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Sanyo Solar Ark and Giant LED Display
shokk writes "Those of us who have played with CrystalFontz and Matrix Orbital serial LCD displays for geeky messaging will get a kick out of the 77k+ LED Solar Ark by Sanyo (only 21k of which are using as red/green/blue combinations for the presentation display). Not only does this behemoth show off its fantastically huge array of solar panels generating 530,000kWh/year and its high efficiency white LED technology, but it also sports a non-chemical water purification system in a very Feng Shui way. Lighting to restrooms underneath is provided by fiber optic paths from the white LEDs in the giant display above." It's a small plant as power plants go (600 kilowatts, when many plants are hundreds or thousands of megawatts) but it was cheap to produce, aesthetically pleasing, and of course, non-polluting, so that Godzilla won't visit.
CrystalFontz and Matrix Orbital serial LCD displays for geeky messaging, I thought this was just another small display, but it's something so completely different, that saying so is almost an understatement.
I have no idea what this story is about.
"Lighting to restrooms underneath is provided by fiber optic paths from the white LEDs in the giant display above."
Hm. Sure would suck to try to pee when they use "fade to black" transitions....
Solar energy is a pratically infinite source of energy, and we have not even begun to tap its potential.
Sooner or later we are gonna run out of oil, and solar is the future. this shows that we dont big ugly solar farms to get the same result
bravo to the Japs!!!
Conscience is the inner voice that warns us somebody is looking - H.L. Mencken
They show the hours, floor layout, pics etc. They even tell you that it can hold 80 people.
They just fail to mention the address & city!!!
Compare that attitude with Firestone's policy of deny and cover-up when people's lives were at stake
Free cell phone tracking
IANAEngineer, but how do you get around the arched design causing part of the solar cells to be shadowed during certain parts of the day? Or can you?
Either way, it looks pretty cool, and what seems to be more interesting/potentially useful is the LED lighting and water filtration...can anyone provide some more info on how the chlorine-free filtration works?
If you can't see the value in jet powered ants you should turn in your nerd card. - Dunbal (464142)
Yea right.If this is aesthetically pleasing, then see the Solar Sail, that one I could actually think of planting in my garden.
Something I've been thinking about lately...
When I was growing up (born in '64), superstition was still pretty widespread in mainstream society, such as rabbit's feet, black cat's crossing your path, "bread and butter", salt over the shoulder, knock on wood, etc. There were people who really took these things seriously: in fact, you might remember a twilight zone episode where some guy speaking about superstition matter-of-factly noted that many people believed in rabbit's feet (and then some guy piped up with "darn right" or something like that).
It occurred to me that these sort of things are almost totally dead, most likely caused by the homogenization of society caused by television and mass media.
Even astrology seems to have taken some big hits. I'm sure there are still some nutcases that follow it, but nothing like it once was.
One superstition, however, seems to be actually gaining prominence: Feng Shui. There are people who actually take it seriously. My wife has a friend (who's Asian) whose mother actually made her not buy a particular condo she was looking at because some Feng Shui witch doctor didn't like it. I've even heard some stories about dot-com idiots in the Silicon Valley who felt the need to blow big $$$ on Feng Shui analyses of their office spaces.
Not sure what the point of all this is, but I found it interesting.
[of course, I'm leaving out religion from this discussion of superstition, but that's another subject entirely. :)]
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
If this story was only posted four months earlier CmdrTaco could have been even more 'romantic' and asked Kathleen to marry him via LED. It's almost as nostalgic as those blinking office lights in Germany.
If you read on the solar lab front page, it says "let's think with us..." In that vein, I would like to offer a link...
engrish
> Yup, the sites slashdotted already .jpgs -> .jpegs and some of the html files (some broken html on there) and could upload them somewhere... if someone's got space. I don't feel like dicking around with geocities or the like.
I figured as much, when I saw it go up. So downloaded most of the images. I've got them in a Mac compacted/hqx format, relabeled the
-- Ender, Duke_of_URL
and what's so exciting about that? you seem to be _really_ bored. what a pity. go out to the playground.
