YOU: Fix the US Energy Crisis

[boab]

"Sure, compared to coal, but you said environmentally 'safest'. I'd place nuclear and any of the the renewables (others) in front of hydro."

Okay...if you want to split hairs, solar, wind and hydro. Or wind, solar and hydro.
One thing "I sure as Hell would not agree", is that nuclear reactors are safer than fossil fuel plants, or hydro! My God! To many examples in history of things going wrong in the nuclear industry. And when they do, it is BAD, to REALLY BAD!
Here is an example or two, your not told. In Idaho there is a small model design of the San Orofre #1 power generator reactor inside a mountain. During design testing in 1952 it had the control rods swell and stick open and it couldn't SCAM. In seconds it melted down.
The radiation inside the mountain was so intense that the shielded TV camera on a remote controlled vehicle from Los Alamos failed from the radiation exposure 7 minutes after it entered the control room area. Everbody was dead naturally. No bodies were removed, or the remote vehicle. The radiation counters on the vehicle were beyond max'd out. And that is on a vehicle was brought in because it was made to handle highly radioactive waste! The access tunnel was simply blownup, then imediately sealed with concrete.
Until about 15 years ago it was highly classified, and I only found out about it when I was in the service in the nuclear weapons program.
It was felt at the time, if it became known publicily, nuclear generation of power would have been dead before it started. It only started the de-classification process after the 3 Mile Island incident.
Then if you'll Goggle around, (it's kind of hard to find naturally) there is a report on a Russian radiative dump site that blew up in 1954. Seems they buried to much hot stuff together, it melted, and sank down into the ground water caused by the heat melting the permafrost. Caused a huge steam explosion that killed over a hundred people outright.
That was another highly classified nuclear accident that was classified by "both sides". And why reactor rods are now stored in cooling ponds for 20 years before being moved off site.
Japan and England also have had there share. France is the only nuclear country I'm aware of that is so far, a virgin.
Notice, this skips the more publized accidents. But like I said, I'm not against nuclear subs, or its use in space. I live on the ground.
Personally I believe the only "safe" long term storage of nuclear waste canisters is to put them in front of the Earths plates, thousands of feet down in the ocean, and let those plates movements at 2" a year, carry the waste back down to the Earth's core were it belongs.

boab

 

[vanesch]

That seems to be one reason why this is interesting: no neutrons, yet people keep finding He and gamma products. Is it all poor technique, simply background? I don't think that's a reasonable answer any more.

I don't know the most recent results, and in how much they are reproducible. However, from the moment that you have a *noticable* amount of power with the release of penetrating radiation (gamma or neutron), then the flux is really strong and usually deadly. If you have a release of the order of the MeV per reaction, then in order to have 1 Watt of power from that, you need something of the order of 10^13 reactions per second, and if a noticable fraction of that reaction rate branches into such penetrating radiation, you see that the observed fluxes are huge, and not difficult to detect, AT ALL, and in most cases, even dangerous.

Now, D + D branches normally 50% in a p + T and 50% in a He-3+n
and this is a property of the nuclear reaction, so it is hard to see how this can be significantly influenced by solid-state effects, but even if it is, it would mean that the channel D + D -> He-3 + n is suppressed by a factor of something like 10^9 or so to make the neutrons not appear in huge quantities. Even if the branching ratio is suppressed to 1 ppm, you'd still have a million neutrons per second, something that is easily detectable (even in the room nearby!).

So unless very very weird physics is going on (suppression of nuclear branching ratios with huge factors), I don't see how you cannot bathe in deadly fluxes of easily detected radiation if you are capable of detecting thermal effects, and hence, how there can even be the slightest bit of ambiguity of its reproducibility. The effects should be easily visible.

 

[Rade2]

Re: Cold Fusion: US Navy makes breakthrough?

Here is the link to the Navy publication where they claim "evidence" of LENR--fusion at low activation energy input.

http://www.newenergytimes.com/Library2/2008/2008BossTripleTracks.pdf

Edit: and see here news release of American Chemical Society presentation:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases...0323110450.htm

====

Now, I would like to begin here a detailed analysis in this forum of the peer reviewed publication by the Navy. I would like to know the following:

(1) Exactly what are the 'possible' hypothesis now on the table that explain how the Coulomb barrier was overcome to allow for any fusion to begin ?

