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Tesla Turns Power Back On At Children's Hospital In Puerto Rico (npr.org)
Elon Musk took to Instagram yesterday to announce the "first of many solar+battery Tesla projects going live in Puerto Rico." Tesla has used its solar panels and batteries to restore reliable electricity at San Juan's Hospital del Nino (Children's Hospital) after the country was devastated by two powerful hurricanes in September. NPR reports: Musk's company announced its success in getting the hospital's power working again less than three weeks after Puerto Rico Gov. Ricardo Rossello tweeted on Oct. 6, "Great initial conversation with @elonmusk tonight. Teams are now talking; exploring opportunities." Tesla's image of the project's solar array, in a parking lot next to the hospital, has been liked more than 84,000 times since it was posted to Instagram Tuesday. The hospital's new system allows it to generate all the energy it needs, according to El Nuevo Dia. The facility has 35 permanent residents with chronic conditions; it also offers services to some 3,000 young patients, the newspaper says. As for who is paying for the power system, the head of the hospital tells Nuevo Dia that for now, it's a donation -- and that after the energy crisis is over, a deal could make it permanent. Both Rossello and the tech company tweeted about the project this week, with Tesla saying in a post, "Grateful to support the recovery of Puerto Rico with @ricardorossello" -- and Rossello stating, "A major contribution of @Tesla to the Hospital del Nino."
This whole mess is all Obama's fault
You can't buy that kind of goodwill/marketing.
Well, if you had to prioritize wouldn't that hospital make it near the top of your list?
#DeleteFacebook
Of course it was done for PR-reasons, but still, it helped a large group of real people in real trouble, so it's hard to be terribly salty about it. I'd rather more companies used their marketing-budgets on stuff that actually benefits the common folk.
Chosen, seriously chosen. You people are so gullible buying into any bullshit. Why the big strangle on Puerto Rico, to drive the population out, to force them to sell on the cheap, so developers can buy it up on cents on the dollar, demolish the homes, redevelop everything to sell for maximum profits. You want to know why others countries do not, absolutely do no want to join the US, who the fuck wants to become another Puerto Rico. Bankrupted on purpose by the US Congress and Senate and then blamed for the bankruptcy and now being driven out of their homes to favour corporate developers. What a piece of shit the US government has become, actively preying on it's citizens to feed the greed of it's corporations all in full public view, don't even pretend to hide it, just smear a layer of bullshit propaganda over it and pretend it isn't there (yeah I know it Russia's fault, they were the ones who mishandled Puerto Rico's finances, there's proof it just can't be released for national security reasons).
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
You're right, you can't. You have to actually go out and help people. What a concept!
Only crack the nuts that crack. You don't put the ones that don't crack in the sack.
Right after giving a giant tax cut to the rich and destroying net neutrality... which of course comes after a few dozen rounds of golf, and then being reminded that Puerto Rico is part of the US.
But after all that, we'll get right on it.
Only crack the nuts that crack. You don't put the ones that don't crack in the sack.
A children's hospital with 35 permanent residents?
Clearly, a site chosen at random for power restoration...
I see that you haven't proposed what would have been a *better* installation, just a comparison to a big nebulous "he could have done better". Where is your analysis? What alternatives were there, and why was his choice sub-optimal?
Can't we just say "bravo" or at least "congratulations" or something?
Elon didn't do it the way *you* would have liked, but note that he actually did something.
Why the fuck would they waste their resources? Get the support to the people who will create JOBS! Not lazy dying losers!
What kind of power do they use? 110v AC? Now would be a great time to convert to something more energy efficient. I'm sure the Tesla PowerWalls take solar, store the power in a battery, then convert it to 110AC so it can just be converted back to 5V/12V DC in the power supplies of all the equipment that needs power.
Each set would consist of batteries and the accompanying solar array to charge them, packaged so it could be deployed as a first response to disasters like this.The ability to get early power to critical facilities would be really valuable. The array shown here looks as though it could fit into a standard 2 TEU, to be shipped or trucked anywhere.
Gibber away all you want about your favorite Elon Musk conspiracy theory. The rest of us have long since stopped listening to you.
35 is a large group?
As nice as this effort was, it could have been done for less than a tenth of the price with one portable trailer generator that can be found on any construction site.
Then the rest of the money could have been allocated to giving far more people electrical power in an emergency situation.
Tesla just fired a few hundred employees before they donated the equipment. Maybe so they could AFFORD the donation.
