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cyrusabdollahi said:
Not at all -- but I don't see any value in debating pie-in-the-sky figures.
- Warren
Should nuclear energy be phased out?
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Not at all -- but I don't see any value in debating pie-in-the-sky figures.
- Warren
Cyrus
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I don't think 20% each for com and resid, is all that pie-in-the-sky. You want to be more conservative, fine. Let's use 10%. Thats still 25% overall reduction. 25% is not an insignificant step. A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, warren.
People thought we would never go to space, we did. People thought the world was flat, it wasn't. People thought the sound barrier could not be broken, it could. People will say, they thought they could not solve the energy crisis, but they did.
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selfAdjoint
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Well, can we at least discuss options for a 20% across-the-board reduction in energy usage? One option would be to outsource even more of our manufacturing and go to a nearly 100% service economy (including overseas services to pay for our goods). I'll bet that would take at lest 20% out of the commercial sector since manufacturing uses lots more energy than service.
Any comments?
Any comments?
Cyrus
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That would reduce a fraction of the power usage in the industrial, not the commercial sector. The commercial sector is blue\white collar jobs, as per government definition. Industrial is manufacturing jobs. Also, to move industry to another country would actually be worse, as other countries probably won't have as strict emissions controls. Its not an easy problem to solve. Having a large services enonomy is kind of dangerous. It is primary industry that brings money into a country. So you don't want to let all of it go away.
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Even in the short term, and even if that would be good for the economy to oursource that much of it, how does that help? 20% is not a significant fraction of the problem and its an amount that we'd make back up in 5 years or so anyway.selfAdjoint said:
To counter the pollution problem, emissions need to be dropped - not by 20% - but by 99%. To end our dependence on foreign oil, we need to drop, not 20%, but 55% of our oil usage.
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Unfortunately, the laws of physics make it impossible for even the smartest EE to reduce our energy consumption by a significant amount without changing how we live. Ie...cyrusabdollahi said:
Actually, you're talking percentage points there, not percent of usage. You're talking cutting 20% from the 33% that residential uses right now. That's actually a 60% drop in energy usage for residential.
So how do we do that? Simple: eliminate all heating and air conditioning, since they are on the order of 75% of your energy usage. Is that a viable solution? No.
Is there any way to make heating and air conditioning 75% more efficient (guess of what is needed to accomplish a 60% drop in residential energy usage)? No. The typical residential gas heater is 85% efficient. It is possible to make them on the order of 95% efficient - dropping their consumption by 12%. With air conditioning, you have the same problem except that they are only on the order of 35% efficient. The laws of thermodynamics dictate that they can't get much more efficient. And electric heaters are, of course, already 100% efficient.
You can pick up a little with heat pumps, but as far as the thermodynamics is concerned, if you get twice as much heat out as energy in with a heat pump, you haven't helped yourself any if that energy in was created at 45% efficiency in a gas turbine generator. Burning it at 90% efficiency yields theh same net usage.
Cyrus
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Ah, I see what you mean. You are correct.
That is just because you think it is impossible to eliminate all heating and air conditioning. In fact, its not. Its called making a sacrifice. It won't kill you. As I said before, it is a necessity only for the very old and the very young. I realize doing that is a big pain in the butt for everyone, but that's the price you pay when you have no other options. You start to cut back to the bare necessities.
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The posts of mine above are why I consider nuclear to be the only viable solution in the near-term (by which I mean the next ~50 years) to these energy and pollution issues. If we just stop building coal plants and build nuclear plants instead, start transitioning to hydrogen for mobile use, with maybe a 30% increase in energy costs we could be pretty much off fossil fuel in 20 years.
One caveat about coal - coal is plentiful and cheap and because of that it is the primary obstacle to change in our energy usage. "Clean coal" is a smokescreen (pun intended). It is certainly possible to make coal "clean", but what is meant by that? Coal has impurities and releases all sorts of nastyness (including, ironically, uranium) into the atmosphere when it is burned. There are ways to stop that, including preheating the coal to drive off methane and then burning the methane. Methane is what a stove uses and is what people think of when they think of a "clean" fossil fuel. But before anyone gets excited - methane is still a fossil fuel and its primary combustion product is still carbon dioxide, the primary greenhouse gas. So while clean coal would help - it would reduce the number of people who die from air pollution, eliminate smog, etc., it would't fix that bigger problem of global warming.