(2) The Navy explanation of the 3-pit patterns they show in Fig.1 is that Carbon-12 was split into three alpha ? Does this not mean Navy then suggests Carbon-12 isotope has preexisting within it three alpha ready to split ? Is this an accepted hypothesis for how nucleons arranged within nuclear shells for carbon-12 ?

(3) What other explanations come to mind to explain the 3-pit pattern shown by Navy in Fig. 1 ? I think it good possibility each pit is a nucleon, either a P or N. So, why would my hypothesis be false ?

 

[intrepid_nerd]

problem: source of power

solution: modify technology so no conventional electricity is necessary. there is no reason that we should be using electrons flowing through wires to power our electronics, it's like selling a product through a middle-man, making the system inefficient and costly. For the source? The sun! not at all as we're using it today, but rather technology that directly uses photons.

example: if a satellite-looking thinger were put on a rooftop that would be able to concentrate sunlight it could be sent down optical fibers. Couldn't light then be split to create a desired image on a television? problems: no idea how to store photon power without converting it to electrons, no idea how we would send signals from the cable company to the television without using conventional electricity (but then again I'm not sure how the signal is sent today).

example 2: in designing our technologies on the molecular level we tend to create stable materials. why? let's start creating materials that are strained. initially creating them would require lots of extra energy but I really think that this could prove beneficial. Extreme example: if we designed a car that had a bottom comprising of strained bonds, and roads that were actually chemical "trails," they could interact where the road could, in a way, power the car.

conclusion: we need to stop with our conventional methods of using power. it has always been hugely beneficial to look at nature and mimic aspects of it, but we must begin to understand we are not limited to this and move onto more abstract ideas. I believe the future of these technologies lies in materials science and that in today's world bulk technologies must be engineered from the molecular level.

 

[mheslep]

Re: Cold Fusion: US Navy makes breakthrough?

Here is the link to the Navy publication where they claim "evidence" of LENR--fusion at low activation energy input.

...

I'd suggest dropping the '--fusion' trailer as long the active researchers continue to make statements like "The mechanism by which DD and DT fusion reactions can occur in Pd is not yet understood; nevertheless, theories are currently under development"

 

[vanesch]

To many examples in history of things going wrong in the nuclear industry. And when they do, it is BAD, to REALLY BAD!

Bad in the sense of objective damage, in the sense of numbers of death ? Or bad in the sense "it really freaked me out" ?

Almost all large industrial endeavors lead sooner or later to some kind of damage. One would like to avoid it, but it is in the nature of things. Now, the question is: is the damage done by the nuclear industry so terribly worse than other activities for which we take such things for granted ?

Here is an example or two, your not told. In Idaho there is a small model design of the San Orofre #1 power generator reactor inside a mountain. During design testing in 1952 it had the control rods swell and stick open and it couldn't SCAM. In seconds it melted down.
The radiation inside the mountain was so intense that the shielded TV camera on a remote controlled vehicle from Los Alamos failed from the radiation exposure 7 minutes after it entered the control room area. Everbody was dead naturally. No bodies were removed, or the remote vehicle. The radiation counters on the vehicle were beyond max'd out. And that is on a vehicle was brought in because it was made to handle highly radioactive waste! The access tunnel was simply blownup, then imediately sealed with concrete.
Until about 15 years ago it was highly classified, and I only found out about it when I was in the service in the nuclear weapons program.

I haven't heard about that one. Now, assuming this seems to be a military test program, and this is more than 50 years ago (at the very beginning of the nuclear era, where still a lot about safety was to be learned), tell me, how many dead do we talk about here, and is there not one single other military testing program that had a similar amount of casualties in the 50 years of its existence ? Say, aeronautics or so ?

Then if you'll Goggle around, (it's kind of hard to find naturally) there is a report on a Russian radiative dump site that blew up in 1954. Seems they buried to much hot stuff together, it melted, and sank down into the ground water caused by the heat melting the permafrost. Caused a huge steam explosion that killed over a hundred people outright.

