Infinite Unknown

- Japan to open nuclear plant (ABC News, May 16, 2013):

Japan is about to open a 30 billion dollar state-of- the art nuclear fuel re-processing plant.

TONY JONES, PRESENTER: It took more than 20 years to build and cost nearly $30 billion. Now Japan’s state-of-the-art nuclear fuel reprocessing plant is about to open. The plant in the far north of the country will be capable of turning spent nuclear fuel into eight tonnes of plutonium each year. The Japanese say the weapons grade plutonium will only be used for power generation, but that hasn’t soothed American concerns about the security of the stockpile and the possible effect on a regional arms race. North Asia correspondent Mark Willacy was given an exclusive look inside the Rokkasho nuclear complex.

MARK WILLACY, REPORTER: With 17,000 tonnes of spent nuclear fuel sitting in pools like this across the country, Japan wants to reprocess it and use it again to generate electricity. It spent $28 billion building this reprocessing plant here at Rokkasho, which is capable of turning this used fuel into eight tonnes of plutonium every year. Continue reading »

Tags: Global News, Japan, Nuclear, Nuclear reactors, Plutonium, Technology

Related info:

- US May Face Inevitable Nuclear Power Exit (PHYS.org)

- Plastic Bags, Tape, Broomsticks Fix San Onofre Nuclear Plant Leak (ABC 10News – Video, Photo)

- Radioactive leak found at Palisades Nuclear Power Plant (RT, May 17, 2013):

Investigators have discovered a half-inch long crack around a nozzle on one of the tanks of the Palisades Nuclear Power Plant, and have attributed the crack to the water leakage that spilled radioactive water into Lake Michigan on May 5.

The plant, which is located on the shore of the great lake and operated by Entergy, was shut down after the water tank exceeded its site threshold and leaked. Authorities say the crack led to about 79 gallons of “slightly radioactive water” spilling from the Palisades plant into the lake, WOOD-TV reports.

The leak came from a 300,000-gallon injection and refueling tank, which floods and cools the nuclear reactor with borated water during refueling outages. It also removes heat from the reactor when there is a loss of coolant by sourcing the safety injection system.

Continue reading »

Tags: Energy, Environment, Global News, Health, Lake Michigan, Michigan, NRC, Nuclear, Nuclear reactors, Palisades Nuclear Power Plant, Radiation, Technology, U.S.

- Gundersen: Breaking news… Officials say U.S. nuclear plant operator “was going to do an experiment on the people of Southern California” — “That’s their words; they said it was an experiment” (AUDIO) (ENENews, May 16, 2013)

Tags: Arnie Gundersen, California, Global News, Government, Nuclear, Nuclear reactors, Politics, Society, Technology, U.S.

- How the FBI Wants to Penalize Internet Companies for Providing “Too Much” Security (Liberty Blitzkrieg, May 13, 2013):

Remember my recent post titled: Former FBI Agent: All Phone Conversations are Recorded and Stored? Well now they now want to ensure doing the same on the internet is as easy as possible.  The latest proposal by the FBI, which would require companies to provide a backdoor for the feds to spy on American citizens on the internet, has been covered extensively in the mainstream media over the past couple of weeks, first in the Washington Post and then later in the New York Times.  It centers around this push to make communications on the internet “wiretap capable” and would impose fines of $25,000 per day for companies that do not comply with Big Brother.  Julian Sanchez of Wired has written and excellent article explaining how this proposal would not only crush privacy rights of law abiding citizens, but would also help cyber criminals, enable totalitarian governments, make the internet less secure and stifle the remnants of innovation that remain in the economy.  Oh, and unsurprisingly, Obama backs the proposal.  My favorite excerpts:

The FBI has some strange ideas about how to “update” federal surveillance laws: They’re calling for legislation to penalize online services that provide users with too much security.

I’m not kidding. The proposal was revealed in The Washington Post last week — and a couple days ago, a front-page story in The New York Times reported the Obama administration is preparing to back it.

While it’s not yet clear how dire the going-dark scenario really is, the statutory “cure” proposed by the FBI — with fines starting at $25,000 a day for companies that aren’t wiretap capable — would surely be worse than the disease.

The FBI’s misguided proposal would impose costly burdens on thousands of companies (and threaten to entirely kill those whose business model centers on providing highly secure encrypted communications), while making cloud solutions less attractive to businesses and users. It would aid totalitarian governments eager to spy on their citizens while distorting business decisions about software design. Perhaps worst of all, it would treat millions of law-abiding users with legitimate security needs as presumed criminals — while doing little to hamper actual criminals.

Continue reading »

Tags: 1984, Barack Obama, Dictatorship, Fascism, FBI, George Orwell, Global News, Government, Internet, New World Order, Obama administration, Politics, Society, Surveillance, U.S.

- Pentagon Wants ‘Human Surrogate’ for Ray Gun Tests (Wired, May 8, 2013):

The Pentagon’s electromagnetic pain weapons are about to make a new friend. It’s an anthropomorphic test dummy that’s gonna get blasted by everything the Pentagon’s non-lethal weapons agency can throw at it.

In its latest round of small business research proposals, the Navy announced it’s seeking a sensor-outfitted “human surrogate” for use in an array of non-lethal weapon tests. That includes ”electromagnetic radiation in the L, S, and W-bands,” noted the request for proposal. Even further, there are plans to subject the luckless mannequin to everything from noise, blast pressure, electrical currents, thermal energy, and light from flashbang grenades.

