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Google Goes Green
foobsr writes "Google today announced its RE<C project to make renewable energy cheaper than coal in the near future. The company, and its charitable arm google.org, plan to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in the initiative. Larry Page stated: 'With talented technologists, great partners and significant investments, we hope to rapidly push forward. Our goal is to produce one gigawatt of renewable energy capacity that is cheaper than coal. We are optimistic this can be done in years, not decades.'"
1.21 gigawatts? 1.21 gigawatts? Great Scott!
The solution to this problem must be out on the internet somewhere... if only I had a website I could use to try to find it...
Given how much money it costs to keep Google's kit running, it's in their interests to look for cheaper energy. It's an investment they hope will increase future profitability.
Has Bill Gates or Steve Jobs made any similar pledges?
Spent fuel -> breeder reactor -> fissionable fuel, and it's already cheaper than coal.
Oh wait, we don't like that kind of renewable resource...
It's going to be some sort of "matrix" where google plugs us all in and harvests renewable energy AND our personal info.
These are the kinds of initiatives that one can applaud when they're coming from a public company. Interestingly, this isn't just an idle PR stunt, or vain charity. While Google expects to invest "tens of millions" into pilot projects, they also are committing themselves to investing "hundreds of millions" into those projects that are likely to yield positive returns.
I have spent so long lamenting the short-sightedness of American business, that it's easy to overlook the fact that at least some companies are willing to stake their immediate earnings on potentially much greater gains in the future. It's therefore very nice to see Google at the forefront of energy innovation because, let's face it, as a geek, that's exactly where I'd be pouring a fair portion of my post-billionaire funds. That and space... but alas Brin hasn't decided to finance his own airospace company YET...
It's actually fossil fuel, except that instead of being dinosaur-fossil fuel (yeah, I know it's not actual dinos), it's fossil-star fuel. (And solar is different in that it harnesses energy that would be just dissipated away if we don't use it).
According to the article it's "REC", not "RCC"
If Google will own the rights to this means of energy production (or producing the equipment to do so, such as solar panels), it'd be a good time to buy Google stock. Owning something that makes energy cheaper than coal and doesn't pollute is something that will be required, not only by our country as we're strapped over the 100$ barrel of oil, but by China, who's growing middle class will desire a cleaner environment rather than simply more stuff.
Anyone who has a patent on this stuff... there's no place it can go but up, so long as cold fusion doesn't come out.
I am not an expert. If I am misled in something, please correct me.
The part I don't understand is how Google plans on tracking how consumers utilize this electricity, so they can in turn display targeted advertising through AdSense and Gmail. Surely I'm missing something.
Dan East
Better known as 318230.
At first I thought it was part of some charitable work. and maybe it is. But, the press release was issued by Google Inc.
When does it end?
I don't care if they own their own 767. You can't just hire a few people and get into all these different markets (e.g. cell phones).
1.21 JIGOWATTS!!!
There are plenty of players in the solar and wind space. OTH, if they pursue geo-thermal energy, USA could have 200-400 GW of energy within a short time (1-2 decades).
In addition, it would be good if could push geo-thermal heating/cooling of business/residential. Right now, HVAC accounts for more than 50% of a places utility bill (and back east, it can account for 75%). In fact, the recent action of placing a data center in a coal mine is the right idea.
By spending just a bit of money on these 2 items, they could make a bigger impact on energy than Kyoto (or Australia/Americas action) has in 6 years.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
It's just a matter of time until the cost of coal rises to a higher level than the cost of renewables, google could just sit back and watch if they wanted to and their goal would still be met.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
I would've thought it was easy to produce one gigawatt of renewable power cheaper than coal. Just subsidise, subsidise, subsidise, and sell on the equipment when you're done. Easy. Okay, maybe it doesn't scale too well...
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
REC is what it's called. Not RCC. Come on, even I'm noticing an unusually high number of editing mistakes in the /. summaries lately. Usually I just don't care- but let's strive for accuracy shall we? If /. isn't anal about this kind of thing... who else would be?
"Clean" coal is still extremly dirty, EVEN if you ignore the carbon issue. For instance, Clinton had passed a law that was going to force ALL of America's coal plants to cut way back on mercury emissoins. W. killed that almost right away when he took over. The reason is that it was estimated to jump electric prices up by 25%. Bear in mind that Clinton's clean up would not have stopped the mercury, just cut it in half. Right now, even in America, we do not do a good job of cleaning up our emissions, BECAUSE of the costs. And countries like China simply skip it all togehter, even though they have billions in the bank and are giving it to other countries to obtain their resources.