Restoring power to a small children's hospital reeks of, gasp, handing out candles during the hurricane.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
Why would they choose a site at random when restoring power? That would be dumb. Always restore power and access to essential services first.
Musk has done in weeks what the federal government was incapable of doing by any means.
This may have something to do with the idiot in charge.
It's also the first real nail in the fossil fuel industry's coffin. For remote sites, solar generation, with batteries, is cheaper that any other source.
It may not be long before you can remove the remote from that statement.
Clean water is definitely a problem, but getting power for locations definitely helps, and as more gets power it will be easier to provide clean water or to boil not so clean water.
That is 35 children with illnesses so severe they cannot LEAVE the hospital, or you know, they'll DIE. Of course you neglect to mention that the hospital also provides services to children who aren't living there, you know, for acute illnesses.
Uhh? Why the fuck would they choose a "random" location? Are you saying they should have used it to power some random subdivision instead? Emergency services have always been the priority for power restoration.
I'm not really sure what you're even trying to get at here?
Do you ignore the "And serves 3000" part?
Heir Orange Turd is really striking out. I guess those damn Ricans are just not Merican enough for him.
To all the ass hats that voted for him I hope you SUFFER.
Serves 3000+ people during the day.
Next...
A hospital that provides services to over 3000 children throughout the island. In addition to the 30 kids that are chronically ill and cannot leave.
Seriously what the fuck is wrong with you?
Serves 3000+ people during the day.
Next...
No, it 'offers services' to 3000. Meaning there are that many potential people that might use the hospital if they needed it. It is no indication of how many are actually served in any given time period.
A children's hospital with 35 permanent residents?
Clearly, a site chosen at random for power restoration...
Meanwhile, in the same period of time, 25% of the entire countries power grid has been restored. Think how many children that helped! Glad Elon is getting the attention he so loves though.
I'm as happy as the next guy to hate on Elon - and have done it here, more than once - but it's hard to argue this isn't a good thing regardless of his motivation.
#DeleteChrome
And with the next hurricane, there will be broken panels all over the place.
Funny thing about the "old and busted" as well as the "new shiny" is they both can be vandalized and stolen in a crisis.
Of course it was done for PR-reasons
Yeah. PR as in Puerto Rico >.>
That is 35 patients who CANNOT leave the hospital. You helpfully ignore the other 3000 patients who have acute illness that get treated there on a daily basis from all over the island.
Holy fuck, are you retarded? Can you not read?
The facility has 35 permanent residents with chronic conditions; it also offers services to some 3,000 young patients
Do you see that? Do you? Can you READ IT NOW?
Retard.
Bullshit! I want more crappy t-shirts with big company logos on them!
Shocking that 2 man company that won a $300 no-bid contract to restore the power to Peurto Rico didn't get there first. Especially when those 2 men had connections to a Trump donor. Strange that. It's almost as if Trump is incredibly corrupt and giving massive amounts of money to his friends and supporters for doing nothing.
Monstar L
It's not like people would need to go to a hospital after a NATURAL FUCKING DISASTER. I'm guessing it's probably a pretty busy place, given the general lack of clean water and other sanitation going on there now. Diarrhea can kill a small child, you know.
>"the project's solar array, in a parking lot next to the hospital, has been liked more than 84,000 times since it was posted to Instagram"
While that is neat looking, is it temporary? It appears to fill almost the entire parking lot, leaving no place to park... Are there other lots? Looks like maybe 150 spots gone. Power is important, but parking is kinda important too, isn't it?
https://www.instagram.com/p/Ba...
A portable generator needs fuel.
Which isn't that available right now.
900 jobs, $10 billion tax subsidies, whatever fee was charged upfront, and whatever fees will be charged later. Musk is evil, and using kids for PR is par for the course.
Mr.Musk is a hero and is saving lives. Thank God we have a few real leaders in this nation. Meanwhile we have Trump and a broken government without enough brains or good intentions of getting anything done. Imagine if this was Miami with twice the population of Puerto Rico and the people had no water for three weeks. Incidents like New Orleans and Puerto Rico stand out as a strong proof that the US can not protect its people.
Restoring power is more their line of work. Providing clean water during a hurricane is as much Tesla's ideal job as it is Best Buy's.
PR-reasons,
Tee-hee. P.R. reasons.
For the water, Sawyer filters would help. Electricity, not much.
