YOU: Fix the US Energy Crisis

[mheslep]

Thiel 2013

 

[mheslep]

I believe mfb's point was that while it may appear a compelling argument that government regulation causes stagnation in technological progress, that is not a sound conclusion as correlation does not imply causation...

I agree there that correlation is not causation, never proof, but depending on the fact set it can be persuasive. We have not only a strong positive correlation between regulation and new hardware (e.g. transportation, biotech, energy), but also a strong negative correlation between regulation and computers/the internet.

 

[mfb]

What do you mean by in the other direction?

See the following sentence in the post you quoted.

I agree there that correlation is not causation, never proof, but depending on the fact set it can be persuasive. We have not only a strong positive correlation between regulation and new hardware (e.g. transportation, biotech, energy), but also a strong negative correlation between regulation and computers/the internet.

This is still the same correlation. "Some technology branch is developing fast => the government does not catch up with regulations" is a well-known reason for this correlation. If you suggest that the other direction is important (so technological development depends on regulations in some way), you need evidence independent of the correlation.

 

[OmCheeto]

...
The reigning king of storage is pumped hydro, at something like $0.04/Wh for a big project like Bath County, and it should be coming up on 10000 cycles soon with the end of life still far in the future.

It looks like Germany may be doing this.

Germany's Key to Clean Energy Is…This Coal Mine?

The numbers look a bit odd. I was discussing digging a geothermal heat sink at work a while back after I saw your post and wondered how many thousands of gallons it would take to cover all my electrical needs for a day with a 600 foot well. It came out to about 7 gallons.

So when the above article states:

...
fill the place up with water—up to 35 million cubic feet of it...

Renewable power would pump some of the water back to the surface, and then gravity would take care of the rest, draining the water back into the mine through an energy-producing turbine. Altogether, the system would have enough storage capacity to power up to 410 typical German homes.
...

It didn't seem like very many homes.

Their image shows the mine at 3300 ft.

Translating to SI units (I'm assuming the original units were SI, as the volume and depth values were suspiciously, um, easy to work with...)
1,000,000 m^3 (volume of water)
1,000,000,000 kg (mass of water)
1,000 m (depth of mine)
9.8 (g)
9,800,000,000,000 joules (pe=mgh)
3,600,000 (joules / kwh)
2,722,222 kwh
410 DE homes
6,640 kwh/DE home

My average electrical usage is about 1,000 kWh/month, so it looks like they can power 410 homes, at my rate, for around 6 months.

or
crunch, crunch, crunch

≈80,000 DE homes for a day

pre-"Submit Reply" edit:

It would appear that German households use significantly less energy that I do, and I appear to be quite the average American: 3500 DE vs 12,000 USA (kWh/yr)

So bump those numbers up to 410 DE homes for a year, and 160,000 DE homes for a day.

ps. I just re-ran the numbers on my 600 ft deep well and came up with 18,701 gallons. It would appear I was off by a factor of 2672, which is a very strange factor to be off by, IMHO.

 

[Straw_Cat]

They do use a lot less power per household. One source, the pdf file linked below, had them using an average of 6,200 kwh per household in 2009, and this one has a figure much lower: 3,512 kwh.

http://shrinkthatfootprint.com/average-household-electricity-consumption

Pdf file from 2009.
http://www05.abb.com/global/scot/scot316.nsf/veritydisplay/5793753d3056bfb4c12578640051183f/$file/germany.pdf

The EU has a standard which has a goal of having new houses and other buildings use 10 kwh/ year per square meter, or less, and 30% of that should come from renewables. A square meter is about 10.764 square feet. That's 1 kwh/year per square foot.
Or less.
A few years back Ontario was thinking about setting a standard like this for new construction in that province, but they tabled the suggestion until later.

 

[mfb]

(I'm assuming the original units were SI, as the volume and depth values were suspiciously, um, easy to work with...)

Sure, it is not a US-project, there is no need to use exotic inconsistent unit systems.

That number of 410 looks very low. Did they divide 160000 home*days by 365? Would fit.
I guess the energy storage would be designed for storage periods of the order of one week, which leads to ~20 000 homes.

 

[OmCheeto]

Sure, it is not a US-project, there is no need to use exotic inconsistent unit systems.

I found the original image on the paper written by Prof. André Niemann, which indeed lists everything in metric units. Though he does not list a volume.

That number of 410 looks very low. Did they divide 160000 home*days by 365? Would fit.
I guess the energy storage would be designed for storage periods of the order of one week, which leads to ~20 000 homes.

The only other numbers he lists in the original paper are:

First valuations show a predicted power rage from 200 to 600 MW.

It also appears that this is old news:

Event
Nutzung von Anlagen des Bergbaus zur Speicherung regenerativer Energie
(Use of facilities of the mining industry for the storage of renewable energy)
Am 30. November 2011
...

Perhaps I should contact my cousins in Germany, and have them go interview him properly. They live about 150 km to the east of Essen.

 

[Wes Tausend]

We always have threads on various pieces of the puzzle, but what I want here is for people to post a coherent plan of how to fix the energy problems we have in the US (and critique what others propose). Some groundrules:

First, though most would agree there are issues, people won't necessarily agree on what they are/what the most important are. So define the problem as you see it before proposing the solution. The usual suspects are: safety, capacity, pollution, cost, future availability of resources, and foreign dependence. Obviously, feel free to modify that list.

Second, I want specific, coherent plans. Don't just say 'reduce CO2 emissions' or 'increase production' - tell me how.

Third, money is important, but not critical (for this thread), so don't let it constrain your ambition. I want solutions that will work - paying for them is another matter. Obviously, any solution will require making tough choices and (in the short term, anyway) spending a lot of money. No need to build a new budget to support it. If you say you want to spend a trillion dollars a year, fine (but the benefit had better be big).

http://www.agmrc.org/markets/info/energyoverview.pdf is a site from another thread with some background info on what we use for what.

I'll go first...

After all the suspected extraneous off topic info probably posted ad infinitum here, I'd be surprised if Russ even continues to read his own thread anymore. That may be my sorrow, as the following PBS video (53:42) documentary link is very, very good (in my opinion), and well worth seeing.

If some folks have not already seen this, there is an excellent treatise on how to fix the climate, "a coherent plan of how to fix the energy problems we have in the US". It is located on the PBS website and called http://video.pbs.org/video/1855661681/ .

A geologist named Richard Alley not only describes the present greenhouse problem, but if it's the same unmodified program I saw, I believe he calculates what combination of energy varieties can reduce emissions to reverse the warming trend and yet exceed the future energy requirements of earth. While I'm sure no comprehensive plan is without flaw or controversy, this is the best public presentation I've ever seen to date and does not differ entirely from your own.

If you read this, Russ, and the above PBS video has been mentioned before, I apologise. I did not read all 55 pages of this thread, but I did search it for terms: Richard Alley, Earth: The Operators Manual.

