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Chrysler Announces Hydrogen Fuel Cell Van
Juanfe writes: "Chrysler group announced a concept vehicle called the Natrium, powered by a sodium borohydride (NaBH4) engine developed by Millenium Cell. NaBH4 can be made from sodium borate -- basic borax, used in laundry detergent.
MilleniumCell is a US Company that, not surprisingly, has made strategic agreements with major borax purveyors in the US (which just happens to be thought of as the largest borax reserve in the world). Could this be the start of the end of big oil and the start of the start of big Borax?" superflippy points out that Chrysler's press release is related to the Electric Vehicle Association of the Americas (EVAA) Electric Transportation Industry Conference 2001.
Hardly...
The U.S. auto industry and the U.S. oil industry are so tight that work has been slowed or delayed for decades on all-electric cars.
While this fuel-cell uses borax derivatives, I would be willing to bet money that any production fuel-cell based vehicles deployed in the U.S. use hydrocarbon-based cells. They're not going to let you just stop filling up every week, after all.
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
There's an article from '97 describing Chrystler's idea for the hydrogen cell fuel car. Interesting to compare their predictions and the result four years later. Quite thought-provoking.
What do you think of MusicCity now?
...Borax has gone up to $1.75 per gallon, and older folks are telling stories about how they could get a gallon of Borax for a nickel when they were kids.
A nickel!
SIGFEH
Not that I expect them to take on the Dubya's oil folks, but Yahoo's Market Guide has some interesting background on the company, Millennium Cell.
The article states that the process of charging up the borax produces pollution, though so does this not (for now) just represent the "make the pollution elsewhere" paradox of electric cars, whereby one uses coal-generated electricity to drive around instead of gasoline, substituting one fossil fuel's energy for another?
-- "Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge." (Charles Darwin)
Being the clever industry they are, the oil companies LONG ago realized they were dependent on a limited resource. Indeed, the reserves wouldnt make it out of the 21st century.
Hence they all now refer to themselves as 'energy companies', and work with all sorts of things, not just oil.
Its in their best interests that things start moving off fossil fuels, given their limited supply, and people move onto things like hydrogen, which is pretty damn common. And they know this.
You'll still be getting your fuel from them in 20 years...it just might not be gasoline anymore.
-
Millenium makes the system that turns the sodium borohydride into hydrogen, then Ballard's fuel cell turns the hydrogen into electricity.
I want one.
Latin, German, Norwegian, Swedish: Natrium
Czech: Sodík
Croatian: Natrij
Italian, Portuguese, Spanish: Sodio
Does this mean the Croatian trade name of Chyrsler's vehicle will be Natrij?
What do you think of MusicCity now?
I mean it's nice, but much too complicated and expensive. Why not use cheap, existing technology, i.e. combustion motors? They can be fueled by alcohol, methane and even hydrogen (BWM is already series-producing a hydrogen-fueled 750). We could have been driving on methane for decades, but the fact is, the oil companies have a lot to say in most governments, and without fuel, even the most high-tech car is useless.
Did you know you can fertilize your lawn with used motor oil?
Have you seen the gas prices lately? They're cheaper than they were during the Clinton administration.
This has absolutely zero to do with who is or was president. If you don't think our fearless leaders are in bed with big oil then you are the one who is blind to "FACTS".
So does this mean you need a huge water tank? I saw no mention of this in the article - but I would guess you'd need more water than you need petrol in current cars.
Have I seen gas prices in the United States lately? Hell no. I'm nowhere near your country, nor am I a citizen of it. I am, however, aware enough of international politics (and your domestic politics) to understand just how connected your President is to the oil industry both domestically and internationally.
Are you trying to suggest that the present depression in US gas pricing provides any evidence for or against the suggestion that US President Bush is involved in the oil business?
To attempt to drag this stuff back on topic and away from Republican American ethnocentrism, let me try this:
I would humbly suggest that this venture will face significant opposition from the traditional energy (nee oil) companies.
You're right tho, facts don't get points unless they're relevant or related to the discussion. Otherwise we could all get our 50 karma by posting mathematics formulae, now couldn't we?
-- "Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge." (Charles Darwin)
The biggest problem with this approach is the distribution. Unfortunately, nobody really seems to give a rat's ass about the environment, so they'd rather buy a car that pollutes the air but can use gasoline available at every other street corner than take the risk of having to drive an extra 3 blocks to the new sodium borohydride station. Hell, you can buy a VW Jetta TDI (Turbo Direct Injection, diesel fuel, like you can't get that anywhere) that gets twice the gas mileage of the GLX (unleaded) version, pollutes less, and has performance comparable to their lower end gas models. You don't see the roads filled with TDIs, do you?
Even if you could convince people to buy the cars, none of the gas stations will want to take on the expense of converting to the new stuff in the first place.
A solution won't fly unless it's cheaper, easier, AND performs better than what people have now. Unless, of course, Microsoft's marketing people have at it.