Yes, again this was in the 50ies and in a military installation: the Mayak accident. It is in fact the second largest disaster after Chernobyl (the only one I know on INES 6 level). The former Soviets are not particularly well known to be careful with anything.

If you want to have an overview of the military nuclear accidents, there's a list on Wiki about it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_military_nuclear_accidents

A list of civilian nuclear accidents is there too:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_civilian_nuclear_accidents

Now, be honest with yourself, and think of any other major military activity, or civilian activity, and then try to get an estimation of the real damage and the victims caused.

For instance, compare to:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aviation_accidents_and_incidents

or have a look at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_accidents_and_disasters_by_death_toll

(ok, I don't know the accuracy of those articles, but they give an idea).


Tell me then, does nuclear stand out so badly ?

 

[gmax137]

Nuclear power is cheap. That's a laugh! Nuclear steam plants are not that efficient when compared to fossil fueled plants that run 2300 to 3200 psi throttle pressure and a steam temperature of 1010*F. (Higher pressure = higher efficiency)
Nuclear plants run in the neighborhood of 800 to a 900 psi on the newer ones, and much less on the older ones. The reason is their heat exchanger is located between the reactor and the steam processor that feeds the steam turbine.

Close enough (though the bigger units run do run over 1000 psi), but thermodynamic efficiency is not an issue in itself, when the fuel cost is almost zero (ie, nuclear). Plus, there's not much else uranium is good for.

Most people also forget, that cheap nuclear power is subsidized by the tax payer. "ALL" nuclear mining, processing, and sale is controlled and supervised by the government(s). Who then sells the pellets to the utility industry at "an agreed on cost". Usually 55% of the true cost in producing the pellet to make it competitive most other fuel costs. The taxpayer is picking up the difference.

Please provide a reference for that 55%. I think that is totally false. Also, a good portion of the U235 currently being used as reactor fuel came from the soviet weapons. Please don't tell me you think it would be better to leave it there. Also, the feds do the enrichment, but the fuel vendors (Westinghouse, GE, Areva) make the pellets.

Maintaining the radioactive waste is also controlled and paid for by the government, (taxpayer) "FOREVER". True, no green house gases are produced by nukes, but huge amounts of radioactive waste is.
boab

False again. If your power company is operating a nuke, you're bill includes paying 0.1 cents per kilowatt hour, which your power company 'gives' to the feds to pay for this. This is completely different from the fossil power generators, who we allow to use our air as their 'waste dump' for no charge.

Here is an example or two, your not told. In Idaho there is a small model design of the San Orofre #1 power generator reactor inside a mountain. During design testing in 1952 it had the control rods swell and stick open and it couldn't SCAM. In seconds it melted down.
The radiation inside the mountain was so intense that the shielded TV camera on a remote controlled vehicle from Los Alamos failed from the radiation exposure 7 minutes after it entered the control room area. Everbody was dead naturally. No bodies were removed, or the remote vehicle. The radiation counters on the vehicle were beyond max'd out. And that is on a vehicle was brought in because it was made to handle highly radioactive waste! The access tunnel was simply blownup, then imediately sealed with concrete.
Until about 15 years ago it was highly classified, and I only found out about it when I was in the service in the nuclear weapons program.

I would really like to see more about this one. I have never heard this story before. The Chalk River (NRX) accident was in 1952, maybe that's mixed up in here. Also, I'm pretty sure the san onofre reactor wasn't even a gleam in G Westinghouse's eye in 1952. And why it would be inside a mountain I don't know. And the Idaho Lab site is pretty flat & bleak. But if you have *anything* - links, articals, even more "I heards" I would appreciate your sharing them.

