nuclear power

When you write for Popular Science, it's easy to become desensitized to wild and crazy future tech. To wit: When I first heard that Darpa wanted to develop cyborg insects to carry surveillance equipment, I thought "ok, cyborg insect spies are pretty cool, but not blowing me away."

Then today, Cornell researchers working on the program unveiled a prototype transmitter for the cyborg bugs that runs on radioactive isotopes. Nuclear powered cyborg insect spies? Ok, now you have my attention.

While the fate of America's Yucca Mountain appears to be sealed, Finnish company Posiva is moving forward with a cutting-edge nuclear waste storage facility that it claims will safely store radioactive waste in drums deep in the ground for 100,000 years. While challenges abound, a green light from the Finnish government expected by 2012 will make the site on Finland's Olkiluoto Island the first permanent nuclear waste repository in the world, opening the door for more to follow.

It's one of those ideas that just sounds wrong: a barge-like floating nuclear plant in the middle of the ocean. But despite its somewhat unconventional approach, a Russian firm we first reported on in 2006 is forging ahead with plans to have the first model ready to begin service in 2012.

Before its planned end-of-life crash landing, which it broadcasted dutifully in HD, Japan's Kaguya lunar craft used its gamma ray spectrometer to find the "first conclusive evidence" of uranium on the lunar surface.

While global warming may present a serious problem for most humans, it has been a great boon to the nuclear power industry. Looking to capitalize on the political and public will behind power plants that don't emit greenhouse gases, nuclear engineering company Babcock and Willcox has rolled out a new power plant almost ten times smaller than many of the reactors currently online.

Scientists decoding dinosaur flesh? Problems with nuclear reactors? We got something for everyone in today's news roundup. All of a sudden, I'm a lot less scared of the flu...

First, though, on the swine flu front, Slate explains how Asian countries use heat sensors to help screen for flu victims. NEC, the electronics manufacturer that makes the cameras, told PopSci.com that there are 108 of them deployed at airports in Japan, but they couldn't say how many were in use at other Asian airports. Also, like the Slate piece, they couldn't say if the technology actually helped prevent the spread of the flu.

It's going to be at least another two decades before any commercial models are built, but researchers are at work designing the Generation IV nuclear reactors. Unlike the generation II and III models now in use that use water to cool and control the fission (preventing runaway reactions, subsequent meltdowns and the environmental apocalypse that would result), the leading contender for cooling material for the Gen IV reactors is molten sodium. Not sodium chloride (plain, unreactive table salt), but sodium metal.