So this week it’s my turn to share a few of my favourite stories from around the wonderful world of the internet! Lined up for you today I’ve got a bit of F1 technology with other applications, a man with a serious hobby, science conference update, medical breakthroughs and a method to help reduce global warming, along with a bonus 6th story (I’m just greedy!), about a new experiment in Australia – I hope you enjoy! Please feel free to get involved and leave a comment.

To celebrate Williams F1 Team winning their first F1 race since 2004 at Barcelona at the weekend, the first link in this week’s round up  is about the success of a subsidiary company, Williams Hybrid Power.

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Through the queens speech the coalition government announced a series of energy market reforms, in the form of the energy bill, that they hope will provide an adrenaline boost to the flagging industry, mainly in the form of complex subsidies. However, as has been apparent with most announcements regarding the energy industry from the government, there are still large areas of policy shrouded in mystery.

The system the government is trying to implement works around low-carbon electricity (from renewable or nuclear sources) can sign long-term contracts to supply at a preferential rate, so effectively legislating against carbon emissions. While this on the face of things looks like a step in the right direction the head of climate change at WWF-UK had some harsh criticism of the legislation, while saying it was a step in the right direction he indicated that it did not nearly go far enough.

One significant implication of the legislation is that it will effectively subsidise the Nuclear Industry as it is a low carbon source of electricity, which is at odds with the coalition agreement, that there would be no state subsidies for nuclear power. Incentives have been shared across, what the government has been to classify as, low-carbon industries; though surely a worry is that the renewable industry will be stifled in the UK, compared against more established technologies.

If we take a look at the German Company Strabag’s development of serialised wind turbine installations, and the speed of that development, we can see what can be achieved focus is placed on renewable energy. This goes to highlight that while the renewable industry is growing in this country at a very healthy rate more can be achieved with greater support.

The Nuclear industry by its very nature is a slow developing beast with small evolutionary design changes targeted towards safety rather than taking revolutionary design steps. This approach being taken to ensure that we have the safest plants possible, as we are dealing with radiation sources after all. If we take a look at the development on the EPR plant at Flamenville in France we can see how slow Nuclear can progress.

The government is worried, and so should we all, about the impending likelihood of black outs and, with the nuclear renaissance faltering, needed to promote growth within the energy sector. With the energy bill they hope to achieve that, unfortunately as the bill seems to be lacking in detail in some areas and over complex in others, the likelihood of success is uncertain.

The future energy balance in the UK must be made up from a mixture of renewable and nuclear in order to be anywhere near the targets set for 2050 on reducing carbon emissions and we must develop a smart grid in order to deliver electricity to where it is needed. That is why clear direction is needed from the government on such issues and while the UK may not ever be a major contributor to global nuclear technology we still have the opportunity to be world leading in renewable/clean technology .

Also posted @ therenewablefuture.

Once again it’s time to look at my five favourite engineering stories from around the internet. This week I’m pointing you to articles on building colonies in space, seventies-style, how engineers can save the British Isles from water disparity, the experience of working in Government for a sustainable energy engineer, how the film “Dr No” apparently killed nuclear’s image and, of course, to mining asteroids.

Colonies in space

If the TV shows, films and books of 50s and 60s were to be believed, by now we should be living like the Jetson’s, flying our space-cars and getting our nourishment from pills. Whilst the images on TV and in comics were fanciful, one book went out of it’s way to make a business and engineering case for the construction of orbiting colonies.

“Colonies in Space” by T. A. Heppenheimer, published in 1977, went into extraordinary detail of both the engineering and societal requirements for building space colonies, complete with fabulous period illustrations and diagrams.

This book has now been released online in its entirety on the website of the “National Space Society“. Head over there and see what the future might still look like.

Engineering can save us from drought

James Dyson argues in the Telegraph that just as the Victorians engineered their way out of the terrible problems presented by poor sanitation via the construction of the enormous sewers, we can now engineer our way out of the disparity between rainfall and consumption requirements across the UK. He goes on to add, that we should look at our water consumption and take serious steps to reduce it.

Sustainability by numbers

David MacKay’s book “Sustainable energy without the hot air” brought some much needed rationality to the renewable energy debate. Impressively and very usefully, the entire book is available free online in a variety of formats.

