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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."
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.
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!
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.
Not true, the hurricanes are caused by Trump's unnatural love of coal.
In the long run yes, but in line with your own climate hypothesis today's hurricanes are being caused by Carter not allowing nuclear fuel to be reprocessed and Obama killing off Yucca Mountain.
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.
Serves 3000+ people during the day.
Next...
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
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.
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
>"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...
Technically, reprocessing is not a rate limiting step in nuclear power generation. There's more than enough natural uranium for the current world's needs.
This is true, but in the absence of reprocessing the flat-earth lobby insists that spent fuel is some sort of massive unsolved problem that threatens our very existance. Even though reprocessing will cost more than dry storage for years to come, we have to implement it just to kill off this stupid argument.
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.
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.
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.
What "deadline"?
Do you mean the target, an S-curve which was described in advance as something fully expected to be "production hell"?
The human body can be drained of blood in 8.6 seconds given adequate vacuuming systems.
A motivation to prove that his technology is rapidly deployed and viable? After everyone hates on him and says he's selling pipe dreams?
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