Best thing that America can do is get off coal (and natural gas is not the way to go, but better than coal). Nukes would help.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Lost my angle bracket. Let's try html.... RE<C
What happened to Dr Bussard's Polywell?
Should Google Go Nuclear?
Dr Bussard's Google Tech Talk on the subject.
I seem to recall Dr Bussard reckoned $200m would put the matter to bed as to whether this form of nuclear fusion reactor would work. That's a tiny fraction of the ITER budget.
Wind might always blow at very high altitudes - but solar works only during the day. So, you either have storage, you ramp coal power plants up and down from day to night, or black out the customers
Name their companies. Even then, does it matter? Most of this Google press release is simple headline grabbing. Where are the dollar figures of what is going where? Are they working alongside other large companies trying to do the same or cherry picking companies they can snap up later for their investment?
Frankly Gates doesn't have to do anything in the renewable energy market, what he is doing through his foundation is saving more lives than can be counted, not exploiting current pc trends towards "everything global warming", doing proven work that benefits people today. Hell, his foundation is more important than Microsoft in my book. Trade some "evil" here for worlds of good elsewhere.
As for Apple, they list many iniatives. Why do they have to be energy related to qualify for points? They do a lot in the recycling arena. They make a big thing out of ensuring their equipment is recyclable and is moving to using non-dangerous/polluting means of making it.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Is jokes and a little bashing on Google. Well, I say good for Google. Finally a major company is taking serious interest in dealing with the addiction that the human race has for fossil fuel energy. With all the money people in the Google regime have I think it is great. If more companies took a stand we might get off our addiction or at least lessen it a bit.
I hope they can do it.
Best of all, it is a private company doing it. Not backed by government, maybe they will lead they way. Just as how true capitalism should work.
i cant seem to come up with a sig.
Gigawatts measure power, not energy. Power = energy / time. When you sell the equipment, power = 0 W.
The solar cells will reflect light and write "www.sanmarcos.island.com" on the clouds.
If a slashhack can think of these, imagine what ubergooglegeek can think of!!!
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
It's thought-inflation: people from Google mentioning millions sort of wears out on me, by now. I mean, if someone /else/ were to say: we're going to invest hundreds of millions in renewable energy, I would think: wow ! That kind of money can buy you a lot of research and development. But when Google says it, I think: yeah yeah, that's just going to cover the cost of coffee machine. Does anyone else experience this ?
Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.
Google will probably see a return in the long run. I'm guessing that, next to HR, electricity is probably their second largest expense. Cheaper electricity == cheaper cost of operations. It's good for everybody, except companies that run coal power plants.
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
Gate's foundation is an attempt to make ppl like him. It was thought up by his wife ( a marketer ) . How much good does it do? meh. Yes, it spends money on such things as aids research. A little here, and a little there. It is designed to impact the largest market.
But Gates has billions at his disposal. If he wanted to make a bigger impact on the world, he would do things that are beyond other VCs (and even most gov). In particular, he could push massive reaseach/development on Alternative energy. Or how about a high speed maglev (say from NY to Milwaukee, with stops along the way). How about putting together a space company, or even an ocean company?
I am sure that you think that this is silly, but by creating a number of companies like that, he employs a number of ppl who then spend their money. In addition, he could have each of these companies be required to give up a percentage to charity (imagine if a companies like MS gave 1% to charity, which it does not).
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Not even enough to do some time travel! Any idiot know that the flux capacitor requires 1.21 gigawatts!
I demand my Mr. Fusion!
Google invested heavily in a company called NanoSolar back on 2002. Since then, Google, along with some of the top investors, have given Nanosolar millions and millions of dollars to produce printable roll-out solar cells that uses a conductive foil instead of silicon, making the cells much cheaper and easier to make. For information on Nanosolar's history, you can go here.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
What is the problem? Hydro power is already cheaper than coal. It is renewable. It can be produced at any time of day. It is relatively easy to store with no loss over time. You can even use solar power during the day to pump water to a higher dam and produce power during the night. Much more efficient than storing power in a battery. Entire countries are powered by hydro power alone, and there is pleny more availiable.
Hydro power share one problem with solar. It is not easily availiable everywhere at all times of the year, and electrical power is not as easy to transport in over long distances as many believe.
