“If You Tilt This Game,Will It Explode?”: The politics of nuclear display at the New York Hall of Science (1966–1973)

This article analyzes the politics of nuclear display at the New York Hall of Science in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The Hall of Science, which had its beginnings in the 1964–1965 New York World's Fair, featured hands‐on atomic exhibits for children and was planning a monumental Nuclear Science Center with the full support of the Atomic Energy Commission. The Nuclear Science Center would have been the biggest permanent display on nuclear science and technology in the United States and the Atomarium its most spectacular exhibit. At the Atomarium, visitors would have watched a working nuclear reactor go critical from a spiral‐shaped theater‐in‐the‐round while listening to a demonstrator standing on a transparent plexiglass window located right above the reactor core lecturing on peaceful uses of atomic energy. This article analyzes the Hall of Science as a space in which contemporary tensions between nuclear exceptionalism and nuclear banalization were played out. In particular, the article explores how playful and immersive regimes of display played a political role in modulating nuclear fear at a time when, while promoting a private nuclear energy industry, the Atomic Energy Commission encountered growing resistance to nuclear power plants.     

Making fun of the atom: Humor and pleasant forms of anti‐nuclear resistance in the Iberian Peninsula, 1974–1984

In the mid‐1970s, the fascist‐leaning dictatorships in Spain (1939–1977) and Portugal (1933–1974) fell. Closely linked to the 1973 oil crisis, debates over energy and technology policies became very prominent during the ensuing political redefinition of both countries. Two decades after the first international agreements between the Iberian regimes and the United States for the development of nuclear programs, a myriad of movements of social resistance to nuclear technology emerged in dialogue with anti‐nuclear organizations in other European countries. Fun and playfulness have been used for top–down popularization and banalization of nuclear technologies since the 1950s, but here pleasant forms of resistance also played a central role in contesting national energy plans, expert discourses, and vested interests. This article explores what we call “anti‐nuclear fun,” the use of amusement, play, and humor as political and epistemic tools to familiarize society with the exceptional and daily risks of the “peaceful atom.”     

Innovation Systems and Industrial Performance Germany in International Perspective

How do national-institutional structures affect the ability of enterprises to respond to increased competitive pressures in product markets and a speeding-up of product life-cycles? The papers in this special issue explore the workings of national, regional and sectoral innovation systems of which German enterprises, universities and other organizations form part. They suggest that while some high-tech market niches are well suited to German strengths in incremental innovation, the German institutional setting tends not to favour high-risk innovation strategies in newly emerging technologies     

Surrogates of plutonium for detection equipment testing

Fight against illicit trafficking of nuclear material relies on the possibility to detect nuclear material concealed in vehicles, people or cargo containers. This is done by equipping and training law enforcement and security staff in border stations or other points of access to strategic places and critical infrastructures with radiation detection equipment.The design, development, testing and evaluation of these instruments ideally require the use of real nuclear material to assess, verify and certify their detection performance. Availability of special nuclear material may be an issue, especially for industry, since only few specialized laboratories are licensed for such material.This paper tries to analyse and describe the possibility to use suitable surrogates that may replace the use of real nuclear material in testing the detection capabilities of instruments used in nuclear security.     

The future of energy – Photovoltaics

This special issue includes critical opinion articles that describe the current status, prospects, and challenges facing some of the primary solar cell technologies being manufactured or developed today. This article presents an introduction to the issue with an overview of topics that cross many or all approaches to producing the devices. Some of the topics considered are the basic structure of a solar module and potential for performance, the reasons for recent explosive growth of the technology (over 40% per year in recent years), the scale that the industry can reach, the cost of components of the device, a comparison of the current technologies and their performances, a discussion of the resource limitations for the various technologies, a brief comparison of manufacturing methods, recycling of the devices, and finally a note about other key roadblocks to full implementation of solar cells as the world’s primary energy source.     

Atomic Afterimages

This article examines the recirculation of Robert Del Tredici's photographs of the Cold War nuclear weapons complex. Originally published in his groundbreaking book, At Work in the Fields of the Bomb (1987), a number of Del Tredici's photographs have been republished in a series of post‐Cold War US Department of Energy reports. The article examines the post‐Cold War circulation of Del Tredici's images in these official government reports and analyzes shifts in their meaning across different historical periods. Ultimately, this paper raises questions about the critical stance of Del Tredici's photographs as they are republished in government reports and examines ways in which the meaning of his photographs responds to both Cold War and post‐Cold War contexts.     

Comment on Cooke's classical method

Several of the papers in this special issue are in one way or another linked to Cooke's “classical” method for combining expert probability distributions. This comment focuses on characteristics of that method. In particular, I consider two questions: does the weighting scheme give the experts a positive incentive to report their beliefs honestly for each variable? How does Cooke's method perform when evaluated out-of-sample?     