Also there is a problem with that left over borax that has to be recycled and delivered back to the consumer. Once its used, its spoiled. You can't wash your clothes with it. It has to go through a process to recycle the chemical. How much pollution will that process create? Same problem with electric cars. If they are getting electricity generated from a dirty power plant are they really helping the environment? A truely Green car will have to have a power source that is clean from beginning to end not just from the tailpipe on.
I think I will stick with my buck a gallon gasoline for the time being and use Mass Transit when I can. The ironic thing about the war in Afghanistan were the initial liberal handwringers screaming that Bush II was just trying to jack up oil prices to help out his evil, rich Texas buddies. As we see today, its dirt cheap -- bottled water costs more per gallon!!!
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
The interesting thing about this article is not that they're selling a fuel cell based car, it's that they seem to have come up with a way to actualy power the fuel cell. For years we have been talking about hydrogen powered fuel cells "that's only byproduct is air and water", while ignoring the large amounts of energy needed to extract the most abundant elemet from the universe. Traditional hydrogen generation uses energy that (surprise) comes mostly from fossil fuels. If they've found a way to use borax instead of fossil fuels, I'll be very impressed.
Unless they've altered the laws of physics, it will still take energy to do this "recharging" of borax that the article talks about, but hopefully this can be more effient than todays batteries, and will at least provide an alternative to oil that does not pollute the air.
One of the biggest problems for gaining acceptance of hydrogen as a fuel is containment of the hydrogen. Hydrogen gas will diffuse out of any container you put it in. So if you have a tank of hydrogen sitting around for a while (how long depends on the material), you will end up with an empty tank.
What makes this solution elegant is that they hydrogen is chemically locked up. As long as the NaBH4 is long lived, then you don't have to worry about it.
Also, the NaBH4 is only refined into hydrogen and borax when hydrogen is needed, so the amount of hydrogen around is relatively small at any given time.
Incidently, hydrogen is not that flamable. You need a proper combination of hydrogen, oxygen, and heat to set it burning and hydrogen dissipates very quickly. (And don't start talking about hydrogen bombs, you need a fission bomb just to ignite one of those and the hydrogen needs to be the heavier (and less common) isotopes anyway.
--
The internet is the greatest source of biased information in the history of mankind.
If our fearless leaders in bed with big oil actually wanted to help big oil, they'd be propping up prices to stop them from falling so low.
This is all about supply and demand. The summer road trip season is over. The economic downturn since 9/11 really cut into people's travel plans. Sucks to be you if you built a new refinery during the $2/gal gas days and it's just coming online now.
Pure oxygen and hydrogen are both materials you don't want to be around with an open flame, but saying that 'water isn't dangerous or flammable' is not by any stretch of the imagination misleading, despite its components.
This is really a very Good Thing. One of the biggest problems with H2 fuel cells is storing the H2. It's so pesky as a gas and impractical as a liquid. Storing it as part of another compound which can then be reused makes things a lot simpler. And it's not like Sodium borohydride is the new black gold; it's a charged battery for cars. You use it up, you get borax and take it back to the shop to be recharged with hydrogen. Very neat.
The difficulty now is how to 'charge' up the battery. Do the gas stations send all their spent borax (the customers sure aren't gonna keep it) back to the plant or would they keep facilities on site to generate H2 and run the borax -> sodium borohydride reaction? The former will increase shipping costs (though it's probably on par with getting the stuff from the Middle East), the latter more expensive to the gas stations and making it harder to switch to a different fuel should it become available.
Ha! I can see a future in which the auto industries don't settle on one type of fuel cell and gas stations are forced to carry a number of types of fuels as a result.
Dyolf Knip
Ancient chinese secret, eh...?
E = MC^2 !
0 = ax^2 + bx + c !
s = s0 + vt +
Oh, wait, I've already got 50 karma.
Anyway, oil companies wouldn't have much to worry about. Well, they would, but it's not like the only thing we use oil for is to power our cars. There's plastics, there's airplanes until they switch over to something a little less nasty, fertilizers, all the common byproducts of oil refining.
Dyolf Knip
Ok lets say that in 5 years Crysler (Or Ford or GM Or whomever) puts out a van that runs on these fuel cells. Before I go out and buy one I want to know a few things:
1) Where do I go for fuel?
2) How much does it cost per mile for fuel?
3) When it breaks where do I get it fixed?
4a) When it needs a part where do I get it
4b) How long does it take for the parts to show up?
5) How much does it cost to insure?
In the US we are real good at Gas and Diesel fuel you can get them almost anywhere. And enough things run on them that getting spare parts and people who know how to fix the things is not hard. I have seen cars that run on Compressed Natural Gas, but there is no way in hell I would buy one. Why because there are like 3 places in all metro Boston that I can get CNG. Where as the 87 octane gas that my Saturn wants can be gotten anywhere.
Remember the cost of owning a car is not just the fuel prices.