Continue reading »

Tags: Global News, Government, Military, Pentagon, Politics, Technology

- US State Department Halts 3-D Gun Production: Demands Removal Of All Online Blueprints (ZeroHedge, May 9, 2013):

Three days ago, in an article that looked at the convergence of 3-D printing and the 2nd Amendment, we presented “the Liberator” – the world’s first fully 3-D printed firearm. The name was aptly chosen because courtesy of its creator, 25-year old UofT law student Cody Wilson, and his non-profit group Defense Distributed, its online blueprint and assembly instructions liberated “anyone to be able to download and print a gun with no serial number, in the privacy of their garage” in effect completely circumventing any gun control/distribution laws, background checks and other regulatory hurdles of an increasingly authoritarian government. In fact, we were counting the number of days before some US Federal agency would come knocking on Cody Wilson’s door and involved that other key Amendment – the First, by either “disappearing him” or politely enforcing a permanent Cease and Desist of all production, including, of course, the removal of all online “liberating” blueprints. We didn’t have long to wait – it took just one week.

As Tech Crunch reports, “the State Department has demanded that new blueprints for a fully 3-D-printed gun be taken offline just a week after they were posted. The Office of Defense Trade Controls Compliance is forcing outspoken Second Amendment crusader Cody Wilson to remove the downloadable 3-D printer files from Defcad.org under expert laws known as the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR).”

“Until the Department provides Defense Distributed with final [commodity jurisdiction] determinations, Defense Distributed should treat the above technical data as ITAR-controled,” reads the State Department order, seen below in its entirety.

Specifically, the Dept of State claims that under “ITAR, it is unlawful to export any defense article or technical data for which a license or written approval is required without first obtaining the required authorization from the DDTC. Please note that disclosing (including oral or visual disclosure) or transferring technical data to a foreign person, whether in the United States or abroad, is considered an expoert under [ ] ITAR.” And since by implication this means that all the data can be seen by at least one foreigner, “this means that all such data should be removed from public access immediately.”

Continue reading »

Tags: Barack Obama, Government, Guns, Obama administration, Politics, Society, The Liberator, U.S.

- US Air Force one step closer to global strike capability as experimental aircraft exceeds Mach 5 (RT, May 3, 2013):

The US Air Force completed a nearly decade-long test program this week with the successful launch of an unmanned aircraft into hypersonic velocity, flying at more than five times the speed of sound.

Air Force officials announced Friday that the X-51A WaveRider flew for more than three minutes Wednesday, a one point hitting a speed of Mach 5.1, according to the Associated Press. The successful flight marked a turning point for the X-51A, which was designed with scramjet technology that’s capable of delivering weapons strikes around the world in only minutes.

The aircraft was designed to reach Mach 6 (six times the speed of sound) but the Air Force deemed Wednesday’s flight a success because the previous three attempts either ended in highly publicized failures or failed to reach the desired top speed.

Continue reading »

Tags: Air Force, Global News, Government, Military, Politics, Technology, U.S.

- Printable ‘bionic’ ear melds electronics and biology (PHYS.org, May 1, 2013):

Scientists at Princeton University used off-the-shelf printing tools to create a functional ear that can “hear” radio frequencies far beyond the range of normal human capability

The researchers’ primary purpose was to explore an efficient and versatile means to merge electronics with tissue. The scientists used 3D printing of cells and nanoparticles followed by cell culture to combine a small coil antenna with cartilage, creating what they term a bionic ear.

Continue reading »

Tags: Global News, Science, Technology

- Scientists build an insect-inspired camera system with ‘nearly infinite’ depth-of-field (May 1, 2013)

Tags: Global News, Science, Technology

- Meet “The Liberator”: The World’s First Fully 3D-Printed Firearm (Liberty Blitzkrieg, May 3, 2013):

3D-printing, like decentralized crypto currencies, have the potential to change the world in which we live in extraordinary ways. Ways that are almost inconceivable at this point given we are so early in the game.  More than anything else, these technologies can empower the individual like never before, and I think that is generally a very good thing.

I first covered the impact of 3D-printing on the firearms industry in January in my post 3D-Printing Meets the 2nd Amendment, where I discussed Defense Distributed’s success in printing magazines for semi-automatic weapons.  At the time, their next major goal was to print a fully functioning firearm. They have now done just that.

From Forbes:

Eight months ago, Cody Wilson set out to create the world’s first entirely 3D-printable handgun.

Now he has.

Early next week, Wilson, a 25-year University of Texas law student and founder of the non-profit group Defense Distributed, plans to release the 3D-printable CAD files for a gun he calls “the Liberator,” pictured in its initial form above. He’s agreed to let me document the process of the gun’s creation, so long as I don’t publish details of its mechanics or its testing until it’s been proven to work reliably and the file has been uploaded to Defense Distributed’s online collection of printable gun blueprints at Defcad.org.

All sixteen pieces of the Liberator prototype were printed in ABS plastic with a Dimension SST printer from 3D printing company Stratasys, with the exception of a single nail that’s used as a firing pin. The gun is designed to fire standard handgun rounds, using interchangeable barrels for different calibers of ammunition.

Continue reading »

Tags: Global News, Guns, Technology