One caveat about coal - coal is plentiful and cheap and because of that it is the primary obstacle to change in our energy usage. "Clean coal" is a smokescreen (pun intended). It is certainly possible to make coal "clean", but what is meant by that? Coal has impurities and releases all sorts of nastyness (including, ironically, uranium) into the atmosphere when it is burned. There are ways to stop that, including preheating the coal to drive off methane and then burning the methane. Methane is what a stove uses and is what people think of when they think of a "clean" fossil fuel. But before anyone gets excited - methane is still a fossil fuel and its primary combustion product is still carbon dioxide, the primary greenhouse gas. So while clean coal would help - it would reduce the number of people who die from air pollution, eliminate smog, etc., it would't fix that bigger problem of global warming.
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I didn't say it wasn't possible, I said it wasn't viable (that subtlety has been a problem in this thread several times...). Just being possible is not good enough. It needs to be viable and it is not viable.cyrusabdollahi said:
The government could, of course, outlaw heating and air conditioning. But that doesn't mean its a good idea. And it doesn't mean the public would go along with it.
Perhaps you think that is an acceptable sacrifice, but I don't and I suspect that a high fraction of the population would consider that unacceptable as well. That and the fact that it would utterly destroy the economy are what make it not viable.
People have had heat for thousands of years and many people most certainly would die without it. That part, anyway, stretches the limit of "possible", but sure, we could do it: Large fractions of the US (not to mention the world) would be simply uninhabitable in the winter without it. We'd need to abandon the northern half of the US in the winter.
Air conditioning is one of the things that makes the modern world the modern world. Eliminate that and we drop back a century. At home it is largely a comfort, but commercially, our economy could not function in its present form without air conditioning. Computers, or electronics of any kind? No - they require air conditioning. We'd have to stop using pretty much everything electronic (which, I guess, would just leave lighting, dropping our energy usage by 90%).
I think I asked you before if you are a "dark-ages environmentalist" and didn't get a response. It would appear that you are. You may consider such sacrifices to be acceptable, but that puts you in a very tiny fringe. Part of what has made the far fringe of environmentalism so impotent is the fact that their goals aren't viable. The US is a free country and the public just won't accept such radical ideas - such a radical departure from what the modern world is.
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Cyrus
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That is why you would have to phase it out.
Ok, fair. Then you limit the total heat output. Make it so that the amount of heating you can get in your home is tolerable. This is one option to reduce heating usage. So your house won't be a warm sunny day in mid january, too bad so sad. Its the price you have to pay if you want to cut back on our power use.
My computer does not have an A/C unit. Does yours? Does anyone else's?
For large networks and mainfrains, of course you will need it. But that's not going to be in every house in the United States.
For the second time, no I am not. I am saying that if you want to reduce the amount of power we use, you will have to make some sacrifices. That does not make me a 'dark ages environmentalist.' Its called there is simply no other alternative. If you want to reduce the power usage, you have to make cuts somewhere. Do you know of any places that we can make cuts, because I would like to know?
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Huh? How do you phase out heat? And what would replace the economics of HVAC? These things account for a significant fraction of our economic output - they'd need to be replaced with something else.cyrusabdollahi said:
Now you're starting to be reasonable, but you're not seeing the flaw in your logic: the amount of heat required is proportional to temperature difference. If you live in a place where the average winter temperature is 30F and you drop your thermostat from 70 to 50, you've dropped your heating usage by 50%. Few people would find that acceptable and that isn't enough to meet your goal. And what if you live in Maine...?
Try running it outside on a hot summer day and see what happens. Most are good up to around 85 F before you start running into major problems.
You could probably redesign personal computers to allow them to run at an ambient temp of 90+F, but it would require a reduction in their functionality. Commercially, I think you underestimate how much of an effect computers have: most office buildings have to get cooling even in the winter because of their computers.
The sacrifices you are talking about would drop us back so far it is difficult to classify you any other way. Simply put, the sacrifices you are talking about require giving up a lof of what we consider modern life. That's what I call "dark ages environmentalism".
I didn't propose cutting power usage, you did. I'm saying that we can't cut power usage without irreparable damage to our economy and modern life. The problems of pollution and foreign oil dependence can be overcome by changing the way we generate power - they don't require decreasing our power usage.
