the eVinci™ micro reactor may be the first SMR deployed in Canada

video from Westinghouse Nuclear web page*

sourced from PDF of a 2019 article on the same website:
“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.” This statement, attributed to Leonardo da Vinci, one of the greatest minds in creative, practical inventions in human history, embodies the guiding principles of the  Westinghouse eVinci™ micro reactor design. The eVinci design is based on demonstrated technology that can revolutionize how remote locations access clean, reliable energy.

In codevelopment arrangements with national laboratories, design partners, and utilities, Westinghouse is developing the eVinci micro reactor to serve remote residential, industrial, and military energy consumers who are not connected to a national grid. The eVinci micro reactor employs a nuclear battery concept as the energy generator. It is being designed to deliver combined heat and power from 200 kWe to 5 MWe from a compact monolithic core surrounded by additional fission product barriers and fully enclosed in a protective canister that can be transported by road, rail, and sea.

Westinghouse and the associated team are aiming to complete the design, testing, analysis, and licensing to build a demonstration unit by 2022, test by 2023, and have the eVinci ready for commercial deployment by 2025. Aggressive as this schedule is, Westinghouse believes it has the right strategy, skill set, and lessons learned from previous experience in deploying first-of-a-kind nuclear technology to meet these targets.*
 “nuclear battery concept” – the canister fits inside a standard shipping container swapped out every 3+ years:



2021-05-12T16:26−07* / at the about* post – at bit.ly/dateposted – anyone can link to this post from its date: May 12, 2021
*a link – or not; see a note on notes and links and a disclaimer / … and maybe browse or search the archive*

nuclear* / results of site-specific search for this term


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media bias: how it is

It’s not that Jeff Bezos emails Washington Post reporters saying, “Promote US wars!”  It’s that only reporters who support imperialism see their articles published and their careers rise. As Noam Chomsky famously said in an interview with Andrew Marr in 1996, “If you believed something different, you wouldn't be sitting where you're sitting.”*



It’s always easier to flow with power than to flow against it. Entire societal infrastructures have been built to ensure that this is the case. Any effort which helps the powerful will be elevated and amplified, while any effort which inconveniences them falls into an empty void.*


2021-05-11T14:12−07* / at the about* post – at bit.ly/dateposted – anyone can link to this post from its date: May 11, 2021
*a link – or not; see a note on notes and links and a disclaimer / … and maybe browse or search the archive*

the asterisk above the video links to an earlier post on Noam Chomsky in the 1990s, the Overton window, and the five filters;
the next asterisk, below the video, links to a recent piece by Caitlin Johnstone – the source for this lightly edited excerpt



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space junk to hit anytime now

image from CBC news item*

quote from an astrophysicist in that news item:
It’s just considered bad practice to throw large pieces of metal from the sky.
—Jonathan McDowell (!w2)*



2021-05-08T09:36−07* / at the about* post – at bit.ly/dateposted – anyone can link to this post from its date: May 8, 2021
*a link – or not; see a note on notes and links and a disclaimer / … and maybe browse or search the archive*

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untended Indigenous forest gardens continue to thrive

the Ts'msyen forest garden in northwestern BC – documented in a groundbreaking new study by Simon Fraser University / image from National Post article

from the National Post, May 4, 2021:
Along Canada’s northwest coast, ancient Indigenous forest gardens – untended for more than 150 years – continue to thrive. Ts’msyen and Coast Salish peoples once planted and cared for plots of native fruit and nut trees, shrubs, and medicinal plants and roots along the north and south Pacific coast, a new Simon Fraser University study finds.

Forest gardening is a common method of food cultivation and agroforestry in Indigenous communities around the world, especially in tropical regions. But the findings published in Ecology and Society mark the first time these lush, open, orchard-like plots have been studied in North America.*

• • •

“It’s striking to see how different forest gardens were from the surrounding forest, even after more than a century,” Jesse Miller, study co-author, ecologist and lecturer at Stanford University, told Science.

A neighbouring swath of conifer forest, which had been logged decades ago and allowed to regenerate naturally, contained only a fraction of the number of species.*

the record shows humans can not only let biodiversity flourish, they can help it flourish


2021-05-06T14:23−07* / at the about* post – at bit.ly/dateposted – anyone can link to this post from its date: May 6, 2021
*a link – or not; see a note on notes and links and a disclaimer / … and maybe browse or search the archive*
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the Overton window – very well explained with examples by Caitlin Johnstone

the Overton window is the spectrum of debate considered socially acceptable; the eponymous Joseph Paul Overton (1960–2003) used to pitch to donors the power of his think tank to shift the spectrum of socially acceptable debate to the political right

Noam Chomsky in The Common Good, 1998:
The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum – even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there’s free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate.*

Caitlin Johnstone, November 2019:

2021-05-05T21:25−07* / at the about* post – at bit.ly/dateposted – anyone can link to this post from its date: May 5, 2021
*a link – or not; see a note on notes and links and a disclaimer / … and maybe browse or search the archive*

see original article on author’s website*
see some or all of her Substack articles*

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Chris Hedges on the cult of the self



20210423T1400−07*
*a link; see a note on notes and links; see also a disclaimer / … and maybe browse or search the post archive*

copied from a footnote to a previous miscellany post:
We have been told a lie … a lie that says progress comes as a result of the efforts of “great” individuals. That lie is used to justify the huge wealth inequity in the world today. The truth is that progress is the result of our ability to cooperate with each other. And it is time that the fruits of that progress be used to help everyone live a dignified life.

—Yuval Noah Harari*

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