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They have done the math. Stop pretending they haven't. It is not even hard to find. The cost per mile of energy is about 10% to 40% for an electric compared to a ICE engine. On average around 20%

https://avt.inl.gov/sites/defa...

If they can get most of the Supercharger network off the grid, most electric cars wouldn't be powered by anything other than the sun.

The Supercharges network provides only a small contribution to the lifetime energy use of a Tesla car. You have to include the energy used to build the car and the 80+ percent of charging that is done at home. This study shows 98% of weekday charging occurs at home or work (for car owners with home charging stations). Indeed, I find never having to stop for gas (and very, rarely for electricity) is one of the big perks of plug-in EV ownership.

Also note that point of use generation of renewable energy solves a crucial problem in the renewable energy puzzle: the need to build transmission lines as existing infrastructure reaches capacity. Transmission lines cost about a million dollars per mile and are subject to lots of regional and political considerations.

Kudos to Tesla if they make this work. I'm still trying to wrap my brain around the size of the solar farm needed for a Supercharger station.

Stop feeding the troll ;) If a person can't handle an argument without name calling, they're not worth your time.

For what anyone not trolling :) There is nothing magical about existing on Earth that allows a nuclear reactor to run. Earth does provide a few conveniences, mind you - your mass budgets are unlimited, and cooling is easier. But nothing about either bulk nor mass prevents nuclear reactors from operating in space, by any stretch, and the two main things limiting their use have been a lack of need and NIMBY (the former being little applicable in the former USSR, they used them quite a bit, although they still lacked a need for high powers and so generally kept them fairly small; in the US, NIMBY limited the US to just one launch, although the US developed a number of other systems, some to flight-ready status, on the ground).

The typical mass balance for a in-solar system fission fragment rocket (measured simply by MWt, not MWe, since thrust is direct) is about 20% payload, 20% structural, 35% reactor, and most of the rest toward various aspects of cooling. The nuclear fuel makes up only about 2% of the total mass (figures from the Callisto baseline). For an interstellar mission, however, the fuel would make up the a large minority or the majority of the mass, trading significantly reduced acceleration for significantly longer acceleration times. On an in-solar-system version, power density is about 6kWt per kilogram of reactor mass (that 35% figure above). This is actually quite low by large-space-reactor standards; many modern multi-megawatt reactor research projects for NEP and defense purposes (example) often deal with density figures of 50-100 kWe per kilogram, including cooling. But a fission fragment reactor has a sparse core and has to rely extensively on moderation / reflection to keep up a sufficient neutron flux; higher core density is prohibited because then the fragments would thermalize.

One thing that's neat about a fission fragment reactor is that, like systems like VASIMR, it can operate in various output modes, trading ISP for thrust as needed. In pure fission fragment mode it's ISP is is ridiculously high, nearly 1m sec; your thrust is purely the relativistic fission fragments from each reaction, carrying the majority of the reaction's energy away. However, you can inject gas into the stream as reaction mass, limited only by the density to which your magnetic nozzle can keep the stream confined. So where higher thrust maneuvers are needed, you can use the same engine (up to the aforementioned extent, of course; you're not going to take off from a planet with a FFRE!)

Disclosure, I work for Plugless, the world's first wireless EV charger for sale to EV drivers. I'll keep it quick. We began trials in 2011 at Google, Hertz, UC Davis, SAP and other partners across the country. We began selling our 3.3kW charger to LEAF and Volt owners in early 2014 and later than year to ELR owners. Our 6.6kW Plugless systems for Tesla S and BMW i3 are months away. The stats that this thread seem most interested in - we're ~7% less efficient than level 1 (standard plug) charging and ~12% less efficient than Level 2 (240v, 30A) corded chargers. You should not believe me. You should believe Idaho National Laboratories which conducted more than 8,700 separate tests on Plugless - our data is comparing our efficiency on those tests versus the countless tests they have done on corded chargers. http://avt.inl.gov/evse.shtml - note: we are the only WEVC system with published 3rd-party data (a requirement of INL...and it was important to us too). It should also be noted we have been on the Clemson team (we are Evatran, makers of Plugless).