Too Hot to Handle: The Controversial Hunt for Uranium in Greenland in the Early Cold War

Before WW2 Danish geologists had found traces of uranium in Greenland. But being squeezed from both sides in the escalating Cold War between East and West, in the first decade after WW2 the Danish government did not support expeditions to explore Greenland's potential uranium deposits. The situation changed abruptly after President Eisenhower's Atoms for Peace address in December 1953, as a result of which a Danish Atomic Energy Commission (AEK) was set up in early 1955. Besides building a large atomic energy research facility (Risø) one of AEK's first initiatives was to support big scale uranium expeditions to South‐West Greenland. The ultimate goal for the leaders of AEK was to liberate Denmark from its dependence on imported fossil fuels by developing Danish nuclear reactors, fuelled by natural uranium from Greenland. In the late 1960s, after more than a decade of uranium explorations, this was still a goal, albeit much more long term. For many reasons the hunt for uranium in Greenland after WW2 was unsuccessful, but the main ones were Danish sovereignty concerns, techno‐scientific nationalism and devastating institutional clashes of interests. The present paper will explore these problems.     

Gray-scale perceptions calculated: optimum display background luminance

The following questions motivated this study, which summarizes and illustrates the answers. How can the number of gray levels visible on a display be maximized? How can a designer maximize the discriminability of a set of gray symbols that use only a part of the luminance range available from the display technology? Can we calculate whether particular shades of gray will be discriminable from each other? How big should successive gray-scale steps be (in luminance, reflectance, or optical density) to make them appear equal? How many discriminable shades of gray can be seen with a particular display technology in a particular light environment? What is the probability that two specified shades of gray will be mistaken for each other at a glance? How does the luminance of the screen background affect the visibility of gray symbols? Is there a single principle that describes the appearances of areas more luminous than the background (positive contrasts) and less luminous areas (negative contrasts)? Limitations on the answers are discussed, issues for further research are suggested, and applications are described.     

What drives public acceptance of nanotechnology?

How do the risks and benefits of nanotechnology, as viewed by the public, compare with those associated with other technologies such as genetically modified organisms, stem cells, biotechnology and nuclear power? And when deciding to use a specific nanotechnology product, will consumers consider the risks, the benefits, or both? We report the first large-scale empirical analyses of these questions.     

Issue linkage in clean technology cooperation: for better or worse?

How should states negotiate and form international agreements to promote clean technology? This paper provides a game–theoretic analysis of the consequences of issue linkage between different technologies. The model suggests that issue linkage increases states’ incentives to participate in clean technology cooperation if their primary interest is in environmental protection and reduced consumer prices, as opposed to international competitiveness. However, issue linkage impedes clean technology cooperation if states mostly worry about international competitiveness. These findings can explain the decentralized nature of contemporary cooperation on clean technology and help devise strategies for inducing more countries to participate in clean technology cooperation.     

Clean technologies: design aspects

This special issue is dedicated to the 11th Conference Process Integration, Modelling and Optimisation for Energy Saving and Pollution Reduction—PRES 2008. Eleven papers have been selected and peer-reviewed covering important subjects of clean technologies and environmental policy. These papers were selected to focus on recent development of various features of design aspects: process design and analysis; energy from biomass, emission and environmental analysis. This issue of heat transfer engineering is the third special journal issue dedicated to selected papers from PRES conferences.     

The meaning of ‘value’ in purchasing,logistics and operations management

We investigate the current conception of ‘value’ within the production-oriented disciplines of purchasing and supply, logistics and operations management. The research design entails a four-step content analysis of peer-reviewed journal articles drawn from these disciplines. Based upon the application of this method, we found that the conception of value within these production-oriented disciplines is subject to a considerable interpretive viability issue. Our findings suggest four contributory factors to this issue: a lack of theoretical rigour; a lack of definitional rigour; a plethora of [undefined] value-related terms in circulation within the field; and a large variety of linguistic usages of these terms, with ‘value’ being used as a verb, adjective and noun. This has profound implications as it throws into question much extant research in this field. How, for example, is it possible to effectively study something that is inadequately defined? It also has significant practical implications, as how is it possible to design an effective or efficient production system or supply chain premised upon the principle of value if none of the actors have a common understanding or consensus of what value is?     

致力项目开发点燃发展引擎——多种核能与核技术新项目开发概要

作为中国核工程开发海外市场的旗舰,中原对外工程有限公司将项目开发作为发展引擎,在百万千瓦级核电项目开发、研究性核反应堆项目开发、多功能医院中子照射器开发研究及多用途模块式小型反应堆项目开发工作中不懈努力,为和平利用核能、核技术做出贡献.     