No disrespect to Google, and I'm glad they're making the investment, but they (and a lot of the commenters here) seem to think all it requires is waving their Magic Googlewand(beta) and we'll have energy cheaper than coal(!! Coal is pretty freaking cheap).
If it were easy, it'd have been done already. For Google to claim that they think it can be done in "years, not decades" sounds like a good bit of hubris. If they don't have something already on the horizon, then we're stepping in the range of arrogant stupidity.
All the credit to Google for stepping up to the plate and trying to get something done, but the way the whole thing is worded, there's this undercurrent of assumption that nobody has tried to make these things work before. All inventors think about cheap energy! It's like Google slapped their head one day and said, "Good God! Why didn't anyone think of creating alternate energy cheaper than coal before?? We're geniuses!!"
I hope something comes of it, but I'm not holding my breath.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
there is often plenty of electrical power gen, albeit some of it quite polluting but a lot that is not like hydro, but there is almost always a lack of transmission lines, think lack of modern tech and tons of lawyers/nimbys. investing in alt power gen is great but their needs to be lines to deliver it. also, not only are there a lack of lines a lot of power is lost in transmission. also, lack of transmission lines is the largest current contributing factor to the rise in electrical rates since the decision who gets to deliver power is decided in an auction that makes ebay look like kids stuff. this is no cakewalk. i wish googlers well.
A hand up and a foot on every chest...
I work for a major public power company and have worked on some renewables projects in departments concerned with supplying retail load (e.g. you, your aunt, Google, etc.) What so much of this debate forgets -- either deliberatley or inadvertently -- is that electricity can't be stored in any useful quantity. It's unique among commodities.
Thus it follows that the main problem with 99% of renewable energy is that it is not dispatchable. When you're working for the power company and suddenly load spikes, you need to be able to call on a resource immediately. We have dozens of internal procedures (and a load of regulation) that dictate how much "ready to go" energy we must have available at any point.
As a utility I can't count of a solar plant to be there as a reserve -- even in the Southwestern U.S. -- nor wind. (Geothermal is a notable exception -- it's as reliable as coal or nuke -- but is only available in specific locations.) Sure, if I could store the energy produced by a wind farm until I needed it, great, but that's not a possibility.
I doubt that Google (or any business) will be willing to accept the operating risk of not having some form of dispatchable energy ready at hand. So they've got two choices:
Utilities, for the most part, regard renewable energy projects as really expensive press release opportunities. Utilities are required to be reliable and, for the most part, are run by men and women who take pride in the fact that when you, Joe Customer, turn on your kid's night light, it comes on. Until someone figures out how to store energy from a wind or solar farm, the energy driving that night light is going to be baseloaded on either fossil or nuclear fuel.
http://www.celsias.com/2007/11/23/nanosolars-breakthrough-technology-solar-now-cheaper-than-coal/
Plastic solar panels, for thirty cents a watt of panels (so an 80w panel would cost, say, $24 to manufacture), giving a probable cost per killowatt hour of around 1 cent.
You know? **CHEAP**
I think this is done.
Hexayurt - open source refugee shelter,
Notice that Google has been arranging talks on Nuclear Fusion, so is not averse to atomic alternatives.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1518007279479871760&q=nuclear+%22Google+Tech+Talks%22+duration%3Along&hl=en-GB
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1590607761573235413
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
Sounds like a marketing ploy to me... If they are serious about energy they could simply switch off google for a week or two - people would lose interest in the internet and go outside and plant a few trees.
The only thing thats underated here is the wattage!
You know, from the moon or the asteroids? It's 'zero-sum' NOW, but that may change in the future.
Blar.
OK - fine. How many parts per million of uranium is there in sea water, eh? Now, take the number of parts of Uranium you will need to run a reactor. Multiple those two numbers, and you will get the volume of water you will need to boil off to get the uranium you need for ONE reactor. Now, take that number and multiply it by the thousands and you will see that the the "Uranium from the Ocean" meme is just a load of impractical bullshit that just makes the pronuclear side come off like a bunch of stupid moonbats. You'd have to process the volume of water the Rhine dumps in a year to get the Uranium for one reactor. Where will all that water vapour go? In the air? And the left over salts? Hmmm? Billions of tons of sea salts, some of it rather toxic? And the results of dumping that much water vapour in the air? Think about that much?
