) of the population growth in the United States by 2030. Three southern states (Florida, North Carolina, and Texas) will account for approximately 36 percent of all U.S. population growth. Florida alone will account for 15.5 percent of the U.S. population growth between 2000 and 2030.

Current nuclear plant distribution

Here is a link to a study that shows that good transportation means a good economy

Addendum: More specifics about a proposed way to get rid of coal usage.
If one third of the $268 billion of the federal money for highways was given as energy incentives. Then $89 billion could be used for incentives (About $15 billion per year. Policies would also need to be adjusted to encourage alternatives to coal.
I do not think the following projection of the replacement energy mix and how long it might take should distract from the core idea: Energy and transportation and health policy need to be merged. Coal usage impacts the current and future budgets for transportation and health. So it makes sense to spend some of the transportation and and health money to displace coal and buy better transportation and health by displacing coal.

Coal generates 2 trillion kWh.

GE ESBWR 1.55 GW nuclear plant are $2.48 billion each. Each new plant would generate about 12.6 billion kWh.
There will be 30-34 applications for new nuclear plants under current regulations 2009.
As part of a unified transportation-energy policy more money was spent to eliminate coal usage as part of a shifting of traffic to rail then the number of nuclear plants could be increased and policies and incentives could be made to encourage up-rating existing nuclear plants. Uprating has a 18-24 month approval process.

$60 billion could be assigned to build three nuclear reprocessing plants to handle 2400 tons of waste each year. There would have to be a reversal of any legislation (like Jimmy Carter introduced) which made reprocessing illegal. The cost would be spread over 15-25 years.

Up to 50% power up rates are possible. MIT has research on making donut shaped fuel and adding nanoparticles for a higher operation temperature.

Wind power could also be given incentives to increase the 29% growth rate. 30 GW (total 68 billion kWh or an added 32 billion Kwh by 2010).

Policy and monetary incentives should be created to switch to more efficient superconducting motors that will be available in 2010 They could save about 34 billion kWh.

Over 20 years, a replacement energy mix scenario is:
80 new 2GW nuclear plants (up-rated 1.55 GW reactors) with 16.25 billion kWh each. 1300 billion kWh
200 billion kWh from up-rating of existing nuclear reactors
400 billion kWh from wind
200 billion kWh from solar
34 billion kWh from superconductor motor industrial efficiency