Thanks,
Wes
...

 

[OmCheeto]

After all the suspected extraneous off topic info probably posted ad infinitum here, I'd be surprised if Russ even continues to read his own thread anymore. That may be my sorrow, as the following PBS video (53:42) documentary link is very, very good (in my opinion), and well worth seeing.

If some folks have not already seen this, there is an excellent treatise on how to fix the climate, "a coherent plan of how to fix the energy problems we have in the US". It is located on the PBS website and called http://video.pbs.org/video/1855661681/ .

A geologist named Richard Alley not only describes the present greenhouse problem, but if it's the same unmodified program I saw, I believe he calculates what combination of energy varieties can reduce emissions to reverse the warming trend and yet exceed the future energy requirements of earth. While I'm sure no comprehensive plan is without flaw or controversy, this is the best public presentation I've ever seen to date and does not differ entirely from your own.

If you read this, Russ, and the above PBS video has been mentioned before, I apologise. I did not read all 55 pages of this thread, but I did search it for terms: Richard Alley, Earth: The Operators Manual.

Thanks,
Wes
...

I approve of some of the content of your prescribed video, as it looks like a one hour synopsis of what has been discussed in this nearly 10 year old thread. I leave it to Russ, to blast the b.s., as I've better things to do today.

 

[mheslep]

After all the suspected extraneous off topic info probably posted ad infinitum here, I'd be surprised if Russ even continues to read his own thread anymore. That may be my sorrow, as the following PBS video (53:42) documentary link is very, very good (in my opinion), and well worth seeing.

If some folks have not already seen this, there is an excellent treatise on how to fix the climate, "a coherent plan of how to fix the energy problems we have in the US". It is located on the PBS website and called http://video.pbs.org/video/1855661681/ .

A geologist named Richard Alley not only describes the present greenhouse problem, but if it's the same unmodified program I saw, I believe he calculates what combination of energy varieties can reduce emissions to reverse the warming trend and yet exceed the future energy requirements of earth. While I'm sure no comprehensive plan is without flaw or controversy, this is the best public presentation I've ever seen to date and does not differ entirely from your own.

If you read this, Russ, and the above PBS video has been mentioned before, I apologise. I did not read all 55 pages of this thread, but I did search it for terms: Richard Alley, Earth: The Operators Manual.

Thanks,
Wes
...

See the "tell me how" phrase in Russ's OP? Could you try a couple narrow illustrations, from what you saw in the PBS piece or elsewhere? I don't think "watch this video" gets you off the hook.

 

[mheslep]

Some aspects of the Richard Alley PBS piece:

15.7 TW total energy consumption. Asks the question if renewables can meet that load, all of it. Gives silly platitudes, draws "0.01%" in the sand, mumbles something about transmission and storage without detail. Useless.
[STRIKE]
No mention of nuclear. [/STRIKE] New 4th gen nuclear mentioned in passing at the end.

Some hand waiving about geothermal - thousands of years. I like to count *possible* jewels too, but there's a difference between that and actually building geothermal plants with a sufficient *water supply* to produce something.

More mumbles about how hydro will cover wind and solar outages without detail. Mumbles about offshore wind, though the current amount in the US is zero.

"Some estimates say ..." conservation and efficiency could cut consumption by %23.

Alley might be a fine geologist but I gather he's just hand waiving happy thoughts here.

 

[edward]

Perhaps we need to take a closer look at the little things we may be missing. I spent three days in the same motel recently. This was unusual because I am usually arriving after dark and leaving early in the morning.

It was a typical mid priced motel. The A/C units were the typical through the wall heat pumps mounted under the window. I sat in a chair reading a magazine in the early afternoon and noticed that the A/C would run about three minutes then go off for about two minutes.

I immediately spotted the reason, the blasted air was blowing up behind the window curtains, then dropping back down and into the return. The curtains came down to the top of the A/C. I pushed the curtains back and set a book in front of them.

Now the unit ran for fifteen minutes straight and shut down for 18 minutes.

The units also need better insulation between the condenser (outdoor) section and the (interior) evaporator section. I say this because in the morning when the sun hit the east facing condensers the units would kick on for short runs. I walked around to the west side of the building in the afternoon and the same thing was happening.

The sensors for the thermostats were located in the return air stream. This wouldn't need a rocket science fix. The 50 room motel is only two years old.

 

[russ_watters]

If you read this, Russ, and the above PBS video has been mentioned before, I apologise. I did not read all 55 pages of this thread, but I did search it for terms: Richard Alley, Earth: The Operators Manual.

As a global warming documentary it's pretty good (a heckuva lot better than "An Inconvenient Truth"!), but I do also find it a little hand-wavey and naive/idealistic on the solutions.

-I agree that the lack of discussion of nuclear power is particularly glaring, since they target it at increasing from 5% to 20% of our power needs. That would make it the biggest or second biggest of our energy sources in their proposed mix (they don't break-out the different forms of alternate energy -- wind might end up bigger in their mix). Based on that, it should get at least as much treatment as solar and wind did...though the unstated subtext of the Navy fossil fuel reduction piece is probably an increase in nuclear power for large ships.

-They say hydro can go from 6% to 12% while also backing-up solar power (note: most if not all of their numbers are given in power, not energy). That doesn't compute. When one form is backing-up another, you can have one or the other, but you can't add both together. What hydro does is give you some storage capacity: so you add enough capacity to generate 24% of our power, while only running it at an average of 12%. Essentially, you double-up on all of the generators in the dams. That's a viable way to do it (the alternative is building a natural gas power plant next to every solar plant), but it was a misleading way to present the capacity.

-They gave geothermal power a couple of minutes of discussion, while saying we can triple it's current capacity. Wow, triple? That's...triple almost nothing is still almost nothing. Including a source of basically nothing is particularly glaring considering the absence of any discussion of nuclear power.

One good point, though, is I definitely like what the military is doing with alternate energy...notwithstanding the joke last month about generating fuel from seawater that got a lot of airtime.

 

[Wes Tausend]

As a global warming documentary it's pretty good (a heckuva lot better than "An Inconvenient Truth"!), but I do also find it a little hand-wavey and naive/idealistic on the solutions.

-I agree that the lack of discussion of nuclear power is particularly glaring, since they target it at increasing from 5% to 20% of our power needs. That would make it the biggest or second biggest of our energy sources in their proposed mix (they don't break-out the different forms of alternate energy -- wind might end up bigger in their mix). Based on that, it should get at least as much treatment as solar and wind did...though the unstated subtext of the Navy fossil fuel reduction piece is probably an increase in nuclear power for large ships.

-They say hydro can go from 6% to 12% while also backing-up solar power (note: most if not all of their numbers are given in power, not energy). That doesn't compute. When one form is backing-up another, you can have one or the other, but you can't add both together. What hydro does is give you some storage capacity: so you add enough capacity to generate 24% of our power, while only running it at an average of 12%. Essentially, you double-up on all of the generators in the dams. That's a viable way to do it (the alternative is building a natural gas power plant next to every solar plant), but it was a misleading way to present the capacity.