It sounds great, and looks really snazzy but doing the math I am less and less confident in the potential of PV cells:
Max. power output: 630kW
Hours in a year: 8760
The main factor in this is a combination of the dirty manufacturing processes needed for solar cells, and their terrible return over their operational lifetime. We need develop cheap, long-lasting, efficient solar cells that don't create a lot of pollution during manufacture or else solar energy will remain merely a pipe dream.
One idea which has great promise is for us to put up power satellites. These satellites would collect the more concentrated solar energy outside the Earth's atmosphere, turn it into a microwave beam, and beam it down to collectors on the Earth's surface. Because of the enormous amounts of energy which would be harvested in this manner, it should be far less polluting than almost any other power generation method. The only real pollution would be in the form of heat pollution, but that can be taken care of with reflectors in space to lower the amount of sunlight hitting the Earth in that area, balancing out the heat added by the microwave beam.
Sapere aude!
Maybe if a few hundred people buy these VA linux wont get delisted!
send comments to valinuxdelistedtroll@hotmail.com
its something that is called "baquacil" by other companies (thats a patented name) -- just a peroxide based solution, more expensive, but seemingly more healthy. call a local swimming pool store and inquire about a peroxide based solution.
________________________________________________
They got bought up by Bridgestone some time ago.
Infuriate left and right
Slashdot, news for individuals who consider themselves might enjoy computers in a fashionable sense, while sufficiently transporting information that some may find important.
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
Not that I'm in favor of lining the oil industry's pockets any further...
Where the heck do you find a decent Spice model for an LED? I've used the basic semiconductor diode model but it is useful only over a very limited range of currents, and it takes a lot of futzing with the constants. Most common LEDs are used in a current range of 1 to 30 mA. I'd like to see a decent Spice model that would cover at least that range, preferably something like 10 uA to 100 mA. I've searched the Internet, but not much luck.
Putting it another way, I'm looking for an accurate model, one that actually comes close to real world experimental measurements.
The US could drop another nuke on Japan, that would have a lot of energy. The only problem is nobody in the military is samrt enough to find Japan on a map. Proof. And also this
That was over-hyped media BS, and absolutely nothing more. Anyone with any experience in automotive sports, in particular, can tell you what happens when you run a tire outside of its spec. They blow, often catastrophically.
Ford was telling people to run the tires more than 25% below they're recommended inflation pressure because the proper safe pressure made the ride in these soccer-mom driven deathmobiles too harsh. If you look at how most street tires are manufactured, its very obvious that running at too low of a pressure will eventually cause a separation in the steel belts or braid in the tire, leading to weakening. It also puts too much strain on the sidewall, which weakens and eventually blows.
But, you know what? Its not Ford's fault either. There is one reason, and one reason only why these people were injured or killed: driver incompetance. A well-trained driver who is actually save behind the wheel knows how to maintain proper air pressure, knows how to control a car when a tire has blown, and most importantly knows not to jerk the wheel when you have traction on only one side of the vehicle. Otherwise you roll over and die, especially in a top-heavy truck like an SUV.
Hell, a number of published independant tests blew out the sidewalls on Ford SUV's and the cars stopped perfectly straight and in a controlled manner. An inexcusably poorly trained driver doing the exact wrong thing is the only thing that can lead to an accident in cases like that one. *Any* good driver knows that perfectly well. Its embarassing how easy it is for any idiot to get a license in the US, and people die because of it.
They do NOT die because of a non-existant policy to cover up a problem in a product.
As usual, the corporate website reveals little about its function, purpose, or use. It shows lots of pictures and a pretty little flash movie with writing all in japanese.
From the writing in the Slashdot article, I've gathered the following:
It has solar panels.
It has an LED display.
It has bathrooms "under" it.
