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Post by Acolyte on Oct 25, 2008 21:45:15 GMT
Something not being mentioned here is the reason why people are happy enough to have nuclear power but don't want it in their backyard. If a nuke goes wrong, if something happens, or if the truck taking away the waste rolls over, the damage is MASSIVE! Three Mile & Chernobyl have coloured how people view nuke power stations.
Not sure what to do about the melt-down dangers but seems to me there's an obvious fix for the waste issue.
Nuke power stations are built on solid ground - ie. nobody goes placing them on fault territory nor where there's any instability. So... drill down underneath the power station for storage of waste - no transport needed, just take any waste down the hole. No increase in danger from transporting waste out where it's vulnerable to accident or terrorist action - it all remains inside the security you (hopefully) have for the plant itself.
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Post by nautonnier on Oct 26, 2008 1:18:12 GMT
If you read what I posted - I proposed the new smaller pebble bed reactors. I have an idea that when everyone is getting power outs for 4 hours a day and every night - there may be less 'planning battles' to get real power. The only other thing to do would be to watch Europe and perhaps even Mexico carry on business as usual while the clouds due to Svensmark's predictions keep the power down on the Arizona/Nevada wide solar cell.
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Post by ron on Oct 26, 2008 5:55:31 GMT
while the clouds due to Svensmark's predictions keep the power down on the Arizona/Nevada wide solar cell. hahahaha! Good one! That would suck! Hey, where can I find out about this 4G reactor that consumes all of it's fuel?
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Post by kiwistonewall on Oct 26, 2008 7:01:08 GMT
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qam1
New Member
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Post by qam1 on Oct 27, 2008 1:32:17 GMT
Not really, it kind of says facts. Yep, those pesky facts always seem to get in the way of a good fantasy The US needs to build a large solar array in the desert southwest. The array will need to be approximately 10,000 square miles. I know that sounds like a lot and it is, but that is only a square 100 miles on a side. Nighttime darkness aside, an array of that size will be enough to theoretically shut down all of the coal electricity plants, and all of the nuclear electric plants, and all of the gas electricity plants. In other words it could supply the US with an amount equal to all of today's electricity needs........ I wrote an article about this somewhere around 3 years ago. Then in December I was at my dentists office and looked down at the cover of Scientific American and.... there was my plan, essentially. It even went one step beyond and claimed that for the price of a mere $450 billion, not only could the array be built, but a new 5,000 mile high voltage DC distribution backbone to stretch across the entire US. www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=a-solar-grand-planThe key part of the article is the costs and benefits: The federal government would have to invest more than $400 billion over the next 40 years to complete the 2050 plan. That investment is substantial, but the payoff is greater. For starters any plan that involves the government spending large amounts of money is doomed to fail right from the start. Secondly, some more inconvenient facts, The government already has spent near that amount if not more pushing solar and wind in the last two decades and what do we have to show for it? In 1989 solar made up 0.011% of our electrical generation and billions of dollars later in 2007 solar made up 0.016% of our electrical generation even if you combine it with wind In 1989 solar & wind combined made up 0.09% of our electrical generation. Millions of acres and billions of dollars later in 2007 solar & wind combined made up 0.85% of our electrical generation. In fact, even though we haven't built a new nuclear power plant, just upgrading the existing plants with new equipment, the improvements themselves produce 461x more power than all the solar combined and 9x more power than all the solar & wind combined. Source for all this www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/aer/txt/ptb0802c.htmlThe energy is just not there. Spending billions more won't make it so. Sorry, except for satellites, small niches here and there and your friend "out west*", yes solar works wonders, but the idea that either solar and/or wind will ever put a significant dent in our fossil fuel use is just fantasy. See Renewables Are Great--for Powering Fantasieswww.aei.org/publications/filter.economic,pubID.15657/pub_detail.asp * It seems every solar proponent on the internet apparently has a friend "Out West" who uses only solar and/or wind power and thinks it's wonderful.
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Post by Acolyte on Oct 27, 2008 2:23:14 GMT
that's a rather interesting set of figures ( www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/aer/txt/ptb0802c.html[/url) but I'm not sure how you get your figures but they seem OK. But I'd seriously question the 'millions of acres & billions of dollars' comment - I've seen articles from the alternates asking for funding & bemoaning the dribbles they get... and millions of acres?Also, what happened in 2001? Did somebody recalculate the figures or something? Could 9/11 have had such a dramatic effect on the use of power?
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Post by ron on Oct 27, 2008 4:08:23 GMT
For starters any plan that involves the government spending large amounts of money is doomed to fail right from the start. Secondly, some more inconvenient facts, The government already has spent near that amount if not more pushing solar and wind in the last two decades and what do we have to show for it? ...and here I thought it was be nice to each other day. OK then, I'm calling BS. Show the citations and figures for 450 billion dollars in solar and wind investment by the government since 1989 please.
