In September, Dan Arvizu, who heads the U.S. National Renewable Energy Laboratory, made a prescient prediction during a European solar energy conference. He said the meteoric growth of photovoltaic installations over the last six years would cause fossil fuel and nuclear interests to demonize solar cells in hope of killing what they might see as a powerful threat. Days later, Washington politicians started ramping up an investigation into Solyndra, a leading maker of thin-film solar cells that had gone bankrupt two years after receiving a $535 million loan guarantee from the U.S. ... Read More
Confessions of a Nuclear Power Safety Expert
June 14, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
When Italy decided in the mid-'70s to add nuclear power to its power portfolio, young mechanical and nuclear engineer Cesare Silvi was among those attracted to the opportunities it presented. His work centered on nuclear safety issues — in particular, what might happen if something unexpected struck a power plant. Corners he saw cut there eventually soured Silvi on that endeavor. His next position — at the Italian Commission on Nuclear and Alternative Energy Sources, which included work on nuclear disarmament — eventually soured him on nuclear energy itself. "[If we] continue with ... Read More
At Chernobyl It Was All Under Control
March 19, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
As a visiting scholar last year at the Linz Institute for Organic Solar Cells, I met Valery N. Bliznyuk, a visiting professor at Linz and a permanent faculty member at Western Michigan University. His fascinating work in materials at molecular and nanotech levels includes work on polymer photovoltaics. Over dinner, he told me he hailed from Kiev (or Kyiv in Ukrainian), and the subject of Chernobyl inevitably arose. And now, with the disaster at Fukushima dredging up memories of that meltdown 25 years ago, Bliznyuk’s recollections of being a scientist laboring in an informational black ... Read More
Inventor of Plastic Solar Cells Sees Bright Future
January 28, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
In 1974, future Nobel laureates Alan Heeger, Alan MacDiarmid and Hideki Shirakawa discovered a new type of plastic — conjugated conducting polymers. "This polymer was a completely new type that acted more like a metal than like other plastics as it was an excellent conductor of electricity," recalled Niyazi Serdar Sariciftci, who started working with the polymers as a doctoral student at the University of Vienna in the mid-1980s. "It became quite the rage and elicited great interest due to its unique behavior." Drawing on that breakthrough, Sariciftci would create the plastic solar ... Read More
Greener Battlefields Would Be Safer for Troops
October 28, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment
The experience of Lt. Gen. Richard Zilmer, who in 2006 became the commander of the coalition forces in the Al Anbar province of Iraq, exemplifies the changing strategy of fighting insurgencies in Afghanistan and Iraq. Before coming to Iraq, Zilmer focused on the importance of space-related warfighting technologies and capabilities. In Iraq, his concerns were often a little more down to earth — his command's dependence on oil. Seventy percent of all convoys carried liquid fossil fuels, and attacks on convoys, the general learned, account for about half of all the casualties. Generators ... Read More