So based on this information, the "ark" is a solar-powered advertising sign with bathrooms under it which are lit by LEDs. Are the bathrooms underground? Are they porta-potties? Why were bathrooms part of the design when they seem rather unrelated to the concept of advertising? Is the "ark" a prototype for a whole bunch of "arks" which are to be produced and distributed for home use? Or for commercial use? Or are they too huge/expensive for more than a few organizations in the world to use? OR, is it a one-of-a-kind tourist destination somewhere in Tokyo? Will it fit on your computer desk, or is it the size of a couple football fields? (I got a small incling of scale in the flash animation, because little flowers were growing on the ground below the picture of the ark, but you never know)
Is this another example of the increasingly-common marketing mimimalism that companies like to use to infuse an annoying hybrid emotion (composited from annoyance and curiosity) into their victims in order to spur them to voraciously seek out all information available on the product just to find out what it IS?
Or was there some hidden screen on the website somwhere that said, in plain english, "The Ark is a ______, built for ______, it will probably be used for the purpose of __________ by _______ or _________."?
You can run but you can't hide, except, apparently, along the Afghan-Pakistani border.
Solar energy is a pratically infinite source of energy
Considering that a solar cell typically requires more energy to manufacture than it can produce during its lifetime, I'm not sure I agree. On the other had, negative infinity is still infinite.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
...what in the hell is it for? That is a *hell* of a lot of solar panel...it can't be just for powering the spartan display I see in those pictures.
How long would it take to offset the pollution that was used to manufacture the satellite and lift it into orbit? Also, aren't satellites in orbit (especially dead ones) a type of pollution themselves in the form of space junk that other satellites have to avoid hitting?
Sandia Labs Solar Thermal Facilities
DOE Whitepaper
Concentrating Solar Power
IMHO, this technology could be that disrutptive technology (ala GNU/Linux) that could upset the current status quo in energy generation. If these systems were deployed equitorially around the entire globe, it would definitely be a good start to significantly reducing our dependence on non-renewable fuels.
As for solar panels power/pollution ration, I'd be interested in seeing some actual stats. I have heard it stated that there has been an enourmous amount of politics (go figure) surrounding various solar cell efficiency studies sponsered by the DOE since their initial rise to fame in the 70's. The Oil industry has a vested interest in keeping us hooked up to their pipelines.
As with any disruptive technology, there are likely large forces at work to supress it's wide spread deployment. The powers that be have no vested interest in producing non-polluting, cheap energy for the masses. It would shift the power of production away from large industry and back to common man. Of course, this is just my opinion, and I have been known to be wrong.
Also, people like to bitch a lot about the aesthetics of large scale solar installations (of any kind) but they never seem to talk about the blight of fossil-fuel based production plants and pipelines, nor the environmental impact that the latter have. I'd rather have millions of acres of large reflecting mirrors and photovoltaic systems producing renewable clean energy over environmentally damaging fossil fuel systems any day.
EOM
Um, what this does show is we still need _huge_ ugly solar farms to get results. An average fission reactor outputs 1GW. You need 2000 of these to replace one single fission reactor. Oh, and that's during daylight hours. Say 6000 of these to replace one reactor if you have to deal with energy storage and loss during non daylight hours. The only thing infinite about solar power is how much space you're going to need to build the plants.
Solar isnt the future, nor is wind. The future is fusion and the way until we get it is fission. There is no alternative.
I still don't think they should've covered up/attempted to shift blame.
But you're absolutely right. Far too few people on the road today have a clue when it comes to knowing any sort of driving safety.
Most drivers know about as much about their cars as they do about their computers: dick.
You put gas in it. You change oil and check other fluids every 3,000 miles. You take it to a mechanic here and there to check things out when they seem weird. You inflate tyres to the pressure indicated in the owner's manual. You drive. Drivers don't really need to know all that much about their cars, just as Joe Sixpack doesn't need to know all that much about the inner workings of his PC to use it.
However, it sure helps to have a clue about both.