 

[vanesch]

problem: source of power

solution: modify technology so no conventional electricity is necessary. there is no reason that we should be using electrons flowing through wires to power our electronics, it's like selling a product through a middle-man, making the system inefficient and costly. For the source? The sun! not at all as we're using it today, but rather technology that directly uses photons.

example: if a satellite-looking thinger were put on a rooftop that would be able to concentrate sunlight it could be sent down optical fibers. Couldn't light then be split to create a desired image on a television? problems: no idea how to store photon power without converting it to electrons, no idea how we would send signals from the cable company to the television without using conventional electricity (but then again I'm not sure how the signal is sent today).

example 2: in designing our technologies on the molecular level we tend to create stable materials. why? let's start creating materials that are strained. initially creating them would require lots of extra energy but I really think that this could prove beneficial. Extreme example: if we designed a car that had a bottom comprising of strained bonds, and roads that were actually chemical "trails," they could interact where the road could, in a way, power the car.

conclusion: we need to stop with our conventional methods of using power. it has always been hugely beneficial to look at nature and mimic aspects of it, but we must begin to understand we are not limited to this and move onto more abstract ideas. I believe the future of these technologies lies in materials science and that in today's world bulk technologies must be engineered from the molecular level.

You should put down your SF story books, we're talking about solving a real-world problem here. Also, I remind you of our "no personal theories" policy here at PF.

Real-world engineering is pretty much more difficult than thinking up extravagant schemes on one's sofa. You have to know pretty well how things work, you have to know how to handle a technological approach that is reliable, you have to do this in an economical way, and you have to have a guarantee that it will work the way you planned.

 

[russ_watters]

Bad in the sense of objective damage, in the sense of numbers of death ? Or bad in the sense "it really freaked me out" ?

Almost all large industrial endeavors lead sooner or later to some kind of damage. One would like to avoid it, but it is in the nature of things. Now, the question is: is the damage done by the nuclear industry so terribly worse than other activities for which we take such things for granted ?

I haven't heard about that one. Now, assuming this seems to be a military test program, and this is more than 50 years ago (at the very beginning of the nuclear era, where still a lot about safety was to be learned), tell me, how many dead do we talk about here, and is there not one single other military testing program that had a similar amount of casualties in the 50 years of its existence ? Say, aeronautics or so ?

I have a whole lot to say about the safety issue, but for now, here are two quick examples for your consideration:

The V-22 Osprey is a revolutionary airplane that has been in development since the 1980s. Because of the major design challanges, there were four crashes during development, which killed a total of 30 people. That's a lot for the development of a new airplane. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-22_Osprey The crashes did not cause the cancellation of the program and the plane is in service today.

One of the first big machines used in the industrial revolution was the steam engine. As with any new technology, people didn't fully understand the dangers and there were a lot of boiler explosions. One I just heard about recently, which was actually worse than the Titanic was the SS Sultana, which exploded on the Mississippi river in 1865 and killed an estimated 1800 people. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sultana_(steamboat ) The cause was simply a faulty boiler repair, combined with some procedural violations. This accident did not stop the development of the steam engine, but did help lead to improved safety. With nuclear, safety has improved substantially since the 1950s as the technology matured.

Because of the nature of the risk, I tend to draw a clear line between these two examples. Those who are members of the military or are civilian contractors working on military projects assume a certain risk when they sign up for the job and the most important aspect of the risk is largely in their control: they can always quit and make the risk zero. The death rate for military pilots, in particular navy pilots and test pilots is very high, but it is ok because people go in with their eyes completely open. This is not the case for civilians and the risk from nuclear plants or even airplane crashes. Most people don't understand the risk enough to make informed decisions and even if they do, practicality sometimes gets in the way. As a result, even though airplanes are extremely safe relative to other modes of travel, we require the actual risk to be extremely low, partly due to the fear factor, but partly due to the innocence of the victims. This is why that one critical fact about nuclear power is so important: despite all the fearmongering from the anti-nuclear crowd, nuclear power has never killed a single person in the US who was not involved in its production or research.

 

[gmax137]

russ & vanesch - I do not disagree with your contention, that nuclear power was developed with comparatively few fatalities, but still I question the anecdote related by boab above in post 301. I know about the three killed in the SL-1 accident in 1961, and I believe three more were killed at Los Alamos and one more in Argentina (Ref INPO 91-008, "In-reactor Fuel-damaging Events."

Unless boab can support his story, I would classify it as ********. And it is damaging ********, because people hear stuff like this and they believe it (after all we know how the gummint likes to cover up their mistakes). Stories like this should not go unchallenged. All most people take away from these stories is "nuclear is dangerous..."