Erlang Developer and podcaster
For example, engine output power will now be rated in scores of mule teams.
No you cannot retrofit current automobiles.
Fuel cell vehicles do not use direct combustion engines so there is very little in common with a traditional vehicle. You would be much better off trying to upgrade from an electric car.
Rothfuss
Here's a couple of links.
. pd f
r id e.html
http://espi-metals.com/msds's/sodiumborohydride
http://physchem.ox.ac.uk/MSDS/SO/sodium_borohyd
Here's what the article says about Sodium Borohydride...
"To solve those problems, Chrysler's system stores hydrogen in sodium borohydride powder, which is nonflammable and nontoxic"
Here's what the data sheets say...
"Stable, but reacts readily with water (reaction may be violent). Incompatible with water, oxidising agents, carbon dioxide, hydrogen halids, acids, palladium, ruthenium and other metal salts, glass. Flammable solid. Air-sensitive."
"Toxic by ingestion. Risk of serious internal burns if ingested. Harmful if inhaled and in contact with skin. May cause burns or severe irritation in contact with skin or eyes.
Toxicity data
(The meaning of any abbreviations which appear in this section is given here.)
ORL-RAT LD50 89 mg kg-1
SKN-RBT LD50 4000 mg kg-1
IPR-RAT LD50 18 mg kg-1
Risk phrases
(The meaning of any risk phrases which appear in this section is given here.)
R15 R25 R34."
Looks to me like big business is full of shit yet again.
-
Steve's Computer Service, Hobbs, NM
The thing that gets me is the energy has to come from some where. Everyone has been touting electric cars however you still have to plug them in to charge the batteries, well where does that energy come from, in the US it comes primarily from large coal burning power plants. Trust me coal burning is probably one of the dirtiest forms of producing energy, worse then oil or gas by far. So yes, our cars might be emitting less emissions but we haven't made any real progress if we are spewing out tons of coal burning byproducts just to generate the electricity.
My feeling is that we need to either harness solar power more effectively or other natural phenomena such as wind or wave. Maybe even Fusion has a chance eventually, regardless any of these methods will be considerably cleaner than fossil fuels.
Nathaniel P. Wilkerson
www.haidacarver.com
The U.S. auto industry and the U.S. oil industry are so tight that work has been slowed or delayed for decades on all-electric cars.
This makes a good story for movies in need of a bad buy but I've not seen any reason to believe it. As a matter of fact, no one in the industry (except the water injected carburator guy thats been in urban lore since the 40's), has ever accused big oil of maligning or hedging their work.
Its time to get out of fantasy land and into real life. Theres to many problems that need solving to get worked up over movie plots.
While this fuel-cell uses borax derivatives, I would be willing to bet money that any production fuel-cell based vehicles deployed in the U.S. use hydrocarbon-based cells
Its possible that this is a notion of the past. However, hydrocarbon fuel cells are non-puluting to California standards. So, I have no problem with it. After all, the energy has to come from somewhere no matter what transport agent is used.
Humm, I had no idea we were viewed this way by the rest of the world. . .
"Hi, I'm from the United States."
"Oh, yes, big land of Borax!"
"Well, um, sure, I guess. . ."
The usual issues apply: finding a source for hydrogen, keeping the storage system and fuel cell from crudding up, and getting the system weight and cost down to manageable levels.
It's still at the "concept car" stage.
Every time I see a "X made from Y" I think of
-Guncotton is made from wood chips
-Sodium cyanide is made from salt
-Hydrochloric acid is made from salt
-Carbon monoxide is made from coal and air
NaBH4 is -nasty- stuff. You don't want to touch it, it will take the water right out of your skin. You don't want water near it until you want the hydrogen. It -burns-, too.
Probably less dangerous than gasoline, but it is NOT as innocuous as laundry detergent.
We were leaning towards Toyota's Prius, although Honda makes one too (the Insight, I believe). Can't speak for Honda, but Toyota is very serious about this, selling them cheap at about $25K (and you get to deduct $2000 on your Federal income taxes. Some states give you incentives, too). Obviously, they're hoping to make it up on market share (not like the dot-coms, I hope!) and maintenance. We test drove one and it was nice, with the pickup of a small V6, but it was uncanilly quiet -- your brain thinks you're coasting even when you're cruising or accelerating slightly. AT 50+ MPG and the tax deductions, we were hoping to come out ahead instead of maintaining our '94 Corolla.
...until our company laid my wife off. Damn recession. Still, the Prius is a pretty cool car. ;)
"Prepare for the worst - hope for the best."
Sounds promising. I wonder though, how long it takes to fuel up? Does the hydrogen simply get absorbed into the borax as easily as gasoline pours into a tank, or are we looking at minutes or hours to recharge the fuel supply?