I'm a pretty good driver and take good care of my car. I've only had one accident - which was major - and two speeding tickets in over 16 years behind the wheel. I did have a tyre blow out at 100kph+ during rush-hour traffic. It was just an inconvenience. Don't panic, keep the car straight, slow down, pull over, and stop. It ain't rocket science.
I spent a good minute reading this story before I had any idea of what they were talking about.
Could he have at least said 77kw+? Solar Ark isn't very discriptive.
The use of the term "Feng Shui" is not necessary, and prettry much improper in this context.
Sheesh. Can't we do better than this?
Wasn't it also the case that the people who died weren't wearing seatbelts? I'm not 100% sure of that, but I recall hearing it, and that's the part that pisses me off the most about the whole situation... if you can't be bothered to wear a seatbelt, you've given up your right to sue in my mind.
*Any* good driver would also know that you can't stop an 18 wheeler on a dime without causing a jack-knife. However, the instinct to simply slam on the brakes as you would in a passenger vehicle is too great to be ignored, so most US jurisdictions require a special license to drive vehicles of that type.
Perhaps another special class of driver's license should be required for SUVs, since driving techniques which lead to acceptable risk in ordinary passenger cars apparently lead to death in SUVs.
What do you mean they cut the power? How can they cut the power, man? They're animals!
Besides, solar is very much in line with the hacker ethic of decentralization. Imagine some distant terrorist plot to knock out strategic fusion plants, destroying the power infrastructure or our country in seconds. I'd rather have tens of thousands of smaller installations operating independantly than monolithic installations whose destruction might very well spell destruction for our future nation.
Sure, fusion is still sexy. The grass is always greener. Solar thermal is here today.
Solar and wind are the cleanest, safest, scalable, decentralized future. Fusion, fission, and continued fossil fuel production are bastions of cold war thinking and power mongering (in a political and resource sense). There are always alternatives.
They're all real video and come in 3 diff. sizes: 28.8Kbps, 56Kbps, and 200Kbps.
This technology seems pretty promising in comparison to straight up solar panels, thanks for informing me.
>A well-trained driver who is actually save behind the wheel knows how to maintain proper air pressure, knows how to control a car when a tire has blown, and most importantly knows not to jerk the wheel when you have traction on only one side of the vehicle.
:) I think I may have even passed someone while the tire was out.
I have no clue how these people had so much trouble with a blown tire.
The tire on my Toyota Corolla blew recently while I was doing a decent click. I had to drive well over a km before I even noticed (I keep my radio + subwoofer a little too loud... so sue me!
I've taken no special driving on a flat tire type classes whatsoever, but I safely pulled the car over onto a gravel shoulder without any difficulty whatsoever. I didn't hit anything, and I didn't lose control of the vehicle at all.
I feel sorry for those people who are so poor at driving that even something as simple as a blown tire causes them to crash.
[And I know a Corolla isn't anything like an SUV, but seriously, if I can pass someone with a flat tire, how can you not pull an SUV over safely?]
- Electronic appliances are getting more energy efficient and still have a lot of potential to get more so
- Improved insulation reduces air-conditioning and heating costs
- A/C and heating usage can be reduced by the design of 'smart' buildings - for example systems control the heat exchange between the home and the outdoors ( for example in the case of cooling: opening vents at night to let the heat escape and closing them during the day )
- You could have your tiles replaced with solar panels and in the future you could even have transparent solar panels used in the windows.
- You can reduce heating cost of an isolated building by having trees near by since they reduce the amount of heat removed from the building by slowing down the winds acting on the building.
The are probably other methods, but you should get the general idea.In France I have seen some old stone houses where the owners open the shutters at night and then close them during the day. Walking in at noon you would have thought that you were in a cool cellar. No electric A/C need there.
Another example is in Egypt ( I think it was there ), some of the houses have a small tower on the roof, with slates all around it. The effect is the wind passing through it draws out the warmer air in the house. No electric A/C need there either.