Cyrus
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No, phase out the use of air-conditioning. You say it is significant, but I am curious as to how significant it is. Can you provide a statistic for that?
They would have to be replaced, but again that's the price you have to pay.
Might not meet the goal, but it will take a step in the direction of the overall goal none the less.
Then you cool the individual computers themselves, not the entire office building.
Don't get me wrong. If we can maintain our way of life, and find better ways to get power while reducing the effects on the environment, GREAT! But I find this very hard to believe, because when most of the world gets out of 3rd world status, we will have a major energy crisis on our hands. Eventually, cuts will be inevitable. (Unless we get some technologies that can supply the increased demands within that time frame, which is debatable)
Cyrus
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Russ, I can't find any information on the impact HVAC has on the total US economy. I have tried and tried. Can you find me anything? The fact that it is so hard to find leads me to believe that it is probably not a major economic sector.
Cyrus
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All this talk about savings and numbers has lead me to wonder how much savings would actually occur in totality by playing around with savings in different areas. First, I looked at the different groupings of the various energy sectors. These sectors include: Nuclear: 20.7%, Hydro 6.7%, Natural Gas 16.5%, Petrol and Others 4.7%, Coal 51.4%. These groupings are for the net generation of electricity only.
I will try to use what I feel are modest and reasonable numbers. Let's say we can improve nuclear by 5% (we find some ways to be a little more efficient). Let's say hydro is ~2% (Maybe we put in more efficient generators), Let's say Natural Gas ~5%, Petrol and Others, ~3%, Coal let's say ~4%. So what would be our overall savings just for the net electricity?
The new percentages would be: Nuclear: 19.665%, Hydro 6.566%, Natural Gas 15.675%, Petrol and Others 4.559%, Coal 49.344%
That gives a new total of 94.984%. So in electricity alone, we have skimmed off ~4.191% (Not too bad)
Keep in mind that this 4.191% increase is just from improving manufacturing of the electricity by doing whatever we can, no matter the cost.
Now, we also know that the total use of power is grouped into three major sectors, residential, industrial and commercial. The percentages are: Residential 36%, Industrial 29%, and Commercial 35%. So let’s assume we use energy saving devices, low power white LED lighting, and anything else one could think of. This would apply to both Commercial and Residential electrical power usage. So, that should be compounded to the 4.191% total power savings we got just from trying to improve how we make the power. So this means that I would originally have 100% power used from the electric source. From my savings, I now have 95.809 as my net total electricity, 36% of which comes from Residential, 35% commercial, and 29% industrial.
Let’s further say that the technology to save power in residential and commercial will be roughly the same. However, commercial uses power on a 24-7 basis, whereas residential has peak hours. So let’s just assume that every 1 saving in residential is going to be 1.5 times the amount in commercial. Let’s say residential saves, 3% all together. That means commercial will save around 6%. Let’s leave industrial alone to make warren happy. So this means the new total power use will be: Residential: 34.92%, Commercial: 32.9%, and Industrial 29%. That means the net difference in savings will be (100-91) = ~3.18%.
So that means we save another 3.18% on top of the 95.809% we saved when making the power. So now we are down to 92.629%. By doing so little, we have already chopped down the net electrical power consumption by 7.371%. (Now were getting some where)
Now, just for the hell of it, let’s say we switch over to renewable sources. Let’s say we exploit wind farms, as warren seems to like, and get perhaps 2% of the total power from wind farms for the U.S. Also, let's say we use have some sort of solar-oil power station, where the sun heats the oil in a tube via reflectors, and gives us 0.5% total US power. Also, let’s say we can use geothermal sources and get another 0.5% power production from that. That means we can further reduce another 3% from the generation of power. Recalculating the values gives a net savings in the end of: 10.371% in terms of electricity.
Furthermore, we know that out of all the natural gas consumption, 25% goes to electrical production, 25% to residential, 16% to commercial, and 34% industrial. We agreed to leave industrial alone, so well do just that. So let’s reduce residential and commercial by 5%, and we will stick with the 5% reduction we used earlier in electrical. That means additional savings of 3.3% for all natural gas usage in the US, not just for electricity.