I DO agree that nuclear power should be (actually MUST be) pursued and with great alacrity and precision. I would love to see a plethora of IFR reactors spread all over the place, if we could figure out a way to make thousands of gallons of liquid sodium safe... But please Please PLEASE quit with the "Uranium from Salt Water" crap. It's REALLY embarrassing. With the depletion of petroleum on the imminent horzon, industrial civilisation is going to have a hard enough time survivng the 21st century. We need concrete solutions NOW. I agree that breeders can help, especially in areas that are cold or don't get much sun (like Canada and Russia and the soon to be livable Antarctic) but they will be part and ONLY a part of a more conprehensive energy solution that includes Wind, Solar PV, Thermal Solar, Tides, geothermal, and Hydro.
All of those need to be built up and built up NOW. For the $500B the USA has pissed away in Iraq (and for the $2T it will likely spend there) the USA could have solarised and insulated huge swathes of its urban infrastructure. Instead, they went to go steal oil to drive their Escalades back and forth between their McMansions, WalMart, Work, Church, and School. Brilliant move, tards. Iraq has 112B bbls of oil. If it follows standard extraction trends, and given the competition for it, (i.e., a big chunk of it will go to Europe, Japan, and China) the USA will be LUCKY to get 25% of that oil shipped to the USA. Divide that into the $2T they'll likely spend ruining Iraq, and you're looking at about $97 a barrel surcharge to the American economy for every fucking barrel of Iraqi crude. Good move, Ace.
For the $500B the USA pissed away and the $2T it is likely to piss away, the USA could have funded the plans to build turnkey breeder reactors that run on fucking THORIUM which is an order of magnitude more common than Uranium. But, no. God ferbid the USA ever spend money where it's really needed. If you take $2T and divide it up to every man woman and child in the USA, you get about $6700. A family of 4 would come out to about $26,800 which would be enough to put a pile of PV on the roof of their house in a grid tie to power themselves and much of society with solar power. But, no - it's more important to spend it on destroying Iraq so we can drive our SUVs, and leave the incandescent lights on, and eat salads i nFebruary that were grown in Mexico or Bolivia, and wear clothing made by slave labour in China, and live in houses made out of chipboard, and fly off to winter vacations in ecological nightmares like Las Vegas.
So, yes, we need breeder reactors, desperately. We don't need Las Vegas. We don't need Phoenix. We don't need LA or Bakersfield. And we don't need to hold on to that embarrassing meme about Uranium in sea water.
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
The US and other major world economies already went thru this "Peak Oil" crisis, although they didn't use that specific term at the time. Nevertheless, there were no shortage of educated economists predicting absolute DOOM for civilization. Economies would crumble. Our way of life would regress. Nothing short of disaster.
Of course, as has often been a trait of humanity, we rose to the occasion and, true to form, Peak Whale Oil was not the disaster so many thought it would be. Why? The biggest reason, of course, was the ingenuity of American business to not just lie down and die, but to innovate. They found that the black liquid bubbling up from the ground could be tapped as a brand new energy source, and they built out the huge infrastructure that was needed to make it happen.
The same thing will happen again. Nobody is going to just lie down as our world falls apart. If for no other reason than there's a (huge) buck to be made in preventing that.
Don't under estimate the powers of greed and self-preservation.
Cringely (I know, I know) had a lot to say about these guys and Google's $10M investment in them a few weeks ago.
It's all about high-altitude kites!
Pete Lynn works for Makani, and had a series of posts to Google Groups in 2003 that explained the concept. There's also an old web page of his that's only available on the Internet Archive.
That's the interesting part about Google's initiative -- they're looking to solve this problem on the (relative) cheap, in years and with millions instead of decades and billions.
it can be made even cheaper. We have LOADS of dried up oil wells all over America as well as the world. Many of them are deep. We can simply un-cap them, and re-use them. Two items that should be worked on is lowering the costs of deep drilling, as well as being able to take advantage of smaller heat difference. In Alaska, they have a system that operates with a max temp of 160-170F(~70-80C). Colorado school of mines has a nice laser drill designed just for rock drilling that could be made more efficient (it does a nice job of sealing the well).
The real issue is like anything else in business; you need to either charge top dollar for quantity 1 or get into mass production and lower the price. This is VERY doable.