This goes to show that sometimes tomorrows technology is actually a case rediscovering what some cultures have been using for centuries.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
But, you know what? Its not Ford's fault either.
Yes it is. You just explained why a paragraph ago: Ford was telling people to run the tires more than 25% below they're recommended inflation pressure
The ONLY reason Ford was able to aviod this one was because of screwball federal legislation which shifts accountability away from the auto manufacturer when the issue of tires come up. If Ford sells a car with a defective headlight, or crank shaft, or cup holder or muffler or door handle, the liability is on Ford's shoulders. If the TIRES are defective, that liability reverts to the tire manufacturer.
What happened with the Explorers and Firestone tires entered a convenient-for-Ford gray area because Ford could say "look, this law right here says the tire manufacturer is liable." It's utter bullshit, because Ford specifically requested tires from Firestone that were orignially inteded for Ranger pickups and were now running underinflated on heavier Explorers.
The entire thing is all Ford's fault but their lawyers and lackeys in Congress were able to generate enough FUD that the whole thing became "murky."
You're right, most drivers are total idiots. Most of 'em probably don't check their tire pressure anyway. That doesn't mean it's okay for Ford to not test their products before selling them.
All I know is that thing goes by realllllly fast when you are on the Nozomi Shinkansen (their fastest bullet train).
Silly Rabbit...Sig's are for kids.
Just parked out to L4 cache.
I always notice that people who throw the fact that manufacturing the solar assemblies produces pollution neatly ignore the fact the manufacturing a coal-burning plant also produces pollution.
No, I don't trust in god. He'll have to pay up front, like everybody else.
Indeed. I dont doubt a second we can cut energy usage on current applications. Probably down to 25-50% of what it is today. But then we need to replace a lot of oil powered things with electric versions instead. Like cars. And then we have the whole developing world. Energy usage will only increase, even if it's used more efficiently. Which still doesnt place energy consumption within reach of the ability of solar or wind to deliver.
We could raise energy prices until it's possible to deliver with alternative energy. But I'll place a solid bet that any politician trying that will be facing a revolution as soon as people get their brand new electricity bill with an extra zero or two tagged onto the end.
You must have no idea about the chemical processes necessary to create photovoltaic cells. It's incredibly dirty with toxic sucstances, beyond building a structure like a power plant.
Do you listen? Do you have any clue as to the chemical makeup of photovoltaic cells? The manufacturing process is incredibly dirty, lots of heavy metals, etc.
""SANYO Aqua Clean System" is used to prevent water pollution. This system keeps water clean by hypochlorous acid generated through water electrolyzation "
hypochlorous acid = HOCl which IS the same as the chlorine used in swimming pools.
77k High Intensity LEDs, eh?
Well considering that a high intinsity LED probably costs about 30-50 cents a piece in bulk... and then the time to wire them up..
And solar panels are about 50 cents a watt, maybe a little less in bulk.
I don't see how this thing cost less than several million dollars.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
Is it 50 cubits high and 30 cubits wide???
At approx 3000 tonnes I would hate to know how much carbon was burnt to construct this monolith. At a saving of approx 90T/annum of Carbon emmisions (the rebate for solar energy) this will be back to break even approx 2035 (assuming 1T carbon to produce 1T of materials, lighter alloys you need more carbon, stuff like steel uses a bit less).
Wind turbines have a carbon break even point around 1-2 years...
Looks like solar has some more distance to catch up.
Nissan covered up serious flaws in their cars because they thought recalls would look bad on their record.
Broad generalizations such as you make are silly. Why do people insist on making them and especially making them against their own countries?
Lighting to restrooms underneath is provided by fiber optic paths from the white LEDs in the giant display above.
That's not what I read. My understanding is that the light is natural sunlight, collected by a device that follows the course of the sun by using a motor powered by its own PV cell. Where did you get the above quote? Did you just decide to make it up?
Like most anything involving toxic chemicals, they are no longer simply DUMPED. This is part of the cost, but there are plants where the water exiting is cleaner than the water entering. (Very few, but the some of the newest plants are designed with this in mind. We're getting there.)
