research*EU Magazine | Number 81 (April 2019)

Author (Corporate)
Publisher
Series Title
Series Details Number 81
Publication Date April 2019
ISSN 2599-7920
EC ZZ-AG-19-003-EN-N
Content Type

Special feature: Nuclear power, the underdog of Europe's energy mix

Summary:

Nuclear power isn’t going away anytime soon and it’s important to try to distinguish in our minds (even though that can be difficult sometimes due to the history) nuclear power used for war and nuclear power used for peaceful power generation. In this month’s special feature, we focus on the latter and whether it has a future within the EU’s increasingly diversified energy mix. By talking to several EU-funded projects that have been hard at work on nuclear energy issues, we can see the argument that yes, if there is a high emphasis on safety and positive international cooperation, nuclear does indeed still have a role to play in EU energy policies, especially given the fact that a quarter of the EU’s electricity generation comes from nuclear power.

Elsewhere in this month’s edition, we’re wowed by the amazing story of how one ERC-funded researcher spent three years of his professional life piecing back together a 170-year-old opera by famed Hungarian composer, Franz Liszt, that was previously considered lost – go to our Project of the Month feature at the end of the ‘Society’ section to find out more!

Then, in Life After, we catch up with the GRAPHENESENS project that has been working with everyone’s favourite new and revolutionary material, graphene. In this case, they pioneered graphene-coated sensors for the automotive industry, and as our catch-up article with them highlights, maybe more as well.

Contents:

Health

  • Saving the sight of pre-term infants
  • Customised minimally invasive medical devices
  • Sensor-based socket design tool improves lower limb prosthesis fit

Society

  • The role of law, economic narratives, and Europe’s social crisis
  • A Ukrainian outlook on Western and Russian narratives
  • Housing crisis impacts art practice and production

Energy

  • New technology for slaughterhouses turns waste into energy
  • An autonomous future relies on reusing waste heat

Climate Change and Environment

  • Impact of climate change on rare species
  • Innovative methods to mitigate negative effects of climate change via financial solutions
  • Green cleaning boosts plastics recycling

Food and Natural Resources

  • Optimising crop protection with a smart pest monitoring solution
  • Novel approach helps companies prepare EU-compliant food labels
  • Forestry vehicles with a soft touch

Industrial Technologies

  • New recovery processes for high-performance and low-cost rare earth-magnesium alloys
  • Breaking the mould of light metal part production

Digital Economy

  • Online security assessment framework helps businesses cope with increased use of personal devices
  • New voice trading system makes noise in industry
  • Mobile commerce platform takes vending machines into the digital age

Security

  • New device helps law enforcement ‘sniff out’ illegal activity
  • No-guesswork maintenance for X-ray security checkpoints

Fundamental Research

  • Ultracold neutral atoms helped overcome the long-standing challenge of building quantum systems
  • Mathematics shed new light on the topological phases of matter

Project of the month

  • Project of the Month: Listening to Liszt’s lost opera for the first time in 170 years

Life after...

  • Catching up with GRAPHENESENS: One company’s quest to push graphene from the lab to the market
Source Link http://bookshop.europa.eu/uri?target=EUB:NOTICE:ZZ-AG-19-003-EN-N
Alternative sources
  • https://cordis.europa.eu/article/id/401428-nuclear-power-the-underdog-of-europes-energy-mix
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