I've gotta say, I love the idea of fueling stations that need nothing more than sunlight, water and a compressor to generate the product, though.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
One of the biggest problems for gaining acceptance of hydrogen as a fuel is containment of the hydrogen. Hydrogen gas will diffuse out of any container you put it in. So if you have a tank of hydrogen sitting around for a while (how long depends on the material), you will end up with an empty tank.
You're smoking crack here dhovis.
Containment is one of the biggest problems with hydrogen fuel cells, but it is not because of the hydrogen diffusivity through metals (yes it does, but very slowly...not a big deal), but rather the handling properties of combustible gases as opposed to liquid fuels.
The energy density of a liquid hydrocarbon (based on heat of combustion) is about 100,000 Btu/gallon. For hydrogen it is a little less than 40 Btu/gallon at 1 atmosphere pressure and room temperature. So you need to compress the hell out of it to get a sufficiently high energy density.
That is the containment problem people don't like. Nobody will care if a year passes and you have lost 1% of your hydrogen.
-Rothfuss
You have a good point here, since the final stage of energy production involves the production of water in large ammounts then why not recycle the water that you are creating and use it in the first reaction, thereby minimizing the size of the water tank required. In fact the size of the water tank would only need to be large enough to provide enough water to initiate the reaction since the final stage produces more than enough water for an ongoing reaction, plus or minus some for evaporation and other losses...
Nathaniel P. Wilkerson
www.haidacarver.com
Don't forget that power technology doesn't work on Internet time. By the time fuel cells become pervasive enough for people to worry about a monopoly, most of these patents will probably have expired.
And I'm still not sure where we're going to get all that hydrogen. In the US most of it is made with steam reformation of Natural Gas. This releases all the C02 from the methane into the atmosphere, and isn't particularly efficient either. Creating H2 with electricity is also possible but highly inefficient even when compared to the lowly lead-acid battery. Finally, where do we get our electricity from?... Oil and Coal. Back to where we started from. Watch out for the shell game folks!!!!
Still we have to do something about our oil gluttony. I think some better fuel efficiency standards would probably be the best thing.
My bottle has a big skull and crossbones on
it, right next to a little picture of a flame.
The text says: Contact with water liberates
highly flammable gasses. Toxic if swallowed.
Causes burns.
Sodium borohydride is a strong reducing agent!
It turns just about any metal cation (e.g. Fe+2,
Cu+2, etc.) into the metal!
According to the Merck, it also reduces:
aldehydes, ketones, acids, esters, acid chlorides,
disulfides, and nitriles. Ouch! Not exactly
inert or friendly. A mouthful of gasoline isn't
gonna kill you, but this stuff'll really do you in.
I don't see anything you've cited that indicates that the stuff is likely to blow up in a wreck. Gasoline is toxic, too, especially here in California where the air-quality geniuses have demanded that it include the carcinogenic MTBE.
I'd also point out that you don't often encounter palladium, ruthenium and other metal salts on your daily commute.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
The FAQ says:
The weight-energy storage is almost equivalent to gasoline. This means it generates about the same amount of energy per gallon of fuel as gasoline.
So, if this is true, wouldn't an electric car powered by this with fuel cells probably get better mileage than most gasoline cars? A gasoline engine is burning the fuel, giving up like 90% of it's energy in the form of heat. While fuel cells, and electric motors also produce heat, it's not nearly as much and a much larger percentage of the energy can be used for actually powering the vehicle.
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Comment removed based on user account deletion
The are located right across the parkng lot.
They have been testing this engine thing for years
in many different cars.. even Suv's. Its totally silent at low speed since it runs off batteries.. once it runs out of juice or needs more horsepower the very small engine kicks on to power the electic system. Its realy wierd seeing a suv moving across the parking lot totally silent. Suposedly they also have regenerative braking hooked up as well. Everything runs off this soapy mixture (which I no know as borax.. ) the soapy mixture is put torhough a catalist which generate hydrogen on the fly hence there is no hydrogen stored in the car.
Upgrade kits aren't available yet, AFAIK, but are certainly possible. (Here's a golden oportunity for aftermarket car part companies!).
1) converting a carburator-equipped conventional car:
remove gas tank, gas filter, carburator;
replace with Hydrogen-on-demand unit with special adapter to replace carb with catlyst unit.
2) converting a fuel-injected conventional car:
remove gas tank, gas filter, fuel-injector system;
replace with Hydrogen-on-demand unit with special fuel injectors that handle hydrogen. The Electronic Control Unit would probably also have to be modified or replaced.
3) converting an electric car:
remove batteries, replace with Hydrogen-on-demand unit and fuel cells.
I read the blurbs on the Millenium website, but they don't answer two questions which seem important. Okay, this borax solution produces "hydrogen on demand" (TM), great. It leaves behind a safe, non-polluting, "recyclable" compound and emits no hydrocarbon exhaust. Sounds all hunky-dory.
