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Won't happen. Electrolysis of Water to produce hydrogen is hideously inefficent. No commerical production of hydrogen is done this way, it's almost all steam reforming of methane. Good link on the process here. The only likely alternative source of hydrogen in the future is bioengineered alge, such as described here. However this is probably still decades away from displacing steam reformation as the primary source of hydrogen.

3) The nuclear industry has managed to externalize the cost of both the disposal of their horribly long half-life byproducts and also the insurance costs of their plants (which the government (i.e. you, the taxpayer) picks up since no private insurance company would touch their policies with a ten-foot pole).

The real reason why solar power isn't here now is because almost all of the costs are upfront and burdened by the buyer of the panels, not a third-party victim.

If you like Nuke Energy, tap into the biggest fusion source within 4 light-years: go solar. Consider:

All of the US's current electricity could be generated by a 10mi x 10 mi solar grid (100 square miles).*

The Yuk-nuclear waste reserve is approximate 1800 square miles.

A field of glass or a 100,000 year + nuke hot spot - it's your choice.

* 3702 US billion kWh/ year : ( source )
164 average Watts/m^2 * 24 hour / day @ 40 deg Lat.
Assume ~ 10% efficiency and run the math. (+/- 20% error)

Thank heaven.

They already spend (from what I read) $100-$200 million / year developing and improving Internet Explorer. (I hope my source is correct on that, though I can't seem to dig it up just now.) That is roughly the GDP of the country of Dominica. And they pay other companies to adopt it as their browser technology. What could their motivation possibly be to spend this much money on a product they give away for free? (Yes, that last question was a joke, folks ;-)

Frankly, I was worried the company was going to go bankrupt.

This article appeared yesterday at www.janes.com [janes.com]

"It now appears certain that any effort to

regenerate Afghanistan is predicated upon

the removal of the Taliban, and the terrorist

attacks upon New York and Washington

have given the US a perfect opportunity to

legitimise its plan to do just that (which

existed well before 11 September). "

The link for this discussion is :

Prospects For A Post-Taliban Afghanistan [janes.com]

You draw your own conclusions in conjunction with the Caspian Sea Region oil link at the U.S. Department of Energy:

Caspian Sea Region [doe.gov]

Why not use hybrid? Hybrids use electric and batteries and a generic heat engine. For this all you have to do is replace the typical infernal cumbustion section of the hybrid and replace it with his Rotery Engine.

Hybrid type systems are equivilent to programming language wrappers: You have a base system that you can recharge and power the vehicles motion, -- Your basic functionality. Then you wrap the actual code/engine that with an abstract class, electricity in wires is pretty generic.

You then power the system with your engine of coice:
Infernal cumbustion, Wankel rotary, McMaster rotary, nuclear fission, fuel cell, biomass, propane, methane,

So why would the article say that he tries to surpass it? Hybrid would be very complimentry.

McMaster's ultimate goal is to displace one very entrenched technology -- the internal combustion engine -- while leapfrogging other, more experimental ones, such as gas-electric hybrid vehicles and those powered by fuel cells

some hybrid urls pulled up quickly with google.
http://www.howstuffworks.com/hybrid-car.htm
http://www.ott.doe.gov/hev/

Prospects For A Post-Taliban Government

The above article appeared yesterday at www.janes.com [janes.com]

"It now appears certain that any effort to

regenerate Afghanistan is predicated upon

the removal of the Taliban, and the terrorist

attacks upon New York and Washington

have given the US a perfect opportunity to

legitimise its plan to do just that (which

existed well before 11 September). "

The link for this discussion is :

www.janes.com [janes.com]

You draw your own conclusions in conjunction with the Caspian Sea Region oil link at the U.S. Department of Energy:

Caspian Sea Region [doe.gov]

Prospects for a Post-Taliban Afghanistan:

The above article appeared yesterday at www.janes.com

"It now appears certain that any effort to
regenerate Afghanistan is predicated upon
the removal of the Taliban, and the terrorist
attacks upon New York and Washington
have given the US a perfect opportunity to
legitimise its plan to do just that (which
existed well before 11 September). "

The link for this discussion is :

www.janes.com

You draw your own conclusions in conjunction with the Caspian Sea Region oil link at the U.S. Department of Energy:

Caspian Sea Region

The exploitation of the WTC attacks and the aftermath for gain both political and monetary is frankly pretty disgusting. The networks have done it since minute 1, The T-Shirts and baseball caps in stores since day 2 or 3, the covers of magazines, newspapers, the endless story after story of the hardship and painthis all caused.

