A preliminary estimate of the economic impact of the energy amplifier

The basic concept and the applicability of the Energy Amplifier (EA) have been exhaustively described elsewhere (Refs. [1] to [4]). The EA is essentially a source of high quality heat, produced by the nuclear cascades induced by a high intensity proton beam inside an appropriate ³beam dump² arrangement. A fraction of such ³heat² has to be transformed into electricity to run the accelerator, the rest being available for a number of different industrial applications, and in particular commercial electricity production. In this paper the economic aspects are further explored and we attempt a first order estimate of the cost of such an energy source, comparing it critically with more conventional sources. In this task we have been greatly helped by a number of people2) who have specific competence in the industrial aspects of the application. We conclude that in agreement to our previous estimates, the practical cost of high quality heat is about US /GJ, namely and times lower than the one of Coal and Natural Gas for the prevailing net interest rate of 5%. The cost of electricity produced with our method is estimated of the order of 2 ¢/kWh, again highly competitive (about half of the cost) with all other traditional sources. In spite of the significant uncertainties in the evaluation, we evidence a strikingly lower cost for our method, direct consequence of the basic simplicity of the design and of its high level of intrinsic safety. Figures are for a 600 MWe stand alone power station. We recall that the EA is also an environmentally more acceptable form of energy from nuclei of virtually unlimited supply. The integrated collective dose for the same energy has been estimated [3] of the order of 2 man Sv/[GWe ¥ year], 1/10 of the average dose due to radionuclide emission from Coal burning and comparable to Oil and Geothermal. The radioactive waste reaches the activity of coal ashes after about 500 years of ³cool-down². Environmentally, the EA performance is comparable to the one of Magnetic Fusion [9], which has, no doubt, a higher cost

High-energy accelerators in medicine

The treatment of tumours with charged particles, ranging from protons to "light ions" ( Carbon, Oxygen, Neon) has many advantages, but up to now has been little used because of the absence of facilities. After the successful pioneering work carried out with accelerators built for physics research, machines dedicated to this new radiotherapy are planned or already in construction. The rationale for this new radiotherapy, the high energy accelerators and the beam delivery systems are presented in these two lectures.The lectures on the new radiotherapy, the high energy accelerators and the beam delivery system

Microstructure evolution of gold thin films under spherical indentation for micro switches contact applications

RF MEMS (Radio Frequency Micro Electro Mechanical System) switches are promising devices but their gold-on-gold contacts, assimilated for this work to a sphere / plane contact, represent a major reliability issue. A first step towards failure mechanism understanding is the investigation of the contact metal microstructure evolution under static and cyclic loading. After static and cyclic loading of sputtered gold thin films under spherical indentation, high resolution Electron Back Scatter Diffraction (EBSD) is used to investigate contact area. Grain rotation against {111} fiber texture of 1 μm thick sputtered gold thin film is a signature of plastic deformation. Grain rotation is observed above 1.6 mN under static loading by a spherical diamond indenter with 50 μm tip radius. A heterogeneity in grain rotation is observed corresponding to a more important plastic deformation in the middle of the indent than at the edge. A 30° Grain rotation is observed for a half million mechanical cycles under 300 μN load by a spherical gold tip (20 μm radius) due to cyclic work hardening. The same test in hot switching mode induces a grain growth in the contact area. Therefore thermal effects occurring during hot switching are underline

Douglas R. Weiner, A little corner of freedom

Cet ouvrage de Douglas Weiner constitue en quelque sorte la prolongation du précédent,  Models of nature : ecology, conservation, and cultural revolution in Soviet Russia. Avec cette nouvelle somme, Douglas Weiner s’affirme comme l’historien de la « naučnaja obščestvennost´ », confirmant que la portée de son travail s’étend bien au-delà de l’activisme environnemental. Si le premier volume était consacré essentiellement aux années 1920 et au début des années 1930, celui-ci embrasse l’ensemble ..

Accelerator break-out group summary

Interesting developments in accelerators have shown that they can be used as {open_quote}factory{close_quote}-type systems with the choice of technology dependent on the specific requirements of the application. The status and future possibilities for cyclotrons and linear accelerators are compared briefly, based on discussions at a break-out session on accelerators. Only high power systems with beam powers in excess of a MW average power were considered

Archie Brown, Seven Years that Changed the World

Avec son magistral The Gorbachev Factor, Archie Brown s’est imposé comme le meilleur spécialiste de la période gorbatchévienne. Son dernier ouvrage était donc très attendu. Il s’agit d’un recueil d’articles dont la première moitié est constituée de quatre contributions parues à chaud, en temps réel, entre 1985 et 1990, et republiées telles quelles, complétées de quelques notes visant à préciser ou à rectifier des faits ou des jugements à la lumière du recul et des sources nouvelles. Ceci témo..