The re-emergence of nuclear energy
Nuclear plants are the ONLY net-energy-positive way to produce electricity. The waste/pollution problem is trivial when compared to fossil-fuels. Under pressure to reduce the production of climate-warming gases, more and more countries around the world are moving to low-emission nuclear energy as a primary solution. Today, even some ‘green’ environmentalists are embracing it.
After the partial meltdown of the Three Mile Island plant in Pennsylvania in 1979, and the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, the construction of nuclear plants slowed significantly. It has been well over a decade since the last nuclear power plant opened in the US. But now many environmentalists are backing nuclear energy and 53 plants are under construction worldwide, double the total of just five years ago.
Experts point to many improvements in nuclear technology over the past decades, with an 80% drop in industrial accidents at the world’s 436 nuclear plants since the late 1980s. The current administration is eyeing federal tax incentives and loan guarantees to fund new nuclear power plants across the US, which could eventually drive down carbon emissions.
In the early 1950s, the dawn of the civilian nuclear power age, nuclear optimists imagined a world powered by tiny nuclear reactors for nuclear-powered cars, airplanes, refrigerators and home heating. Today, in an era of climate change and energy insecurity, the nuclear industry is re-evaluating some of those old dreams. This includes the nuclear battery.
Designed by Hyperion Power Generation, a Los Alamos Labs spin-off, the cheap, small and easily transportable nuclear battery is about the size of a refrigerator, compared with a 50-feet-tall traditional reactor. It produces 25 megawatts of electricity, about 2,5% the output of a large atomic power-plant reactor. This is not quite compact enough for cars, but is being designed to power small towns with fewer than 20 000 homes, as well as military bases, mining operations, desalination plants and even commercial ships and cruise liners.
iPad is a new media ecosystem
Apple’s iPad is not just another computer but a whole new paradigm, a complete media ecosystem.
My own media habits are changing steadily. I find myself using my iPad several hours a day. Instead of watching TV passively, bombarded with frequent, annoying advertisements, I scan the news on my iPad, selecting what I want to read, viewing what I want.
I read articles from the NY Times, the Economist, Fortune, Wired magazine and many others that simply await a finger-touch. I read Kindle books on my iPad too; a bit heavier than my old Kindle, but I prefer the brighter black-and-white text and colour interface. I Google search, simply saying (audio) what I am looking for and browse the web. And, of course, I read and send e-mails on my iPad – just about as easily as on my desktop. My smaller iPhone is my backup because it is always in my pocket.
Of course, the best function of iPad is showing photo albums, moving each picture with a finger-flick and expanding views with two fingers. What better way to share photos from my bucket-list trips? Someone said that the hardware disappears, leaving just easy access to the media.
With iPad opening up this new category, everyone is announcing their new tablets, slates and pads – Dell’s Streak and Motorola’s Xoom, with Microsoft, Amazon and Google also cooking up competition.
But, it is probably too late – Apple’s new iPad is already in production and will launch soon. It is thinner and lighter, with more memory and a more powerful graphics processor, though the display resolution will be the same. And it will have at least one camera on the front for features like video-conferencing and Face-Time calling.
In the first quarter of 2011, Apple’s sales jumped to almost $27B, with record earnings. They sold 7,33 million iPads during the quarter, almost as many as the two previous quarters combined. Total iPad sales to date are about 15 million units. Long-term estimate are 33,7 million iPad units for 2011 and 40 million for 2012. For Apple, the IPad business has become almost the same size as the Mac.
Questions: My old PC desktop and laptop are still functional and I have all my ‘stuff’ on Outlook, plus who-knows-how-many gigabytes worth of archives. Shall I go through the arduous process of transferring all that to an iMac desktop? And dump my laptop for a Macbook Pro? I will have to spend the next weeks (months) learning the slick Mac interface, transferring all my stuff, and fiddling with files and programs that do not transfer.
And then, what will I do with my functioning-well desktop and laptop? Should I buy something I do not really need? Hey, what is Apple doing to me?
Jim Pinto is an industry analyst and commentator, writer, technology futurist and angel investor. His popular e-mail newsletter, JimPinto.com eNews, is widely read (with direct circulation of about 7000 and web-readership of two to three times that number). His areas of interest are technology futures, marketing and business strategies for a fast-changing environment, and industrial automation with a slant towards technology trends.
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