It truly is terrible. I understand things need to be reported, people need to be made aware, yes its nice to sell things and donate the money to the cause of helping and cleaning up etc. But what of the things that are for profit?

Conspiracy alert?

While I don't think our Government staged the WTC attacks, I do think the biggest 'corporation' that has exploited the situation for both monetary/political gain has been the current administration. It is shameless truthfully: they have introduced radical legislation(covered here), got the wheels of war rolling (the whole gang in charge right now is a who's who of the military industrial complex), and the possibility of the oil connection in the region:

UNOCAL testimony on needing gov support in Afghan region to stabalise for energy plans

Energy Information Administration prospectus on Regions Energy

as well as the total destruction of critical analysis of the job the administration is doing (How can you condemn the pres in this hard time?) by the press , the supposed complete reversal of approval ratings Worldwide, despite the questionable actions, the complete "fsck you" attitude towards allies and UN, has led me to believe that they have taken this ball and run with it.

Off the soapbox and back to the topic. When a company like Sun or Oracle or anyone of that magnitude chimes in ready and willing to go forth with some plan that makes them look good and allows them to profit off of these insane times we are living in makes me really not think to much of the company, nor do I want to have anything to do with them.

As long as people discuss the implications
of oil and gas in the Caspian Sea Region:

From the U.S. Department of Energy:

The Caspian Sea Region

Why hasn't the media reported this?:

Courtesy of the U.S. Department of Energy:

Caspian Sea Region

In February 1998, the Taliban announced plans to revive the Afghan National Oil Company, which was abolished by the Soviet Union after it invaded Afghanistan in 1979. Soviet estimates from the late 1970s placed Afghanistan's proven and probable oil and condensate reserves at 95 million barrels. Oil exploration and development work as well as plans to build a 10,000-bbl/d refinery were halted after the 1979 Soviet invasion. A very small amount of crude oil is produced at the Angot field in the northern Sar-i-Pol province. It is processed at a primitive topping plant in Sheberghan, and burned in central heating boilers in Sheberghan, Mazar-i-Sharif, and Kabul. Another small oilfield at Zomrad Sai near Sheberghan was reportedly undergoing repairs in mid-2001.

Yeah...um, why don't you go ahead and give me the oil export numbers for Afghanistan then. Just the simple stuff, you know, millions of barrels exported per year, etc.

Oh that's right, there are no oil exports from Afghanistan. Maybe there's some other dark government secret you can dig up for me.

Alright, you got it, ooo you got me. There are no oil exports from Afghanistan yet. But they have been planned for quite a long time.

And mostly plans have been made to move both natural gas and oil through the region from former Soviet republics. But since I am nothing but an idiot conspiracy theorist, you might not want to read the documents from the Department of Energy like I have said in other posts.

From the Department of Energy website:

In February 1998, the Taliban announced plans to revive the Afghan National Oil Company, which was abolished by the Soviet Union after it invaded Afghanistan in 1979. Soviet estimates from the late 1970s placed Afghanistan's proven and probable oil and condensate reserves at 95 million barrels. Oil exploration and development work as well as plans to build a 10,000-bbl/d refinery were halted after the 1979 Soviet invasion.

The Soviets had estimated Afghanistan's proven and probable natural gas reserves at up to 5 trillion cubic feet (Tcf) in the 1970s. Afghan natural gas production reached 275 million cubic feet per day (Mmcf/d) in the mid-1970s.