You can't get rid of it all - reprocessing actually generates more waste than you start off with - but you can at least get the really hot stuff out of the waste and make it easier to store what's left over and the now radioactive consumables you've used to get that far. People forget that Uranium has a high melting point and is very strong which makes it difficult to cut up fuel rods, which has made most reprocessing not much more than a proof of concept. It's all got to be done by robots due to how radioactive the fuel rods are.
One promising alternative is liquid reactors where expired fuel rods and expired weapon material can be thrown into the molten fuel instead of the incredibly expensive and messy operation of reprocessing. The US had a couple of thorium based reactors along those lines but lobbying from the uranium dependant US nuclear lobby let to that work being shut down. The US nuclear industry has eaten it's own children in that way so expect advances to come from elsewhere.

The Idaho National Laboratory developed a pretty effective method of reprocessing radioactive waste without much extra waste.... and the stuff that was left over was pretty much low level radiation stuff that could be handled in some of the existing repositories designed for that low-level waste. It does take operating breeder reactors, and the #1 problem with the technology is that it in theory could be used to create bomb-grade material out of the waste products in the same facility. The major concern is that if the technology was perfected in the manner that has been suggested and became commonly known to countries like Iran and North Korea, that they would have a much easier time building nukes.

I'm still undecided if that is an acceptable trade-off, and there may be some wise reasons for not going down that technology path. It should at least be a part of the conversation about nuclear reactors. If that really is the reason why the major governments of the world don't build those kind of reactors and waste reprocessing plants, I wish they would be a little honest too.

Idaho National Laboratory actually commented on the Slate piece, saying:

It was disappointing to read Mr. Brumfiel's article. The Curiosity mission represents everything that is great about American ingenuity and engineering. For months, we've hosted a public website that explains via a virtual tour and factsheets how the nuclear battery was developed, fueled, tested and delivered. The website is available at http://www.inl.gov/marsrover.

How about linking to the original source instead of a short summary:

Robots were sent and it was on Slashdot at the time too. The problem is Robots don't work in radioactive environments unless they have been made for it. You can't harden every existing robot to radiation because they normally don't encounter that level of radiation working in a Car Manufacturing plant. Even we only have 1 facility that specializes in making that kind of equipment. If it's a matter of pride to Japan that "Their" robots didn't help they will find out that the cost to build and maintain that kind of facility is well beyond anything the private sector (Honda) will be willing to put forward.

There's an area in the Idaho deserts where even the roadside rest stops have radiation counters. It's an area in which much of the US's early nuclear reactor experimentation was done. I've only driven through, and it's a very stark area (my first hint that something weird was going on: how come the cell phone system has such terrific 3G coverage out here in the middle of nowhere?) Anyway, a Web search suggests that there's a museum in honor of all this: http://www.inl.gov/ebr/d/ebr-i-brochure.pdf No clue whether it's still open or worth the trouble, but if you're anywhere close it might be worth checking out. Bring your lead outerwear.

Oddly enough, my dad built the engine plants for the Atomic Airplane project, back in the 1950s. The project was snakebit from the start. The buildings are now part of the Idaho National Laboratory. He got stiffed for $400,000 by the US Government - in 1954 that was not pocket change..

Can you provide a citation for that? If they cut up, packaged, and transported the entire contents of the melted-down Three Mile Island reactor core across the country from Pennsylvania to Idaho, then it can't be that much of an obstacle, especially if the stuff is conveniently packaged in fuel bundles instead of fused into a solid mass that has to be cut up.

The point is, it's already been done.

Collecting solar energy with antennas - LLL seems to have done this in 2007.

https://inlportal.inl.gov/portal/server.pt?open=514&objID=1269&mode=2&featurestory=DA_101047

What are they using to rectify the signal to convert to DC? The antenna is neat - but not at all surprising, its size should just scale with wavelength. You could make a 125nm long antenna that would resonate with visible light (well withing the resolution of existing lithography). The problem is how to convert the 100THz signal you get to a DC signal. You need a fantastically fast diode.

If they have managed this, that would be an impressive achievement.

The PDF mentions (on page 2):

One possible embodiment is metalinsulator-insulator-metal (MIIM) tunneling-diodes.

Is it possible? Does it make sense?

90% for that range of frequency which i bet is quite small in comparison to regular solar power. This definitely sounds like a good possibility but the total energy they can get is from a smaller pool though this may not matter due to higher efficiency but most importantly, cheapness.