 

[russ_watters]

gmax, you're right - I'm discussing it based on the assumption that the incident was real or similar ones happened, but that doesn't really meet our standards of reporting facts. I'm going to look into that incident, but Boab, you really need to provide citations for such examples. I'll let that one go since the discussion has already incorporated it, but for the future, examples that aren't common knowledge or easily found with a google (and I checked - this one can't be) need backup.

 

[Topher925]

Sorry to break away from the main topic of current discussion, but I recently heard at a conference that China is currently adding 1GW A WEEK (two plants per week) to their power infrastructure. Although, currently most of these are coal fired plants.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/6769743.stm

I've been watching nuclear rather closely lately and it seems that China is having a huge affect on the price of nuclear fuel now that they are looking to start building 30 high output plants within a decade.

Higher worldwide demand and a fear of future shortages have driven the price of processed uranium ore from $10 a pound in 2003 to $120 this month.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/28/AR2007052801051.html (Old article, I know)

More to the point, most nuclear power studies I have read use numbers from TODAY, with only 17% of the world's power (~15 TW) being supplied by nuclear fuels. What's going to happen in the not to distant future to the cost of nuclear created electricity when materials such as Uranium and Thorium become highly valued commodities? Whats are going to do with all of the nuclear waste when the worlds demand for power increases from 15TW today to the estimated 30TW in the next few decades, assuming this energy increase is solely supplied by nuclear power? Breeder reactors and reprocessing are still said to be 25+ years away (source a few pages back). What will the world do with all of the radioactive waste when its produced 10+ fold from its current production rate?

Back to the topic of safety, everyone knows China is well know for their unmatched value of human life. With the rate at which nuclear power plants are going to be built in that country and with China's legendary safety standards, I bet in a few years you will be seeing that nuclear fatality list on wikipedia to get a little bit longer.

 

[russ_watters]

More to the point, most nuclear power studies I have read use numbers from TODAY, with only 17% of the world's power (~15 TW) being supplied by nuclear fuels. What's going to happen in the not to distant future to the cost of nuclear created electricity when materials such as Uranium and Thorium become highly valued commodities? Whats are going to do with all of the nuclear waste when the worlds demand for power increases from 15TW today to the estimated 30TW in the next few decades, assuming this energy increase is solely supplied by nuclear power? Breeder reactors and reprocessing are still said to be 25+ years away (source a few pages back). What will the world do with all of the radioactive waste when its produced 10+ fold from its current production rate?

I'll have to go back and look, but both technologies have been used sucessfully in the past and reprocessing is in use now in some places, so I'm not clear on why they would be 25 years away...

In any case, serious efforts to drive down CO2 usage are going to drive up prices. That's just an economic reality. But we have to compare technologies against each other, not just say one is expensive. In addition to (currently) being cheaper than solar, nuclear doesn't have the scaleability issues of either solar or wind. As a result, even if the price goes up substantially, it still may be the only real viable alternative.

Also, $120 a pound doesn't sound like much to me. Currently, by far the biggest economic impediment to nuclear power is the plant construction cost, not the fuel cost. Fuel cost is rarely ever mentioned as being a relevant issue.

Back to the topic of safety, everyone knows China is well know for their unmatched value of human life. With the rate at which nuclear power plants are going to be built in that country and with China's legendary safety standards, I bet in a few years you will be seeing that nuclear fatality list on wikipedia to get a little bit longer.

True, that is a serious concern. The only real solution to that is global standardization and technology sharing, as was done with the phase-out of CFC's. It is in our interest to help them, so we will - and we can even profit from it if we do it right.

 

[vanesch]

More to the point, most nuclear power studies I have read use numbers from TODAY, with only 17% of the world's power (~15 TW) being supplied by nuclear fuels. What's going to happen in the not to distant future to the cost of nuclear created electricity when materials such as Uranium and Thorium become highly valued commodities? Whats are going to do with all of the nuclear waste when the worlds demand for power increases from 15TW today to the estimated 30TW in the next few decades, assuming this energy increase is solely supplied by nuclear power? Breeder reactors and reprocessing are still said to be 25+ years away (source a few pages back). What will the world do with all of the radioactive waste when its produced 10+ fold from its current production rate?