#DeleteFacebook
Not so world class on delivering on timelines or actually making deadlines but hey its Silicon Valley and some guy who loves the internet, with a green company, investors are literally throwing money at his projects.
Fact 1 - Puerto Rico was bankrupted by its own foolish investments and corrupt leaders.
Fact 2 - There are literally hundreds of countries that would join the US today, we don't want them.
Fact 3 - You are a huge blame-shifting excuse giver. Stop moaning about how bad you have it. Here in California we just had massive wildfires and we are getting NO BAILOUT. Elon Musk lives here and gave NO FUCKING POWER SHIT TO ANYONE IN AMERICA.
How is that Tesla production deadline doing? Oh right, facts and shit that you cant just smash with confirmation bias, damn.
Bankrupted on purpose by the US Congress and Senate and then blamed for the bankruptcy and now being driven out of their homes to favour corporate developers.
Are we still talking about Puerto Rico or are we talking about Germany and Greece?
I actually know a geologist who worked on that project. Was a German fellow, so he didn't care too much about the politics of the situation.
His take was that the site is and will continue to be geologically stable for many 1000's of years.
The big concern was that the rock which makes up the thing is hard and has many fractures. This allows a relatively rapid transfer or rain water to seep through to the aquifer below.
The containers themselves by regulation must last between 300-1000 years. Of course in 100 years, the company that made them will be long, long, long out of business so if they should fail at 250 or even 299 years, it's not like anyone would be around spank them.
Statistically, it is likely we would see at least 1 or two barrels which will fail at the lower end of the spectrum and start leaking. Do these things break catastrophically? I have no clue. I would assume they just develop small leaks which increase over time as the base material gets exposed to the radioactive elements and moisture.
If you are not an expert, it is down to who you believe.
The DOE says, hey...everything is fine and even when the containers fail (and they will) it will take a super long time to pollute the water and even then, we think it is an acceptable level of pollution.
The NV State scientists say, no no no, due to the properties of the underlying rock, we calculate that should a barrel leak, the ground water will be polluted to a deadly level in about 1000 years.
I have no idea who is actually correct. In general though, humans are pretty crap about thinking 10 years into the future let alone 1000. I could imagine that many folks would say..meh...that's like 1000 years from now! For sure we will have thought of something to fix it by then.
Maybe we will have. Maybe we wont. Maybe we will have been killed off by then. If that's the case, I hope all the barrels leaks and kills who ever takes over the planet.
It has 35 permanent residents. It also treats a considerably larger number of children who then go home after recovering, much like any hospital. If it's life or death, they can probably take care of adults as well.
In any event, it's probably more useful than throwing paper towels at people.
The sad part is that there are better locations to store the nuclear waste such as the salt mines in Texas, but Texas has a lot more political clout. Meanwhile, we have a slow-motion disaster forming at the Hanford nuclear site.
This post is encrypted twice with ROT-13. Documenting or attempting to crack this encryption is illegal.
You're delusional. They couleave shipped a diesel generator
Actually forget about shipping the diesel generator.
It's a hospital, it probably already has it's own generator.
(Well, maybe not this peculiar hospital, but in general hospital have generators and you could ignore shipping them in the general picture).
and a few hundred gallons of fuel in less time.
Yeah ! Great, we can now run the hospital on monday !
Hey, what shall we do on tuesday, once around a hundred of gallons of fuel have been burned ?
Here lies your problem.
This is about restoring EMERGENCY power asap.
Generators are good for *emergency* power, as you say.
i.e.: making sure that during the first few hours, there's some power, until the problem is solved.
It's only a very temporary backup.
Then you hit the problem of supplying enough fuel to keep the generator going.
That's the point of solar in sunny areas : it's not limited to a few hours.
This a small hospital, it doesn't probably have ginormous fuel reserve to hold any longer.
The whole country has been destroyed, power won't be back after a few hours.
The whole country has been destroyed, local fuel distribution won't be easy.
It's remote area, shipping daily supplies of hundreds of gallon of fuel is going to be a logistical nightmare.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Can you imagine the PR fallout by people like you if a solar company bought a generator instead of installing panels?
The headlines would read: "Even Tesla can't afford their panels!"
Not to mention it was probably internally cheaper to temporarily reallocate panel inventory here than actually expend resources to obtain, install, and continue to procure fuel for a generator.