-They gave geothermal power a couple of minutes of discussion, while saying we can triple it's current capacity. Wow, triple? That's...triple almost nothing is still almost nothing. Including a source of basically nothing is particularly glaring considering the absence of any discussion of nuclear power.

One good point, though, is I definitely like what the military is doing with alternate energy...notwithstanding the joke last month about generating fuel from seawater that got a lot of airtime.

Thanks for replying, Russ. And a hand to the other gentlemen for replying too.

I don't have many friends or family that are willing to watch such documentaries, besides discuss their merits, so I have an appreciation for threads like yours. Thank you. The Richard Alley video is on my DVR and I can see I need to watch it again with the comments mentioned here in mind. I thought the video to be a good, comprehensive rough draft, my favorite, the "napkin" drawn version of a possible future blueprint.

I did think it was a bit vague, but assumed that was a consequence of squeezing the vast array of info into a one hour segment that would appeal to general PBS type audiences. Considering this, I kind of wonder if Dr. Alley didn't somewhat avoid nuclear power to appease some of the paranoid fringe element. He may be much more amenable to it than he initially let's on. He has a couple of books out that would make an interesting, and possibly more complete, read. https://www.amazon.com/dp/0393081095/?tag=pfamazon01-20 and http://press.princeton.edu/titles/6916.html

I consider myself to be a politically independent, but I very much agree with John McCain on stepping up the use of nuclear power. He is very comfortable with it, ostensibly because he lived in harmony with nuclear power aboard Navy vessels. I can't remember exactly where I ran across the mention, but someone once suggested that nuclear fission power would be well suited to smaller, remote/automated regional plants that were to be constructed in sealed, mass produced "shipping container" size module dimensions and buried underground. The security element was that any pilferers would have substancial digging to steal components. The safety element was supposed to be that cooling water would be gravity fed and not depend upon "iffy" pump operation. That our Navy can already use such condensed power-pak sizes is a major plus... i.e. sounded good to me.

I live in a major energy producing state, North Dakota. The huge Bakken oil reservoir is only the latest segment offering and does finally reduce our dependence on OPEC with the possible compromise of fracking damage to groundwaters. The southwest area of ND has significant uranium deposits. We have abundant coal here, unfortunately very dirty coal, as if there is such a thing as clean coal. We also have the fifth largest earthern hydroelectric dam here, Garrison Dam, and we are the second windiest state in the union, right behind Texas.

I'm not sure how the ND vs Corps of Engineers hydroelectric back-up policy works, but I believe the dam is restricted when power can be met by coal fired plants. If so, we already have an excess hydroelectric capacity that we decline to use, also a concern of yours, I believe. I suppose part of the reasoning would be that "free" government power cannot be allowed to compete with private enterprise. I think all the powerplants are owned by stockholders, cooperative or not. The other quite legitimate reasoning to restrict hydroelectric, is that coal fired plants do not do well cycling between cooling and reheating to vary power output, while hydroelectric can.

I worked for a railroad and we hauled slightly cleaner Wyoming Powder River coal, to mix with sulphurous ND coal, to just barely squeak by on the past latest emissions. Being downwind in the city of Bismarck, I once noted a Tribune article by a group of several local respiratory medical professionals pointing out the high incidence of respiratory issues now in the area. Biting the hand that once fed me, so much for asthmatic Teddy Roosevelt's ancestors ever coming here for the clean air again.

At a recent banquet, I ran into an old friend and high school classmate who worked in management for MDU (Montana-Dakota Utilities), our regional natural gas and electric supplier. After someone else broached the subject, I mentioned that we needed to find a way to seclude coal powerplant CO² as coal-synthesizer plant Dakota Gasification has learned to do, that is by selling it to oil companies to bury or just plain burying it. As I said, North Dakota has some of the dirtiest coal imaginable, and we have a lot of it. He protested that it would cost too much, and I retorted that it didn't matter considering the likely alternative. In exasperation, he said, "Well you can just sit in the dark then". Rather than further fuel an unhealthy argument I said nothing more. But I was thinking better me suffer now than my, and his, greatgrandchildren go without acceptable energy when the next bitter cold ice age arrives, possibly because we invited it. It's already cold enough here.

Thanks,
Wes
...

 

[OmCheeto]

I do believe, I've dug myself a new hole.

I told someone the other day, that I would not debate opinion, after the first jab.
And you can't argue facts.
So what on Earth have I to discuss?^[1]

...The sensors for the thermostats were located in the return air stream.
...

How on Earth do you know that?

google google google

I spent three days in the same motel recently.
...

You took it apart.
You were only going to spend one night, but you decided to take the air conditioner apart.
And it took you two days, to put it back together.

:thumbs:

--------------------------
[1] Speculation.

 

[edward]

I do believe, I've dug myself a new hole.

Do you still have the shovel?

How on Earth do you know that?

google google google

I only had to pull out the filter and I could peek in and see the thermostat sensor. I believe in the A/C business they are called a feeler bulb

You took it apart.
You were only going to spend one night, but you decided to take the air conditioner apart.
And it took you two days, to put it back together.

No, no, no, I only do that at Luxury hotels with large central air conditioning systems.

 

[russ_watters]

Perhaps we need to take a closer look at the little things we may be missing. I spent three days in the same motel recently. This was unusual because I am usually arriving after dark and leaving early in the morning.

It was a typical mid priced motel. The A/C units were the typical through the wall heat pumps mounted under the window. I sat in a chair reading a magazine in the early afternoon and noticed that the A/C would run about three minutes then go off for about two minutes.

I immediately spotted the reason, the blasted air was blowing up behind the window curtains, then dropping back down and into the return. The curtains came down to the top of the A/C. I pushed the curtains back and set a book in front of them.

Now the unit ran for fifteen minutes straight and shut down for 18 minutes.

The units also need better insulation between the condenser (outdoor) section and the (interior) evaporator section. I say this because in the morning when the sun hit the east facing condensers the units would kick on for short runs. I walked around to the west side of the building in the afternoon and the same thing was happening.

The sensors for the thermostats were located in the return air stream. This wouldn't need a rocket science fix. The 50 room motel is only two years old.

Ehem:

This is called "retro-commissioning": http://cx.lbl.gov/definition.html

 

[russ_watters]

Quote by edward
"...The sensors for the thermostats were located in the return air stream."

How on Earth do you know that?

Ehem:

Before:

After:

google google google

You took it apart.
You were only going to spend one night, but you decided to take the air conditioner apart.
And it took you two days, to put it back together.

:thumbs:

--------------------------
[1] Speculation.

Can't speak for edward, but I was staying in that hotel room for business and I had some after-hours testing to do at a client's site that was picking-up again in the morning, so I arrived at the hotel at about midnight and wrote the note at quarter after one, to drop off at the front desk when I ckecked-out in the morning.