Actually, I was not suggesting passive heating/cooling, but using heat pumps where the condensor is buried in the ground (roughly 55F/~10C rather than exposed to air which is always in the wrong direction (when you want to heat, it is much colder; when you want to cool, it is hot outside).
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I wonder if a world wide power grid would ever work with solar power. Its always sunny somewhere right? The question then becomes: is there enough surface area, even assuming very efficient solar panel arrays to power the whole world one part of the globe at a time?
My 0.02
There is more coal in the US then there is in all of China.
IT's going to take a lot to make something cheaper then that.
While I applaud their efforts, maybe a focus on exposing coal plants that don't meat current clean air standaards and exposing the politician that give the coal plants exemptions?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
The IFR was started by poppa bush. It was within 3 years of completion. Sadly, Clinton killed it (did not want to, but it was part of a deal with congressmen, in particular kerry; IMHO, this was the single biggest mistake that clinton made; far worse than lying). The nice thing about the IFR is that it is 100% based on past and current tech. There was nothing new to RD, except to integegrate these. The idea is that you load the ractors and then when fuel is used up, a set of robots bring out the fuel, seperate it, add new fuel while re-process the old fuel right on site. Since it is a fast/breeder reactor, it does create plutonium. But NOBODY would have the capability to get close to it. After about a 100 years, the reactor is shut down permanently, and a VERY small amount of trans-uranic waste is left over that decays within 150 years. THis is the best paper to read
ITER is a TEST. Purely a TEST. It is HOPED that it will generate excess energy, but we do not know. The chances are that it will. But even then, it will be 2050 before it is really known. Then it will take another decade or two to get prototypes going, etc. etc. IOW, the earliest that you will see plants on-line is about 2060-2070. That is far too far away (though it is good that we do it; need to know).
We can still start up the IFR, but W. says that he is interested in doing it, but appears to be doing nothing. I am guessing that this will happen in the same way that our energy research was funded (W spoke about America's research via SERI, though he had just cut 10% of their budget).
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
TFA explains how they're gonna do it. And it doesn't mention Nanosolar. eSolar and Makani.
not even close!
No. Cheap solar hasn't been done until I can actually go out and buy this stuff for 30c/watt. Until then it's just a press release. I hope it's true, but I'm not holding my breath. I keep hearing about solar-power-tech-du-jour that never actually reaches production.
Incidentally, this company whose press release you linked is owned at least in part by Google...
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
I'm sure this can be done in years. It's just that no one ( at least no one with a whole bunch of money and incentive) really wanted it until now. power companies have no reason, they get to charge money regardless of where the power comes from so non-renewable works just as well for them, they might as well let others invest in the R&D. Google will at very least save a good deal of money on this project and at best they will make a good deal of money from it. Good for them.
Dog is my co-pilot.
Synergize!
TFA is just another update on Google's long-running green initiatives. Google's REC initiative started before TFA companies were even contacted by Google. Part of my money and stock is on this, so I'm kept well up-to date. Nanosolar still remains the best option for Google - in fact, most of their Googleplex is solar-powered (there's a huge solar array on the West? side of the building.)
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
In AMerica, 3/4 of our goods are processed between NYC to Milwaukee, in those areas in between. In particular, Chicago, Flint, Detroit, Buffalo, etc. In fact, there is more transportation of ppl and goods in this region, than is between SD to SF.
BTW, The great lakes is the best cheap way to send goods, but during the winter, it can be blocked. In addition, it is slow. There is also trains, but they are slow (averaging about 40 mph if you do not consider any stops). Trains carry a lot of goods (not as heavy as ships, but a lot). Planes are used all over, but expensive and very polluting. And it can not carry heavy. Finally, more trucks go in this region than the entire rest of the USA (but that is changing as more and more manufacturing ships out of country or to the south). These are slow, but good for point to point.
So, where does the maglev come in? It would replace the majority of the trucks (can carry the same load) due to speed and costs. It would take away a lot of the airlines cargo (due to costs). It would take away SOME of the train's cargo (due to speed and costs; things like coal and chemical would be out). And probably little of the ship's. IOW, this is the one line in the USA that could make money almost from the git-go.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Reconfigure all copper power and communications cabling to be north-south, effectively turning the earth in to the core for the winding of a huge electrical motor/generator. The movement of the cable through the earth's magnetic field, usable electric potential will result.
Free energy! Hurrah! (The question is this viable? I have not actually calculated it out, and would there be any environmental effects?)