To put this in perspective, this is being spun as some kind of victory over the evil, hidebound Puerto Rican electricity company which only managed to restore power to about a quarter of the whole of Puerto Rico in the time it took Musk to get power to this one hospital. It's totally a PR stunt, and it's working.
I love thinking about the long term, and I wish more people did. I'm in the middle of a house construction project, trying to design it for a many-hundred to couple-thousand year lifespan (just the basic structure, not everything in it).... and it touches on everything that you do. And I know the exact same things would apply to repository design.
Example: first off, let's assume that like me they're building out of concrete. Well, unless your wall thickness is dam-thick, what's going to happen is CO2 will slowly dissolve into the concrete, converting the cement to limestone and lowering its pH. When the lowered pH zone reaches the rebar, it'll suddenly begin to rust and increase in size (as it's no longer protected by a highly basic environment); within a few years, the concrete is spalling out, and if not repaired, the structure will soon be unsafe.
What do you do? Well, one answer is, like dams, extreme thickness. This keeps the CO2 from ever reaching the rebar, although it also means a very expensive build. The answer of "no rebar", like the Romans did, may seem tempting, but beyond how that means that you can no longer have any shear or tensile stress (shear = loads that aren't in perfectly balanced arches; tensile = loads for example in the foundation, meaning you have to have a crazy-overbuilt foundation), it also means no safety factor against shifting loads. What's the balance?
Stainless steel has excellent (although somewhat uncertain in the long-term) lifespan. It's a bit unpredictable... you may find not the slightest bit of corrosion on 99% of the stainless but then heavy pitting on 1%, with no obvious rhyme or reason as to why. In general, though, it's quite good, but very expensive - 5x more than mild steel.
Loose plastic fibres again appear to have extremely long lifespans in concrete, and play a role akin to the horsehair that Romans added to concrete - helping resist the formation of microcracks. But while they can add some limited tensile strength to concrete, the structural benefits are limited.
Fibre-reinforced plastic rebar has superb tensile strength and can can resist shear loads. Carbon fibre is best, but very expensive; basalt fibre looks best for my needs. Unfortunately, FRP has inelastic stress-strain behavior which means that it can't directly substitute for steel in all roles. Also, tensile strength of FRP rebar does drop with time, but mainly early on; the rate of decline slows and slows with time (unlike basalt and glass, degradation in carbon fibre rebar is minimal with time... it shrugs off almost anything. But again, crazy expensive).
In my case, the house is being shaped to try to - as much as is realistic - avoid shear stress. Which is challenging when it comes to price because, for example, have you ever gone out and shopped for curved windows? ;) So we're doing the windows as big arches, setting a frame inside them (not matching the wall's bend, just flat), and deviating slightly from a perfect arch so that most of the panes inside can be rectangular, with only a couple requiring a curved cut. Where reinforcement in the concrete is required it'll be a mix of FRP and stainless rebar, with a pozzolanic / loose fibre concrete. I'm also pushing for the use of very thick pumice crete walls, acting as their own insulation. "Thick" and "pore space" are two factors in concrete that have demonstrable very long term survivability - stress from a shear force is inversely proportional to the thickness squared, and pore space tends to mean that it "crushes into itself" over time rather than shearing / spalling off. But in addition to that not being traditional in modern construction, it can cause problems, say, when you're concreting a wall to a foundation and the wall shrinks as it hardens, putting stress (and thus cracking) at the connection point. A pozzolanic mix should reduce but not eliminate this (it also produces a stronger concrete in the end, and the CSH gel tends to self-seal cracks - although pozzolanic concrete
The human body can be drained of blood in 8.6 seconds given adequate vacuuming systems.
So what you are saying is, since they couldn't restore the entire power grid in Puerto Rico, they shouldn't have bothered restoring power to a critical service, LIKE A HOSPITAL.
Fuck you nerds are retarded.
Diarrhea can kill a small child, you know.
Particularly if they are standing right behind you...
Please, by all means, show me the solar power generation and storage facility that you built in a country whose transportation infrastructure was devastated, completed just 2 1/2 weeks after speaking with the local government for the very first time.
The human body can be drained of blood in 8.6 seconds given adequate vacuuming systems.
Yes of course.The 85% of the island is running on generators. But after 35+ days without power, diesel is scarce and generators are failing.
Sure. But electricity is useful to have too. Tesla supply the stuff they are good at. Someone with more knowledge about water can supply that.