More recently he’s been working for the British government to advise on energy policy. In this month’s issue of the the IMechE’s Professional Engineering magazine, he discusses his experiences in working in government and how his viewpoint has changed and evolved since working there.

Dr No killed the nuclear industry’s image

The Royal Society of Chemistry have blamed the James Bond film “Dr No” for destroying the public’s previously positive image of nuclear power. In 1962. Head over to Power Engineering International where the absurdity of this statement is tackled and followed by a train of James Bond villain puns…

Mining asteroids

I couldn’t let this week’s news round-up pass without mentioning the James Bond villain-esque-meets-Jetson’s plan to mine asteroids by a billionaire. Yet like James Cameron exploring the oceans and Richard Branson blasting off on Virgin Galactic, I’m rather glad that we have billionaires who want to push the boundaries. Head on over to The Engineer magazine to read Stuart Nathan’s amusing and positive peace on the subject.

That’s your lot for this week. Let us know what you think in the comments and check back again this time next week for another news round up!

Right, I’m off to plot my path to world and galactic domination. I shall be in my space colony if anybody needs me.

Once again it’s time to look at my five favourite engineering stories from around the internet. This week I’m pointing you to articles on what people do when they’re wired into the electricity grid, why engineers might have to share the blame with politicians for projects heading off-piste, concrete canoes, the impact of the Ellesmere canal on the engineering profession and the third industrial revolution.

Rural leccy = lights & telly

Harry Hutchinson has written a blog post for ASME’s ME magazine discussing the impact of rural electrification after coming across a World Bank report from 2008. It may not be a complete surprise but it turns out the main thing people do when they get wired up is to turn on the lights and the television. Would I do anything different? Well, the computer has priority over the television, but I do like having the lights on!

Engineers and politicians: pot kettle black?

Over at The Engineer magazine blog, the Secret Engineer has been pondering why the UK seems allergic to government-led projects. Given that engineers specialise in scepticism, we may have to shoulder our share of the blame.

As much use as a concrete canoe?

Apparently a concrete canoe is very useful and the construction of them is competitive. This news comes fresh from the Eastern Seaboard of the United States, where the New York region competition took place last Sunday and was won by New Jersey Institute of Technology. Further investigation reveals that this is a long-running contest organised by the ASCE.

So when can we expect to see the ICE’s inaugural concrete kayak event?

When engineering went pro

Staying with water but this time keeping it in a structure rather than keeping it outside the structure, the IET’s E&T magazine has a great article on the difficulties faced during the construction of the Ellesmere canal and the long-term impact on the engineering profession.

The third industrial revolution

This week’s Economist leads with a 14-page special report as to how 3D printing and rapid prototyping might be about to change the way we consider manufacturing.

If nothing else, as the article notes, we’ll never run out of spare parts ever again.

That’s your lot for this week. Let us know what you think in the comments and check back again this time next week for another news round up!

Right, I’m off to print out some parts for my concrete canoe.

So what IS planned obsolescence? It is basically designers and manufacturers planning and designing a product to have a fixed service life, after which a new product must be bought. Instead of making a product that will as long as technically possible, a company would be making a product that is the most economically beneficial in the long run.

Is planned obsolescence a get-out-of-jail-free card for the economy?

The first major case of planned obsolescence was in the early 20^th century with the light bulb industry. A group of the largest light bulb manufacturers was created with the sole purpose of regulating the expected lifetime of light bulbs. Before this light bulbs used to last more than 2500 hours and it was one of the main advertising highlights, but the lifetime was reduced to 1000 hours by this cartel. And that what they named themselves: The Phoebus Cartel. This reduction in average bulb lifetime resulted in people buying bulbs more often, and more hence money in the cartel’s pockets. They even fined member companies if samples from their production lines lasted too long!

Whilst this can be seen as a disease, it was also proposed as a cure, a cure for the Great Depression in the USA in the 1930s. Bernard London proposed the idea to kick start the economy, although it was never implemented.

More recently, Apple came under fire in the USA for the limited life of the iPod. They made it very hard for an iPod user to replace the battery, which meant that after 18 months of use, it was more worth it to buy the latest model rather than replace the battery.

As planned obsolescence might be economically beneficial, it has some environmental drawbacks. As products have shorter life-cycles, there are a larger number of products reaching their end-of-life and being thrown away. There has been a huge increase in disposed waste resulting from this. Obviously at the moment this is not a sustainable way of life, but we live in a consumer society and seem addicted to it. But can it be a cure for the recession that has not gone away completely? Or is it a disease that will cause countless problems for years to come?

