Justin Hall - Freeing energy form the grid (video)

Justin Hall-Tipping spoke today at the IIEA, Ireland’s leading think tank on European and International affairs. Previous speakers have included Ban Ki-moon (UN Secretary General), Mohammed El Baradei (Head of the International Atomic Energy Agency), Nobuo Tanaka (Head of the International Energy Agency), Noam Chomsky (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), and Peter D. Sutherland (current Chairman of BP and Goldman Sachs International).

Some of our most serious planetary worries revolve around energy and power -- controlling it, paying for it, and the consequences of burning it. Justin Hall-Tipping had an epiphany about energy after seeing footage of a chunk of ice the size of his home state (Connecticut) falling off Antarctica into the ocean, and decided to focus on science to find new forms of energy. A longtime investor, he formed Nanoholdings to work closely with universities and labs who are studying new forms of nano-scale energy in the four sectors of the energy economy: generation, transmission, storage and conservation.

US teen designs compact nuclear reactor (video)

LONG BEACH, California — Eighteen-year-old Taylor Wilson has designed a compact nuclear reactor that could one day burn waste from old atomic weapons to power anything from homes and factories to space colonies.

The American teen, who gained fame four years ago after designing a fusion reactor he planned to build in the garage of his family's home, shared his latest endeavor at a TED Conference in southern California on Thursday.

"It's about bringing something old, fission, into the 21st Century," Wilson said. "I think this has huge potential to change the world."