The only "sustainable" large scale solution for nuclear are breeders, and as you say, they are still two or three decades away (the decades we lost with their stopping in the 80/90ies). I recently had a talk from a guy from Areva concerning mining and so on, and their predictions are that until 2030, there are no real concerns, afterwards, things will depend on new discoveries of ores, the speed of expansion of (thermal) nuclear and so on. So there will be some tension on the market around that period, which might finally stimulate to get real with breeders.

The waste is really not a problem, there simply has to be a policy that becomes efficient: reprocessing already, which reduces the waste to its essential part (and anyhow necessary to switch to breeders). The best middle term solution to the waste (once it is re-processed) is dry cask temporary storage at the surface, because in any case these things have to cool 50+ years before final geological storage. And become serious with geological storage.

Back to the topic of safety, everyone knows China is well know for their unmatched value of human life. With the rate at which nuclear power plants are going to be built in that country and with China's legendary safety standards, I bet in a few years you will be seeing that nuclear fatality list on wikipedia to get a little bit longer.

I'm afraid so too. This might have two effects: people might panic at the first "serious" China Syndrome (haha) and this might be the end of nuclear worldwide (for no good reason), or, we might have an accumulation of serious accidents in China, which finally give us enough statistics of what is a serious nuclear accident, and people might then just get used to it and become less ticklish about it.

 

[Astronuc]

Well ultimately, we'll use up the coal, oil and natural gas, and that will leave nuclear, hydro, wind and solar. Industries might be able to use solar power to produce liquid fuels, and perhaps biofuels will become a major source of liquid fuels.

As for nuclear, the current inventory of spent fuel contains some unused U-235 and some amount of Pu-239, which could be recovered into MOX. At the same time, Thorium could be introduced. When Shippingport was burning thorium the fuel was actually U-235 mixed into Thoria, and some of the Th-232 was converted to U-233.

Thorium is relatively abundant, but it would have to be used in breeders to produced fissile U-233, to supplement U-235 and Pu-239.

Of course, this doesn't address the proliferation issue.


In our neck of the woods, there is rumor of a pending announcement of a company that produces solar cells moving into an abandoned IBM facility. Further north, a biofuels company is expanding.

 

[vanesch]

Well ultimately, we'll use up the coal

There's still a lot of coal around. Many decades, even a century or so.

 

[russ_watters]

Agreed - with oil, we can say 'well, it'll be gone soon, so we won't have to worry about pollution from it anymore', but there is no clear time horizon for coal going away. All of us will certainly be dead long before coal supply becomes an issue. That means that pressure to get off coal needs to be artificial: it needs to be a politically/scientifically driven choice, not an economic necessity driven choice like oil will be shortly.

 

[Topher925]

There's still a lot of coal around. Many decades, even a century or so.

I believe about 160 years. And the US is the Saudi Arabia of coal as well.

That means that pressure to get off coal needs to be artificial: it needs to be a politically/scientifically driven choice, not an economic necessity driven choice like oil will be shortly.

Global Warming?

 

[mheslep]

Higher worldwide demand and a fear of future shortages have driven the price of processed uranium ore from $10 a pound in 2003 to $120 this month.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/28/AR2007052801051.html (Old article, I know)

More to the point, most nuclear power studies I have read use numbers from TODAY, with only 17% of the world's power (~15 TW) being supplied by nuclear fuels. What's going to happen in the not to distant future to the cost of nuclear created electricity when materials such as Uranium and Thorium become highly valued commodities?

I'm not inclined at the moment to run the fuel cost to kwh implications, but I venture the answer for some time yet is that it doesn't matter, that fuel costs are not a large consideration in the overall costs of nuclear power, especially when comparing nuclear fuel cost to fossil fuel costs in conventional plants. The spike we're seeing at the moment is demand driven, and not because the planet is running low on U. The higher costs will spur more production shortly, I venture.

