Had 3-Mile Island's containment dome not been built double-strength because it was under an airport landing path, it may not have withstood the H explosion. IAEA in '04 estimated deaths from Chernobyl at 4K. An '09 more extensive review found deaths approaching 1M by '04, almost 170K in N. Am. If Fukushima #4 melts down, cesium-137 and strontium-90 would be floating around for centuries before decay. If #3, the plutonium will take 482K years. Fuku, unfortunately, is nearing Chernobyl levels of releases.
China led the world in clean energy investment in '10 @ >$54B. Germany 2nd @ $41B. US 3rd @ $34B. Italy 4th at $14B. $243B total. I believe the numbers include hydro, but I'm not sure if it includes nuclear.
Lawrence Berkeley Lab has a breakthrough H storage composite material of magnesium nanoparticles sprinkled through a matrix of a plexiglass-like polymer. Rapid absorption/release of H @ modest temps w/out oxidizing the metal.
UK's GDP was down .05% in 4Q. '11 forecast 1.7% growth. 4.4% (official) inflation rate double household income rise.
In '10, line losses in US grid cost ~$26B and 160M tons of extra CO2 emissions. Losses rise greatly during peak hours and tie up huge amounts of generation and transmission capacity, limiting new wind, solar access. Localized waste energy recycling (WER) can significantly relieve the problem. 1MW of WER gen (say at a manufacturing plant or industrial site) could displace up to 2.25MW of peak gen/transmission. DOE has ID'd roughly 200GW of potential US WER gen. Otherwise, we need $50B worth of new power lines for 10k miles. And no one wants new lines in their back yards. The US added all of 620 miles in the last 10 years.
Happy trails, pards.
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