Brands behaving badly
Brands that don’t care enough, if at all
Council spending for a coronation
Courtesy of MyLondon
I’d love to say it was just Tory madness, but it wasn’t.
The government still stole first prize for a rushed in law and order bill resulting in a significant number of arrests over the recent bank holiday weekend for apparently thinking illegitimate thoughts.
No, this is about local councils spending significant chunks of change on King Charles’ coronation.
Ealing (Labour), spent £180,000 towards a live screening, fireworks and presumably branded brollies, despite announcing in December, a need to cut a further £2m from its budget for public health, adult social care and leisure centres.
Southampton City Council spent £5,000 on coronation signs for lamp posts, even though it can’t afford the electricity bill to keep the same lights on all night.
Bromley Council (Conservative) spent £50,000 on celebrations, cash which was filched from a community found, usually reserved for grants to charities.
Last year the Tory Council leader, Colin Smith, vetoed a proposal to give community groups grants to open warm banks for residents struggling to heat their homes.
We have a third fewer libraries due to a decade of local government cuts. There are fewer bus routes outside of London and less frequent waste collection services because budgets have been squeezed beyond breaking. How can councils legitimately spend budget they don’t have on a party when vital services continue to fail?
Eastleigh Borough Council (LibDem) used the occasion to help struggling people, spending £1,600 to provide 400 free meals on coronation Saturday.
Are they mad?
Green discovery
Something green enough to generate hope rather than carbon
The next nuclear breakthrough?
Photo by Alexander Voronov on Unsplash
Back in April 21, I wrote about a Danish company which was working on a compact molten salt reactor (CMSR), an old nuclear technology from the 1950s revisited, which could democratise, bountiful, zero carbon energy delivered anywhere in the world.
Harnessing safe nuclear is still very desirable because it provides a base load of electrical energy which doesn’t fluctuate in the same way renewable does. Increasingly, battery technology has to be used to even out renewable energy production, because weather is weather.
Bill Gates is also celebrating a nuclear first. TerraPower, a company he started 15 years ago is on track to deliver a Natrium, nuclear, next-generation power plant by 2030 in Wyoming, USA.
Bill, who has a few bob for worthy causes, believes that the world needs to go long on nuclear, to meet the world’s energy needs and eliminate carbon emissions.
Like other power plants, the Natrium also heats water, creating steam, which drives a turbine to generate electricity. It also splits uranium atoms in a chain reaction.
The way the reactor is cooled is where the cool developments have occurred. Water isn’t very good at absorbing heat, stopping at its 100 degree boiling point. Pressure also builds when water heats up, which puts strain on the system and can create emergencies as seen most recently at Fukushima in Japan in 2011.
Liquid metals on the other hand, can absorb huge amounts of heat, while maintaining a constant pressure.
The natrium plant cools the reactor using liquid sodium, with a boiling point 8 times higher than water. As the sodium heats up it physically rises which allows it to cool, just like a giant lava lamp. This means it can continue to function safely even if power to the nuclear plant is interrupted by a tsunami, earthquake or determined terrorist.
There is also an energy storage system which controls the amount of electricity produced; a unique integration with power grids which increasingly rely on variable energy sources.
The coal plant, which has been operating in Kemmerer, Wyoming for 50 years is scheduled to be closed, with the loss of 110 jobs. But the new plant will employ over twice as many people and the construction of the plant will bring in a further 1,600, further boosting the local economy.
The reduced size and scale of the new Natrium plant means it can be built far more quickly and cheaply than the leviathan currently under construction at Hinkley Point in Somerset.
Be happy
An uplifting story to round off your week
The Rwandan Government’s Zipline saves lives
Zipline founders holding their droid which exits the drone for precise delivery
When Google first announced they were experimenting with drones for home delivery, I wondered why? Why go to the trouble of making an efficient road delivery service more complicated with such marginal gains?
Programmes like Flying Doctors and Skippy had already taught me on summer holiday TV that helicopters and small planes provide vital services to remote communities. I didn’t make the connection with drones, which seemed to be toys controlled by the same anoraks who loved flying model aircraft.
It might be one way to spend a Sunday afternoon, but the kit was too fragile and short range to be of any use for lifesaving missions.
I was wrong. Thanks to the Rwandan Government’s enlightened approach to change, Zipline, a US blood delivery drone start-up, is now highly valued, with 75% of medical drone deliveries being made by the company in Rwanda from two hubs.
Using drone technology instead of vehicles to transport blood has reduced the average delivery time significantly. Most of the road trips were taking at least 2 hours and some were impossible in the wet season. This has now been reduced to 41 minutes or less, which has helped save lives. One example is the 88% reduction in maternal fatalities in hospital because of these speed savings.
As Rwanda’s national drone delivery provider, Zipline will also be delivering medical supplies, nutrition and animal health products, expecting 2 million deliveries per year by 2029.
It’s impressive and refreshing to see how Rwanda sees itself as a startup launchpad for the rest of the world, positioning itself as a testing ground for ideas and innovation, directly helping to solve its own problems.
I worked on Friday to count the votes in the local elections. More out of interest rather than earning any money. Although it did pay well. It was great to see how rigorous the counting of votes is and the systems in place to prevent fraud.
We were being watched by cameras and representatives of the local parties (including candidates) all the time. It gave me pleasure to see every conservative councillor except 1 lose their seat locally. When I questioned them why my local conservative MP had blocked me on twitter, refused to respond to emails and refused to see me at her surgery, they went very quiet.
A friend of mine put his name forward as a councillor for the Lib Dems more as a joke than being serious and he won.
MSR reactors (melted salt reactors) unfortunately have never been built yet (except for test in 1954) and have 2 big problems: 700 degrees C hot saltwater - no valves have yet been able to accommodate that AND the usual nuclear waste problem although only for 50 generations not 1000 of years...