For engineers and designers it can cause moral and ethical dilemmas. I, for one, have always been taught to design something to its full potential, and if I do not do that, am I falling below the standard of the engineering profession? Do you think engineering institutions have tackled or are tackling this issue properly?

By-and-by, engineers tend to spend a fair amount of time sitting down. Whether that be through working at a desk, sitting in a meeting, or travelling, it can accumulate to a significant proportion of your week. (Not to mention time spent sat down in leisure hours). You may be surprised to hear that this is not a good thing; sitting down all day slows your metabolism, can be bad for your back, and is linked with earlier mortality. Put simply, the more proportion of your time spent sitting, the slower you will work and the earlier you will die. Many people assume that taking regular breaks and getting exercise outside of work hours negates the effects of sitting all day, but unfortunately that is not the case.

This stems from the simple fact that homo sapiens are not engineered (I’m not going to start a debate on creationism/evolution, so you can take that as meaning any one of the following: theological creationism, guided evolution, natural selection, aliens from the planet zorg, or any one of the proposed mechanisms that describe how we got to where we are…) to sit for prolonged periods of time. We are hunter gatherers, designed to be up and on the move. I.e. dynamic creatures not sedentary PowerPoint jockeys. When sitting, our structure (skeleton, muscles, tendons and ligaments), adopts an unnatural posture, placing stresses into our body that we were never designed for. Worse still, our muscles and ligaments become used to this posture, which in turn can lead to a whole series of knock on problems. To me, as a reliability engineer, this sounds like the classic tale of customers returning products with new, previously unforeseen failure modes, that can only be attributed to it being used for something it was never intended for… (not covered by many warranties!)

Over the last few years, there has been a surge in the number of people choosing to stand whilst working, but like all good ‘modern trends’, this is really nothing new. Standing desks were more popular in the 18th and 19th century. They could be found in homes, schools, & offices, until they disappeared almost overnight. Notable users include Thomas Jefferson, Charles Darwin, Winston Churchill and until this day, Donald Rumsfeld. Like many of the older workstations, many of the modern interpretations include the flexibility to change from sitting to standing (or even perching) to encourage variety. Like seemingly everything moderation is the key so I don’t mean to promote standing still in one spot all day!

I’m acutely aware of the downsides of sitting down as years of silly sports (apparently we are not engineered to be front row forwards either) have left me unable to sit comfortably for very long at a time, so I am in the process of getting a new standing desk in my workplace. I foresee the changeover to be ‘interesting’, and for some of my colleagues to be confused, but I’ll let you all know how I get on!

This week the UK government announced a new initiative to promote the development of Carbon Capture & Storage (CCS) technology, after the total flop of the last scheme. The CCS roadmap can be split into three distinct parts: the first provides research and development funding, the second grants for the construction of plants and the third funds the running costs, which makes this an attractive scheme for industries looking to develop CCS.

Heralded by the government and fossil fuel companies as a panacea for CO₂ reduction; they say it’ll enable polluting fossil fuel plants to run with ‘zero’ carbon emissions (an 80-90% reduction), a view many will question. Now I will try and answer some key questions: what are the merits of CSS, will it actually work on an industrial scale and what part does it have to play in reducing global warming and aiding theUK in meeting its 2020 and 2050 targets?

As you may know, the idea behind CCS technology in power generation is to enable the stripping of CO₂ from the emissions from fossil fuel fired power plants (pre or post combustion) and to then store it , normally very deep underground or under the sea. The technology behind CCS is largely unproven on an industrial scale and the storage component is an unknown element. The injection of CO₂, and essentially the storage of CO₂, has been used to prolong the life of oil wells in enhanced oil recovery but if this method of storage is stable is unknown.

What has to be remembered is that with CCS we are still producing vast quantities of CO² by burning non-renewable fossil fuels, it doesn’t reduce emissions we’re just storing them away. We do not know how reliable the storage of CO₂ is, and whether or not it will escape or dissipate and rise to the surface adding to global warming in the future. Also, it’s virtually impossible to measure the success of the storage solution and/or any CO₂ escape from deep sea storage. This is also not to mention the problems that may be caused to the pH level of the sea and the effects that it may have on sub-sea ecosystems.