In January 1998, the Taliban signed an agreement that would allow a proposed 890-mile, $2-billion, 1.9-billion-cubic-feet-per-day natural gas pipeline project led by Unocal to proceed. The proposed pipeline would have transported natural gas from Turkmenistan's 45-Tcf Dauletabad natural gas field to Pakistan, and most likely would have run from Dauletabad south to the Afghan border and through Herat and Qandahar in Afghanistan, to Quetta, Pakistan


Besides the gas pipeline, Unocal also had considered building a 1,000-mile, 1-million barrel-per-day (bbl/d) capacity oil pipeline that would link Chardzou, Turkmenistan to Pakistan's Arabian Sea Coast via Afghanistan. Since the Chardzou refinery is already linked to Russia's Western Siberian oil fields, this line could provide a possible alternative export route for regional oil production from the Caspian Sea. The $2.5-billion pipeline is known as the Central Asian Oil Pipeline Project. For a variety of reasons, including high political risk and security concerns, however, financing for this project remains highly uncertain

Pumping Oil Out Of Central Asia

The Geopolitics of Oil In Central Asia

Caspian Sea Oil and Gas Production

The oil behind Bush and Son's campaigns

Consortium formed to build Central Asia gas pipeline

So why dont you go ahead and read those little ditties I dug up for you as you requested and remember: its easy to use a search engine, so why not try and use one before copping some sort of attitude about me being some wacko who is full of shit.

I quote you:

Maybe there's some other dark government secret you can dig up for me.

It aint dark, its right at your fingertips.

Yeah...um, why don't you go ahead and give me the oil export numbers for Afghanistan then. Just the simple stuff, you know, millions of barrels exported per year, etc.

Oh that's right, there are no oil exports from Afghanistan. Maybe there's some other dark government secret you can dig up for me.

Alright, you got it, ooo you got me. There are no oil exports from Afghanistan yet. But they have been planned for quite a long time.

And mostly plans have been made to move both natural gas and oil through the region from former Soviet republics. But since I am nothing but an idiot conspiracy theorist, you might not want to read the documents from the Department of Energy like I have said in other posts.

From the Department of Energy website:

In February 1998, the Taliban announced plans to revive the Afghan National Oil Company, which was abolished by the Soviet Union after it invaded Afghanistan in 1979. Soviet estimates from the late 1970s placed Afghanistan's proven and probable oil and condensate reserves at 95 million barrels. Oil exploration and development work as well as plans to build a 10,000-bbl/d refinery were halted after the 1979 Soviet invasion.

The Soviets had estimated Afghanistan's proven and probable natural gas reserves at up to 5 trillion cubic feet (Tcf) in the 1970s. Afghan natural gas production reached 275 million cubic feet per day (Mmcf/d) in the mid-1970s.


In January 1998, the Taliban signed an agreement that would allow a proposed 890-mile, $2-billion, 1.9-billion-cubic-feet-per-day natural gas pipeline project led by Unocal to proceed. The proposed pipeline would have transported natural gas from Turkmenistan's 45-Tcf Dauletabad natural gas field to Pakistan, and most likely would have run from Dauletabad south to the Afghan border and through Herat and Qandahar in Afghanistan, to Quetta, Pakistan


Besides the gas pipeline, Unocal also had considered building a 1,000-mile, 1-million barrel-per-day (bbl/d) capacity oil pipeline that would link Chardzou, Turkmenistan to Pakistan's Arabian Sea Coast via Afghanistan. Since the Chardzou refinery is already linked to Russia's Western Siberian oil fields, this line could provide a possible alternative export route for regional oil production from the Caspian Sea. The $2.5-billion pipeline is known as the Central Asian Oil Pipeline Project. For a variety of reasons, including high political risk and security concerns, however, financing for this project remains highly uncertain

Pumping Oil Out Of Central Asia

The Geopolitics of Oil In Central Asia

Caspian Sea Oil and Gas Production

The oil behind Bush and Son's campaigns

Consortium formed to build Central Asia gas pipeline

So why dont you go ahead and read those little ditties I dug up for you as you requested and remember: its easy to use a search engine, so why not try and use one before copping some sort of attitude about me being some wacko who is full of shit.

I quote you:

Maybe there's some other dark government secret you can dig up for me.

It aint dark, its right at your fingertips.

I understand your fear and frustration. But do we have to go over this again and again?

our attackers have spilt american blood on american soil. they have killed americans IN OUR OWN HOMELAND!