Lead‐Free Perovskite Nanowire‐Employed Piezopolymer for Highly Efficient Flexible Nanocomposite Energy Harvester

In the past two decades, mechanical energy harvesting technologies have been developed in various ways to support or power small‐scale electronics. Nevertheless, the strategy for enhancing current and charge performance of flexible piezoelectric energy harvesters using a simple and cost‐effective process is still a challenging issue. Herein, a 1D–3D (1‐3) fully piezoelectric nanocomposite is developed using perovskite BaTiO₃ (BT) nanowire (NW)‐employed poly(vinylidene fluoride‐co‐trifluoroethylene) (P(VDF‐TrFE)) for a high‐performance hybrid nanocomposite generator (hNCG) device. The harvested output of the flexible hNCG reaches up to ≈14 V and ≈4 µA, which is higher than the current levels of even previous piezoceramic film‐based flexible energy harvesters. Finite element analysis method simulations study that the outstanding performance of hNCG devices attributes to not only the piezoelectric synergy of well‐controlled BT NWs and within P(VDF‐TrFE) matrix, but also the effective stress transferability of piezopolymer. As a proof of concept, the flexible hNCG is directly attached to a hand to scavenge energy using a human motion in various biomechanical frequencies for self‐powered wearable patch device applications. This research can pave the way for a new approach to high‐performance wearable and biocompatible self‐sufficient electronics.     

Probing a Device's Active Atoms

Materials science and device studies have, when implemented jointly as “operando” studies, better revealed the causal link between the properties of the device's materials and its operation, with applications ranging from gas sensing to information and energy technologies. Here, as a further step that maximizes this causal link, the paper focuses on the electronic properties of those atoms that drive a device's operation by using it to read out the materials property. It is demonstrated how this method can reveal insight into the operation of a macroscale, industrial‐grade microelectronic device on the atomic level. A magnetic tunnel junction's (MTJ's) current, which involves charge transport across different atomic species and interfaces, is measured while these atoms absorb soft X‐rays with synchrotron‐grade brilliance. X‐ray absorption is found to affect magnetotransport when the photon energy and linear polarization are tuned to excite Fe? O bonds parallel to the MTJ's interfaces. This explicit link between the device's spintronic performance and these Fe? O bonds, although predicted, challenges conventional wisdom on their detrimental spintronic impact. The technique opens interdisciplinary possibilities to directly probe the role of different atomic species on device operation, and shall considerably simplify the materials science iterations within device research.     

Slow Photons for Photocatalysis and Photovoltaics

Solar light is widely recognized as one of the most valuable renewable energy sources for the future. However, the development of solar‐energy technologies is severely hindered by poor energy‐conversion efficiencies due to low optical‐absorption coefficients and low quantum‐conversion yield of current‐generation materials. Huge efforts have been devoted to investigating new strategies to improve the utilization of solar energy. Different chemical and physical strategies have been used to extend the spectral range or increase the conversion efficiency of materials, leading to very promising results. However, these methods have now begun to reach their limits. What is therefore the next big concept that could efficiently be used to enhance light harvesting? Despite its discovery many years ago, with the potential for becoming a powerful tool for enhanced light harvesting, the slow‐photon effect, a manifestation of light‐propagation control due to photonic structures, has largely been overlooked. This review presents theoretical as well as experimental progress on this effect, revealing that the photoreactivity of materials can be dramatically enhanced by exploiting slow photons. It is predicted that successful implementation of this strategy may open a very promising avenue for a broad spectrum of light‐energy‐conversion technologies.     

加速器驱动次临界系统（ADS）与核能可持续发展

核废物最少化是核裂变能可持续发展的关键问题。加速器驱动次临界系统（ADS）是一种高效的核废物嬗变器（或焚烧炉）,是解决核废物的关键技术。文章主要介绍了ADS的基本原理及其对先进加速器、先进冷却性技术等方面的带动作用,并对各国ADS的研究现状进行了比较,最后提出了ADS发展必须解决的关键问题及其与国内核能发展的关系。     

A framework for the selection of the right nuclear power plant

Civil nuclear reactors are used for the production of electrical energy. In the nuclear industry vendors propose several nuclear reactor designs with a size from 35–45?MWe up to 1600–1700?MWe. The choice of the right design is a multidimensional problem since a utility has to include not only financial factors as levelised cost of electricity (LCOE) and internal rate of return (IRR), but also the so called “external factors” like the required spinning reserve, the impact on local industry and the social acceptability. Therefore it is necessary to balance advantages and disadvantages of each design during the entire life cycle of the plant, usually 40–60 years. In the scientific literature there are several techniques for solving this multidimensional problem. Unfortunately it does not seem possible to apply these methodologies as they are, since the problem is too complex and it is difficult to provide consistent and trustworthy expert judgments. This paper fills the gap, proposing a two-step framework to choosing the best nuclear reactor at the pre-feasibility study phase. The paper shows in detail how to use the methodology, comparing the choice of a small-medium reactor (SMR) with a large reactor (LR), characterised, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency (2006), by an electrical output respectively lower and higher than 700?MWe.