The latest is that Japanese authorities have reportedly said there’s a significant chance the fuel rods have partially melted at two of the reactors, and they are still fighting a full-blown meltdown (Scientific American has a detailed look at just what went wrong after the earthquake and tsunami). The operator of the reactors, Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), resorted to pumping seawater into the reactors, which to many in the industry sounds very much like a last-ditch, worrisome effort. Reuters reported 140,000 people have been evacuated from the area as a safety precaution, and iodine is being readied to distributed to people in the area to protect them from radioactive exposure. We’ll soon see if the disaster will get worse or better.

Read more here.

Karen Kloosterman, from the Green Prophet, will moderate the panel, and she has a nice piece about the conference on the Green Prophet:

At least three Green Prophets will be at the Eilat-Eilot Renewable Energy Conference tomorrow in Eilat, Israel. Look for us talking excitedly to young start-up companies, and entrepreneurs, and catch Green Prophet’s editor Karin Kloosterman at a media seminar tomorrow afternoon, where with other media experts she’ll be talking about ways entrepreneurs can gain access to international media. She’ll be flying in for the day to report on the event.

Among those on the media panel will be Green Prophet’s friend David Goldman from Expansion Media. He works with clean tech companies around the globe, showing them how to put their “green” face forward. Starting at 3:25 PM at Herod’s (Laurence Hall), meet Green Prophet at the seminar: The Role of the Media in Promoting Clean Agenda Energy. Meet us there to listen and network afterward.

Will kiosks strategically placed in stores finally convince us all to recycle our gadgets and cell phones? Startup ecoATM (a Green:Net 2010 launchpad company) and its investors think so; on Wednesday, ecoATM announced it has raised a Series A round of $14.4 million in funding from kiosk giant Coinstar, Oakland, Calif.-based venture capital firm Claremont Creek Ventures, and venture debt from Silicon Valley Bank (SVB).

Park Spark Project provides anaerobic digester, where dog waste is converted methane, a burnable fuel for this gas light. Photo: Park Spark Project

Times change, thankfully. Instead of thinking first about how to get rid of waste, more people are now asking how they might put parts of the waste stream to use.

Some landfills now capture methane to power massive generators that feed electricity to the grid; a California company makes biodegradable plastic from organic waste without using petroleum. The list of companies and people involved in promising and innovative work continues to grow.

New Hampshire-based geothermal ground heat exchange company LVestus Energy has just begun a Geo Thermal Purchase Agreement (GeoTPA) program that makes green, geothermal energy a cost-effective way to heat or cool a commercial facility – for no upfront money – the same way that you can buy solar power.

Its GeoTPA is the same idea as the Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs) that turned solar power into a commodity in the nine or so states that have allowed solar companies to compete with electric utilities, by selling you just the power (off your roof) hour by hour.

Better Place electric car company has their technology centered around cars being produced by the French automobile giant Renault-Nissan. You might even see them on the road in 2011. They are accelerating the global transition to sustainable transportation. As good as this sounds, there are those who seem to be angered with the company already. Some find them monopolizing in some places. Israel, as an example, has “favored” them as the electric car company of choice.

This view may all change with the help of another company, ETV Motors. The company just announced a radically new concept to extend the range of  the lithium ion  battery cell packs that will be fueling these cars. They are  developing a unique micro- turbine device that will be able to extend the range of  the battery cell packs to up to twice the present driving range of 130 -160 km. ETV’s COO said, “the micro turbine device will be able to “create electricity while driving.” I don’t know about you, but that blows me away! The turbine utilizes a specially series of rotary blades, which will be located at the rear of the car’s undercarriage and will provide power by a rotating “universal joint” to the battery pack in the center of the car.

Watch this video below to learn more about ETV Motors. I would love to hear your comments. Shoot me your thoughts @ExpansionMedia.

Since its launch, last July, more than 300 entrepreneurs, in more than 35 countries have used OnGreen.com. The company, which describes itself as the “LinkedIn” of cleantech investing, lets investors review business plans and then, if they are interested contact the plan’s author to potentially back the venture.

OnGreen plans to generate revenue through advertizing, lead generation, events, research and other connection services.

With cleantech investing on the decline and early stage cleantech funding taking the biggest hit in a tight year of investments, cleantech entrepreneurs certainly need all the help they can get. I praise the founders of OnGreen for creating this network. Let us  hope that they are successful. We need to live in a cleaner, “greener” world. Let the networking begin.

Better Place has been successfully operating an EV taxi program in Tokyo, supported by the Japanese government. The pilot project began on April 26, in cooperation with Nihon Kotsu Co., Tokyo’s largest taxi operator, and focuses on the feasibility of an automated battery switch process as means for taxis to have instant, zero-emission, range extension. In the first 90 days of the trial, the EV taxis drove over 25,000 miles using battery switch as the primary means of “instant charge” or range extension.

Better Place remains on-track in developing and deploying countrywide networks of charging and battery-switching infrastructure in its first two markets, Israel and Denmark, for commercial launch in late 2011. Better Place will begin its initial network deployment in Canberra, Australia in late 2011 as part of a nationwide infrastructure roll out.