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Post by ron on Oct 27, 2008 5:47:03 GMT
If the agw'ers are correct, we NEED those solar panels, covering vast areas. They'd soak up energy (& to address a point above) shouldn't be altering the albedo of an area too much as (depending on the model) the light focusses in to a close point. If you're getting scattered reflection you're wasting power & if you're getting much heat above the array you're also wasting energy. Well, you DO realize that capturing the energy instead of letting it radiate back to space is a direct heating of the globe? The same kind of direct heating that nuclear power creates. Turning it into electricity and distributing it then exports that energy to other places where it will be turned back into heat. So you've got an area with an ideal albedo of 0%. I don't think it would have much of an effect, especially since a good amount of that will be released into the area as the energy is turned into electricity or is stored. But one never knows about these things. As for the butteryfly effect of wind turbines... Ya, ok. Maybe. But I'd have to believe it is a tiny butterfly compared to the amount of heat and steam released into the air around any large electricity plant. Hey! We haven't even touched on geothermal, ground source heat pumps, ocean source heat pumps, nor politician hot air source systems.
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Post by Acolyte on Oct 27, 2008 6:00:43 GMT
Well, you DO realize that capturing the energy instead of letting it radiate back to space is a direct heating of the globe? The same kind of direct heating that nuclear power creates. Turning it into electricity and distributing it then exports that energy to other places where it will be turned back into heat. So you've got an area with an ideal albedo of 0%. I don't think it would have much of an effect, especially since a good amount of that will be released into the area as the energy is turned into electricity or is stored. But one never knows about these things. As for the butteryfly effect of wind turbines... Ya, ok. Maybe. But I'd have to believe it is a tiny butterfly compared to the amount of heat and steam released into the air around any large electricity plant. Hey! We haven't even touched on geothermal, ground source heat pumps, ocean source heat pumps, nor politician hot air source systems. Yeah... I know. But still, one could perhaps get a lot of work done by moving the heat around. But from a truly practical level, the only way to reduce our heat signature is not to use any energy - everything we do eventually reduces to heat production. (and I brought up wave, tide & geothermal in reply#22)
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Post by pidgey on Oct 27, 2008 6:12:38 GMT
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pkatt
New Member
Posts: 28
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Post by pkatt on Oct 27, 2008 8:05:03 GMT
How about something more cost effective and less destructive than putting a big blob of solar collectors 10,000 square miles big. Why not use our cities as our power collectors. Any enviornmental damage to be done has already been done there. Apparently they are a natural heat sync. Developments are being made in rooftop, bird friendly units for wind power.... www.aerotecture.com/projects_gt.html .. More effecient, non vibrating and they do not spin apart in high wind. That combined with things like www.powerfilmsolar.com/products/applications.htmlfor existing buildings and energy creating mandates for newer buildings and renovations. Maybe even go as far as to make streets heat collectors. Hydro, gas, and a bit of the Earth's natural warmth harnessed and we should be able to make a huge impact on our consumption without having to do things like set aside acres and acres of land to be covered with solar or wind plants. It would not take forever, and probably wouldnt cost as much as all the new reactors will... The trouble seems to be if it doesnt come from a power plant, how will they charge for it. While we are on the nuke subject. If we do end up building more reactors they should be able to reuse all of the rods we are currently trying to store now, much the same way as I hear England uses theirs. If that were the case, we have a store of fuel that could last for quite a while from our current reactors.
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Post by Acolyte on Oct 27, 2008 8:39:47 GMT
I guess if we're making wishes, the real thing to make a change is to simply change our consumption habits. This whole deal of having to have the latest & the best is suicidal on a planet barely able to support the race in sheer numbers alone.
i work with computers - most people use their computers as glorified typewriters with minimal graphics capabilities. Yet they race to replace them every couple or three years? Why? Because of the Wintel game where software bulges enough to make your hardware slow so you go buy new hardware, which then has a new version of software come out... and so on.
Car makers get away with making cars with built in obsolescence because we're convinced the latest design is somehow better. just imagine if you didn't have to buy the exact model of the exact part for your car? If one alternator, one battery etc. fit all cars of the same approximate size?
If we could change that one facet of our world, the energy problem, the pollution problem & even the GW issue would be put off for generations - & we could all live better lives.
