COSMIC CERENKOV RADIATION - POWER SOURCES WE'VE BARELY EXPLORED

Submitted by Jeff Buster on Wed, 04/13/2011 - 10:58.

Image from NASA

 

Since the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear problems occurred on March 11, 2011, many newscast reporters on television and radio have had to explain the extreme problems occurring at the 6 un-cooled Japanese nuclear reactors.  
 
Reporters could be heard stumbling and struggling to explain the complex engineering and sophisticated physics which were involved.   Half lives, isotopes, light water, boron, caesium 137, Sieverts, rems, etc., etc..
 
I thought to myself:   I bet these reporters wish they had been more attentive in their high school math, science, and physics classes.   I know I wish I had paid more attention.
 
But it’s never to late to learn, so here we go!
 
The image above is a NASA sketch of theoretical gamma ray energy collectors. The energy which such an array would collect is Cerenkov Radiation (or Cherenkov).
Cerenkov Radiation is the radiation which causes the blue glow (See Google images) in the water in nuclear reactors.  
 
Unlike photo voltaic arrays - which collect energy from the sun less than half the time - Cerenkov collectors collect gamma rays from deep space, so they are operative 24 hours a day. 
 
While we continue to poison the globe with a light dusting of toxic radiation and an atmosphere full of fossil fuel exhausts - where are novel energy concepts like Cerenkov Collectors being built and tested? 
Unfortunately, not in my backyard.
 
 

 

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Chernkov gamma collectors are a revelation to me--!

Submitted by Lee Batdorff on Fri, 04/15/2011 - 12:54.

 

This was sent to me via email from Paul: The Cerenkov gamma collectors are a revelation to me--! as was the 'artificial leaf' [artificial photosynthesis] developed at MIT by the Daniel Nocera team: http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/04/artificial-leaf-follow-up.html http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/onepercent/2011/03/green-machine.html many more articles about this are all over if you do the searches. In his own words, here's a 22 min. summation Nocera gave at in a lecture at MIT -- presents global energy demands vs. current technologies & implications, and if you've got the time to watch it, he simply-deftly explains the essential catalyst chemical trick that makes it work, w/ the implications that an olympic-sized swimming pool of WATER contains all the potential energy [w/ their 80% efficient artfcl. phtsynths. breakthrough] to produce on the order of 43 Tera-watts of electric juice per second!: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTtmU2lD97o This news SHOULD be a game-changer... If you consider the small quantities of uranium that produced the hell of hiroshima & nagasaki, the point is the same as Einstein figured it -- the amount of energy in any amounts of matter [if completely converted] is astonighing. Nocera's 'leaf' can work with grey water, sea water, etc., and the catalysts are reasonably in-expensive -- a true breakthrough. Hmmm, what's not to like? oh, that's right, TOTAL RESISTANCE FROM THE STATUS QUO, that's all.....