Finally someone with money decides to make a real difference in the world. In my opinion Google is one of the greatest companies. I'll support them to the end.
Does this mean Larry and Sergei will be getting rid of their personal Boeing 757, Boeing 767 and helicopter?
Or is the commitment to green living only PR deep?
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
fyi, nobody is investing in new oil refineries, because noone in their right mind would invest $$$ when they won't get a return on capitol. The market has spoken - the market says there isn't money to be made from more refineries. That's probably because you'd have to run it for 10 years to break-even, and in 10 years time, our refining capacity may outstrip supply. Either that, or there's a massive organised world-wide conspiricy, to keep gold cookies out away from intelligent negative people.
Long story short, there is actually zero factual information to suggest we are anywhere near peak
Ignore the factual information. There's *lots* of oil. Jedi waves hand.
If the oil companies are conspiring to do anything, it's that they want to sell you *more* oil and *now*. That's because it's good for their bottom line. So go to the gas station and fill up, dump in the river and fill up again! Don't worry about future scarcity! We want your money NOW! and if we make money it's good for the economy, so it _must_ be good for you too!
There's an apt saying: "Never ascribe to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity". As I see it, the oil companies aren't capable of the type of conspiricy you suggest. It's too easy to shine light on their FUD. For example, the chamber of echos that exxon has created to suggest that there's *lots* of scientists who don't believe in the human impact on climate change. Some are fooled, anyone who cares to look it not.
And on the bright side - if you're right - and the oil companies are delibertly trying *not* to sell more oil (falls down laughing), then they're doing humanity a service on so many different levels:
Energy prices have been too low for too long. If an energy crunch happens, it will mean severe economic adjustment (and hardship) that could have been mitigated by a more frugle policy to energy usage. Such policies could help the economy slowly make the necessary structural changes. Such policies fly can only exist when the future becomes more important than satisfying immediate wants. I'm not holding my breath - too many people with a sense of entitlement - that they should have what they want, and have it now. Humanities current flirtation with greed has nothing to do with malice, and everything to do with stupidty.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
I'm glad that Google is investing in solar panels built with nanotechnology because eventually, we can produce 20-30 kW solar panel installations that will cost US$3,000, not the US$30,000 that conventional silicon-based solar panels cost. At US$3,000, that makes it possible for every home in the neighborhood to have a solar panel.
Look, if you are boiling the water to obtain it then you are a fool. You statement is akin to saying that a man who has his car being pulled by horses is an idiot. Assuming that the man does not have a broekn car, then Yes, he is, but you statement is even worse. It would not be done in that fashion.
Fortunately, the vast majority of ppl in the nuke business are not idiots. Uranium is easy to filter from sea water. In fact, some others in the posts showed how incorrect you are. Would I suggest doing this? No. But if we burned up all the easy to access uranium AND thorium AND we have not started fusion, then separating uranium from sea water is there. And yes, there is a LOT of uranium.
IOW, the anti-nukers who come up with ridiculous statements (we will run out of all uranium in the next 30 years, etc) are in the same category as yours.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
"Google today announced its RC<C project to make renewable energy cheaper than coal
I was trying to figure out what the C stood for in RC and couldn't, so I clicked the attached story and sure enough, the project is actually called RE<C...
http://ed.markovich.googlepages.com
Of course there is.
There is enough surface area in just the world's deserts to power everything on Earth, even considering very inefficient solar collectors.
The problem is that there are not enough collectors, that can be made cheaply and quickly enough, to compete with fossil fuels... yet.
The message we will be getting soon from everywhere associated with "renewable" and "sustainable" energy is really simple. If you can't make do with less, we will help you to do so. If you currently use more electricity (or any other energy source) than can be reasonably supplied, you are just going to have to make do with less.
Make Do With Less.
What would happen if your local cable provider was powered exclusively by wind power? Somewhere between 30% and 50% of the time the service would be unavailable. That isn't a problem if you look at it from the correct perspective, that of being a responsible consumer of energy rather than a piggish American entitled to everything.
You are going to be seeing more and more news and commentary slanted this way. We are clearly going to take the world's largest economy and highest standard of living and run it into the ground. We will come out the other end with children that understand the meaning of being a responsible global citizen and preserving the planet's natural resources. Of course, those resources will be being preserved for the new owners, the Chinese and Indians.
Solar provides the most energy when it's sunniest. People use the most energy when it's sunniest. Synergy.