What about oil. That is another big component of our dependence on energy. Well, only 1.3% of our distillate oil goes to making electricity. In fact the percentages are:
Residential: 10.7%
Commercial: 5.4%
Industrial: 3.7%
Oil Company: 0.8%
Farm: 5.1%
Electric Power: 1.3%
Railroad: 4.9%
Vessel Bunkering: 3.4%
On-Highway: 59.6%
Military: 0.6%
Off-Highway: 4.4%
Other: 0.0%
Ok, so let's impose regulations in parenthesis, and their associated new percentages:
Residential (6%): 10.058%
Commercial (6%): 5.076%
Industrial (0% I left it alone): 3.7%
Oil Company (1%): 0.736%
Farm (1%): 5.049%
Electric Power (3%): 1.261%
Railroad (1%): 4.851%
Vessel Bunkering (1%): 3.366%
On-Highway (Lets say 20%, this would be tough, but not unrealistic to achieve): 47.68%
Military (0%, well leave them alone): 0.6%
Off-Highway (5%): 4.18%
Other: 0.0%
Total of Distilled Savings: 13.443%. That is allot of savings for not asking too much.
This means we save ~10.371% in electricity production, and ~13.443% in distillate oil consumption.
So let's try not to be so dismissive about making changes that clearly would NOT destroy our economy or destroy our industry. It is very possible to make great strides in efficiency, *if we want to*. I was very moderate in how much savings I imposed. If you increase them, you will get even better results. The only area I was critical was in on-highway consumption by 20% because we already have the ability right now to make our cars ALLOT more fuel efficient. It just amounts to taking cars that average 18mph highway and turning them into 21.6mph on high way. Hell, my car already gets 24-mph city, and its a 4 door accord not a tiny pinto. So there is no reason why that can't be done.
As I alluded to earlier, a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.
I will try to use what I feel are modest and reasonable numbers. Let's say we can improve nuclear by 5% (we find some ways to be a little more efficient). Let's say hydro is ~2% (Maybe we put in more efficient generators), Let's say Natural Gas ~5%, Petrol and Others, ~3%, Coal let's say ~4%. So what would be our overall savings just for the net electricity?
The new percentages would be: Nuclear: 19.665%, Hydro 6.566%, Natural Gas 15.675%, Petrol and Others 4.559%, Coal 49.344%
That gives a new total of 94.984%. So in electricity alone, we have skimmed off ~4.191% (Not too bad)
Keep in mind that this 4.191% increase is just from improving manufacturing of the electricity by doing whatever we can, no matter the cost.
Now, we also know that the total use of power is grouped into three major sectors, residential, industrial and commercial. The percentages are: Residential 36%, Industrial 29%, and Commercial 35%. So let’s assume we use energy saving devices, low power white LED lighting, and anything else one could think of. This would apply to both Commercial and Residential electrical power usage. So, that should be compounded to the 4.191% total power savings we got just from trying to improve how we make the power. So this means that I would originally have 100% power used from the electric source. From my savings, I now have 95.809 as my net total electricity, 36% of which comes from Residential, 35% commercial, and 29% industrial.
Let’s further say that the technology to save power in residential and commercial will be roughly the same. However, commercial uses power on a 24-7 basis, whereas residential has peak hours. So let’s just assume that every 1 saving in residential is going to be 1.5 times the amount in commercial. Let’s say residential saves, 3% all together. That means commercial will save around 6%. Let’s leave industrial alone to make warren happy. So this means the new total power use will be: Residential: 34.92%, Commercial: 32.9%, and Industrial 29%. That means the net difference in savings will be (100-91) = ~3.18%.
So that means we save another 3.18% on top of the 95.809% we saved when making the power. So now we are down to 92.629%. By doing so little, we have already chopped down the net electrical power consumption by 7.371%. (Now were getting some where)
Now, just for the hell of it, let’s say we switch over to renewable sources. Let’s say we exploit wind farms, as warren seems to like, and get perhaps 2% of the total power from wind farms for the U.S. Also, let's say we use have some sort of solar-oil power station, where the sun heats the oil in a tube via reflectors, and gives us 0.5% total US power. Also, let’s say we can use geothermal sources and get another 0.5% power production from that. That means we can further reduce another 3% from the generation of power. Recalculating the values gives a net savings in the end of: 10.371% in terms of electricity.