Except a couple of nagging questions. Like, how do you recycle the waste product (sludge?) to make it usable again? You have to reintroduce hydrogen back into the waste product to make it usable again, but that hydrogen has to come from somewhere. They mention seawater as the potential source of hydrogen in this process. Okay, true, water is two parts hydrogen, one part oxygen. But you have to expend energy to extract the hydrogen. Lots of it. Where does that energy come from? Power plants, most likely. Power plants that burn fossil fuels, for the most part.
From what I understand, it's more efficient to burn the fossil fuels directly in your car's engine than to burn it in a power plant, transmit the energy somewhere, store it in some sort of battery or fuel cell, and use that to power your car. Even if that's not the case, you still have to burn fossil fuels, nullifying the supposed benefit of this new "clean" technology. Plus, we're still beholden to "big oil".
The other question is, what happens to the waste product? I guess it would go into some sort of holding tank in your vehicle or something Does that mean you would have to not only fill your tank when you go to the borax station to refuel, you would also have to empty the waste tank?
Oh well, at least this seems more useful than cold fusion.
What fuel cells do for you is provide a better way to store energy. The energy still has to come from somewhere.
I can see the ad campaign now...
Hmmm....in my local station and just about everywhere in the country (Ireland), you can get Unleaded, Lead-Replacement Petrol or Diesel.....surely all different for different engines? No really a problem either, if the "recharge with hydrogen" thing is the only constant, each auto maker could pick whatever they felt was the most suitable storage-sodium-borohydride unit.
Acting stupid isn't much fun when there's someone around who knows better
The automobile needs to be redesigned from the ground up. We're still using the same basic design that Henry Ford popularized: cheap, bulky, easy to manufacture, and constructed mostly of steel. The average car weighs 20 times more than the driver. Right there, you cut efficiency of getting from point A to B by twenty-fold even if you had an impossible perfectly efficient engine. Obviously, there's a limit to how efficient a vehicle can be following law of diminishing returns as you try to make the vehicle and motor lighter. However, we're nowhere remotely near that point with the 99% inefficient metal beasts we drive today.
Food for thought: a 300lb. hybrid recumbent bike / motorcycle design, somewhat bullet shaped, made out of modern composite plastics with large crumple zones and a strong rollbar. It has interchangable wheels for different seasons (if necessary) and generally has a very low rolling resistance. The vehicle is powered by a 10hp electric motor, which (if the vehicle had no rolling or air resistance) and assuming a 200lb driver, would reach 35mph in 3.7s. Reasonably, lets say 6s, but less if you decide to help out by pedaling. Obviously the power source is the greatest weight. Fuel cells would be ideal, but even without, modern lithium ion batteries would be a decent replacement at 300W/kg power density and 100Wh/kg energy density. 10hp = 7460W, so you'd need about 55 pounds for the Li-Ion batteries. A 1000W solar array ($5000), will fully charge the batteries in about 3-4 hours in full sunlight. So now you have a very cheap vehicle which will last nearly forever (except the batteries and tires), require virtually no maintenance, and once paid for, be free to operate as long as you live somewhere with halfway decent sun-hours. Who wants to build one? (-;
The point you make about upgrading a centralised source to renewable making thousands of cars Green at once instead of having to upgrade every car is a good one. In addition, energy can be extracted in ways and from areas not practical within the car itself. You may put a solar cell on a car, but you can't take advantage of offshore wind or tidal power.
Phillip.
http://www.FutureEnergies.com/
Property for sale in Nice, France
The idea that's it inherently wrong to support fuel energy producers/distributors is insane on it's face, no matter who the president might be. The fact that GWB's family was in the oil business just makes it seem...errr...suspicious.
We all need to face one fact: until the energy needs of this nation are met in some other way, consistently and inexpensively, we will need oil to keep our economy moving at any pace.
All one has to do is consider, just for a mmoment, the inability of this nations's infrastructure to obtain the fuel necessary to transport goods and people (planes, traines and automobiles) and provide the electrical power to just survive in some basic fashion. That includes keeping food cold and fresh, keeping people on life-support systems alive, keeping our schools and job sites lit and, and allowing all of us here to sit on our arses and submit this stuff.
One can blindly blame the support of some politician towards oil companies for the lack of movement in developing new fuel sources. What I don't hear in this space is how the pressure from envionmental groups have nearly forced us into the dark ages, destroying our ability to build and operate nuclear power plants in this nation, the use of which would have gone a long way to reduce our need for fossil fuel.
Yes, I know the down side to that concept, especially in regards to disposal. But, we've come a long way technologically since the early days of nuke power, and there are other civilized nations (France, for example) who have been using it safely for nearly 40 years. Politicians in this nation are so frightened of the envionmental groups that they dare not breathe a word of support, lest they be accused of creating another China Syndrome or Chernoybl. Which is what 90% of this country views as the reality of nuke power, anyway.
Joe Dougherty, Florida, USA
The words I thought I brought, I left behind. So, never mind.