We do this in other countries all over the world, spilled the blood of the people of those countries (mostly innocent), in numbers greater than those on September 11th. And while this was a horrible tradgedy, and the act of violence should not be excused, the thing I do not understand is, how come it is ok when we do it to them, and not ok when they do it to us?

Go through the recent history books and find time after time again the corupt regimes and policies that we support (Khmer rouge for example: 3 million Cambodians killed and we supported them. Our track record is horrible.

We have the ability to approach this differently, we give all this talk about peace, but yet we are the first people to declare war: ever notice that our violence is deeply ingrained in our psyches; war on drugs, war on poverty, war on terrorism. The BS goes "We are a peaceful nation, one of resolve, but we'll kick your ass..." blah blah blah.

But really the story is this:

but you've got to keep this one fact in mind. they want you DEAD(WE WANT THEIR OIL). if you are american, be it anti or pro war, they want you DEAD. (IN ORDER TO GET SUPPORT FOR TAKING THEIR OIL WE HAVE TO PORTRAY THEM AS CRAZY AMERICAN HATING BROWN WACKOS) they want your family and friends DEAD along side you (MORE PROPAGANDA, PUT FAMILY AND FRIENDS INTO IT SO YOU WILL SUPPORT OUR ACTION TO GET CENTRAL ASIAN OIL). and honestly i don't see them stopping until they themselves are infact DEAD..(YEP, LOOKS LIKE THE GOVERNMENT CONTROLLED MEDIA HAS YOU CONVIENCED THAT THEY ARE BROWN AND CRAZY)

This oil thing has been planned for a long long time. Shut off CNN and check around. May as well start with your own Gubments documents here. And also think real closely at whose interests George W. Bush and company represent. OIL and ENERGY.

woops... I got sources. forgot:

Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia

Energy Information Administration

Follow the Oil Trail--
Mess in Afghanistan Partly Our Government's Fault


if ya want more goto my website and email me.

A similarly "alternative materials" idea is straw-bale construction. First heard about this in San Francisco/Berkeley areas; apparently it has some government support even. Here is a good page with some pictures, plans, history and thermal/etc. data even.

It wasn't hydrogen burning.
From the DOE H2 website:

Did hydrogen cause the Hindenberg to blow up?

No. A recent study of the accident implicates the paint used on the skin of the airship, which contained the same component as rocket fuel.

The biggest problem here is that we really don't know who to believe. Given the choice between believing a U.S. district attorney and some slightly scummy small-time crook, we really don't know which to take. The U.S. government has a long history of bad behavior. (Think about the secret experiments (also here and here) in the '50s, in which people were exposed to radiation ... the ones for which the government began making restitution recently, when reports began to emerge. Think about J. Edgar Hoover's FBI. Think about the entire Justice Department over the last eight years. Think abou the IRS since its inception.) There just isn't any room to automatically assume that a responsible government employee isn't trying to cover up a mistake at West's expense, just because he can.

The good scenario here is that West is a petty crook who's getting a break because it's his first offence. The bad scenario is that the DA realised that if he dropped this, he'd look like an idiot, so he's threatened a poor innocent guy into pleading guilty to a crime he didn't commit, just to save the DA some embarassment. And it looks as if we'll never be sure.

You have to remember, the USSR went in there to "pacify" what they considered their territory.
The US has no such intentions or illusions.

Consise Backgrounder Linkage:

Pakistan 1
Pakistan 2

Afghan 1
Afghan 2

You have to remember, the USSR went in there to "pacify" what they considered their territory.
The US has no such intentions or illusions.

Consise Backgrounder Linkage:

Pakistan 1
Pakistan 2

Afghan 1
Afghan 2

developing photolithography
More of the above
Process description
A summer photolithography project

Teflon was developed in 1945 as a sealant for the gaseuos diffusion uranium enrichment process. Here is a chronology of the development of atomic weapons. Here is an overview of the modern process. So in fact, the necessity of inventing weapons of mass destruction gave us the gift of non-stick cookware. Pretty nifty.