Furthermore, we know that out of all the natural gas consumption, 25% goes to electrical production, 25% to residential, 16% to commercial, and 34% industrial. We agreed to leave industrial alone, so well do just that. So let’s reduce residential and commercial by 5%, and we will stick with the 5% reduction we used earlier in electrical. That means additional savings of 3.3% for all natural gas usage in the US, not just for electricity.
What about oil. That is another big component of our dependence on energy. Well, only 1.3% of our distillate oil goes to making electricity. In fact the percentages are:
Residential: 10.7%
Commercial: 5.4%
Industrial: 3.7%
Oil Company: 0.8%
Farm: 5.1%
Electric Power: 1.3%
Railroad: 4.9%
Vessel Bunkering: 3.4%
On-Highway: 59.6%
Military: 0.6%
Off-Highway: 4.4%
Other: 0.0%
Ok, so let's impose regulations in parenthesis, and their associated new percentages:
Residential (6%): 10.058%
Commercial (6%): 5.076%
Industrial (0% I left it alone): 3.7%
Oil Company (1%): 0.736%
Farm (1%): 5.049%
Electric Power (3%): 1.261%
Railroad (1%): 4.851%
Vessel Bunkering (1%): 3.366%
On-Highway (Lets say 20%, this would be tough, but not unrealistic to achieve): 47.68%
Military (0%, well leave them alone): 0.6%
Off-Highway (5%): 4.18%
Other: 0.0%
Total of Distilled Savings: 13.443%. That is allot of savings for not asking too much.
This means we save ~10.371% in electricity production, and ~13.443% in distillate oil consumption.
So let's try not to be so dismissive about making changes that clearly would NOT destroy our economy or destroy our industry. It is very possible to make great strides in efficiency, *if we want to*. I was very moderate in how much savings I imposed. If you increase them, you will get even better results. The only area I was critical was in on-highway consumption by 20% because we already have the ability right now to make our cars ALLOT more fuel efficient. It just amounts to taking cars that average 18mph highway and turning them into 21.6mph on high way. Hell, my car already gets 24-mph city, and its a 4 door accord not a tiny pinto. So there is no reason why that can't be done.
As I alluded to earlier, a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.
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Art
The reason it is called 'clean coal' is because it is not burned! It is gassified by heating to 2000 F which breaks it down into it's constituent chemical building blocks. These are then distillated and so what were harmful emmissions become useful by-products such as anhydrous ammonia and ammonium sulfate for use as agricultural fertilisers, phenol for use in manufacturing wood resins and naphtha and liquid nitrogen which have many uses.russ_watters said:
The CO2 produced is captured and as I outlined in an earlier post can be used to help extend the useful life of oil wells or simply sequestered underground.
The net result is there are zero emmissions from a plentiful raw material source with none of the longterm environmental / health risks associated with nuclear power.
With regard to the US reducing it's usage of power one of the most obvious ways to do this without changing a single thing in how power is currently used is by converting the supply system to use HTS cables.
The amount of power currently lost through electrical resistance in the transmission grid is immense. This loss could be eliminated almost entirely using technology already available and proven. In fact it has been undergoing small scale field trials for some years now in several US states without any problems. Other advantages are it greatly reduces the amount of cabling needed to carry power as area for area HTS wire will carry >150 times the amount of current existing wires carry.
Another interesting area under development is HTS motors, prototype 36.5 MW (47,000 HP) ship propulsion motors have been produced for the US navy weighing 1/3 and taking up 1/2 the space of conventional motors of the same rating. Many ships have already transitioned to electrical propulsion systems making the next step to HTS systems far simpler. It is estimated that if a cruise ship used a HTS propulsion system it would save ~$100,000 a year on fuel.
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Lisa!
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I voted yes but I think nukes should be phased out.