 

[russ_watters]

I don't have many friends or family that are willing to watch such documentaries...

Good way to kill a boring hour on an exercise bike.

I did think it was a bit vague, but assumed that was a consequence of squeezing the vast array of info into a one hour segment that would appeal to general PBS type audiences. Considering this, I kind of wonder if Dr. Alley didn't somewhat avoid nuclear power to appease some of the paranoid fringe element. He may be much more amenable to it than he initially let's on.

I agree with all of your perception. But I don't like it: if a subject is serious enough to treat seriously, then it should be treated seriously.

I live in a major energy producing state, North Dakota. The huge Bakken oil reservoir is only the latest segment offering and does finally reduce our dependence on OPEC with the possible compromise of fracking damage to groundwaters.

While we're at it, some mention was made of clean coal in the video, but nothing about fracking. Fracking is currently the only thing causing a significant reduction in coal use anywhere in the world. The US didn't even sign the Kyoto protocol and ignored it's carbon emission requirements, yet met them easily due to the sharp drop in coal use as power has switched to natural gas.

Certainly, fracking has the potential to pollute -- any industrial activity does -- and needs to be carefully regulated. But it is an important part of the transition to cleaner energy.

 

[OmCheeto]

Ehem:

Before:

After:

Can't speak for edward, but I was staying in that hotel room for business and I had some after-hours testing to do at a client's site that was picking-up again in the morning, so I arrived at the hotel at about midnight and wrote the note at quarter after one, to drop off at the front desk when I ckecked-out in the morning.

Good job fixing that. And your first image confirmed another suspicion I had, as to why edward's air conditioner was so poorly designed, yet were only two years old. They're made in China. What do they care about how efficient they are for the American market. And the contractors who build the hotels probably don't care either, as long as it's the cheapest thing on the market.

Perhaps you should learn Mandarin, or Cantonese, and do some consulting work.

And I can barely make out the refrigerant type from your image. It looks like R22.

hmmm...

Relief in Every Window, but Global Worry Too
...
Commercial interests foster the stalemate. Though the protocol aggressively reduces the use of HCFC-22 for cooling, it restricts production on a slower, more lenient timetable, and as a result, output has grown more than 60 percent in the past decade. Even in the United States, HCFC-22 is still profitably manufactured for use in older appliances, export and a few other industrial purposes that do not create significant emissions, like making Teflon.
...

You would probably understand the article better than I, but it looks like you can buy an R-22 unit here in the states, as long as it doesn't contain any refrigerant when it crosses the border, and fill it up after the fact.

ps. Greg should get ahold of the Hotel Assn. of America, and get us all a deal on hotel rates. It seems PF'ers are really good at fixing poorly designed/installed air conditioners.

 

[russ_watters]

And your first image confirmed another suspicion I had, as to why edward's air conditioner was so poorly designed, yet were only two years old. They're made in China. What do they care about how efficient they are for the American market. And the contractors who build the hotels probably don't care either, as long as it's the cheapest thing on the market.

Well, they care enough to meet the federal efficiency standards. They don't have a choice. Unfortunately, efficiency is a function of heat exchanger size, which is limited by sleeve size, so that type of air conditioner is significantly less efficient than a residential, free-standing condenser.

In this case, the problems were entirely due to the installing contractor's ineptitude.

 

[Wes Tausend]

Gentlemen,

I did finally get a chance to review the http://video.pbs.org/video/1855661681/ PBS video. Although Richard Alley presents it, the writer and director was Geoff Haines-Stiles (52:42) who is ultimately responsible for included content and it was produced by Erna Akuginow (52:47). See Erna Akuginow and Geoffrey Haines-Stiles for more.

Even after reading some criticisms here, I am still quite impressed by the comprehensive info addressed in an only one hour video on such a complicated concept. Having oft struggled to shorten much simpler forum posts on logical argument, I believe it was quite a feat to squeeze as much logic as they did into such a short synopsis.

I'm going to guess that the numbers Richard comes up with, such as the 0.01 percent (39:40) of available solar power that could provide in excess of current planet use, are not just his own, but part of a general professional consensus borrowed from published studies reviewed by the IPCC of which he is a "proud" member (01:35).

What Dr.Alley is proposing is modifying our present division of energy/power use to another that is more conducive to sustainability and ultimate human survival.

He presents some figures here (03:22 & 51:08) for present planetary use:
Fossil fuels...78%
Nuclear....5%
Hydro......6%
renewables...1%
wood & dung...10%
TOTAL....100%

And he suggests we set a 2030 goal (51:08):
Solar.....26%
Wind.....13%
Geothermal...13%
Biomass fuels...4%
Hydro...5% (reduced from 6%??)
SubTotal...61% renewable

And adding existing and new nuclear making up the other non-renewable 39%:
Nuclear...26%
Fossil fuel...13% (reduced from 78%!)
SubTotal...39% non-renewable fission/carbohydrates

Note that Richard Alley has assigned a high importance to nuclear power after all.

2030 Total:
renewable...61%
non-renewable...39%
2030 TOTAL...100%

I recently had a new V-10 engine installed in our thirsty Ford Excursion (Sierra Club Valdez award winner). I picked the best mechanic I could find with the full realization that he wasn't perfect. I would pick somebody like Richard Alley as my Earth mechanic. BTW, we more than make up for the thirsty Excursion with our hybrid Prius. The Excursion is a great HD tow vehicle and the Prius unbeatable as lightweight people transport.

Speaking of hybrids, here is an interesting link for the hybrid USS Makin Island (LHD-8). It's diesel-electric option is not much different than my locomotives that I used for the railroad. Somewhere back in the early '90's Burlington Northern Railroad (BN) was second only to the U.S. Navy in fuel usage. Since then this railroad merged with the old Santa Fe to become BNSF and include even more track and a larger fuel budget. BN was a pioneer in converting brush type DC locomotives to solid state brushless AC locomotives in North America and much of the beta testing was done between Mandan, ND and Glendive MT where I worked. The testing was done by German Siemen EE's as we made our trips. Siemens also certainly provides the solid state high efficiency DC power line system touted in Brazil in the video. I guess Edison and DC won afterall.

Thanks,
Wes
...

 

[mfb]

Hydro...5% (reduced from 6%??)

The total demand is rising, a slightly reduced fraction can still mean a larger absolute value.

Solar.....26%
Wind.....13%
Nuclear...26%

This would mean we have to use electricity to heat buildings on a large scale. That is possible, but it will further increase the total consumption. And I guess we need a lot of electric cars as well to get that.
Nuclear power is quite unpopular in many countries, I don't see how this is supposed to happen (to have it available in 2030, site-specific planning would basically have to start now).

