iFan: Keeping the blistering speed of the 3GS from giving you blisters! Also provides emergency cooling in those tough Iraqi deserts where iPhones are being deployed. Comes with free 'Fanspeed control app'
iFan: To keep blistering performance from blistering your hands. Also keeps you cool in the hot Iraqi summer, when our phones are out on the battlefield.
If we wanted to cut down on the amount of methane that cows emit, couldn't we just put pilot lights on their mouths? Then we'd have firebreathing cows.
My reply to the post was more centering around the theoretical "limited" amounts of uranium resources. If we do sea extraction, at current consumption rates we would have tens of thousands of years of fuel.
If you look at my post again, nowhere did I say that nuclear power was cheaper than wind power. Merely that it was cheaper than wind power when taking into account the grid upgrades that would have to be done to concentrate wind in productive areas, then transport it to market.
We can't just plop down half a million wind mills in north dakota and power america off that, then expect the power grid to be happy.
It just ultimatley may make more sense to use nuclear to deliver power to population centers away from large wind resources.
Though I do agree with you on the necessity of grid upgrades.
There is a terrific amount of energy avaliable in wind. Especially in high altitude winds. If wind power, particularly the flying kite turbine variety, ever becomes cheap enough, it could be worth the while to create a wind/hydrogen system where hydrogen is used as a backup source of energy for the grid, and/or used as a fuel source for autos.
Additionally, a lot of the times the wind is strongest at night, when the energy consumption is lowest. In this kind of situation, you can use excess energy capacity to run various processes, electrolysis being one of them.
And the efficency of converting water to hydrogen and oxygen then using hydrogen in fuel cells is low, for sure, but that's because liberating the oxygen also takes part of the energy. If you look at it in terms of actual theoretical maximum efficency of the process of splitting water, and what we've got now, it's actually quite high. However, If you have an industrial process that requires lots of oxygen, skimming it off as a byproduct has got to be cheaper than fractional distillation from the air.
Slashdotters have good reason to rail against it. It's only practical if there is a terrific excess of energy, combined with no way to use it at the time. Hydrogen makes sense as an overflow buffer, not a central pillar. However, in this scenario, it's a good fit. It can also be shipped and exported as ammonia, something you really can't do with batteries.
Once uranium prices get high enough there's actually a way to sift it out of the sea. Probably a couple of square miles of sifters could probably supply global energy demand. Bam, cleanly obtained uranium.
Processing can also be done by nuclear power.
Again, it's economics. Mining it out of the ground is cheap. So is coal, but that doesnt mean with some government subsidies, sustainable uranium extraction from the sea couldn't provide a steady uranium source for any country with a coast. Add that to the fact that generally speaking nuclear fuel is less than 10% of the cost of nuclear power generation itself, and you can easily double or triple the cost of your fuel with only incremental increases in the cost of generation. Far lower than building windmills and their acompanying grid infrastructure requirements to get the power from the wind centers to where it needs to go.
However, it would seem that the true watershed of wind power is high altitutde collectors. Apparently above newyork it can get up to 10kw/cubic meter. It would seem that most centers of civilization in north america and Asiaw (east coasts of both respectively) are blessed with prodigious amounts of energy in their high altitude jet streams.
That, and it also nips the problem of intermittent wind. High altitude wind is extremely consistent.
Combine the two, using high altitude wind where you can, and sea mined nuclear where you can't, and/or for high altitude wind outages, and you have a stunningly clean solution for world energy problems.
Just a question of money and technology.
The answer to this is fuel cell plants powered by hydrogen derived from electrolysis. Supplemented by nuclear baseload power if desired.
There have been some good advances in cheaper electrolysis latley.
HDSPA tethering in Japan on Docomo's network costs $8 as a base fee, and then $50 up to 50MB of data. Then it goes up from there to a cap of $100 for 100MB. After 100MB, the charge does not increase.
This is for up to 7.2Mbps
I shouldn't have included the jaguar, it was pretty advanced.
But generally with the saturn, turbografix and dreamcast, their rush to market ensured that they did not have the hardware muscle to fend off even the 'inferior' consoles. Like the playstation, PS2, SNES, Genesis, etc..
So, if processing power doubles every 2 years, this should realistically take about 35 years to accomplish.
Which means we may have artificial human level intelligences before I retire.
Perfect, now I can have a care taker that doesn't get fed up with me when I can't pour his coffee because I have parkinsons.
This could totally be perfect for Mongolia, and New Zealand and Australia.. Cattle puts out ALOT of crap.
Next thing you know, New Zealand will be powering their golf carts off of methane directly extracted from the asses of all of their sheep.