3 years ago observations on distant supernova showed that the expansion of the universe was accelerating, a discovery that was utterly unexpected and could only be explained by some previously unknown repulsive force. eg here

Surprisingly little fuss was made about this considering it meant that the most fundamental prediction physics has made about the nature of the universe is wrong. It seemed strange to me that they could be this wrong and yet still claim to know exactly what happened in the first few microseconds of the universe. Imagine walking along with someone in the wilderness, who says we are 5 hours, 3 minutes and 32 seconds from our destination. Later you find out that you're on a different continent to the one he said you were on. Yet still he insists he knows your time of arrival to the precise second. A modicum of doubt would seem appropriate.

Anyway, I wonder if this could be the missing force ?

Not being a troll, but I still don't see the big deal about one irrational number.

3.44333444443333334444444...

Then there are the 'dirty' irrational numbers like pi and e that seem to have random digits. The research mentioned has moved a big step closer to proving that the digits of pi don't just seem random, they truly are random (at least in the sense that all possible combinations occur).

The part that'll really blow your mind is that somebody found an equation that tells you any binary digit of pi you want, without having to calculate any of the other binary digits. (See here.) That is why people are excited by the conjectured normality of pi: if normal, it produces all possible strings of bits from a trivial deterministic equation. This mixture of randomness with order is at the heart of many interesting questions in chaos theory, computational theory, and cryptography.

Hmm... Check this out.

Check this formula too. If the formula is so simple (like taking the sigma out of a mere factors of fractions), pi couldn't be containing any message. I simply skeptic about that....

Not if you listen to my Lecturer at University

Fuel cells are heavy in weight at the moment, and he argues that it is more efficient to burn the hydrogen in a combustion engine (note must be modified to gain extra efficiencies). Unfortunately I can't find to much information on his research, apart from link below

Still part of the problem is storing the hydrogen, as you need very heavy gas containers (heavier than your LPG tanks). But research is being done in storing the hydrogen in a phosphorous material to try and make system lighter and safer.

I am more interested in using Flywheels, as the are making flywheels that can store a crap load of energy per unit weight. You double speed you quadruple energy stored. Also having flywheels that can spin for a year, without being recharged. Also there is some rapid recharge times available for Flywheels. As new stronger materials become available the energy storage per unit weight will increase even more.

The problem with flywheels in car uses is that going over a pot hole could stuff the bearings, but they are overcoming this. The other problem is if the flywheel disintegrates, it could cause some big issues, but using new materials the will give properties that wont lead to total failure.

References:

Link EV batteries 1
Link EV batteries 2

Research into Hydrogen Power Car - Combustion

While Los Alamos is, indeed, in New Mexico, the vast majority of US above- and underground nuclear testing took place in Nevada, at the aptly-named Nevada Test Site. I think (but I'm not certain) that only one test took place in New Mexico, at the Trinity Site.

My father, who is a nuclear physicist, participated in over two dozen of those tests, and had to fly to Nevada from New Mexico (where we lived) for every one.

By the way, there are also no deserts in New Mexico.

There was a study in the 50's called Project Pluto that was an air-breathing ram jet fueled by a nuclear reactor. Kinda cool, and some of the events around it were pretty nutso.

Richard Feynmen (sp? you know, the famous funny nuclear dude), while working on the really big bombs, had an idea that you could power a jet engine with a reactor. So he patented it. At that time the scientists were allowed to patent their ideas they came up with on the project. As a side note, they also got a dollar for each patent, but no one really bothered. Until Feynman found out, and demanded his dollar. Anyways, more funny mayhem ensued, which he talks about in his books.

He never really thought about the idea until Project Pluto came along independently. The scientists there found out there was a patent on the idea, much to their surprise. To they contacted who they thought was the expert, Feynman. He was surprised they contacted him and just said it was a back of the napkin patent, and he really wasn't the expert.

There's some info on Project Pluto here:
http://www.nv.doe.gov/news&pubs/publications/histo ryreports/news&views/pluto.htm

http://yarchive.net/space/exotic/project_pluto.htm l

http://www.merkle.com/pluto/

Kooky stuff...

Jason

It's great the we might be able to do sequencing in a matter of hours rather than years, but the real question is, what does that get us?

Every drug company has a Genomics division these days, to analize the existing data from the Human Genome Project. Now that new data can be gathered at such increadible speeds, are we any closer to improving the quality of life based on this work. Probably not, and the cause is a double edged sword.