Besides, with processes like sol-gel you can almost make solar cells in a bucket, and cure them in an oven.
Well, you can't raise the price of sunlight. What other technologies need more development? and how much time and money are "we" spending on PV? I for one, if I actually owned a house, would look towards PV in order to be independent of the electric grid. I do happen to have a Pelton wheel turbine (water wheel) stashed away, if only I lived next to a suitable stream....
w00t! pr0pz to my S1m C1t4 h0m13z!
corolla is not top heavy.
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
Well, there are problems with solar energy and producing solar PV cells but I still think the thing is just damn cool! LEDs, fiberoptic cable, a nifty architecture, at least it shows (possibly) that someone is thinking beyond coal and oil. Don't go thinking that hydro is the answer either since that seriously messes with ecosystems. Maybe those organic solar projects we read about here a few months back. Hmmm.... Hell, I'll take a few windmills right about now. Anything to stick it to the fatcats still in the energy business having a suckfest with the US government.
:::Horrendous Experiences Make Amusing Anecdotes:::
I agree. Heck, I'd be happy if SUV's just got officially classified as separate vehicles from cars AND trucks since they seem to be pretty radically different. Did the caravan have all these problems twenty years ago or was it basicly an oversized car?
Nuclear energy isn't a viable alternative either, not until we come up with a good way to dispose of nuclear waste. The chance of it getting into the environment accidentally is bad enough, but with the possibility of terrorists getting their hands on it and spreading it around on purpose, the attendant risks and security costs make nuclear a non-starter. Not to mention that nuclear energy shares one of fossil energy's problems: it's running on a non-renewable fuel. When they dig up the last of the uranium, what then?
If you want a real innovative solution, how about a solar chimney? It combines the best parts of wind and solar power to give us cheap, clean, reliable energy 24/7/365.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
This web site does not describe the process they used to fabricate the solar cells. If they use the same old cheap process as usual, their cells slowly release arsenic in the environment. In 10 to 15 years, the cells will be too porous to be useful and so worn out they'll have to be scrapped.
Which of course will release all the arsenic still trapped in them.
I really don't know what's this legend about the semicon industry not polluting. Between the huge water use and the nasty chemicals, any semicon plant is a drain on resources. And solar cells release contaminants, so it's not an environmentally acceptable power source either.
Between a nuclear plant and a field of solar cells of the equivalent power, the latter would be by far the worst source of pollution.
--
Mad science! Robots! Underwear! Cute girls! Full comic online! http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/
Many caravan models use a car frame rather than a truck frame, though some of the larger models do use truck frames.
Caravans also don't have the horrible gas mileage problems that SUVs do. My father drives an '89 Dodge caravan, and it has a 4 cylinder engine. Sure, you can't drive it the same way as a 6 cylinder car, but it certainly has no problem pulling a small trailer (with a motorcycle), or being packed full of heavy audio equipment.
He's a mechanic, and we got the caravan well after they had become popular. I'm certain he wouldn't have gone near one if they had any sort of track record of safety problems (and I don't remember hearing anything). Caravans are, IMHO, much better family cars than SUVs.
WMBC freeform/independent online radio.
Do you think you'll be using the computer you use now in 20 years? There are a lot of nasty chemicals used in semiconductor manufacture. At least PV should last at least 20 years.
PV panels are so extremely inefficient it isn't funny. To make things worse their power ratings which people look up all the time are based on some ricidulous test conditions known as STC (standard test conditions). The STC that panels are rated under based on the amount of sunlight hitting the panel per square meter, the temperature of the panel itself, and the mass of the surrounding air. The STCs are 1000 watts/square meter, panel temp of 25C (77F), and an air mass of 1.5 (which is slightly above sea level). The ratings of panels based on the STC are measured in their output wattage. Amorphous silicon panels are the cheapest but least efficient with 4 to 6% efficiency. Under STC thats 40 to 60 watts per panel. Screen printed poly and mono crystaline panels are about 10 to 11% efficient and cost a bit more than amorphous panels. Laser grooved buried grid (LGBG) panels cost the most but have the highest efficiency of about 13% but in some cases as high as 15%.