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Post by ron on Oct 27, 2008 15:14:56 GMT
How about something more cost effective and less destructive than putting a big blob of solar collectors 10,000 square miles big. Why not use our cities as our power collectors. Any enviornmental damage to be done has already been done there. Apparently they are a natural heat sync. Developments are being made in rooftop, bird friendly units for wind power.... www.aerotecture.com/projects_gt.html .. More effecient, non vibrating and they do not spin apart in high wind. That combined with things like www.powerfilmsolar.com/products/applications.htmlfor existing buildings and energy creating mandates for newer buildings and renovations. Maybe even go as far as to make streets heat collectors. Hydro, gas, and a bit of the Earth's natural warmth harnessed and we should be able to make a huge impact on our consumption without having to do things like set aside acres and acres of land to be covered with solar or wind plants. It would not take forever, and probably wouldnt cost as much as all the new reactors will... The trouble seems to be if it doesnt come from a power plant, how will they charge for it. While we are on the nuke subject. If we do end up building more reactors they should be able to reuse all of the rods we are currently trying to store now, much the same way as I hear England uses theirs. If that were the case, we have a store of fuel that could last for quite a while from our current reactors. Great post. I think what you suggest re: using the city to power itself is a good idea, but won't make the enormous kinds of energy that the city needs. Don't get me wrong- it will help, but it's not going to generate the big Watts. Yeah, I had heard about these fuel consuming nukes as well. Apparently currently in production technology uses less than 5% of the fuel in a fuel rod! This is worse efficiency than the old days in internal combustion engines. I'm still hunting for a great article about the new technology. What I have always wondered about is why our home heating plants don't generate electricity and use the "waste heat" from the engine to heat the house. For example purposes, my 7500 Watt diesel generator consumes about 1 gallon of diesel per hour at max output. That one gallon of fuel produces about 140,000 BTUs and the electricity is worth about 24,000 BTUs, that alone would be a 17% increase in efficiency. Well, I shouldn't say that I've really wondered; it would be pricey with heating oil (same as diesel fuel) at $0.79 a gallon. But I've actually been to a campground in northern BC, Canada that had a separate building housing their two electric generators... and they weren't using the free heat to warm their building(s)! Fun discussion.
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Post by ron on Oct 27, 2008 16:21:54 GMT
I guess if we're making wishes, the real thing to make a change is to simply change our consumption habits. [...] If we could change that one facet of our world, the energy problem, the pollution problem & even the GW issue would be put off for generations - & we could all live better lives. I agree, but there's no need to live a Spartan lifestyle, either. With "free" energy we can live well. With "free" and renewable energy we can all live well for a very very long time. Pretty soon we will design the computer that will design the computer that will figure this all out for us. In the meantime, Think Solar! 4 kWh/m 2/day
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Post by ron on Oct 27, 2008 17:06:19 GMT
The energy is just not there. Spending billions more won't make it so. Sorry, except for satellites, small niches here and there and your friend "out west*", yes solar works wonders, but the idea that either solar and/or wind will ever put a significant dent in our fossil fuel use is just fantasy. OK, here's the math. According to eosweb.larc.nasa.gov/sse/ the average insolation at the top of the atmosphere for Mesa Arizona averaged year-round is approximately 8.3 kiloWatthours/square meter/day (kWh/m 2/day). I am going to use 4 kWh/m2/day as my basis, allowing for 52% atmospheric loss)1 square mile converts to 2,590,000 square meters. 10 square miles = 25,900,000 square meters. 25,900,000 square meters * 4 kWh/m 2/day = 100 million kWh/day = 100 megawatts 100 megawatts / 24hours per day = about 4 megawatts 10,000 square miles / 10 square miles = 1,000 four megawatt areas. (That's right: My 100 miles-per-side square (10,000 square miles) of desert receives the same amount of energy as 1,000 4 megawatt nuclear power plants. (The largest nuke in the country is about 1.3 megawatts, but let's not let a pesky fact get in the way.)) If efficiency of the conversion process is 50%, you have the equivalent of 1,000 2 megawatt nukes. So, let's compare that with Palo Verde (also in Arizona) Nuclear plant: www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/nuclear/page/at_a_glance/reactors/palo_verde.htmlPalo Verde is just a hair under 4 megawatts capacity total for all three nukes on site. (Palo Verde generation, 2007: 26,782 million kWh, or just over 3 megawatts average for the year, 79 percent of it's 4 megawatt capacity.) It sits on just a hair over 4,000 acres. 4,000 acres = Just over 6 square miles. Hey!!! That's 1.2 megawatts worth of solar collection (at 50% efficiency)! Maybe they should put in solar collection panels and just shut down the 3 nukes!!! (or Gee, I dunno, add them to the site, or build a solar collector next door) Maybe you don't get the math the way I did it. Let's go back and convert them to the same basis as the webpage you and I both quoted: 1 square mile converts to 2,590,000 square meters. 10 square miles = 25,900,000 square meters. 25,900,000 square meters * 4 kWh/m 2/day = 100 million kWh/day 100 million kWh/day * 365 days = 36,500 Million kWh per year 36,500 million kWh Divided by 8760 hours = 4.16 megawatts for each 10 square mile area. The sun is HOT. Then again, maybe I've made a mistake in my math. Yep, those pesky facts always seem to get in the way of a good fantasy I couldn't have said it better myself.
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