Actually, it sounds like by varying the size and materials of the antennas on a panel, they can capture a much broader spectrum of light than 'conventional' panels, including extending into the infrared.
https://inlportal.inl.gov/portal/server.pt?open=514&objID=1269&mode=2&featurestory=DA_101047

There are definite and novel uses for this, if they could figure out how to actually rectify the electricity generated. Industry, for example, spends big dollars trying to shed waste heat from piping and equipment...how about wrapping it in one of these and let the generated electricity run your cooling system for you? Talk about direct waste heat recovery systems...I picture a solar farm with their 'panels' gently flapping in the breeze, not caring about incident light direction, so long as they're in the sunlight...and still keeping the lights on for some time after the sun goes down...

good times.

... to etch an antenna at the wavelength of 0.000001 meter? Well, OK, it's not trivial. But we do have things like lasers that can etch chemicals at that size and smaller. Then we need a way to transfer that etch to conductive metal, add rectification to make it usable and collectible, and have our own little power sources. A flat panel might do if the current level doesn't burn up the collection tap point.

They can 'print' them.
https://inlportal.inl.gov/portal/server.pt?open=514&objID=1269&mode=2&featurestory=DA_101047

This seems a bit well-aged for 'breaking' news, unless they've found some way to rectify the high frequency power...then it would be newsworthy indeed! I'll have to RTFA...

Actually almost all process control vendors participate to some extent with National Lab. Nothing secret about it, go to the webpage and sign up for a 5 day red team/blue team session on how to hack scada equipment.: http://www.inl.gov/scada/training/index.shtml

If you are a process controller vendor and you haven't sent your security staff to Idaho then you are out of the game. Because the rest of the process control world will break into your systems while laughing their asses off.

"That number gives you a ratio to the power grid and power needs. Extend that ratio to what it would be today if Greenpeace hadn't killed nuclear power plants in 70's."

Greenpeace? You're giving them way too much credit.

Greenpeace didn't kill nuclear plants in the 1970s, Three Mile Island did and Chernobyl after that. Yes, I'm well aware that Three Mile Island didn't release much radioactive material (the containment structure worked) and Chernobyl was an inherently unsafe design (and had precious little containment), but that doesn't change the public perception of these events: that despite assurances that nuclear power was safe it wasn't as safe as claimed. Furthermore, even the engineers involved with Three Mile Island were surprised with the extent of damage in the core once they started cutting it out. It was a partial meltdown, and it could have been a lot worse. It took, what, a few years to clean up after it? No, longer than that. 30 and ongoing. A few years ago they took the core pieces out of water storage in Idaho and put them into dry storage now that they've cooled down enough. As per agreement between the State of Idaho and the federal government they still have to be moved out of Idaho to some permanent site that is yet to be determined (see below), so the ultimate costs of the accident still aren't fully accounted for. The accident is still costing money and will cost plenty more.

The other thing that stifled nuclear power was the construction costs for utilities (HUGE capital expenses and MASSIVE cost overruns), and the fact that there still isn't a permanent storage site for high-level waste even though the government has been collecting money from nuclear power utilities since at least the 1980s in order to build it (i.e. is Yucca Mountain dead as a site or not? And if dead where's the new site, and when is it going to be on line? By 2030 or so?).

I know that nuclear power is still a good option and I think it has a future if people get off their asses and A) solve some of the technical/political challenges, and B) either get over the NIMBY attitude and let nuclear power flourish, or C) invest HEAVILY in the other alternatives. Most people have no clue of the energy challenges we're going to face in the next few decades if nuclear power is left out of the choices to replace oil's eventual decline. People need to accept it now so that there is time to get building before things get to a crisis. This isn't something that will be solved with a few wind turbines. It would take thousands upon thousands, and people will gripe about where those are sited too!

However, despite all that I'd wager the public appetite for nuclear power wouldn't be any better if Greenpeace didn't exist. People have more than enough valid reasons to be skeptical of it. I mean, face it. If they couldn't site a geological repository at Yucca Mountain, in the middle of a desert area that already had hundreds of nuclear bomb tests, then where the heck are they going to put it? And without a solution for long-term storage nuclear power's future is uncertain in the USA.

Like always, science coverage in the news is done poorly. There's no way to tell just from the article what's really going on. This could just be enhanced absorption for traditional solar cells. On the other hand, it could be nanowire antennae. And the questions you need to ask are dramatically different for each. In the former case, the question is, "What is your conversion efficiency for light that *does* hit?" And in the latter case, the question is, "How have you implemented self-assembled nanoscale rectifiers?"