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Since the US energy demand increases by, say, 1.5% annually, we'll be back to the same demand in about 3 years, yet will have spent billions of dollars in a futile attempt to improve efficiency by this insignificant amount.cyrusabdollahi said:
- Warren
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You sure have added up lots of numbers, but you still haven't provided even a single technique by which such savings could be made -- other than wearing sweaters in the winter, of course.cyrusabdollahi said:
- Warren
Cyrus
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Actually, I just showed you that it is about 13% for oil. That is a good amount of oil that can be saved. Which means less dependence on foreign sources. Also, If we can delay our usage increase by 3 years (for electricity), that’s 3 years of less increase in pollution. That sounds better than 3 years of rising emissions. If you factor in increases in renewable sources, that's about 10 years. A few billion is not allot of money. We spent that much to study where to make a hole in a mountain to put our nuclear waste, as Russ has pointed out. They did not even dig a hole with that money. So we do have the money around. Might as well put it to better use.
I made no mention of eliminating HVAC in that calculation warren. Thanks for yet another cheap shot, real classy.
I made no mention of eliminating HVAC in that calculation warren. Thanks for yet another cheap shot, real classy.
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TheStatutoryApe
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Cyrus I think that there's a bit of a conflict with trying to decrease energy usage. Yearly we want to make sure that more and more people have clean water, food, clothes, shelter, heat/air, medical care, education, transportation, jobs, ect ect... in essence if we try to meet these goals more people are going to be using more energy yearly. I'm sure that these are goals you would whole heartedly endorse and would like to see met on a larger percentage yearly. I was on the same track of considering reducing energy usage until I realize this. After that reealization it seemed that the primary focus should really be harnessing more energy for less overall cost ("overall" to include longterm issues of global warming pollution ect.). Energy saving measures are definitely a good idea but I think in the long run with all issues considered it's really just a way of reducing the inflation of energy use which will continue to inflate regardless as already mentioned by Chroot and Russ.
On getting industry and commercial to reduce energy expenditures I think that it's not a very big issue there. Cost in energy is factored into cost of business and any good business man should be working on keeping his business as cost efficient as possible. I am sure though that there are businesses that are reluctant to make the investment in more efficient energy consumption. Most likely they just don't realize how they can benefit. Any good company that provides such technologies though should be hitting up anyone they can with literature on the subject. Tax breaks for companies that institute major energy saving plans would be a good incentive for them to get it done and tax breaks for companies that provide said services would also be good. What do you think?
On getting industry and commercial to reduce energy expenditures I think that it's not a very big issue there. Cost in energy is factored into cost of business and any good business man should be working on keeping his business as cost efficient as possible. I am sure though that there are businesses that are reluctant to make the investment in more efficient energy consumption. Most likely they just don't realize how they can benefit. Any good company that provides such technologies though should be hitting up anyone they can with literature on the subject. Tax breaks for companies that institute major energy saving plans would be a good incentive for them to get it done and tax breaks for companies that provide said services would also be good. What do you think?
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HVAC is roughly half of a building's energy usage (commercial or industrial). Energy is roughly $1.5 trillion or 15% of the US GDP (based on 100 quadrillion btu of annual usage at 5 cents per kwh). Someone check my math.cyrusabdollahi said:
http://energy.cr.usgs.gov/energy/stats_ctry/Stat1.html
http://zone.ni.com/devzone/conceptd.nsf/webmain/6E14CD46F2DBE74586256E2100798272?opendocument&node=200768_US
It is also important to remember that cutting energy is a double-hit to the economy and cutting hvac makes it a triple-hit: Cutting energy usage hurts the energy industry and whatever industry you are cutting it from: cutting it from HVAC hurts the HVAC industry, and cutting HVAC hurts every industry that uses HVAC. Ie, buying a house without HVAC will cost less than buying a house with it, hurting the construction industry, construction hardware industry, finance industry, etc.
Just saying that doesn't tell us anything at all about how you'd go about doing it or what effect it would have.
In my opinion, such baby-steps are counterproductive because they waste time. While we take baby-steps, the situtaion just keeps getting worse.
It works out largely the same either way. In offices, the computers are responsible for most of the HVAC anyway. Whether you pipe the air conditioning to the computer itself or just to the room, the heat from the computer is still going back to the hvac unit.
We already have a technology that works just fine. It's the subject of this thread.
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People may be calling it different things, then: http://www.fossil.energy.gov/programs/powersystems/cleancoal/Art said:
That technology is not off the drawing-board yet, and I think in the near-term we need to use technology that has already proven itself to be commercially viable. We could be building nuclear power plants now and in just a few years make a significant dent in our fossil-fuel dependence. Not these single-digit differences - in a couple of decades we could all but eliminate fossil fuel energy production.