A motivation to prove that his technology is rapidly deployed and viable? After everyone hates on him and says he's selling pipe dreams?
---Up Up Down Down Left Right Left Right B A START
Every little bit helps. I'll admit I'm the first to crap on Elon's government subsidy dependency and his slick presentations without production, but the situation is so dire, anyone's aid helps. Even the Cajun Nation and American Black Cross have chartered boats and planes to help. A single large hospital can be about 5 MW.
As of last week, the Army Corp of Engineers announced that they have installed 148 industrial generators (the size of tractor trailers) restoring 579 MW / 2,500 MW, about 20% of the island. The biggest problem is tha San Juan, like all cities, built the generation far away from the city, so now that there is no transmission, the city is blacked out. 6,500 miles of transmission needs to be rebuilt, so everything right now is point to point. A barge-based 50 MW generator will be installed this week to restore power to the north side of the island. So there are a lot of innovative solutions appearing here. Solar can help in the short term because it eliminates the fuel logistics, which is the big problem right now.
https://www.defense.gov/News/Transcripts/Transcript-View/Article/1349928/department-of-defense-press-briefing-by-army-corps-of-engineers-commander-lt-ge/
Ten years? 90% of people can't think to the end of a.....
Wow am I hungry. Pizza sounds good.
And how are you going to fuel this generator? Getting diesel to it would be difficult, and you would have to post 24/7 security so it doesn't get stolen by desperate people
That is the one good part about not having a union is that they can fire the cynical and angry people. However, they can also fire the people who want there to be a union...
I bet there are 10% of employees at every big company that could be let go with little consequence.
Elon Musk lives here and gave NO FUCKING POWER SHIT TO ANYONE IN AMERICA.
Puerto Rico is in America.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
When I say that dry storage of waste would be more economical than reprocessing for years to come, I do mean years, not ages. A repository like Yucca Mountain is just a buffer, big enough to hold a generation or two worth of waste while we develop better reprocessing technology. Long before those geologic eons commentators are worrying about, the unburned U and Pu in it will have been recovered and burned up.
Increases,eh?
The dirty bomb-maker reads on for more details...
This is where it all began, the downward spiral to the end of all civilization.
nuclear waste only turns into waste if you remove it from the ground in the first place ...
When I say that dry storage of waste would be more economical than reprocessing for years to come, I do mean years, not ages. A repository like Yucca Mountain is just a buffer, big enough to hold a generation or two worth of waste while we develop better reprocessing technology. Long before those geologic eons commentators are worrying about, the unburned U and Pu in it will have been recovered and burned up.
I'd much rather have it stored at Yucca than at all the nuclear plants all over. It is easier to control one location. Yucca seemed mostly to be killed because of nimby type fears. Harry Reid was partly responsible I recall, not that the republicans are remotely better. Bad ideas get sold via lies, because the rich and powerful are behind them. Good ideas get killed via lies as well, because the liars shout the loudest. Of course you also have the uninformed that repeat what they believe just because they have "faith", but many of them don't want to learn.
At the end of the day, a Hospital has power, and that is a good thing. As far as nuclear power goes, I'm not worried about current technology. We can build safe systems and install them only in areas suitable. What worries me about nuclear is people only concerned about the cost pinching pennies causing safety to be eroded. You also can't rely on regulators and government, because you know Trump proved that any idiot elected can break that. Perhaps when you run the numbers, even with corruption and greed factored in, then nuclear still wins. For now at least natural gas buys us some time and solar is coming along nicely.
How do you plan on paying for things like firemen?
The rich will buy their own firemen, the rest of us will burn.
Former Illegal Immigrant restores power to devastated Children's Hospital that FEMA, under POTUS that wants to deport all illegal aliens, couldn't manage to do.
Good thing Trump wasn't President when Elon was illegal.
Your home project made me think of this video, it was the first time I'd heard of aircrete:
https://youtu.be/b9Gmor0I3mw
I'm not sure how that would compare to pumice crete.
Its just the elon haters.
The dude could have restored power to the entire freaking island and theyd whine because he didnt ship them badly needed antibiotics.
Isn't the idea to extract energy *from* the ground, not put reusable radioactive energy *into* the ground? It was only waste after partially using it.
The parking lot is now filled with solar panels!
Musk, "Who the fuck said P Ricos had cars! Let them walk ... good exercise."
Hahahahahahaha
If you want to use the word "fact" then please back up your opinions with some believable evidence.