Slashdot Mirror
iFan: Keeping the blistering speed of the 3GS from giving you blisters! Also provides emergency cooling in those tough Iraqi deserts where iPhones are being deployed. Comes with free 'Fanspeed control app'
iFan: To keep blistering performance from blistering your hands. Also keeps you cool in the hot Iraqi summer, when our phones are out on the battlefield.
I am professor Xavier. And I approve this wheelchair.
If we wanted to cut down on the amount of methane that cows emit, couldn't we just put pilot lights on their mouths? Then we'd have firebreathing cows.
My reply to the post was more centering around the theoretical "limited" amounts of uranium resources. If we do sea extraction, at current consumption rates we would have tens of thousands of years of fuel. If you look at my post again, nowhere did I say that nuclear power was cheaper than wind power. Merely that it was cheaper than wind power when taking into account the grid upgrades that would have to be done to concentrate wind in productive areas, then transport it to market. We can't just plop down half a million wind mills in north dakota and power america off that, then expect the power grid to be happy. It just ultimatley may make more sense to use nuclear to deliver power to population centers away from large wind resources. Though I do agree with you on the necessity of grid upgrades.
There is a terrific amount of energy avaliable in wind. Especially in high altitude winds. If wind power, particularly the flying kite turbine variety, ever becomes cheap enough, it could be worth the while to create a wind/hydrogen system where hydrogen is used as a backup source of energy for the grid, and/or used as a fuel source for autos. Additionally, a lot of the times the wind is strongest at night, when the energy consumption is lowest. In this kind of situation, you can use excess energy capacity to run various processes, electrolysis being one of them. And the efficency of converting water to hydrogen and oxygen then using hydrogen in fuel cells is low, for sure, but that's because liberating the oxygen also takes part of the energy. If you look at it in terms of actual theoretical maximum efficency of the process of splitting water, and what we've got now, it's actually quite high. However, If you have an industrial process that requires lots of oxygen, skimming it off as a byproduct has got to be cheaper than fractional distillation from the air.
Slashdotters have good reason to rail against it. It's only practical if there is a terrific excess of energy, combined with no way to use it at the time. Hydrogen makes sense as an overflow buffer, not a central pillar. However, in this scenario, it's a good fit. It can also be shipped and exported as ammonia, something you really can't do with batteries.
Once uranium prices get high enough there's actually a way to sift it out of the sea. Probably a couple of square miles of sifters could probably supply global energy demand. Bam, cleanly obtained uranium. Processing can also be done by nuclear power. Again, it's economics. Mining it out of the ground is cheap. So is coal, but that doesnt mean with some government subsidies, sustainable uranium extraction from the sea couldn't provide a steady uranium source for any country with a coast. Add that to the fact that generally speaking nuclear fuel is less than 10% of the cost of nuclear power generation itself, and you can easily double or triple the cost of your fuel with only incremental increases in the cost of generation. Far lower than building windmills and their acompanying grid infrastructure requirements to get the power from the wind centers to where it needs to go. However, it would seem that the true watershed of wind power is high altitutde collectors. Apparently above newyork it can get up to 10kw/cubic meter. It would seem that most centers of civilization in north america and Asiaw (east coasts of both respectively) are blessed with prodigious amounts of energy in their high altitude jet streams. That, and it also nips the problem of intermittent wind. High altitude wind is extremely consistent. Combine the two, using high altitude wind where you can, and sea mined nuclear where you can't, and/or for high altitude wind outages, and you have a stunningly clean solution for world energy problems. Just a question of money and technology.
The answer to this is fuel cell plants powered by hydrogen derived from electrolysis. Supplemented by nuclear baseload power if desired. There have been some good advances in cheaper electrolysis latley.
HDSPA tethering in Japan on Docomo's network costs $8 as a base fee, and then $50 up to 50MB of data. Then it goes up from there to a cap of $100 for 100MB. After 100MB, the charge does not increase. This is for up to 7.2Mbps
I shouldn't have included the jaguar, it was pretty advanced. But generally with the saturn, turbografix and dreamcast, their rush to market ensured that they did not have the hardware muscle to fend off even the 'inferior' consoles. Like the playstation, PS2, SNES, Genesis, etc..
Exceptions to your rule Sega saturn Dreamcast Turbografix Jaguar
So, if processing power doubles every 2 years, this should realistically take about 35 years to accomplish. Which means we may have artificial human level intelligences before I retire. Perfect, now I can have a care taker that doesn't get fed up with me when I can't pour his coffee because I have parkinsons.
Largley by plankton/algae?
This could totally be perfect for Mongolia, and New Zealand and Australia.. Cattle puts out ALOT of crap. Next thing you know, New Zealand will be powering their golf carts off of methane directly extracted from the asses of all of their sheep.