[they'd be propping up prices to stop them from falling so low]
Perhaps the conspiracy theory needs to be amended with an explanation that while the conspirators are clever enough to operate a vast network of wrongdoing without detection, they just aren't smart enough to figure out how to actually make oil prices go up. If I was one of these theoretical Big Oil execs with a bunch of politicians on the payroll, I'd fire them, they're doing a lousy job. I put gas in my car the other day for 98 cents a gallon.
On the other hand, perhaps we should consider the possibility that George W. just might have things on this *other* than oil companies.
You know what this means?
ORL-RAT LD50 89 mg kg-1
89 mg of this chemical per kilogram of body weight is the LD50 (lethal dose to 50% of rats it was administered to orally).
(The funky bolding is to emphasize where each part fits in the LD specification.)
So, if a rat weighs 500g, there's a 50% chance that feeding it 44.5 mg (a very tiny amount) of this stuff will kill it.
Extrapolating this to an 80 kg (176-pound) human, ingesting only 7.12g of this chemical should be enough for a 50% chance of death (assuming it has the same toxicity to humans as rats).
All in all, pretty nasty stuff.
It's not so much that W's family was in the oil business as the fact that Cheney was the CEO of Halliburton.
And for those who don't keep track of such things, oil prices are in the toilet because Russia is bringing new production online like they're Texas in the 20's, despite OPECs calls for a cut to raise prices. Russia now has the lowest cost-per-barrel and they know that they can win a price war with anyone, and be sitting very pretty when some other producers close up shop (especially ones with high costs-per-barrel like many places in the U.S.) and the price bounces back to $30.
Don Negro
Perl 6 will give you the big knob. -- Larry Wall
Will it get 20 Mule-Power?
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
See here and here.
The Sinclair C5 was a plastic-bodied electric trike with pedal assist, and was supposed to be the Next Big Thing at one point. But, nobody bought it. It was about an order of magnitude cheaper than what you're suggesting, too.
Basically, a car has to be a certain minimum size to be useful to people. Even the existing subcompact cars are too small for 99% of the public. For most Americans, it has to hold 4 people and their luggage. A trike has no chance in the market whatsoever.
Jon Acheson
All opinions expressed herein are my own, and not those of my employers, who are appalled.
Low gas prices today are instrumental in ensuring continued dependency tomorrow.
They need to make Gasoline look more economically attractive and viable while all this "fuel cell" and "solar power" nonsense blows over.
Last year, after my third rolling blackout, I was seriously considering selling some stock-options to buy some solar panels for my house. If they were going to jack up prices and reduce reliability, then FUCK the power companies, they can buy power from ME at their spot market prices.
Unfortunately, I delayed just long enough for the market to crash, and make it rather unattractive, as the power crisis disappeared.
And I'm sure there are power company execs (like the ones at Enron that got $200k bonuses this quarter prior to their bankruptcy) who are breathing sighs of relief.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Don't forget the little "unplanned criticality" accident in Japan two years ago.
Fuck man, accidents happen no matter how careful you are. It's okay when an oil refinery catches fire. Maybe it sucks a lot when a tanker spills it's guts on pristine shoreline. Maybe it sucks a WHOLE lot when we have to bomb some uppity dictator into submission to keep them from clenching the supply line. But it's sure a hell of a lot better than watching a populated area get turned into an uninhabitable wasteland for the next 12,000 years. And if you reply to say that Kiev is inhabitable, then why don't you prove it by moving there, and raising a load of kids. Leukemia anyone? Thyroid cancer anyone?
The only thing fission power does is prove how prone humans are to screwing up, because when (not if) screw ups happen, they're of tremendously huge proportions.
We have to ask ourselves why these accidents happen. It's easy to point fingers to a profit-hungry power company cutting safety corners to pad the bottom line and the CEO's bonus - but if you look at Chernobyl, that wasn't the case because we're talking about a state-run institution. Sure - safety measures were in place, but laughably inadequate. At the end of the day, whether it's private enterprise, or state-run, someone's going to cut corners, and even when they don't cut corners, someone's going to screw up, and even when everyone is doing their best, some religions fanatic hijacks a plane, and even when airline security is tight, an earthquake happens.
My point is, no matter how careful we are, no matter how infinitesmally small we reduce the probability of an accident, the deal is - the CONSEQUENCES of this kind of accident are so profound as to be unacceptable to any person with the facility of reason.
The same is not the case of every other method of power generation. Proponents like to discuss safety in terms of the chance of an accident. I'm saying they need to forget about chance, and think about the consequences, because accidents happen and it's always only a matter of time.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
[Low gas prices today are instrumental in ensuring continued dependency tomorrow]
:-)
Ah... so if prices are high, it must be because of a conspiracy. If prices are low, it must be because of a conspiracy
Conspiracies might or might not exist. But I don't think that high or low prices per se are evidence of anything.
The comment about Enron execs and bonuses is right on, although it has nothing to do with the industry they are in. It often appears that large publicly traded companies are operated more for the benefit of top management than for the benefit of the owners (stockholders). As someone who owns some stock but it not an executive at a large firm, this annoys me.
