Norwegian Town's Bright Idea Is A Shining Example Of Ingenuity

During WWII, Rjukan became the target of commando raids by joint British and Norwegian Resistance forces to sabotage the Norsky Hydro plant nearby, which was producing heavy water for the Nazi nuclear bomb programme.

This was proper, hardcore, bad-ass, hero stuff. Guys parachuted into occupied enemy territory, knowing that they faced execution by the Gestapo if they were caught, trekked cross-country for weeks, hid out in the wilderness for months and snuck into a heavily-guarded facility to plant demolition charges. Later they sank a ferry carrying supplies of heavy water being transported back to Germany.

More details here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwegian_heavy_water_sabotage

I think the real story here is the European sense of community. Let's face it, this project is not really a necessity (and it provides light to a very small section of the square) but the town decided to pool their money together and do it anyway.

Italian town did it first: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/world/europe/6189371.stm

The whole town is actually considered for a place on the UNESCO world heritage list: http://whc.unesco.org/en/tentativelists/5472/

It certainly has an interesting history, having started as a company town, important war history (sabotage of production of materials for the production of nuclear weapons), and certainly interesting geography.

I’d like to see this sort of thing in urban areas too. Tall buildings mean dark valleys. I’m writing this from downtown Manhattan, where the narrow streets are especially shadowed.

But even in more residential areas of the city, more light at street level would be a lovely thing. Some of my neighbors have mirrored windows and you’d be surprised how much light that sends into my apartment.

It is so hard to capture a 'light level' with photography. I wish they would have shown a photo without the reflected light, so as to give some contrast to the difference.

The spot of light seems very small, They should have it focused on another reflector in the square to light-up the surrounding area.

The Atlantic's photography blog, In Focus, has some photos of the mirrors in the two cities: http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2013/10/using-giant-mirro...

I wonder why they begin to settle there in the first place. After the first few houses were up, they were probably aware of the lack of sunlight. So why would they suddenly need it? Probably because it looks cool, which I agree with.

I really wonder how this will fare during the winter. Granted, there is little sun during a snowstorm, but this will require a lot of maintenance with constant de-icing and such.

I wonder how much heat this provides? Or is it mainly just to brighten things up?

Pondering what happens when the pv cells get snowed under.....

But how often do you get sunny weather in that location?

I was surprised the reflectors were so small.

Breaking alert: news organizations love puns

So they brought sunlight to a parking lot. A. Parking. Lot. I was hoping for a decent cafe, restaurant, playground, meeting place, mosque or such to emerge. Let's see if that's going to happen.