Philippe Matthews Show Guru Advice, Author Reviews, Tech Reviews, Entertainment News

For the first time, a superconducting current limiter based on YBCO strip conductors has now been installed at a power plant. At the Boxberg power plant of Vattenfall, the current limiter protects the grid for own consumption that is designed for 12 000 volts and 800 amperes against damage due to short circuits and voltage peaks.

a leading design concept for producing nuclear fusion energy—can, under certain rare fault conditions, produce beams of very energetic "runaway" electrons that have the potential to damage interior surfaces of the device. In the event of such a fault, a tokamak-based nuclear fusion power plant will have to employ protection systems to prevent any damage.

By combining three layers of detection into one new device, a team of researchers from Japan has proposed a new way to monitor radiation levels at power plant accident sites. The device would be more economical that using different devices to measure different types of radiation, and could limit the exposure times of clean-up workers by taking three measurements simultaneously. Radioactive decay produces three flavors of emissions: alpha, beta, and gamma.

Citing a weak economy and the "current uncertain status of U.S. climate policy," utility American Electric Power has decided not to proceed with plans to expand CO2 capture and storage technology (CCS) efforts at its Mountaineer power plant in West Virginia.

Because solar and wind are only available sometimes, GE's new powerplant can quickly cycle on or off to pick up the slack.

Conditions are changing rapidly at the Fukushima power plant, where at least two of its six nuclear reactors have partially melted down. The editors of Scientific American are following the developments, and part of the effort involves following various Twitter users.