Unlike some other conspiracies, the automobile/oil industry ones have some interesting history. I'd say it's more like interesting food for though, and it's not from some paranoid kook either --I'm not one to believe in paranoid conspiracies, new age cures, faith healing, visits from intelligent extra-terrestrials, mysticism, etcetera. I do however believe in sunshine (anti-backroom) laws, fair competition (through iron handed regulation if necessary, and good public policy.
Michael Parenti in Democracy for the Few (6th Ed.)[1] writes about some disturbing observations. The energy frugality of mass-transit was so "undesirable" to the oil and auto industries" that "[f]or over a half-century their response has been to undermine th nation's rail and electric-bus system."
The undermining of Los Angeles's 1935 "75-mile radius" "3,000 quiet, pollution-free electric trains [carrying"80 million people a year" was carried out by:
He follows up with the influence of cars, extended references of death rates --"2x accumulated number of Americans killed in all the wars ever fought by the United States"", urban air pollution, massive automobile land use, "$300 billion annual subsid[ies]", while "...mass transit--the most efficient, cleanest, and safest form of transporting goods and people" is abandoned. (p. 106)
I believe the money used "to subsidize automobile use" can be viewed, from one perspective, as an example of an economic freeloader. As auto companies undermine mass transit, thus using public dollars (which they only pay a fraction of) to fund expensive automobile public infrastructure.
I particularly like how he states that "[g]iven the absence of alternative mods of transportatoin, people become dependent on the automobile as a way of life so that their need for cars is often as real as their need for jobs." The economic burden of autos is pretty high for most americans. It's not like a $1000 tv, or $300 bike. It's a monthy loan payment, and then it's a bi-annual insurance payment, and finally its massive social/tax/healthcare cost from the "46,000 people killed" and "2,000,000 people injured" in traffic accidents. It makes wonder if the Segway could make a dent into this automobile entity we all have to live with?[24][25]
_____ >Parenti's footnotes<
23. Jonathan Kwitny, "The Great Transportation Conspiracy,"in Cargan and Ballantin (eds.), Sociological Footprints, 2nd ed. (Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth, 1982)
24. Bureau of Census, Statistical Abstract of the United States 1992 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1992); Andrew Kimbrell, "Car Culture: Driving Ourselves Crazy,"Washington Post September 3, 1989. Kimbrell notes that fatality statistics may be too low since they do not include deaths that occur several days after accidents or off-road.[2] he points out that motor vehicles kill easily one million animals each day, making road kills second only to the meat industry. More deer are killed by cars than by hunters.[3]
25. Kimbrell, "Car Culture" >/Parenti's footnotes<
_____
1. "a major voice among political progressives"...Ph.D from Yale...lectures frequently at college campuses across the country." --[from back cover]
2. My grandfather died because of accident related complications =(
3. Animal rights activists will have a hard time stopping consumers from driving though, considering how car ownership is ingrained. And/or how convenient it is.
Proponents do discuss both. But chance is as important as consequences. Look at it this way:
- Method A has a death rate of 1000 per accident and a 0.01% accident per unit of production. Result over time: 10 deaths per unit of production.
- Method B has a death rate of 10 per accident and a 1% accident per unit of production. Result over time: 10 deaths per unit of production.
Now you would automatically eschew Method A because it causes more deaths, but over time they are the same. This is the reason why air travel is safer than car travel, but appears not to be. An airplane crashes and hundreds dies. A car crashes and a couple die, but more cars crash than planes.Nuclear power has the same problem plus the added bonus of fear. Quick, which exposed people who lived five miles from the Japanese accident you mentioned to more radiation: their most recent medical X-ray or the accident? Yet this is far and away the worst accident in a modern, industrialized nation, slightly edging out TMI (TMI had no immediate deaths, Tokaimura did). Only one other accident (excepting Chernobyl, about which see below) has caused immediate death: SL-1 in the US. This despite the fact that several nations get signficant amounts of power from nuclear power.
The Chernobyl accident is the worst case you can show and it is not a very good anti-nuclear case for two reasons:
- Causes
- Effects
Let's look at causes: While the trigger was a human error the reasons it were so bad are all DESIGN issues that were possible only in an enviroment like the old USSR:- There was no containment beyond the piping. Unlike western reactors which are first put in reinforced concrete building and the use an multi-layered containment system to separate fuel from coolant Chernobyl was in basically a sheet metal shed and ran individual pipes over individual fuel rods.
- Chernobyl was designed such that loss of coolant increased reactor power. Western reactors use coolant that aids reaction (ie, is a moderator) so if it is lost the reactor begins to shutdown, leaving residual heat to be delt with. Because of design the water cooling Chernobyl retarded reactions and a loss of coolant sped up the plant.
- Chernobyl's control systems required both computer control at all times, were not passively regulating (ie, things like loss of power to the plant drops the rods and such), and were such that the reactor had to increase reaction rate during shutdown.