...The waste is really not a problem, there simply has to be a policy that becomes efficient: reprocessing already, which reduces the waste to its essential part (and anyhow necessary to switch to breeders). The best middle term solution to the waste (once it is re-processed) is dry cask temporary storage at the surface, because in any case these things have to cool 50+ years before final geological storage. And become serious with geological storage.
.

It is certainly a political problem (unfortunately) as the US long term storage plan is completely dead in the water with the Obama administration, and US reprocessing is no where in sight.

 

[signerror]

problem: source of power

solution: modify technology so no conventional electricity is necessary. there is no reason that we should be using electrons flowing through wires to power our electronics, it's like selling a product through a middle-man, making the system inefficient and costly. For the source? The sun! not at all as we're using it today, but rather technology that directly uses photons.

This is a no-go. Energy is central to industrialized society - it is everywhere, moving thousand-ton cargo ships, flying airplanes, heating buildings, refining commodity metals like aluminum, powering city lights at night, and on, and on. It's a fundamental commodity of human activity, going back to ancient times. It was farm animals and slaves; now it's electric motors. It was fire; now it's ohmic heating. It was horseback; now it's the horseless carriage.

Electricity is merely one convenient medium; it is not the central issue.

example 2: in designing our technologies on the molecular level we tend to create stable materials. why? let's start creating materials that are strained. initially creating them would require lots of extra energy but I really think that this could prove beneficial. Extreme example: if we designed a car that had a bottom comprising of strained bonds, and roads that were actually chemical "trails," they could interact where the road could, in a way, power the car.

That does nothing. You're just moving the usage of energy from one place - engines - to another - roads. It would be pointless even if it weren't incredibly inefficient and wasteful.

conclusion: we need to stop with our conventional methods of using power.

That's not your conclusion, that's your starting premise! You're begging the question.

 

[signerror]

I haven't heard about that one. Now, assuming this seems to be a military test program, and this is more than 50 years ago (at the very beginning of the nuclear era, where still a lot about safety was to be learned), tell me, how many dead do we talk about here, and is there not one single other military testing program that had a similar amount of casualties in the 50 years of its existence ? Say, aeronautics or so ?

He's probably thinking of SL-1 (what else?), although he's mixed up all the facts.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SL-1

Experimental military reactor, LWR, went prompt-critical in 1961, three deaths. Only reactor-related fatalities in the US (although there were several nuclear-power related deaths in reprocessing - criticality accidents).

Somewhat horrific, actually:

The third man was not discovered for several days because he was pinned to the ceiling above the reactor by a control rod.

 

[signerror]

"Sure, compared to coal, but you said environmentally 'safest'. I'd place nuclear and any of the the renewables (others) in front of hydro."

Okay...if you want to split hairs, solar, wind and hydro. Or wind, solar and hydro.

Hydropower is extremely dangerous when badly engineered. A single hydroelectric dam collapse was responsible for a quarter of a million deaths:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banqiao_Dam

The resulting flood waters caused a large wave, which was 10 kilometers (6.2 mi) wide, 3–7 meters (9.8–23 ft) high in Suiping (遂平), to rush downwards into the plains below at nearly 50 kilometers per hour (31 mph), almost wiped out an area 55 kilometers (34 mi) long, 15 kilometers (9.3 mi) wide, and created temporary lakes as large as 12,000 square kilometers (4,600 sq mi). Seven county seats, namely Suiping, Xiping(西平), Ru'nan (汝南), Pingyu (平舆), Xincai (新蔡), Luohe (漯河), Linquan (临泉), were inundated, as were thousands of square kilometers of countryside and countless communities. Evacuation orders had not been fully delivered because of weather conditions and poor communications. Telegraphs failed, signal flares fired by Unit 34450 were misunderstood, telephones were rare, and some messengers were caught by the flood. While only 827 out of 6,000 people died in the evacuated community of Shahedian just below Banqiao Dam, half of a total of 36,000 people died in the unevacuated Wencheng commune of Suipin County next to Shahedian, and the Daowencheng Commune was wiped from the map, killing all 9,600 citizens[1]. Although a large number of people were reported lost at first, many of them returned home later. Tens of thousands of them were carried by the water to downriver provinces and many others fled from their homes. It has been reported that around 90,000 - 230,000 people were killed as a result of the dam breaking.

