The Real China Syndrome -- Bad Air
Looking out the window from my hospital bed last week, I marveled at the clarity of Rattlesnake Ridge almost 30 miles away. The air quality was amazing.
I then looked down at an article I was reading in The Week that reported how the air quality in Beijing was so bad, the visibility so low, that a downtown factory building burned for three hours before anyone noticed!
The American public first became aware of Beijing’s bad air issue during the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Coaches were having a hard time allowing our athletes to go to Beijing to train prior to the Games because the air was so toxic. The City responded by shutting down coal plants in the area, implementing forced-reduction in traffic and halting many industrial activities. It worked pretty well for the duration of the Games.
But it’s gotten worse since then...
George Stanford - In Memoriam (Tom Blees
On October 7 we received the sad news of the passing of Dr. George Stanford, one of the original members of SCGI. George was the first of the IFR scientists I contacted when I began my research that resulted, years later, in the publication of Prescription for the Planet. After acting as my original IFR mentor, he soon introduced me to Charles Till and Yoon Chang. Thus began a constant years-long four-person email chain as the three of them tutored me—with endless patience—so that I might introduce a wider audience to the amazing technology that they had developed with their team at Argonne West. That mentorship has continued to this day. Their tutelage not only changed my life but the lives of many others around the world who have come to understand the profound nature of IFR technology, that it can literally transform the planet if we are wise enough to deploy it. Despite his failing health, George's mind was clear and his intellect razor-sharp right up to the end. He was always willing to contribute his insights and expertise whenever called upon to do so, which happened frequently. He was always generous with his time and never patronizing no matter how unschooled his questioner. After several years of friendship, his wife Janet once told me that George loved being again immersed in the IFR culture, doing his best to finally see the commercial deployment of the system. Alas, the delay was too long. It will be with regret, but with profound gratitude, that we toast George Stanford when the ribbon is cut on the first PRISM reactor, an event that will hopefully happen soon enough so that the rest of his colleagues will still be here to see it. Tom Blees We won
"Integral Fast Reactors CAN WILL Power the Planet"We won... The official results for the MIT Climate CoLab contests were announced last Friday. Thanks to the support of people from around the world, our proposal envisioning a path to an energy-abundant future was far and away the top vote-getter, garnering 665 votes.
Get the Book: Nuclear 2.0
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