Wind turbines could more than meet U.S. electricity needs, report says
Wind turbines off U.S. coastlines could potentially supply more than enough electricity to meet the nation’s current demand, the Interior Department reported Thursday.
Simply harnessing the wind in relatively shallow waters — the most accessible and technically feasible sites for offshore turbines — could produce at least 20% of the power demand for most coastal states, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said, unveiling a report by the Minerals Management Service that details the potential for oil, gas and renewable development on the outer continental shelf.
The biggest wind potential lies off the nation’s Atlantic coast, which the Interior report estimates could produce 1,000 gigawatts of electricity — enough to meet a quarter of the national demand.
The report also notes large potential in the Pacific, including off the California coast, but said the area presented technical challenges.
The Interior Department released an executive summary of the report on Thursday.
It noted that "strong wind resources also exist offshore California, Oregon, Washington and Hawaii, but it appears that the majority of this resource lies in deep waters where technology constraints are potentially significant" — a sentiment Salazar echoed when asked about Pacific wind potential.
Read the full article at the LA Times.
NIF scientists set the controls for nuclear fusion
Among the flurry of experiments going down worldwide, significant work will start rolling at the US National Ignition Facility sometime this June. Under construction for twelve years, the lab will focus 192 giant laser beams on two forms of hydrogen, deuterium and tritium. Combining these isotopes at high temperatures generates a colossal amount of energy, recreating conditions "at the heart of the sun." The goal is to find a way to achieve controlled, sustained nuclear fusion and energy gain in a lab. According to the director of the facility, Dr. Ed Moses, "When all NIF lasers are fired at full energy, they will deliver 1.8 megajoules of ultraviolet energy to the target." Lasting just a few nanoseconds, the system is capable of generation 500 trillion watts of power — more than the peak electrical generating power of the entire United States. Significant results are expected sometime between 2010 and 2012.
[ed]Nuclear fusion is the world game-changer we’ve been waiting for…[/ed]