Ok, so if there are so many uncertainties surrounding CCS, and potential pitfalls, what place should it have as one possible solution to reach our 2020 and 2050 emission targets? Well while I do not under any circumstance see this as a long term solution to reducing emissions, especially as we will run out of fossil fuels before long, I do think in the short term it does have a key part to play if we want to have any hope of achieving the targets set for 2020 and 2050 as we are woefully behind with our development of low carbon and renewable energy.

While this new scheme will be welcomed by investors and will aid in meeting the UK’s targets in reducing CO₂ emissions we all have to remember that it still involves burning a fast depleting finite resource where security of supply is a significant concern. CCS isn’t the solution to climate change, or the energy gap, but it may have a supporting role.

This week I was impressed to watch a feature of a flying car on the BBC Technology website. Alright it doesn’t look much like your normal family car (I don’t know where you’d put the shopping) but I’m really impressed by the design and I’m sure that there will be use for it in military type situations at least. It’s impressive how the rotors etc all fold up, so it would be usable on everyday roads and you wouldn’t have to worry about decapitating people!

Have a look on the company PAL-V’s website to find out more about this heli-car.

Seeing the maiden flight of the PAL-V ONE got me thinking, had it have been unveiled on Sunday the 1st of April, I’d probably have thought it was a April Fools joke, but as it was released the day after, it’s a perfectly legit feature. But what other April fools jokes were played around the net?

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There has been some very significant developments for the Nuclear Industry in the UK, with E.ON and RWE (nPower) [Horizon Nuclear Power] pulling out of the UK Nuclear New Build Programme, and on Monday the largest decommissioning contract ever will being awarded to the Babcock Dounreay Partnership to decommission Dounreay, by the far the biggest blemish of the nuclear industry.

Now in regards to the decision by EDF and RWE, if you believe the Energy Minister, Charles Hardy, this move was not down to a lack of confidence in the UK Nuclear Industry but due to, “pressures elsewhere in their businesses”, though it may have more to do with the lack of confidence in Nuclear as a whole following the Fukushima disaster in 2011. Whatever the reason for this decision, the fact is that this leaves the Nuclear New Build Programme in a severely weakened position and presents a stark truth that the UK cannot rely on private and foreign investment for our core infrastructure.

The big players that are left, and that the government is relying on to plug the energy gap, are EDF/Centrica (or British Gas) and Nugen, with EDF/Centrica being by far the most serious players. However with cost of a new nuclear plant rising, partly after increased safety precautions have been implemented following on from the Fukushima disaster, and the slow progress and higher than expected cost of EDF’s flagship nuclear reactor, the European Pressurised Reactor, in Flamanville, the continued support by these big players should be viewed with extreme caution.

The governments existing policy of no subsidies for nuclear power will have to come under review in the not too distant future, else the risk of the new nuclear sector collapsing is very real. Now I don’t agree with subsidies for nuclear power, as I believe it has already cost the country enough over decades of poor management leading to heavy decommission costs and that we should focus on more sustainable power. But we have already invested heavily in proving New Nuclear Build Designs and paving the way for their installations so to abandon now would leave the country out of pocket and with a serious and fast approaching energy gap.

Finally I will briefly consider the blemish that is Dounreay and the ever protracted decommissioning process, which at last count was estimated to finish in 2032. Dounreay was, in my opinion, the most poorly managed nuclear facility that the country has ever ran and more a experimental play house for the development of nuclear power and fuel than ever a well run facility. There have been stories of rooms that were out of bounds for decades due to radiation, which have only recently been decommissioned, and nuclear waste leakage into the waterways. The decommissioning process is incredibly complicated and to trust that it will be more cost effective to hand this over to a private firm is incredible at the least.

I have no worries on the ability of Babcock to perform the decommission and I am sure that the people involved will not actually change much due to the limited suitably qualified resource that this country has; though to presume that this will reduce costs is in my opinion a foolish one. It should also be noted that Babcock has an ever expanding portfolio of highly sensitive and very significant operations in this country. Private companies exist for one purpose, to make money, which any sensible person cannot disagree with; however to put them in charge of public infrastructure and services and expect them to act altruistically is incredibly naive.

For more of my opinions on nuclear and energy as a whole, please visit my blog!