The problem is the restrictions through international treadies and government regulation, on gentic engineering of humans. Don't get me wrong, I'm not in favor of such modification of the human genome, howeer, this leaves only one recourse. They can create medications that the sufferer of a genetic defect can take every day for their entire lives to prevent the ocurrance of an illness that they are genetically predisposed to. This is a boon for drug companies. If they can generate long term revenue streams by creating medications which reduce the chances of developing illnesses to which certain people are genetically predisposed to, and clain that they are doing this, instead of developing ways to repair a gene at birth - not because it's more proficable to do it this way but - because this is the only avenue they're allowed to pursue due to federal and international regulations against messing with the human genome; then who are the regulations truly serving? the population, or the drug companies?

Along the same lines, there will always be countries which are not signatories to the afore mentioned international regulations - in which drug companies can deelop the gene theropies which could truly benefit sufferers of gentic diseases and defects. That said, there will always be a black market for these theropies, once deeloped.

The question becomes which is a better world to live in: one where we have a drug dependant population, or one where we have a genetically altered population.

At this point I'll conclude my analysis because any further speculation will lead to the realm of Gattica style science-fiction. There is, however a great deal to consider...

--CTH

--

The Department of Energy does actually have a few programs set up in the United States to promote solar power use in the US. One is the Million Solar Roofs Initiative (MSR) which provides grants to state and local partnerships to try develop uses for solar energy in communities. The program plans to have a million solar roof systems in place in the United States by the year 2010.

There is a map of current locations of partnerships in the United States here:

http://www.eren.doe.gov/millionroofs/tally.html

The main webpage for the program can be found here:

http://www.eren.doe.gov/millionroofs/"

And here is a list of projects that have already been put into place in the United States related to this program:

http://www.eren.doe.gov/millionroofs/news.html

bbh

The Department of Energy does actually have a few programs set up in the United States to promote solar power use in the US. One is the Million Solar Roofs Initiative (MSR) which provides grants to state and local partnerships to try develop uses for solar energy in communities. The program plans to have a million solar roof systems in place in the United States by the year 2010.

There is a map of current locations of partnerships in the United States here:

http://www.eren.doe.gov/millionroofs/tally.html

The main webpage for the program can be found here:

http://www.eren.doe.gov/millionroofs/"

And here is a list of projects that have already been put into place in the United States related to this program:

http://www.eren.doe.gov/millionroofs/news.html

bbh

The Department of Energy does actually have a few programs set up in the United States to promote solar power use in the US. One is the Million Solar Roofs Initiative (MSR) which provides grants to state and local partnerships to try develop uses for solar energy in communities. The program plans to have a million solar roof systems in place in the United States by the year 2010.

There is a map of current locations of partnerships in the United States here:

http://www.eren.doe.gov/millionroofs/tally.html

The main webpage for the program can be found here:

http://www.eren.doe.gov/millionroofs/"

And here is a list of projects that have already been put into place in the United States related to this program:

http://www.eren.doe.gov/millionroofs/news.html

bbh

--
All your .sig are belong to us!

Ok, let's try this again.

U.S. demand has been growing exponentially around 5% a year.

A ten-fold increase in generating capacity will roughly double the time until demand exceeds supply.

So once the demand problem is fixed, the plants won't be need. We'll have thousands of nuclear plants sitting around.

And no, it's not wrong that demand is much, much lower in the evening. That's why evening prices are so much lower. Solar homes are usually spec'd to have a week of storage. For grid-tied solutions we don't need that much. We just need to get the majority of homes through the night.

If there's anything to be learned from the furor in California, it's that you can't just take care of the majority. You have to supply everyone, or else all hell breaks loose. You also have to degrade gracefully; rolling blackouts are not graceful. Since the system is not designed to discriminate between priorities of uses, such as traffic lights, elevators and desk computers (priority 1), overhead lights (priority 2), climate control and air conditioning (priority 3) and water heating (priority 4), the only way to manage demand and avoid a grid collapse is to shut off blocks of users. That's a system design flaw that needs to be fixed, badly.

I'd pick your argument apart some more, but I've got someone waiting for me.
--

God I'm bored...

An interesting summary of DOE-sponsored research in hydrogen production, storage, transport and use is here.