 

[AlephZero]

Solar.....26%
Wind.....13%
Nuclear...26%

This point has been made before, but it's worth asking the question again:

If the average output from Solar and Wind combined is 39%, what provides that 39% share of power when it's dark and the wind isn't blowing?

If it's nuclear, the installed capacity needs to be 65% not 26%. And you have to figure out a way to start up and shut down nuclear generators once per day, without compromising safety and plant reliability, to cover the solar load - even if you make the optimistic assumption that it's always windy somewhere in a big country like the USA.

And even assuming an optimistic 12 hours of sun per day averaged over a year, the installed solar power needs to be 52% to reach the 26% average...

 

[Wes Tausend]

Hydro...5% (reduced from 6%??)

The total demand is rising, a slightly reduced fraction can still mean a larger absolute value.

mfb,

I assume the proportions can be scaled up/down and even modified by experimentation. My guess, to meet projected energy needs, is that the suggested drastic drop to 13% of fossil fuel use is the key and this is only a demonstration model. I say key because due to various bootstrap greenhouse effects, CO² may already take the reaction of an over-reduction of fossil-burn to remove excess CO² from the atmosphere, as the current level seems already detrimental to continental weather in both structure damage and crop friendliness.
This seems a little unfriendly to long term fossil-fuel investors, though.

Solar.....26%
Wind.....13%
Nuclear...26%

This would mean we have to use electricity to heat buildings on a large scale. That is possible, but it will further increase the total consumption. And I guess we need a lot of electric cars as well to get that.
Nuclear power is quite unpopular in many countries, I don't see how this is supposed to happen (to have it available in 2030, site-specific planning would basically have to start now).

BUILDINGS
I owned a small home construction company in the mid '70's. Our major product was subcontract drywall and interior coatings. The 1973 OPEC Oil Crisis caused major changes in home construction. I got a sincere education in home air exchange vs trapped humidity when windows and doors suddenly met stringent new Federal requirements for air leakage to the exterior. Humans exude about 1 gallon of water per day per person and it was tough on my wall and ceiling warranty when damage from the trapped moisture proliferated.

About that same time some experimental homes in Saskatoon, CA were built so well insulated that they supposedly initially required no heating system whatsoever. IF I recall, the thick-walled home theoretically heated itself by the 100+ watts each, given off by the occupants. In reality, they skipped the double entry in most and installed 20KW heaters in each home (miserly portable 110v milk house heaters approach this 20KW). They, too, found the homes worked in principle until occupied, and then the stark need for air exchange arose. There still appears a rendition of the original experiment here and here.

The point is that electric heat is not expensive if one does not use much of it. Once it enters the dwelling, it is 100% efficient. All the energy is converted to heat and none is vented out as in combustion systems.

CARS
There appears to be a confusion as to what power will be used when (such as at night).

Currently, the answer is more simple. Electric grid requirements drop off late at night, so all powerplant investments are primarily daytime investments. There is a requirement surge mostly during dim mornings due to industrial coming on line as many are waking up in the dark hours, especially in northern states. Industrial use tapers off as evening approaches but humans turn on stoves and televisions, then suddenly it is lights out, A/C relaxes and power requirements sag by midnight. This inherent sporatic power use allows for moderate electrical grid structure, and low amp loads, to charge electric vehicles over night with less chance of overload. Thus the future answer is not so simple, but quite possible.

Electric cars for local travel are great, and fortunately the cars will require heavier after-sunset power at an opportune time. Solar PV cells cannot ever directly do this "night-job" in spite of the claimed fact that 80% of the planet could run from them just using American SW desert acreage... during the day (Unless we had trans-atlantic power cables), an unlikely scenario.

At night, hydroelectric power can supply the missing solar energy without exhausting water-shed resources during the day. Rather than build more dams, we must find a way to get by with what we have. I can suggest one way to do this would be to heavily drain these few dams during the night, then pump the water back up hill using solar power during the day. After all, it is the sun that makes the water "go uphill" in the first place. It would take a major dam redesign with upper and lower reservoirs, or at least adding a lower retention reservoir to existing dams. If this is possible, how might this otherwise be eloquently accomplished?

Here is how. My locomotives and my Prius use the same basic hybrid solid state systems. Both make use of the exchangability between motors and generators. The drive motor for the Prius can recharge the storage battery as a generator during deceleration. The locomotive uses the traction motors (one per axle) to regenerate electrical current during dynamic braking. The locomotive motors-turned-generators provide high resistance to rotation (brakes) when in generate mode. The kiloamps are dissipated as wasted heat through large fan driven "toaster grids" near the top of the body rather than recovered. So why couldn't properly designed dam generators be run backward as pump motors, during the day, using purposed excess renewable solar power?

NUCLEAR
I previously mentioned using mass produced nuclear microplants modeled after Navy vessels. Give homeowners a choice. Bury one in the neighborhood or run with a reduced power clamp if they won't "pay the not-in-my-back-yard bill." Kinda mean, I know. Heh, heh.

Thanks,
Wes
...

 

[OmCheeto]

...
One good point, though, is I definitely like what the military is doing with alternate energy...notwithstanding the joke last month about generating fuel from seawater that got a lot of airtime.

It seems the Europeans are doing their own version of this comedy routine.

Synthesized 'solar' jet fuel: Renewable kerosene from sunlight, water and carbon dioxide
Date: May 3, 2014
Source: ETH Zürich
Summary: With the first ever production of synthesized "solar" jet fuel, the EU-funded SOLAR-JET project has successfully demonstrated the entire production chain for renewable kerosene obtained directly from sunlight, water and carbon dioxide, therein potentially revolutionizing the future of aviation. This process has also the potential to produce any other type of fuel for transport applications, such as diesel, gasoline or pure hydrogen in a more sustainable way.

Ironically, I found this on EARTH-The Operators' Manual's Facebook page. It's actually quit good. I've shared many of their findings:

A High-Renewables Tomorrow, Today: El Hierro, Canary Islands
FEB 13, 2014
...
El Hierro now has five wind turbines with a combined installed capacity of 11.5 megawatts soon to provide the majority of the electricity for the island. When wind production exceeds demand, excess energy will pump water from a reservoir at the bottom of a volcanic cone to another reservoir at the top of the volcano 700 meters above sea level. The upper reservoir stores over 132 million gallons of water. The stored water acts as a battery. When demand rises and there is not enough wind power, the water will be released to four hydroelectric turbines with a total capacity of 11 MW.

The entire project, expected to come online this year, is projected to generate three times the island’s basic energy needs—for residents, farming cooperatives, fruit and fish canneries, and the 60,000 tourists who visit every year. Any excess electricity will be used to desalinate water at the island’s three desalination plants, delivering almost 3 million gallons of water a day, enough for drinking water and to cover part of the irrigation needs.
...