Nobody has ever argued that solar is the panacea and will solve all our energy problems and serve you breakfast in bed. It is one component of a mix of renewable energies that will be the solution. Solar, wind, hydro, wave, bio, fission, fusion some day...
But yes, a Manhattan-project for energy storage probably would be a good idea, as it would advance electric cars and help everyone with their little gadgets, too, and make someone very, very, very rich.
Have you heard it burn rubber when the stoplight goes green? Electric motors like the Prius uses are amazing at producing off-the-line torque. Combine that with its low weight, and you find that the Prius actually out-accelerates most cars on the road.
As an environmental move, whether hybrid drivetrains represent a net win is a little ambiguous (until we get plug-in hybrids). But for performance, they have a lot of pretty exciting advantages.
I was on a University team which built a hybrid formula-style racecar. That thing blew the pants off of Ferraris. In fact, it was originally entered for the general Formula SAE event, which then outlawed hybrids as having an unfair advantage. (So we started another competition just for hybrid vehicles.)
Want to see what electric motors can do? Check out the Tesla Roadster. And it only uses an AC induction motor (hence "Tesla")!!
(The fact that it "only" uses an induction motor is important because induction motors, though cheap and durable, are not even the money-no-object "best" option: That would be a permanent magnet synchronous DC motor.)
The downside to electric drivetrains is that they have more components, and electric motors are heavy, so their more impressive torque needs to make up for the increased weight. But the fact is that, currently, hybrids do exactly that, and, as motors get lighter, the advantages will only get more and more pronounced.
Have you heard the quiet, confident, high-tech sound of a really powerful electric motor spooling up? It's truly a beautiful sound.
The loss of a handful of coal miners in Utah is nothing -- NOTHING -- compared to what the media doesn't tell you.
In 2004, the worldwide death toll among coal miners was a whopping 21,500!! (Most of the accidents happened in China.) That's as many deaths, every single year, as seven World Trade Centers stacked atop each other.
Contrast the coal industry with the nuclear power industry; in its entire history, there's been only one incident with fatalities. (Chernobyl, a reactor that was orders of magnitude less safe than modern designs, killed 31 people. Divide that by the 50-year existence of the nuke power industry, and you get an annual death toll of 0.62 persons.)
If all coal-fired power plants were converted to nuclear, we'd immediately surpass the goals of the Kyoto Protocol. Environmentalists spend a lot more time criticizing nuclear power than coal; the facts show they are barking up the wrong tree. Even when they criticize coal, they do so for the wrong reasons - like acid rain, which pales in comparison to the massive death toll among miners.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
It was humans "combined with a form of fusion"... duh. Why a "form of fusion" wouldn't be the most efficient approach to start with is not clear...
In discussions with friends, however, we have established a subsidiary flaw. Even if we accept the ridiculous notion of "bioelectricity", why use humans? If humans produce X watts, then presumably a blue whale produces X*2000 watts or so, and lasts just as long. So to be faithful to its own premise, the Matrix should have featured rows and rows of whales in gigantic tanks.
I hypothesise the following battery sizes and uses:
* ant - tiny battery for powering calculator watches and similar
* mouse - several mice can power a gameboy advance, machine edition (TM)
* tortoise - excellent for super long lasting, low voltage applications
* human - general purpose "coppertop" C-size battery, rumoured to explode unexpectedly
* elephant - useful size for running starter motors in cars
* blue whale - sufficient to run a Toyota Prius for 2 hours or 200km between krill doses
Also, if it was vaguely realistic the Matrix: Revolutions would have featured criticism of Steve Jobsbot for creating the iPod Robo with a non-replaceable squirrel power source. Once your squirrel dies, it just rots inside your iPod unless you send it back to Apple or use a dubious third party possum as a substitute.
Read Pynchon.
... or denial, particularly denial of the laws of physics.
All these flat-Earth economists who think that we can solve the problem if we just throw enough money at it really annoy me. Put simply, there are physical problems that no amount of investment or innovation will ever solve. The purported hydrogen economy is a classic example: since hydrogen is not an energy source - and, due to the laws of thermodynamics, never will be - it's really a non-starter.
Eventually, we reach limits to all of these things. Think the Earth can support an infinite number of people? Well, we'd need infinite amounts of arable land and fresh water, and we don't have them; and, to spoil the surprise at the end, we'll never innovate our way to them, either. The final solution to this would be a massive decline in the number of human beings on Earth, and the people with the money and the power are happy enough to price themselves into that market at the expense of everyone else.