I'd be interested in seeing more details about the house. Is it a monolithic or geodesic dome? Does it have multiple levels? Are the floors of each level also concrete? How about the roof (if it isn't a dome), is that concrete?
I've been toying with the idea of designing/building an extremely long lasting, low maintenance home off the grid in the back woods.
How about this !
https://futurism.com/a-tiny-fi...
If it was only going to be a short term problem you might be right, but as it is being noted by pretty much every source it is going to be MONTHS before power is going to be restored. It would take a lot of fuel to keep a facility of that size running for that long. Many island communities are switching to renewables due to the high costs to import fossil fuels. Depending on the setup it may also suffice for an emergency backup system and supplemental grid power once the areas electrical grid is rebuilt.
I actually know a geologist who worked on that project. Was a German fellow, so he didn't care too much about the politics of the situation.
His take was that the site is and will continue to be geologically stable for many 1000's of years.
The big concern was that the rock which makes up the thing is hard and has many fractures. This allows a relatively rapid transfer or rain water to seep through to the aquifer below.
The containers themselves by regulation must last between 300-1000 years. Of course in 100 years, the company that made them will be long, long, long out of business so if they should fail at 250 or even 299 years, it's not like anyone would be around spank them.
Statistically, it is likely we would see at least 1 or two barrels which will fail at the lower end of the spectrum and start leaking. Do these things break catastrophically? I have no clue. I would assume they just develop small leaks which increase over time as the base material gets exposed to the radioactive elements and moisture.
If you are not an expert, it is down to who you believe.
The DOE says, hey...everything is fine and even when the containers fail (and they will) it will take a super long time to pollute the water and even then, we think it is an acceptable level of pollution.
The NV State scientists say, no no no, due to the properties of the underlying rock, we calculate that should a barrel leak, the ground water will be polluted to a deadly level in about 1000 years.
I have no idea who is actually correct. In general though, humans are pretty crap about thinking 10 years into the future let alone 1000. I could imagine that many folks would say..meh...that's like 1000 years from now! For sure we will have thought of something to fix it by then.
Maybe we will have. Maybe we wont. Maybe we will have been killed off by then. If that's the case, I hope all the barrels leaks and kills who ever takes over the planet.
I wonder you much your friend really knows since he talked about a 'barrel leak'. Nuclear spent fuel is solid and inert, kept is casks, not barrels. This is the common problem when people conflate cold war nuclear waste with spent fuel.
Spend fuel casks cannot 'leak' because they contain no liquid. However, there is a possibility of groundwater from above running over the waste, somehow penetrating the casks, and then carrying some trace amounts of waste product as it migrates downward. This is why a mountain is a good choice, as groundwater from above is naturally diverted. Furthermore, a waterproof layer over the storage area along with monitoring are ways to ensure that the unlikely does not occur AND present a problem.
The politicians that shut down Yucca played their trick. They asked specific questions that needed further work to answer, then they cut off funding so those questions could not be answered, then they claimed the reason they shut it down was too many unanswered questions.
Another important fact to consider is that we already have waste and we must do something with it. So we must solve the problem, and those that are stonewalling the effort is creating a much much greater risk than any that Yucca ever would.
(or vitrify it)?
Yup. See reference. There are various approaches which all revolve around binding the radionuclides in some material which is stable over geological timescales, like a glass or synthetic rock.
If the high-level waste can be made non-soluble this way, I have trouble seeing how it can be a problem, short of people deliberately digging it up.
Um...no.
Puerto Rico used to make its money by being an inexpensive place to make goods and pharmaceuticals for the mainland US. Because PR is a US territory, there were no tariffs.
Then a whole lot of "free trade" agreements were signed. Suddenly, PR wasn't the cheap place on the manufacturing front, and the Jones Act meant it was much more expensive to ship from PR to the mainland than to ship from, say, China.
Add in the fact that PR residents are US citizens and can easily resettle on the mainland, and we ended up with an island mostly of retirees and poor people who couldn't afford to move. Thus not much in the way of a tax base. Which then means they run into financial problems.
Here's a bit of a thought exercise you should apply to your theory: Why would someone buy the redeveloped property in Puerto Rico? Especially for a "maximum profit" price?
Weather? Lots of similar climates available on the mainland, with cheaper cost of living (ie, food is trucked in instead of shipped in on expensive Jones Act compliant vessels). Plus it's not too difficult for an American to retire to many non-US places in the Caribbean.