Though some people are upset by some of the stuff he posts, as in the one regarding predicted sea level rise:

Двигатель Измененией; I followed this page for the cool off-grid living tips you USED to post. Lately, all I've seen is uncorroborated pseudoscience and it's driving me crazy. Consider yourselves unfollowed.
Like · Reply · 29 April at 09:50

Jay Kanta; Well, Bye.
Like · 29 April at 11:51​

I tend to ignore uncorroborated pseudoscience.

...
The point is that electric heat is not expensive if one does not use much of it. Once it enters the dwelling, it is 100% efficient. All the energy is converted to heat and none is vented out as in combustion systems.

It's even cheaper, when you're more than 100% efficient:

Aug25-10, 08:09 AM
...

I did an experiment last summer using 1/2 inch 100' long black irrigation hose and a $22 bilge pump. The system collected ~2.3 kwh of thermal energy in about 3.5 hours.
...
Some numbers:
flow: 1.6 gpm (~ 24 watts pump)
area of hose: 0.27 m^2
system fluid capacity: 32 gallons
max delta T / hr: 11 'F
To = 61.7'F
Tf = 90.9'F

Eek! Late for work. BBL.

Let's see... 24 watts of electrical input over 3.5 hours yields 84 watt hours consumed.
Energy gained by the system was 2300 watt hours.
2300 - 84 = 2216 net watt hours
system efficiency: η = P_out / P_in
= 2216/84 = 2338% efficiency

Ha! Take that wikipaedia!

Efficiencies may not exceed 100%

Dullards have apparently never heard of the Kobayashi Maru. When in doubt, cheat.

Thanks,
Wes
...

You're welcome.

 

[Wes Tausend]

...

OmCheeto, thanks for responding. I am happy to see that I did not kill a healthy thread... as sometimes seems to happen.
...

...
One good point, though, is I definitely like what the military is doing with alternate energy...notwithstanding the joke last month about generating fuel from seawater that got a lot of airtime.

It seems the Europeans are doing their own version of this comedy routine.

Synthesized 'solar' jet fuel: Renewable kerosene from sunlight, water and carbon dioxide
Date: May 3, 2014
Source: ETH Zürich
Summary: With the first ever production of synthesized "solar" jet fuel, the EU-funded SOLAR-JET project has successfully demonstrated the entire production chain for renewable kerosene obtained directly from sunlight, water and carbon dioxide, therein potentially revolutionizing the future of aviation. This process has also the potential to produce any other type of fuel for transport applications, such as diesel, gasoline or pure hydrogen in a more sustainable way.

OK. I finally had to look for what joke Russ was talking about. It is obvious that water and CO² are the byproducts of carbohydrate combustion, and the combustion process could theoretically be reversed. So my first thought was that it was simply one of the sensational claims often found on "propoganda airwaves" to influence the unwary. There is often an element of truth to these claims, the problem being that the fuel is not free, but requires an input of more than a gallon to make a gallon. The worst ones make use of the automobile alternator to form hydrogen which may then be burned by the attached combustion engine. The wit-challenged that believe this is helpful, do not recognise that the drag of the alternator cancels the tractive power produced, plus adds whatever efficiency losses are wasted getting there.

But if one does not "spend" a gallon+ to make a gallon of fuel, and uses free (otherwise wasted) solar energy instead, the loss doesn't count. So your link points out that the military benefit to the scurrilous seawater/fuel story that circulated is possibly true. It may use the Fischer–Tropsch process and is very similar to the synthesis work done by Dakota Gasification Company (DGC) since 1984 (whom I mentioned previously). A gentleman who works at the DGC plant mentioned that they have already done some preparation to produce diesel (from coal rather than water) in addition to the products mentioned on the wiki link. Rather than solar, they likely use dirty coal for energy conversion power, probably the next-door Antelope Valley Station, not so good. But the research is theoretically good.

There is one major flaw, for the purposes of this thread, in using seawater to extract the H, O & CO² to build a carbohydrate. Large portions of the greenhouse carbon gas are presently somewhat sequestered in the seawater if the temperature of the seawater does not rise, or somebody take it out by extraction. Our best science today begs that as possible, we keep as much CO² cornered anywhere, except in the upper atmosphere, as in after combustion. So while military fuel may be handily produced on site rather than by precarious shipping, it does not ultimately help save the world, and is of only short-term marginal benefit.

Ironically, I found this on EARTH-The Operators' Manual's Facebook page. It's actually quit good. I've shared many of their findings:

http://blog.rmi.org/blog_2014_02_13_high_renewables_tomorrow_today_el_hierro_canary_islands
FEB 13, 2014
...
El Hierro now has five wind turbines with a combined installed capacity of 11.5 megawatts soon to provide the majority of the electricity for the island. When wind production exceeds demand, excess energy will pump water from a reservoir at the bottom of a volcanic cone to another reservoir at the top of the volcano 700 meters above sea level. The upper reservoir stores over 132 million gallons of water. The stored water acts as a battery. When demand rises and there is not enough wind power, the water will be released to four hydroelectric turbines with a total capacity of 11 MW.

The entire project, expected to come online this year, is projected to generate three times the island’s basic energy needs—for residents, farming cooperatives, fruit and fish canneries, and the 60,000 tourists who visit every year. Any excess electricity will be used to desalinate water at the island’s three desalination plants, delivering almost 3 million gallons of water a day, enough for drinking water and to cover part of the irrigation needs

Thanks for providing an example of hydro storage at work. It appears to be the most likely practical candidate for mega energy storage, although I have heard of a small power station using lead-acid batteries as an Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS). An acquaintance bought discounted used batteries for his own off-grid project from the source.

I'm not sure what all must be done to make huge generators reasonably interchangeable as drive motors to pump water back uphill, but it would help solve a packaging problem in existing hydroelectric power houses. I know that one may take a common induction motor (old wash machine), turn it at 3450 rpm, and derive inefficient 110v 60 cycle ac from it. The easiest back-yard experiment would be to use an induction motor to drive another precisely at the correct rpm and use the driven assembly to light incandescent bulbs as a test load.

Most well designed solid state brushless ac motors can be driven at any rpm as long as the computer matches the correct cycle phase to motor speed, exactly as modern locomotives do at hundreds of volts and thousands of amps. Locomotives are really mega-watt power stations and their German developer, Siemens, most certainly can design high power solid state power-plant devices as evidenced by their DC power line systems as used in Brazil etc. This is a far cry from the puny, unreliable 30 watt output transisters that frequently failed on 1970's audio stereos, for those that are old enough to remember.

Though some people are upset by some of the stuff he posts, as in the one regarding predicted sea level rise:

I followed this page for the cool off-grid living tips you USED to post. Lately, all I've seen is uncorroborated pseudoscience and it's driving me crazy. Consider yourselves unfollowed.
Like · Reply · 29 April at 09:50

Jay Kanta; Well, Bye.
Like · 29 April at 11:51

I tend to ignore uncorroborated pseudoscience.