Compared to the magnitude of the problems we're talking about, I don't consider 7.5% to be "immense" - I don't even consider it worth talking about. Coal power alone is currently half of our electricity generation.
http://www.answers.com/topic/electric-power-transmission
Again, the numbers we're talking about are miniscule (I'm skeptical of that $100,000 a year savings, but anyway...). Such motors have been demonstrated at 97.2% efficient whereas conventional electric motors are up to 96.8% efficiency - a difference of less than 1%.
http://www.psnh.com/Business/SmallBusiness/Motor.asp
http://www.amsuper.com/products/motorsGenerators/104213395711.cfm
Oh, and where does the electricity come from to power such motors? From an oil-fired gas-turbine engine that could have been connected directly to the screws anyway.
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Cyrus
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Well, let's assume the world is peaceful. There is no disputes, we are all one big global community. We all use nuclear power, and we have eliminted all needs on fossil fuels. What would be the amount of nuclear waste produced by these production plants? Also, where would you propose we put all that nuclear material?
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Yes, I've glossed-over thos issues a little bit. The productivity losses we'd see due to people being uncomfortable at work would be huge. Our kids would not be as well educated because they can't pay attention in school if they are sweating. Disease would increase due to poor indoor environmental conditions. When I say that HVAC is one of the things that makes the modern world the modern world, it isn't just about comfort alone - comfort is required for making the world run as efficiently and productively as it can.TheStatutoryApe said:
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All that nuclear waste could still fit inside a single football stadium and we could put it just about anywhere. But why even bother? As I said before, we could even leave it where it is now, not hurting anyone or anything.cyrusabdollahi said:
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Consider the waste data a little further: http://www.uic.com.au/wast.htm
Art
Your information is a couple of decades out of date - see Dakota Gasification Company's Great Plains Synfuels Plant. http://www.dakotagas.com/ BTW The process was first developed and used by the Germans during WW2 to provide fuel for the luftwaffe.russ_watters said:
We could be building Clean Coal Plants now and reduce harmful emmissions to zero without the headache of disposing of nuclear waste or incurring the high costs >$300 m each in decommissioning the plants at the the end of their useful life. http://www.nrc.gov.edgesuite.net/failover.html Apart from disposing of the spent fuel remember when the plant is decommissioned much of the construction material is also irradiated and needs to be disposed of safely.
In the US, 10 defunct nuclear plants have been decontaminated (the Decon method) whilst 14 have taken the safe store (Safstor) approach whereby they are mothballed to avoid incurring the costs associated with their demolition. I believe the plan is to leave them that way for 50 - 60 years. The 3rd option for handling defunt nuclear power plants is entombment which as the name suggests consists of enclosing the structure in some material such as concrete. This is used by some countries. Neither Safstor nor entombment are very nice legacies to hand down to your grandchildren.
Some people here have spoken about reprocessing fuel to extend the life of the nuclear era but the decommissioning costs involved in cleaning up reprocessing sites is huge. The French Atomic Energy Commission is decommissioning the UP1 reprocessing plant at Marcoule. Progressive decontamination and dismantling of the plant and waste treatment will span 40 years and cost some $6.5 billion
, nearly half of this for treatment of the wastes stored on the site.
If fossil fuel is the most environmentally friendly, cost effective way to go why would we want to eliminate it? Especially as somebody here already pointed out there is only enough nuclear fuel for 30 years anyway and as I already pointed out enough coal to last 300 years, with the added advantage the resource is yours and so doesn't incur the problems involved in achieving a stable energy supply from politically unstable regions of the planet
7 1/2% equates to something like 12 power stations. That sounds worth talking about to me. But then again you seem so keen to push the notion that anybody advocating saving power is a 'dark age environmentalist' I can see why you are so dismissive of substantial savings with no loss in standard of living.
Precisely so the infrastructure is already in place to support clean coal power plants.
HTS motors are far more efficient than conventional motors at low speed. The $100,000 figure I quoted was the lowest end of the scale.
http://www.amsuper.com/products/library/Maritime_Reporter_final3_sk1_73002_final.pdf (you'll note this is from the source you quoted)
It seems only diesal direct drive ships are built, for which I am sure there must be good technical reasons but you'll be pleased to know they are also working on HTS generators too.
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