So what's the pitch? Why pay top dollar for that Puerto Rico house instead of a Bermuda house or US Virgin Islands house or a Key West house or a Hawaii house?
Fact 1 - Puerto Rico was bankrupted by its own foolish investments and corrupt leaders.
Puerto Rico was bankrupted by the relaxing of tariffs combined with the Jones Act.
It used to be a cheap place to make stuff for the mainland. It isn't cheap enough anymore. When the factories and other businesses shut down, the people who could afford to relocate to the mainland did so. As US citizens, there was no barriers to moving to FL or NY or a host of other places.
That left an island mostly of retirees and people who could not afford to move. That destroyed Puerto Rico's tax base.
Elon Musk lives here and gave NO FUCKING POWER SHIT TO ANYONE IN AMERICA.
First, Puerto Rico is in America.
Second, what electrical equipment do you want Musk to provide to the areas destroyed by wildfires in CA? The power plants are still in operation. Some power lines were presumably destroyed, but CA utilities will have those back up pretty quickly. What massive electrical infrastructure failure do you want solved?
Clearly, a site chosen at random for power restoration...
Just to turn your cynical remark on its head, what kind of brain dead idiot would chose a site at random?
regardless of his motivation
When motivation perfectly aligns with a practically ideal solution the hero will be labelled a villain regardless of what happens.
But I am keen to hear a better site proposed. Given a country that is suffering from a devastating storm there are a few effects at play:
- destroyed sanitation
- damaged food in circulation
- dead plant and animal matter
- hazards everywhere.
Frankly he should be criticised if he *didn't* pick a hospital as priority one.
Musk didn't "get" power to a hospital. He created power at a hospital. Comparing it to repairing a few trunks in existing infrastructure is childish.
I assume the only reason you're shitting on Musk's achievements is because you lack any of your own?
and destroys all the solar panels... you get to buy them again. Any solutions put in place must be spec'd to survive cat 5 hurricanes or we are just wasting money. Build a solution now that will cost more but survive the future and the long term costs will be significantly reduced.
Neither - it uses earth as an inner form, to be removed by a backhoe afterward. There is no outer form except for where the walls are steep. In order to anchor the outer form to the interior we either have to use wires attached to the foundation, or to shotcrete anchors to the earth form.
"Sort of". ;) The basic shape can be divided into what the engineer has taken to calling "the worm" (garage, hallway and some small rooms that branch off of it) and two "domes" - a small one that makes up the guest wing and is divided into two rooms, and a big open floor plan dome that makes up the living room, kitchen, and master bedroom. The "worm" starts at the garage, descends deeper into the ground the further into the house you get, so each room branched off of it is successively lower, and ends at the guest wing dome. At the main dome, you can either go up or down from the hallway; down is the base of the dome (living room / kitchen), while up is a wooden loft built inside the dome (master bedroom). I picked up a tiny one-person bucket elevator for next to nothing from a person who was contracted to tear down an old library, so I'll be incorporating that in as well :)
Dividing the house into simple shapes helps the engineers. They can treat the worm as an arch that just varies in height and width, while they can treat the domes as isolated structures, with a self-supporting interconnect. Of course, to keep it this simple they have to bear the earth loads, since half the house is underground (it's built on the edge of a canyon, so you've got big windows on the canyon side, but you don't see it from the other side because the ground continues onto the "roof"). To take the earth loads (rather than having to basically angle the whole house against the ground!) the engineer came up with the idea to have a concrete "beam" up against the earth, which transfers the loads into perpendicular internal walls that act as buttresses.
(Gotta love having a good engineer! :) )
The whole loadbearing structure is concrete. For aesthetics, we're looking at concreting in rocks (aka, the rocks would be on the surface of the earth mould and thus get concreted in when the concrete is poured). The engineer thinks we'll probably have to drill and/or glue some concrete anchors onto the rocks; I guess we'll find out. Hopefully not drill, that'd take an awfully long time ;) Anyway, once the mould is is cleared out, I'll be using high pressure water to remove excess cement off the rocks. Should create a very nice cave feel :) The bath is going to just be a low point in the foundation, with rocks concreted into it (the inspiration is Grjótagjá, up north - my favourite geothermal cave bath :) ))
Good for you! I wish more people would pay attention to the whole "long lasting" aspect. People talk about "eco homes" - there's nothing "ecological" about having to rebuild a house every couple decades. If you build a house and it lasts hundreds or even thousands of years, it's saving a huge amount of resources versus a house that has to be rebuilt over and over again.