I am not on Facebook and am unaware of this, but I can appreciate the humor in the terms, "uncorroborated pseudoscience". I do know the U.S. Navy is quite concerned about rising sea-levels since 100% of their bases will eventually flood world-wide. For myself, I will move my fuel-thirsty camper, and drag my fishing boat anchor up the beach to a dry spot.

...
The point is that electric heat is not expensive if one does not use much of it. Once it enters the dwelling, it is 100% efficient. All the energy is converted to heat and none is vented out as in combustion systems.

It's even cheaper, when you're more than 100% efficient:

According to the video the Chinese are way ahead of us here. They have solar hot water heat devices on many roofs now.

Let's see... 24 watts of electrical input over 3.5 hours yields 84 watt hours consumed.
Energy gained by the system was 2300 watt hours.
2300 - 84 = 2216 net watt hours
system efficiency: η = P_out / P_in
= 2216/84 = 2338% efficiency

Ha! Take that wikipaedia!

Cheater.

Dullards have apparently never heard of the Kobayashi Maru. When in doubt, cheat.

Being a dullard, I had to look it up. I will have to review my Star Trek collection.

Thanks,
Wes
...

You're welcome.

Now I feel as though I have been pre-welcomed for my thanks in my signature. It is something like pre-retaliation, only on the friendly side of the scale.

My local library had the book https://www.amazon.com/dp/0393081095/?tag=pfamazon01-20, so I checked it out and am in the process of reading it. It is very good and Richard does have more to say. He talks about everything from nuclear worth and politics, to the reason humans have the brain size that they do, due to "burning stuff".

We, as a species alone, dedicate our food intake and minimal digestion to brainpower, not the energy consuming long-gut digestion as does every other animal. The invention of fire and cooking (pre-digestion) allows us the smallest digestion tract on the planet, leaving more resources for thinking power as opposed to a cow eating raw vegetation and digesting it with four stomachs.

And that is just the first few pages. If, "genius is 99 perspiration and 1 inspiration", as Edison said, Richard is a genius. He doesn't just make this stuff up. There are 111 pages of the 479 page book dedicated just to professional reference notes and of course it was a remarkable team effort to package it.

At this point, I will say that Richard Alley is the best answer to Russ's original query about solving the world energy crisis. Russ, thanks for reminding me why I saved it on my DVR before retirement.

Thanks,
Wes
...

 

[OmCheeto]

...It is obvious that water and CO² are the byproducts of carbohydrate combustion...

You are the first person to have ever used the word "carbohydrate" in this 9 year old thread.
hmmmm...

-----------------------------
ps. I have a full time job, and my responses are usually very short, M-F.
pps. I responded to someone on the NRL site, regarding "carbohydrate" production from seawater. They allow user comments. I did some math, and showed that a 500 megawatt nuclear reactor, could theoretically, create enough fuel, for all the planes on the ship, in ≈24 hours. In the back of my mind though, my lizard brain was laughing.

 

[Wes Tausend]

You are the first person to have ever used the word "carbohydrate" in this 9 year old thread.
hmmmm...

-----------------------------
ps. I have a full time job, and my responses are usually very short, M-F.
pps. I responded to someone on the NRL site, regarding "carbohydrate" production from seawater. They allow user comments. I did some math, and showed that a 500 megawatt nuclear reactor, could theoretically, create enough fuel, for all the planes on the ship, in ≈24 hours. In the back of my mind though, my lizard brain was laughing.

Whoops. Well, ok, I should have properly used the term hydrocarbon instead of carbohydrate. Sorry. I tend to do that.

In another thread, I recently used the term "finderscope", instead of "goto scope", to otherwise carefully describe (to a NASA engineer mind you) how Ptolemy's math is all that is needed (barring escape/re-entry) for NASA to shoot a rocket to Mars. Embarrassing.

My point was supposed to be that Ptolemy's geocentricity differs from Copernicus' heliocentricity only by intuition, not the math, which was/is nearly identical. But the point was undoubtedly somewhat lost by my incorrect use of the term "finderscope". A finderscope is a small wide-angle "rifle" scope used to aim a more powerful narrow field-of-view scope. OTOH, a goto scope has a built-in computerized calendar, clock and map to find which "sky-spot" Mars will be on any given night. The cheap, tiny goto computer differs little from the planetary prediction of Ptolemy's map of relativity which is all NASA needs to aim with (unless they slingshot a path near another planet).

So we could make food from seawater and CO² also.

P.S. It could be that the roots of laughing reside in the lizard brain. Laughing appears to be a form of regurgitation of unsavory logic.

Thanks, I think,
Wes
...

 

[OmCheeto]

...
So we could make food from seawater and CO² also.
...

Well, from what I've read, we've had a similar technology in use for over 10,000 years. It's called agriculture. And some smart people, as recently as 200 years ago, figured out how to turn wood into automobile fuel. Though I don't think the automobile existed back then. Probably why it took nearly another hundred years for there to be a market for the stuff.

The French chemist, Henri Braconnot, was the first to discover that cellulose could be hydrolyzed into sugars by treatment with sulfuric acid in 1819. The hydrolyzed sugar could then be processed to form ethanol through fermentation. The first commercialized ethanol production began in Germany in 1898, where they used acid to hydrolyze cellulose. In the United States, the Standard Alcohol Company opened the first cellulosic ethanol production plant in South Carolina in 1910 during WWI. Later a second plant was opened in Louisiana. However, both plants were closed after WWI due to economic reasons.

Yup

The year 1886 is regarded the year of birth of the modern automobile - with the Benz Patent-Motorwagen, by German inventor Karl Benz. Motorized wagons soon replaced animal-drafted carriages, especially after automobiles became affordable for many people when the Ford Model T was introduced in 1908.

hmmm... I just had a great idea. But like all my great ideas, someone else beat me to it.

The spouse of one of my coworkers, works for a company called Agilyx. I don't think I'd ever heard of the process that they used, but it sounded like it solved several problems, all at once.

They turn waste plastic, into fuel. I don't know where you are from, but in these parts, we recycle everything, with the possible exception of certain types of plastic. It sometimes takes me 3 months to fill my 20 gallon garbage can.

Anyways, my idea merged three things together.
Aircraft carriers not at war looking for fuel
Plastic to fuel
The Great Pacific garbage patch

and maybe some nets...

But...

Research of cleanup...
At TEDxDelft2012, Dutch Aerospace Engineering student Boyan Slat unveiled a concept for removing large amounts of marine debris from the five oceanic gyres. With his concept called The Ocean Cleanup, he proposes a radical clean-up that would use the surface currents to let the debris drift to specially designed arms and collection platforms. This way the running costs would be virtually zero, and the operation would be so efficient that it may even be profitable. The concept makes use of floating booms, that won’t catch the debris, but divert it. This way by-catch would be avoided, and even the smallest particles would be extracted. According to Boyan Slat's calculations, a gyre could realistically be cleaned up in five years' time, collecting at least 7.25 million tons of plastic combining all gyres. He however does note that an ocean-based cleanup is only half the story, and will therefore have to be paired with 'radical plastic pollution prevention methods in order to succeed'.
...