Nanoantennae are a very interesting approach to dealing with solar. They can be tuned to absorb ranges of frequencies of radiant energy at extreme efficiency. The downside they've had with them so far is that you get AC in the THz range, which can't be effectively harnessed. So they're working to get self-assembled nanoscale rectifiers in the antennae.

http://futureplanets.blogspot.com/2009/01/solution-to-plutonium-problem.html

While it still uses Pu 238, it uses much less, and the current supply could last for another 20 years. No doubt you already knew about this when you claimed "There is nothing better than an RTG for this problem and probably never will be."

Since when does "what we have now" imply "what we'll have with the radical technology improvements that are presently occurring"? You do realize that not only are solar thermal prices dropping, but there have been some *major* advancements in the economics of photovoltaic systems. Silicon cells are typically profitable to sell at $4/W (and are currently selling at $5/W because of supply shortages). CIGS cells are profitable at $1/W. This is a major, major leap that'd make solar cheaper than coal almost everywhere in the world.

Let's look at Nanosolar as an example. Their first plant, when at full capacity, will make them one of the biggest solar producers in the world (430 MW/year if I recall correctly). But this is just their first plant. Selling cells that are profitable at $1/W at nearly $5/W means they'll be profiting hand over fist, which means that investors will fight for the chance to throw money at them. How long do you think it'll take them to scale up with essentially unlimited venture capital? I'm betting not very long. They built their current facility with $100M raised just a year and a half ago, and they've already delivered their first product. Given that most of that money had to go toward simply commercializing their laboratory-scale process, what sort of capacity do you think they could pull off with, say, the next $1B in cash? Dozens of GW/year? And Nanosolar is just one CIGS manufacturer among many. And there's CdTe, too. Unmet demand begs for a market solution. It's inevitable that it's going to be filled.

Longer term, here's a crazy new tech for you to chew on: nanoantenna solar cells. A completely different process than conventional cells, which use photons to knock electrons off a donor, these new cells are simply designed to receive solar energy in the same way that a larger antenna receives the several-orders-of-magnitude-longer wave radio signals. They should be able to be produced on a cheap reel-to-reel process like CIGS cells, yet they have the potential to be as much as 80% efficient, even receiving the infrared that the Earth emits at night.

There are 2,000 zeta joules of readily available energy, enough to meet the demands of the entire world for the next several millennia if we are willing to invest a little in the technology and infrastructure. See http://geothermal.inl.gov/publications/future_of_g eothermal_energy.pdf

Well, guess I should have Googled first.

Google: "synthesizing hydrocarbons from water and carbon dioxide":
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&client=firefox- a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&hs=1QI&q=synt hesizing+hydrocarbons+from+water+and+carbon+dioxid e&btnG=Search

Apparently they've been working on this technology for awhile. I think they were originally planning on using the exhaust gases from a coal plant or something as a source of raw carbon dioxide. But I don't see why you couldn't use this new technology!
http://www.inl.gov/videos/sc/syntrolysis.pdf
http://www.kpk.gov.pl/images/i7pr/bb295736b8d250fc 0ccf0a0742b164c1.pdf
http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/artic les/olah/index.html

I think this could work. Imagine a facility centered around a nuclear reactor. It draws water from a lake/river, uses what energy is needed to power an array of these atmospheric C02 extractors, and combines them to produce usable fuel! This could change everything. At our current level of technology, we don't have a problem with clean energy. If we had the will power, we could turn off all the coal plants, build a bunch of reactors, and remove that component of global warming overnight (relatively speaking). However, we would still need a source of portable power. A facility like this would be an "instant oil field." Any nation on Earth can become its own Saudi Arabia.

I really hope this CO2 extraction technology proves viable, because if it is, we have on our hands nothing less than the solution to the entire global warming problem.

Thirty years ago it was rare to expect any car, let alone a US built one, to last much more than 150k. Manufacturing has greatly improved. Even manufacturers that build ``below average'' vehicles are putting out product that lasts far longer than the bad old days. There is no prima facie reason that a Hummer wouldn't last for 300k miles given that, unlike the Prius, Hummers don't have uber-expensive batteries that will almost certainly need to be replaced at 100k miles.