I've been working on a project at Georgia Tech called FutureTruck, which is sponsored by the Department of Energy and some major automobile manufacturers. If you're interested, the website is here. GT is one of 15 schools from around the US and Canada that were tasked with taking a GM Suburban, a rather poor MPG performer but popular in today's market, and making it cleaner, more efficient, and (if possible) even more consumer-attractive.

Just a couple things I've noticed over the past 2 years of this project:

1. Fuel cell vehicles are still a ways off. The hydrogen containers are bulky and heavy, and a system still costs around $1 million.

2. Diesel/biodiesel looks promising but a few problems remain - more polluting than normal gasoline, different performance issues, and such. However, they are more efficient overall. Paired with an electric motor, diesel engines could turn out to be cleaner and more effective than gasoline-only vehicles.

3. Electric-only vehicles are very limited in range and scope. Batteries are still heavy, even the 'new' kinds of batteries like Lithium-Ion. Combined with the need for a charging/recharging infrastructure, and the (at least) American desire for power, the electric-only vehicle will likely be relegated to shuttle cars on a set path.

4. Hybrids, like diesel-electric or gasoline-electric, seem to be the wave of the near future. I believe all the schools participating in FutureTruck are using a hybrid system of some sort. The Honda Insight is a good example of a production car that is a hybrid vehicle. It can reach about 70 MPG after a bit of driver training/getting-used-to. There are an array of configurations and methodologies for hybrid systems that I won't get into here, due to space considerations. But I believe, and so do a lot of other schools and even car manufacturers, that hybrids will pave the way in the near future. Beyond that... maybe they'll have fusion power worked out by then. ;)

I hope this helps some of you out with what's going on in the alternative fuels/powertrain area. I am by no means an authority on this subject, so visit the Department of Energy, the Argonne National Laboratories, and the Society for Automotive Engineers websites for much more detailed information. Those websites are here, here, and here respectively.

800 Gallons of Ethanol/acre

US & Canada = 18.8 million square miles

1 acre = 0.0015625 square mile

800 * 18,800,000 / 0.0015625 = 9,625,600,000,000 gallons

Now of course, ethanol isn't as dense as crude oil.

Crude Oil has 6 million BTUs/barrel, ethanol has 3.7 (From the same source, the US uses 1 million BTU every 1.1 days per capita.)

1 barrel = 42 gallons

So converting from gallons of ethanol to the equivalent barrels of oil:

9,625,600,000,000 * 3.7 / 6 / 42 = 141,328,253,968.254

the maximum average oil imports from February 1999 to February 2001 was 10,000 barrels / day.

This is 3,650,000 barrels per year. Or 0.002% of the theoretical maximum energy production of North America.

Of course, this doesn't allow any room for food, factories, homes, or people. Or account for mountains, lakes, and poor soil. But it is reassuring. Because if we were using more energy than we could ever produce in our wildest dreams, we would hit that wall extremely hard when the oil runs out.

800 Gallons of Ethanol/acre

US & Canada = 18.8 million square miles

1 acre = 0.0015625 square mile

800 * 18,800,000 / 0.0015625 = 9,625,600,000,000 gallons

Now of course, ethanol isn't as dense as crude oil.

Crude Oil has 6 million BTUs/barrel, ethanol has 3.7 (From the same source, the US uses 1 million BTU every 1.1 days per capita.)

1 barrel = 42 gallons

So converting from gallons of ethanol to the equivalent barrels of oil:

9,625,600,000,000 * 3.7 / 6 / 42 = 141,328,253,968.254

the maximum average oil imports from February 1999 to February 2001 was 10,000 barrels / day.

This is 3,650,000 barrels per year. Or 0.002% of the theoretical maximum energy production of North America.

Of course, this doesn't allow any room for food, factories, homes, or people. Or account for mountains, lakes, and poor soil. But it is reassuring. Because if we were using more energy than we could ever produce in our wildest dreams, we would hit that wall extremely hard when the oil runs out.

Hate to reply to myself:

DOEs Concentrating Solar Power Program

More info on Solar 2

Hmm, maybe it is still operating, and I haven't passed by on the right days?

Worldcom - Generation Duh!