I think I like Boyan's idea better.

 

[Wes Tausend]

...

so we could make food from seawater and co₂also.

well, from what I've read, we've had a similar technology in use for over 10,000 years. It's called agriculture. And some smart people, as recently as 200 years ago, figured out how to turn wood into automobile fuel. Though i don't think the automobile existed back then. Probably why it took nearly another hundred years for there to be a market for the stuff.

Agriculture is really slow. I was thinking of a pizza Replicator.

the french chemist, henri braconnot, was the first to discover that cellulose could be hydrolyzed into sugars by treatment with sulfuric acid in 1819. The hydrolyzed sugar could then be processed to form ethanol through fermentation. The first commercialized ethanol production began in germany in 1898, where they used acid to hydrolyze cellulose. In the united states, the standard alcohol company opened the first cellulosic ethanol production plant in south carolina in 1910 during wwi. Later a second plant was opened in louisiana. However, both plants were closed after wwi due to economic reasons.

yup

the year 1886 is regarded the year of birth of the modern automobile - with the benz patent-motorwagen, by german inventor karl benz. Motorized wagons soon replaced animal-drafted carriages, especially after automobiles became affordable for many people when the ford model t was introduced in 1908

hmmm... I just had a great idea. But like all my great ideas, someone else beat me to it.

Speaking of great ideas, my great grandfather invented a transmission in 1902 and sold it to Henry Ford for mega $. So he was pretty cool. But he spent most of his free time planning to harness perpetual motion which is why he was probably fooling around with the gears. He wasn't fazed in 1905 by the craftiness of an exasperated swiss patent clerk. That clerk was finally able to point out to a long line of various obnoxious perpetual motion inventors why even the sun wasn't a good example of perpetual motion. Popular Mechanics was full of perpetual motion schemes in the late 1800's, early 1900's. By then everybody knew the sun lasted way, way longer than an ordinary coal fire and crackpots weren't invented yet. 'Til later.

Which occasionally worries me that my gravity-powered perpetual motion theory may be wrong too. It's absolutely ingenious, classic, wonderfully absurd and I'd tell you about it, but then the mentors would have to kill me.

the spouse of one of my coworkers, works for a company called agilyx. I don't think i'd ever heard of the process that they used, but it sounded like it solved several problems, all at once.

They turn waste plastic, into fuel. I don't know where you are from, but in these parts, we recycle everything, with the possible exception of certain types of plastic. It sometimes takes me 3 months to fill my 20 gallon garbage can.

Anyways, my idea merged three things together.
Aircraft carriers not at war looking for fuel
plastic to fuel
the great pacific garbage patch

and maybe some nets...

But...

at tedxdelft2012, dutch aerospace engineering student boyan slat unveiled a concept for removing large amounts of marine debris from the five oceanic gyres. With his concept called the ocean cleanup, he proposes a radical clean-up that would use the surface currents to let the debris drift to specially designed arms and collection platforms. This way the running costs would be virtually zero, and the operation would be so efficient that it may even be profitable. The concept makes use of floating booms, that won’t catch the debris, but divert it. This way by-catch would be avoided, and even the smallest particles would be extracted. According to boyan slat's calculations, a gyre could realistically be cleaned up in five years' time, collecting at least 7.25 million tons of plastic combining all gyres. He however does note that an ocean-based cleanup is only half the story, and will therefore have to be paired with 'radical plastic pollution prevention methods in order to succeed'.

i think i like boyan's idea better.

Boyan's perpetual ocean currents. I agree his idea is better. Unless they stop flowing when the arctic waters are sufficiently polluted with light-weight fresh icemelt water.

P.S. I'm kind of new here. Are we supposed to be doing this to Russ's thread? Not that perpetual motion wouldn't be a great energy source in a crisis.

As a token of on-topic compliance, I should mention that I was disappointed to find we only have a thirty year supply of recoverable fissionable nuclear material at current production rates... according to Richard Alley and his sources. We are now using surplus cold-war materials, not activly searching for more, and there is certainly more, but not nearly to the plentiful extent of harmful carbon fuels. So besides the nasty world politics involved, the resource appears basically too scarce for major practical implementation.

Fusion, which is not susceptable to limited U-235 reserves, inspires an inside energy industry joke that "fusion is the energy of the future and always will be". Fusion is not presently a chicken that Richard, or his international cohorts, will count.

Thanks,
Wes
...

 

[mheslep]

As a token of on-topic compliance, I should mention that I was disappointed to find we only have a thirty year supply of recoverable fissionable nuclear material at current production rates... according to Richard Alley and his sources.

Sounds like Alley is dabbling in social policy more than geology. Known land based reserves, today, are 5 million tons of Uranium; consumption is 68,000 tons/year or 73 years. Likely reserves are 7 million tons, or 102 years, and that is with no increase in reserves. Yet reserves have increased ~0.1 million tones per year on average over the last 35.

We are now using surplus cold-war materials, not actively searching for more, ...
...

Uranium exploration is certainly ongoing, as indicated by the steady increase in known reserves.

There are still other fission energy alternatives.

• Breeding fertile fuels, i.e. U238, into fissionable isotopes, in which case the supply of fissionable material multiplies ~150 times instantly, with the couple decade's of supply already mined, processed, and set aside.
• Thorium is also a fertile fuel.
• Seawater based Uranium and Thorium

 

[mfb]

The costs of uranium are a small part of the overall costs - I remember something like 5%. Give or take a factor of 2 for this value, a doubling of the uranium price would still be a small effect on the costs of nuclear power and change the amount of available uranium significantly.

 

[gmax137]

The costs of uranium are a small part of the overall costs - I remember something like 5%. Give or take a factor of 2 for this value, a doubling of the uranium price would still be a small effect on the costs of nuclear power and change the amount of available uranium significantly.

...This is the total annual cost associated with the "burnup" of nuclear fuel resulting from the operation of the unit. This cost is based upon the amortized costs associated with the purchasing of uranium, conversion, enrichment, and fabrication services along with storage and shipment costs, and inventory (including interest) charges less any expected salvage value.

For a typical 1,000 MWe BWR or PWR, the approximate cost of fuel for one reload (replacing one third of the core) is about $40 million, based on an 18-month refueling cycle.

The average fuel cost at a nuclear power plant in 2012 was 0.75 cents / kWh.

from
http://www.nei.org/Knowledge-Center...ts-Fuel,-Operation,-Waste-Disposal-Life-Cycle

If the generation cost is say 5 or 6 cents/kw-hr, then the fuel would be about 15% of the cost.

 

[OmCheeto]

...
P.S. I'm kind of new here. Are we supposed to be doing this to Russ's thread?

What are we doing to to Russ's thread?

Thanks,
Wes
...

You're welcome.