Related papers: The End of Cheap Uranium
At any sustained positive growth rate of energy demand, depletion of all terrestrial energy resources, including non-renewable deuterium fusion and renewable solar, occurs within a remarkably compressed period. The time to depletion is…
The combustion of coal, the most polluting form of energy, must be significantly curtailed to limit global average temperature increase to well below 2 degrees C. The effectiveness of carbon pricing is frequently undermined by sub-optimally…
Suppose an initial state is coupled to a continuum of energy states. The population of the initial state is expected to decrease with time, but is the decrease monotonic? The occupation probability of the initial state is the survival…
We propose that supernova relic neutrino (SRN) observation can be used to set constraints on the neutrino decay models. Because of the long distance scale from cosmological supernovae to the Earth, SRN have possibility to provide much…
Currently we produce 10 to power 21 digital bits of information annually on Earth. Assuming 20 percent annual growth rate, we estimate that 350 years from now, the number of bits produced will exceed the number of all atoms on Earth, or 10…
Kick-starting the space economy requires identification of critical resources that can lower the cost of space transport, sustain logistic bases and communication relay networks between major nodes in the network. One important challenge…
Long-term solutions for the disposal of toxic wastes usually involve isolation of the wastes in a deep subsurface geologic environment. In the case of spent nuclear fuel, if radionuclide leakage occurs from the engineered barrier, the…
Global achievement of climate change mitigation will heavy reply on how much of CO2 emission has and will be released by China. After rapid growth of emissions during last decades, China CO2 emissions declined since 2014 that driven by…
The Sun is expected to increase its radiant output by about 10% per billion years. The rate at which the radius of the Earth's orbit would need to increase in order to keep the present value of the Sun's radiant flux at the Earth constant…
Future direct observations of the Cosmic Neutrino Background (C$\nu$B) have the potential to explore a neutrino lifetime, especially in the region of the age of the universe, $t_0=4.35\times 10^{17}\ {\rm s}$. We forecast constraints on…
Purpose: Our objective is to apply an improved statistical global model of beta^- decay half-life systematics [1] generated by machine-learning techniques to the prediction of beta half-lives relevant to r-process nuclei. The primary aim of…
Energy storage shifts energy from off-peak periods to on-peak periods. Unlike conventional generation, storage is duration-limited: the stored energy capacity constrains the duration over which it can supply power. To understand how these…
HST/STIS observations of Uranus in 2015 show that the depletion of upper tropospheric methane has been relatively stable and that the polar region has been brightening over time as a result of increased aerosol scattering. This…
In this proposal, a cost-effective energy harvesting and management system have been proposed. The regular power keeps around 200 Watt while the peak power can reach 300 Watt. The cost of this system satisfies the requirements and budget…
Electricity demand and generation have become increasingly unpredictable with the growing share of variable renewable energy sources in the power system. Forecasting electricity supply by fuel mix is crucial for market operation, ensuring…
Comparing Big Bang Nucleosynthesis predictions with the light element abundances inferred from observational data, we can obtain the strong constraints on some neutrino properties, e.g. number of neutrino species, mass, lifetime. Recently…
A Neutrino Factory, sending $>10^{20}$ decay neutrinos per year from a high-energy stored muon beam towards remote detectors, has been suggested as the ultimate tool for precision measurement of the neutrino mixing matrix. Following two…
Two years of satellite observations were used to quantify methane emission from coal mines in Queensland, the largest coal-producing state in Australia. The six analyzed surface and underground coal mines are estimated to emit 570+/-98 Gg…
We explore the fate of the universe given the possibility that the density associated with `dark energy' may decay slowly with time. Decaying dark energy is modeled by a homogeneous scalar field which couples minimally to gravity and whose…
The ultimate climate emergency is a "runaway greenhouse": a hot and water vapour rich atmosphere limits the emission of thermal radiation to space, causing runaway warming. Warming ceases only once the surface reaches ~1400K and emits…