1. Corners are no problem, because the system uses fiber optics.

   The novel drilling system would transfer light energy from lasers on the surface, down a borehole by a fiber optic bundle, to a series of lenses that would direct the laser light to the rock face.

2. They are claiming no need for pipe to line the borehole:

   Moreover, researchers believe that lasers have the ability to melt the rock in a way that creates a ceramic sheath in the wellbore, eliminating the expense of buying and setting steel well casing.

I wish I had some good answers for you but I don't. I just moved into my first house and have been working toward solar power. Living in Central Florida, we have plenty of sun to spare. (Wind, too, but I'm sure the neighbors would be unhappy with a 75-foot tower in the backyard.) The question now is what am I going to do with it.

I've replaced all my incandescent lights with fluorescent. (You'll be amazed at how much flourescent lighting will save you each month. Not only does it use fewer watts, it doesn't produce nearly as much heat). I've made sure there is plenty of insulation. I'm getting rid of the electric water heater and putting in a solar version. The 15-year-old electric dryer is being replaced with a natural gas version (yes, gas is expensive but it's not nearly as pricy as electrons). There are also a few more appliances (all over ten years old) I'd like to replace but I've already blown my monetary wads so to speak.

I've been reading HomePower for inspiration and ideas. While building a solar system from scratch sounds like the best way to go about it, what I really want is a kit being that this will be my first attempt. I want parts I know will work together and a clear path to setting everything up.

I like the configuration you are proposing and your usage isn't too far out of line. (I've gotten down to 7.5 KW a day.) Most of what I've heard about Trace and Siemens is good. They both have a very loyal following.

Make sure you check out the DOE's Million Solar Roofs web site. There is lots of good information there. Specifically, they have a state-by-state incentive guide that tells what incentives are available from where and how to get your system subsidized by any number of public and private groups.

Good luck. Once you get your system up and working, I'd love for SlashDot to follow-up with you.

InitZero

Virus myths: Ahh the good old days when the Good Times virus was clearly a hoax - unless you believed it in which case you would forward it around, fulfilling the prophecy!

We need to get our sh*t together, come up with a sane way to get value out of the fuel we have piling up

Completed tests indicate that a unit about the size of a bathtub could process a ton of spent fuel in a day.

You might also want to look at this abstract. It suggests, but does not state clearly, that all the trans-uranics (TRU) can be recovered from the salt bath using a liquid metal cathode. If that keeps them out of the waste stream until they've been converted to fission products, so much the better.
--
Knowledge is power
Power corrupts
Study hard

Gee, if "many of the reactors in Canada had to be shut down after 10 years" then the 21 operational reactors in Canada suggests that Canada used to have many more. What was the total number -- 50, 100, 210 reactors? And most of those 21 seem to be older than 10 years...

What was significant about the Pinatubo eruption was the 17 Megatons of sulphur dioxide (which measurably increased ozone damage for at least two years), and the sulfates in the cloud of debris (5 cubic kilometers of stuff, with much of the heavier stuff landing nearby) in the upper atmosphere which shaded the Earth and decreased global temperatures.

>In space, people have yet to mass-produce the
>weapons that can take out a station.

I don't know about that...

errgggg... the better link is
Fugu

you're missing a big point (5) when doing comparitive genomic analysis it's very very helpful to have organisms that are very differen yet conatain the same genes. It really make the controller regions for a gene stick out like sore thumbs as they remain conserved across genomes yet don't show up on any gene prediction programs. This is a very nice shortcut to understanding how to turn genes on and off.
check out more on fugu sequencing at our website doe fugu sequencing

1. Coal is a fossil fuel (some has plant fossils).
2. Oil and gas are geological fuels, they're in places just being discovered now.
3. Club of Rome 1972: World reserves 455 billion barrels. "We could use up all of the proven reserves of oil in the entire world by the end of the next decade," said President Jimmy Carter.
4. 600 billion barrels used between 1970 and 1990.
5. 1990: Oil reserves over 900 billion barrels.
6. 1999: World oil reserves: 1,000 billion barrels (5,000 of natural gas also).

Of course, we're ignoring fission plants. Not that it matters when nobody is building power plants. Well, we can all fire up our backyard generators and see what that does to air quality.