. . .or INEL. http://www.inl.gov/laboratory/index.shtml

For version 0.5.1 (might be old by now) of kpdf, the thumbnails in the side pane do page numbering as you want. I'm not sure about the rotation because I have not needed to do that in years, but that would be a useful feature. It's on the wish list and you can fall back to Kghostview if you run into something that really needs rotating. It should show up under View->View Mode of Konqueror as an option when you look at pdf files.

Kpdf also has browser like navigation buttons that are very helpful in large documents. For an example of aids to navigation and not needing to rotate see the very useful Idaho National Laboratory Ge(Li) Gamma Sectrum Catalog (warning, this is an 89MB file). This document makes me think rotate has been done automatically, which would explain my never needing to do it. For an example of text searching where you thought there was not text because the file is obviously an image of an ancient, manually typed manuscript, see here. Those features, combined with Konqueror's ability to split tabs, have made it so I have not printed someone else's pdf in two years.

KDE just keep rocking.

Ah, yes, the water cascading over the concrete barriers and gently splashing into the concrete-lined culvert below. I remember going to sleep to the sound of 300 car trains hauling potatoes out of town.

Many of the software engineering jobs aren't in Idaho Falls itself, but out at 'The Site', the Idaho National Engineering (and Environmental) Laboratory. It's a convenient 75-90 minute bus ride out of town, just north of Atomic City (Quonset hut with a bar, gas station, and post office).

INE(E)L is located so far from town so as to provide a buffer zone in case of a little mistake in one of the engineering projects. Interesting place, if you ever find out what went on in some of the widely separated facilities out there. (Hint: the original name was Reactor Testing Station...)

http://www.idptv.state.id.us/buildingbig/buildings /ineel.html
http://nuclear.inl.gov/52reactors.shtml

That's what you get for living in the desert. You countered the parent post, who said that freshwater is plentiful in most of the US by saying that in a couple places in California, there is need for conservation. I hate to burst your bubble, but California is not "most" of the US. Come to the Mississippi river area and tell me there's not enough water.

The problem in California is blatantly ignored by most Californians. Developments continue in most parts of (at least) Southern California despite the fact that the the water supply can't handle the growth. "Everyone" wants to live there but there aren't the resources to support everyone. The problem in California is quite significant to the rest of the country, despite the Mississippi being full of water. California's economy, if it were an independent nation, would be the fifth largest in the world. Its responsible for 14% of the US GDP - $1.5 trillion dollars in 2004. 12% of Americans live in California (more people than in all of Canada) - and that doesn't include illegal aliens.

The Grandparent's basic statement that a clean freshwater supply is, "Not a problem here" is selfish and ignorant. Yes, if fewer people were dumb enough to live in California, then they wouldn't have (as bad of) a problem. But with a powerful economy, a reasonably high average income, and many jobs, there's a reason people are dry in the desert.

Despite the opinions of many Californians I've met, the universe does not revolve solely around them, or their state. Water shortages are rarely an issue in the U.S., outside of California (and I suspect probably mostly only Southern California) and the Southwestern states -- the only exception being the odd seasonal shortage during a bad summer drought in other places, or if the water supply is contaminated for some reason.

No, the universe doesn't revolve solely around Californians, but I've generally found that most Americans think that they already live on the greenest side of the fence. Outside of California water shortages may not be a big problem, but large parts of the US are not as densely populated either. Montana doesn't seem to have water problems. Yay, you win! Oh, wait, that doesn't solve California's problem.

As for water contamination in the US - its a bigger problem that you're aware of. Just because there's water coming out of the taps in your house doesn't mean that its not contaminated.

The Colorado river is tainted with heavy metals after passing through mining tailings in southern Utah (Moab). California drinks the Colorado so dry that the Gulf of California receives very little "fresh" water and is becoming increasingly salinated. Its becoming so salty that the fish population is disappearing. This is naturally having a negative impact on the local population.

The INL, formerly known as the INEEL developed the first nuclear reactors. Nearby Arco Idaho is the first town in the world to be powered by nuclear power. However, how do you run Nuclear reactors in the middle of old lava beds (equivalent to desert)? How do you provide cooling? Oh, there's a large aquifer - the Snake River aquifer? Yes, lets use that. Funny, where does the Snake River end? So yes, there's lots of water in the Mississippi, but is it clean? Is it safe?

Ironically there is now a division of

Idaho has 53 nuclear reactors that have been operating before you were in diapers! http://www.inl.gov/ Several projects are still classified. If you're curious, check out the advanced test reactor, one of three at the Reactor Testing Complex.