To give a comparison imagine building a car that when faster before slowing when you hit the brakes, had independent for acceleration, steering, and braking on each wheel, and the passenger front controls were done automatically by computer in response to your actions on the other three. How long would it be before you crashed? And when you crashed you had just an open frame and no seat belt. Would that be enough to get rid of cars?As to effects, Kiev is habitable and if you find me a job I'll be happy to move there. Correct action can minimize the effects of an accident in the immediate term, it is possible to decon much of the exposure, andrelatively short amounts of time are required for decomposition of the most dangerous radioactives (on the order of 30 years, not 12,000). The longer lived radioactives are less radioactive per unit by definition (higher radioactivity means more decays per unit time so the half life must be shorter) and generally are less dangerous when external, being dangerous when ingested. While clearing topsoil is not picnic it is arguably easier than the cleanup of an oil spill because it is easier to use large machinery to match the scale.
What this means is that consequences, while worse, are not irreversible and can, depending on management of the technologies can result in less consequences over a given time period than competing ones even if the individual events are worse.
Herb
Again, feel free to sentence me to death if my questions annoy you. I'll come back in 5 minutes anyway. -Sythi
companies may be slow to change, but they dont get to be big companies by rejecting it completely.
-
Is your electric reclined bike going to be a 3-foot sphere of bubble wrap? No, it's going to be a hard plastic shell, and its only padding will be on the seat, so how is this relevant?
To answer your question, though, I'd MUCH rather be in the indestructible steel box, because if I'm in the bubble wrap, I'm going to be either crushed under the semi or subjected to far higher acceleration, because the bubble wrap and I together have only a tiny fraction of the mass of the steel box and I together. When the same amount of force is applied to a much lighter object, it gets accelerated proportionately more.
In ANY head-on collision, mass DOES help, because the lighter object will tend to get knocked backwards, while the heavier object is only slowed down. The lighter object undergoes much higher acceleration. To use your example, would you rather be in the bubble wrap, or the 18-wheeler?
Now, in a head-on collision with an 18-wheeler, a bridge abutment, or some other very massive object , it may not make as much of a difference what you're driving, because the super-massive object isn't really going to yield. But, in a collision with anything else, yes, size does matter. And most collisions are with other cars.
As a real-world example, my aunt was sideswiped by a big truck, which mashed her and her car into a guard rail. She came out of it without serious injury, because she was driving her company's full-sized Caprice station wagon, and it had enough mass, structural strength and crush room to absorb the impact before it got to her. They told her that if she had been in an economy car, there is no question that she would have been killed.
All other things being equal, bigger cars ARE safer.
Jon Acheson
All opinions expressed herein are my own, and not those of my employers, who are appalled.
Isn't it funny how often things that Americans call impossible are implemented successfully by other countries.
Japan (where I live) has profitable mass-transit. Near my home are two competing rail lines, JR and Nishitetsu. Nishitetsu (AFAIK) has always been profitable, and JR (now restructured) has returned to profitability.
I don't think they make money on ticket sales, just like San Diego does not. It is easy however to make money from the concentration of people that you have in your major stations. Play Railroad Tycoon, it's the same concept.
For example, Tenjin station (The Nishitetsu hub in Fukuoka) is rented out to advertisers on a daily basis for HUGE sums of money. The whole station goes to one advertiser who puts up gigantic (50-foot) posters in the high-traffic areas. (Today's display was for Boss Coffee. See how well that works?)
Another good way to make money is to build a department store on top of the station. Most big stations in Japan have 7-8 stories of stores above, and 1-2 stories of stores below the train station. Naturally, they're always full of people.
Another good source for creative mass-transit is the Brazillian city of Curitiba. Can't say if it's profitable, but it is successful.
"Reactionaries must be deprived of the right to voice their opinions; only the people have that right." - Mao
Isn't it funny how often things that Americans call impossible are implemented successfully by other countries.
Nice try but no-one said it wasn't possible especialy Americans. You could add New York Subway, Chicago L-train, etc as successful mass transit systems. And they are in the USA.
Historicaly, and economicaly they simply aren't viable below certain population densities. And remember I am not against mass transit, I use it myself even when a 20 minute commute becomes and hour and a half. I am against people who raise it as a false flag.
Get Facts, get them straight, and please come again...
Hehe. At the same time, Dihydrogen Monoxide is also an inhalation hazard. :) It takes easily less than 100ml to kill you if inhaled.
:)
But then, your lungs aren't terribly resilient to much of anything when you inhale any number of substances, are they?
"No problem. I have the capacity to do infinite work so long as you don't mind that my quality approaches zero."-Dilbert
It's worth noting that pure water doesn't harm the environment, so it's no great sin to just dump it overboard, now is it? :)
What a silly question.
"No problem. I have the capacity to do infinite work so long as you don't mind that my quality approaches zero."-Dilbert