You of course have to "futureproof" it as best as you can. E.g. just in the
The human body can be drained of blood in 8.6 seconds given adequate vacuuming systems.
I wonder you much your friend really knows since he talked about a 'barrel leak'. Nuclear spent fuel is solid and inert, kept is casks, not barrels. This is the common problem when people conflate cold war nuclear waste with spent fuel.
Spend fuel casks cannot 'leak' because they contain no liquid.
Don't let those pesky facts get in the way of a good nuclear scare session.
We simply aren't used to the archetype of a genius billionaire, with a heart for the planet and humanity.
That's like arguing that a pile of salt won't leak away when you pour water on it because the salt "contains no liquid".
Nobody is talking about the waste being liquid, the concerns are about leaching - which is why dry storage casks exist in the first place. Because the fact that fuel rods have the potential to leach over long periods is not just a hypothetical. Zircalloy cladding is great, until it suddenly isn't (sheer, creep, galvanic corrosion, stress rupture, oxidization-aiding contaminants like lithium, etc). Cladding fails sometimes in operation, and it will also randomly fail during storage (assuming it's even intact to begin with)
This is nonsense. Unless there is a waterproof geological trap, water will leak through the mountain. Impermeable bedrock is the exception, not the rule.
And said wastes are toxic in vanishingly small quantities, so it's not some "laugh it off" scenario; the LD50s can be less than a billionth of a gram, let alone the effect threshold. Furthermore, if you actually get a situation of heavy corrosion and leaching of fuel rods, you have the potential for a lot more than just "trace" amounts.
And what's your plan for ensuring that it stays waterproof, exactly? You know what the lifespan on a typical geomembrane is? About 20 years or so. We try to do better with modified bitumen membranes, but when you're talking such long time scales... who the bloody heck knows?
The human body can be drained of blood in 8.6 seconds given adequate vacuuming systems.
And said wastes are toxic in vanishingly small quantities, so it's not some "laugh it off" scenario; the LD50s can be less than a billionth of a gram, let alone the effect threshold. Furthermore, if you actually get a situation of heavy corrosion and leaching of fuel rods, you have the potential for a lot more than just "trace" amounts.... We try to do better with modified bitumen membranes, but when you're talking such long time scales... who the bloody heck knows?
I think we can answer that last question empirically.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
Pumped water storage utilizing paired reservoirs of water could serve two purposes in the Puerto Rico crisis:
The kinetic energy of water is an environmentally sound method for storing excess solar or wind energy. Since the central portions of the island are mountainous, there is plenty of height to supply the head pressure for micro-hydro power generation, while the water itself can also be used as a source of a community's water, which would be recharged by utilizing the usual wells or surface runoff sources.
Instead of using expensive, short-lived, and toxic chemically-based batteries to store the energy, the excess power from solar/wind arrays is used to pump the water up to reservoirs in the mountains. This water is used to provide power during the night. If the system is designed with enough overall storage capacity, any water in excess of what is required to meet the demand for electricity can be tapped from the system as needed. Batteries and/or capacitors may still have a place in such a system, to serve as a voltage-leveling buffer. Such a system would be physically more robust during hurricanes since much of the infrastructure could be built on or under the ground.
Systems such as these have been in operation for many years, but the idea has never been used at the scale that would power an island the size of Puerto Rico, which has many small towns separated by difficult mountainous terrain, this could be a viable solution.
It would be relatively easy to set up such a system in the Western USA, such as using the facilities at Lake Meade and Lake Havasu along the Colorado River and connecting them with a pair of pipelines that carry water either uphill for storage, or downhill for power generation.
The Mohave Valley has ample space and wind resources for wind power, which would never have to be stopped due to low peak demands for energy since Lake Meade is so much larger than Lake Havasu there would always be enough storage capacity for the excess wind/solar energy.
PlaynBass
Hi Rei,
I wanted to contact you personally. Is there any email id which I can use to connect?
My gmail email id is rajmohan.harindranath
Can you send me a mail to connect?
Regards,
Rajmohan H
rajmohan_h@yahoo.com
Everyone's going on about high tech battery solutions. They're overlooking one highly effective low tech solution that would serve a mountainous island like Puerto Rico very well. Guess there's not enough glamor in it.
PlaynBass