While those efficiencies might not seem so bad recall the STC. Real world conditions are not nearly as pleasant. Typically due to dust and air pollution you're only seeing really 800 or so watts/square meter of sunshine unless you live in the mountains. Solar panels are also either dark blue or black so they retain a good deal of heat which affects their output voltage trmendously. Shadows and the angle of the Sun during the day are also going to cause output drops.
There's cases of using reflectors to increase the sunlight intensity on panels to increase their output. This causes you a lot of headaches however. Increased sunlight means a higher cell temperature which lowers your efficiency and output voltage. Adding active cooling just makes you entire system less efficient because power is being immediately used to cool the panels.
PV panels also require some nasty chemicals and most PV manufacturing plants are dirty monstrosities though many are getting better about the chemicals used. If you factor in all of the energy required to make a single solar panel though you're going to end up with a crappy cost/return ratio. Fossil fuels have good return ratios because biological and geological processes have been doing all the work of making the energy contained in the fossil fuels over millions of years. If you want to use the Sun to get power look into solar thermal rather than solar electric.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
My CAR makes more than that! And funnily enough, it's a Nissan Godzilla...
There's no such thing as "solar batteries" in English. That's a direct translation of the Japanese term "taiyou denchi." "Taiyou"= sun and you guesed it, "denchi" = battery. Too bad Japanese companies and other organizations within Japan have trouble accepting their lack of English skills and neglect to at least hire out the translation work to natives. If you have been to Japan or had much experience with made-for Japan products/media(web included) and such then you know what I mean.
Yes, there is a lot of energy coming from the sun that we can potentially harvest. The main problem is the terrible efficiency at which the current collection methods operate.
Imagine if we could build organic solar collectors that would sequester CO2 as a side-effect and only require dirt as a raw material. Retreiving the solar energy would release much of the CO2, but net-net, there would be reduced atmospheric CO2 at the end of the process (they might create more dirt as a by-product). A potential downside is that they might take twenty years to achieve maximum efficieny, but if the process is pipelined, we'd have a constant supply each year.
Oh, wait...
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
We already have come up with several good ways to dispose it; the first and foremost is: Dont. Use it again. Current fission fuel is used to about 1% when it's decomissioned for efficiency. It could easily be reprocessed, used in a breeder reactor and used again. Eventually you'll get 'spent' fuel but in far far lower amounts for the amount of energy gained. And we're not going to run out of nuclear fissile material any time soon, especially if we reuse the fuel. Even so, it's just a stopgap until fusion gets here.
The solar chimney project is interesting, and I've run across if before, but still, the thing is 5km wide, and 1km high. And again, you need 5 of them to replace a single fission reactor (if their 200MW output is 24/7/365, which I doubt, rather like an average of 50MW average, which would make it 20 of them to replace one plant assuming 100% efficient energy storage). We might as well build glass domes over most cities to capture waste energy. Again, it ends up being interesting, but not practical.
Clueless nuclear advocates talking about what if what if this happens . . . . and then this other thing happens . . . see and then it gets cheap forget about security costs. As long as there is material produced that can be used to produce weapons you've got to add security and all that what-if, wide eyed naive speculation shit goes out the window. Nuclear fission is a fucking retarded idea. Get over it.
Is it just me or does it look like this thing might fly off its little legs if a tornado hit ?
Hell - put a bend in the middle, wait for the next tornado, and you have the world's biggest boomerang !
Wonder how it would stand up to an earthquake ?
X
Read this and tell me that hypochlorous acid isn't a chemical.
Hmm. The description on the Sanyo web site sounds pretty close to swimming pool chlorine generators. They essentailly use electricity to genreate chlorine from good old NaCl.