It's also pretty invasive, when you consider the huge reservoir created behind a dam.

 

[vanesch]

Global Warming?

Yes (even if one can argue that it is not 100% sure, one cannot deny that the possibility is there, so "better safe than sorry" - if it turns out not to be there, the coal is still around to be used).

But there are other reasons: ocean acidity, and, mostly: toxic exhausts like mercury vapor and other heavy metals, and also tiny particles. This last part might eventually be solved with better technology. In other words, coal, apart from an eventual CO2 problem, is still pretty dirty.

 

[OmCheeto]

Hydropower is extremely dangerous when badly engineered. A single hydroelectric dam collapse was responsible for a quarter of a million deaths:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banqiao_Dam


It's also pretty invasive, when you consider the huge reservoir created behind a dam.

Dammed if you do and dammed if you don't.

http://www.bpa.gov/power/pl/columbia/2-flood.htm
The disastrous flood of 1948 accelerated the demand for multipurpose dams on the Columbia River and its tributaries. The 20-day flood was the greatest single disaster in the history of Columbia River Basin.

...

During the flood of 1996 we had an example of how the dams could help. As the Willamette River overflowed its banks, BPA and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers worked together to control the flow of the Columbia River, allowing the Willamette to runoff, which helped avert flooding in downtown Portland.

I'm sure if the population density were as ridiculous here as in China or elsewhere, the death tolls would have been in the millions also. What was the story I heard the other day? Bus tips over in India and 2000 people are killed?

Personally, I like the dams. Too bad we can't do the same with the mighty Red River. But I've heard it's just a stream running through a big lake bed. Might be a fun and interesting project though. Where's the nearest low point outside of Fargo?

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Yes (even if one can argue that it is not 100% sure, one cannot deny that the possibility is there, so "better safe than sorry" - if it turns out not to be there, the coal is still around to be used).

But there are other reasons: ocean acidity, and, mostly: toxic exhausts like mercury vapor and other heavy metals, and also tiny particles. This last part might eventually be solved with better technology. In other words, coal, apart from an eventual CO2 problem, is still pretty dirty.

This is one point on which Obama and I do not agree. It seems to me that we are a long way from having viable clean coal technology. On the other hand, it is hard to ignore the vast reserves of coal had by the US. It may be that technologies that make fuel from coal will be the best option.

But if Obama likes coal, in his honor, I am all ears.

 

[Topher925]

But if Obama likes coal, in his honor, I am all ears.

I think Obama just wants to rely on coal until other renewable energy resources are established. I don't believe his administration is looking to use coal for any long term energy source.

 

[mheslep]

60 minutes piece on - what should have been called LENR - last night.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/04/17/60minutes/main4952167.shtml
Inteviews:
-LENR investigator, SRI's McKubre
-'debunker' physicist Richard Garwin
-Rob Duncan, Univ. Missouri researcher hired by CBS to examine recent claims.
-even Fleischmann agreed to an rare interview from France.

CBS claims they have a DARPA memo making positive claims about PdD reactions. Google shows nothing on it. Anyone have a line on this?

 

[Topher925]

I haven't heard anything but that article states that at least 20 independent labs are able to create this nuclear reaction. Could it really be a nuclear reaction though without emitting any atomic particles?

 

[mheslep]

I haven't heard anything but that article states that at least 20 independent labs are able to create this nuclear reaction. Could it really be a nuclear reaction though without emitting any atomic particles?

Well all those labs claim to have created:
-excess heat, the heat is more than can be explained from 1.2eV per molecule chemical reactions, and they can only do this about 70% of the time.
-He

The 'what' behind this is still very much in question.

 

[gmax137]

I don't know anything beyond what the 60 minutes piece reported, but... They quoted the report as saying something like "production of anomalous excess heat." And 60 minutes went on to focus on the "excess". What about the "anomalous"? Does that simply mean "unexplained" or does it also mean something like: intermittent, or not reproducible?

Maybe I'm a dinosaur, but if you have a hard time proving something produces heat, it seems to me unlikely that you can design a real power plant around it. Remember the title of this thread - "Fix the energy crisis."