If you want a better idea of the limits to our ingenuity in the face of limits to our environment and resources, watch this short film, "Are Humans Smarter Than Yeast?".
Attack its weak point for massive damage!
http://www.solarbuzz.com/index.asp
It went up significantly a few years ago and is now flat. It will probably drift downward in the future, but not nearly as much as one would hope.
My company (a medium-to-large sized chemical company) is also spending hundreds of millions in capital in order to further enter the renewables market. We aren't the only ones. Some bigger companies are investing billions. And compared to Google, these companies already know what they are doing and aren't dabbling on the sides.
Slashdot has always been too pro-Google and pro-Apple.
"Renewable" means "The cost doesn't go up until after I'm dead."
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
I'm not normally for Nuclear, but this looks promising.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1518007279479871760&q=Google+tech+talks+lerner&pr=goog-sl
Define destruction: This land is fire succession: In the normal cycle of events it burns to the ground every 30 to 50 years. Part of the cycle. Tarsand mining is more disruptive, because it messes up the drainage patterns some. But the companies have to put it back more or less as they found it, and they are limited in what chemicals they can leave behind.
If you have ever spent any time walking the ground in that part of Alberta it is tedius country. Once you are even a couple hundred meters away from the Athatbasca River it is so flat you can see only 50 meters or so. Much of it is either spagnum peat bog interspersed with black spruce or tamarack, or its sandy soil covered with caribou moss and lodgepole pine all in various stages of recovery from the most recent fire.
Given that Canada has tens of thousands of square miles of terrain that is indistinguishable from this, and another million or so that is very similar, sacrificing a few tens or even hundreds of square miles on a temporary basis is not an unreasonable price to pay.
For the companies do have to reclaim it. Is the reclamation perfect? No. It doesn't have the same degree of randomness as the orginal landscape. Overall it takes about 20 years.
I've also seen the waste heaps at Uranium City. El Dorado Nuclear shut down decades ago. There was a war. They needed uranium now. It was an era when we cared even less about polution. Beaverlodge lake had acid leaching into it for years from the refuse heaps of the concentrator plant. When I saw it the first time, twenty years after the plant closed, in 1975 the lake was sterile. No fish. No algae. Could see the bottom 30 feet down through clear blue water. I saw it again 20 years later. The lake now had trees growing on the margin. Grasses and reeds were colonizing some of the shallow bays.
Uranium City is on the Crackingstone Peninsula on the north shore of Lake Athabasca. It's Canadian Shield -- granite. The land has almost no carbonates in its soil so acidic waters take a very long time to neutralize. Yes despite all this, the land is recovering. Not fast, but steadily, without help.
The last mine at UC closed shortly after my first visit. Within weeks UC was a ghost town. Now about 50 people live in a town that once housed 5,000. Some of the houses were put on barges and taken to other settlements on Lake Athabasca. The rest? Some are burned -- victims of school kids pranks during the last months. Many have collapsed from the snow loads. Most of the windows are broken. A few have trees growing in the foundations. It was a sad experience as I walked through this place. I looked at the empty places, and wondered who had been there? What were their dreams? UC is now a graveyard of dreams.
The tar sands are on the edge of the shield. Mostly sandstone and glacial till. Fair amount of buffering compounds to keep the soil pH from getting too out of whack. This is land that left on it's own would heal. But the companies give it a shove along that direction.
Query: Was the land a wasteland all the way from the processing plant to the cutting edge where the equipment was? I bet not. Yet much of that land has been mined and reclaimed.
Is it zero impact? In the short scale no. In a thousand years you'll have a hard time telling it happened.
I spend several weeks each summer traveling the wild country on and near the Canadian Shield. I love that country. But I don't begrudge the islands of temporary ugliness that allow our society the raw materials that we need. Canada is not short of wilderness.
One of the things that I've come to appreciate from my trips is that with all of their foibles and faults, people are precious. After three weeks of seeing no one but other members of our group, no sign that anyone had ever been here before, no contrails across the sky of jets taking people to distant lands the discovery of a fifty year old tobacco tin where a game trail between to lakes meets the shore, is a source of wonder.
Third Career: Tree Farmer Second Career: Computer Geek First Career: Teacher, Outdoor Instructor, Photographer.