I think using chlorine to purify the water is a good thing. That waterfall wouldn't be nearly as attractive if it was flowing with raw sewage.
Well... there's about 530,000 minutes in a year, thus, it produces 1 kWh/minute, or 60 kWh/h... which equals 60 kilowatts. So, it's not a small power plant -- it's a tiny power plant.
Little extra zeros tend to change the value of the number :-)
What in the fuck would make you think dog meat is cheap compared to ruminant flesh or pork? Give me a fucking break. Back off the keyboard for a second. Go take a walk outside. You're on time out for the rest of the eveing. Don't bother replying, just stop.
The main problem is the terrible efficiency at which the current collection methods operate.
My old '77 VW Rabbit was an incredibly efficient collector of solar energy. I'd walk away for 5 minutes, and it'd be boiling hot in there. Imagine if we had a Beowulf cluster of those....
On stereophonic equipment, the monaural sound obtained through multiple channels will enhance your listening pleasure.
The hypochlorous acid is generated using ions and electricity.
Burn all the oil up. It's just stored solar energy anyway. ;)
Pigs are domesticated animals created by humans. They've been bred for thousands of years to provide garbage disposal.
Probably, the primary reason that southeast asians eat dog and the west does not, is that southeast Asia did not receive domesticated ruminants, other than pigs, for a few thousand years after their domestication in the middle east. This left them dependent on other sources of protien. Dogs, therefore, *were* bred for food in SE Asia. Dogs are too high on the food chain to be very efficient food sources, but they are much easier to live with than pigs. Therefor, dogs were a reasonable food source given the options.
This is not a political statement. This is not legal advice. It's a frick'n Slasdot post. However: I'm Running For
Your math is right, but 530,000 kWh is still a lot of power. It's roughly enough to power 50 Average American homes for a year.
If superstition is dead, how is John Edwards so popular?
is competition good, or is duplication of effort bad?
lol
true, i never did say "positive" source of energy
I doubt any terrorist with half a brain would want to use spent fission reactor fuel for a dirty bomb. There are plenty of nasty radioactive isotopes out there used for all sorts of things including glow-in-the-dark clock faces, smoke detectors, food irriadiation, various medical uses, etc. Most of these would be far nastier if spread over a populated area than spent fuel rods, these materials are also generally far less controled than reactor waste is. The reason nuclear waste from reactors is such a PITA to deal with is the relatively long half-life of uranium, not because it is more radioactve than other isotopes.
Happy Fun Ball is for external use only.
In _real_ English it's called a _solar array_ because it's an array of solar cells.
Your batsu geemu is to eat a tube of wasabi.
Znork wrote:3 75403949/ qid%3D1023163567/ref%3Dsr%5F11%5F0%5F1/104-5872897 -4313528
We already have come up with several good ways to dispose it; the first and foremost is: Dont. Use it again.
Too expensive. Once-through is far cheaper and easier, even dealing with the waste. Break-even for reprocessing is $700/kg for raw uranium. Right now uranium is $30/kg:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0
it's just a stopgap until fusion gets here.
Again, too expensive. Fission is cheapest and safest.
Learn more and debate here:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Know_Nukes/
-nukebuddy
Jeremi wrote:
t opics.html
When they dig up the last of the uranium, what then?
There is more uranium in the ground than is proven. There is no financial incentive to prove it. Beyond that, there are currently 4.6 billion tons of uranium suspended in the oceans of the world. We have been extracting it since at least as far back as 1971. We can probably do it for $100/kg (vs. current uranium prices of $30/kg -- not much of a price difference to worry about since uranium cost is a tiny portion of total nuclear energy cost). We might be able to do it for $18/kg. (Again, no fanancial incentive to prove.) It is constantly being renewed BTW by the world's rivers washing more uranium into the oceans.
Nice page on seawater mining of uranium:
http://www.jaeri.go.jp/english/ff/ff43/
Learn more about and debate nukes here:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Know_Nukes/
-nukebuddy