So, you're proposing we only use 'old technology'. That means Film X-rays vs digital ones that reduce radiation exposure 50-90% Rather than using digital cell phones transmitting 1/4 watt, we'd be using analog ones that transmitted at 4 watts. Rather than using wifi, we'd just stick with old portable phones - 2.4Ghz, right next to your head, at like 10X the output.
The list goes on. As mentioned in other threads here, there's a big difference between ionizing and non-ionizing radiation.
Heck, you list Asbestos as an example - thing is, we knew the stuff was dangerous back before WWII, it's just that in the war rush we disregarded it in favor of getting more ships out.
In the end, you go back 'a few generations', you'll see more pollution, radiation, and other hazards at far lower utility level. We've done a lot in identifying causes of damage rather than just finding correlations between use of certain types of equipment and the condition being tracked.
I have a 'small' trailer for my motorcycle as well. It's probably a lot bigger than yours, but it sounds like you've struck a good balance. There's nothing particularly heavy about modern TVs, it's all the height and width. A small flat bed trailer gives you the expanded capacity when you need it, but doesn't cost you mileage all the time, unlike a bigger vehicle.
The main board thing is the nasty part, from what I understand they're all pretty much custom for that model TV, and there's too many of them to realistically stock in a shop, much less a van for home visits. In the old tube days you could fix 99% of TVs with something like 50 parts.
In which case I see more remote work coming up. I mean, I found my half hour each way commute draining after a time, I can't imagine doubling it.
Yeah, if the traffic isn't that busy, inductive in the roads wouldn't be cost effective. Still, they have 300 mile range EVs now, and if you get charging stations at work, you could start with full batteries each way. Only remaining problem would be the 'emergency trip home'.
And In-home TV repair with a VW diesel? Wouldn't a panel van be better? I'd think that you'd occasionally need to haul a whole TV... Anyways, you're correct with your assessment on hybrids not being great for pure highway driving, which is the diesel's strongest area, a good selection. The volt would also be a poor choice from the sounds of it, you'd lose most of the effect of a plug in, strong hybrid, with that many highway miles. 'Inner city taxi' is a better duty load for them.
Scuba Tanks? Really? They're not that common on boats and aren't optimized for holding hydrogen. It'd be like trying to hold sand in a wire collander intended to drain pasta.
I mentioned it working better with a massive cylinder at a factory - economy of scale. scuba tanks would actually be smaller than the ones mounted in a car.
I figure you wouldn't want to spend an hour at a 'gas station', besides, existing ones don't have enough parking. Restaurants, malls, even your general stores do.
Eating in at a McD's will generally take at least half an hour. A sit down place where they cook to order will take closer to the hour. Besides, if you're driving for long distances a good break with a good meal is a real stress reliever and makes for safer driving.
Well, a Volt isn't exactly #5, but good catch. I was picturing a pure electric vehicle with a small hitch and specialized power plug in the back; that way you avoid the expense of the engine - in both cost and weight, for normal trips that don't need it. And #6 would fix you right up.
So let's add one. I ordered them for what I saw as practicality/likelihood. 7. Buy a multi-fuel vehicle; plug-in hybrid of some sort if you make a lot of long trips
In your case, I'd consider utilizing mass transit - train or bus into city core; walk the rest of the way. I'd prefer a city core optimized for foot traffic - I live in the upper north, so to me this means skybridges and perhaps even slideways in the larger city centers. At an easy 3mph, a human can travel a mile in 20 minutes. If you figure that it takes 8 minutes to get to your car, start it up, get out of the parking spot and lot onto the road, then drive at 10mph average, then take another 8 minutes to park and get to the final destination, that's 21 minutes. With slideways doubling the walking speed to 6mph, that's more like 1.5 miles where going by foot is actually faster.
By the way, have you considered the cost of your commute? That living closer to your work might be better? Assuming you work 5 days a week, that's 25% more time, 500 extra hours a year dedicated to your job, plus fuel, plus car wear, etc... I believe that it's unsustainable for most people; the suburbs are eventually going to die. Note: This means attention needs to be paid in cities, building GOOD apartments and condos and such.
I've said for years that there's nothing wrong with electric vehicles that a batter that lasts twice as long at half the price wouldn't fix. That's actually a 4X improvement, approximately, but we've improved a bit over the last few years.
Long term, I think Lithium-Iron (LiFe) batteries are going to win the automotive market - a little less energy density(though they're working to fix that, of course), but they degrade so much slower that after the first year they actually hold more charge.
1. Battery swap 2. 30-60 minutes for a 80% charge is certainly possible. Eat in! 3. Rent a long ranged vehicle for the occasional trip 4. Fly or take train and rent a vehicle locally 5. Rent a trailer with a generator of some sort- as a bonus, it gives you extra cargo space for your long trip! 6. induction charging built into the very roads
Note that while it has the highest energy by mass, by volume it's actually pretty low, though it does beat LiIon. This also doesn't count the vessel needed to contain it - not a big deal for a massive cylinder at a factory, but it's a substantial mass/volume hit to include a 700 bar pressure vessel in a car.
As far as I'm aware, gearbox noise is still as significant an issue as aeroacoustic noise.
I've seen some literature that suggests they've changed designs to eliminate the gearbox by changing the generator design. Because the gearbox was expensive and one of the most maintenance intensive parts.
Of course, that might just be one manufacturer, there are dozens of wind turbine makers today, all with different designs.
Until relatively recently even Westinghouse was pushing hard to get taxpayers money to build TMI painted green instead of more recent technology.
The fixes implemented after TMI pretty much precludes another TMI. It's like continuing to lambast Pintos for catching on fire if Ford had implemented a fix as soon as it was discovered.
If you want to really simplify things, the AP1000 design is a generational change from the Babcock&Wilcox, given that both are PWR plants. But that would be a bit like comparing a 2000 model honda civic with a model T. - The new design boasts 50% fewer safety valves, 80% less safety piping, 85% less control cable, 35% fewer pumps, and 45% less seismic building volume. Eliminating parts might seem dangerous, but it also means that there are fewer things to break/go wrong.
I tend to go by 'person', not 'human', or 'alive'. 'Persons' get protection. That way intelligent aliens from Mars would get protections, as AIs and such would get protection. A brain-dead body isn't a person, thus not rating for the protection people get.
Heat is in Watts, but some confusion with temperature and some incorrect late night posts on my part didn't help.
'Heat' is temperature. Watts is power. The relations between the two is complex; but in general the more power involved, the faster the temperature gain/loss.
On the coal side adding more boilers and supporting infrastucture is difficult because for a few reasons - they are huge and take up a lot of land and all the associated requirements (eg. cooling water dam, ash dam, other ash storage, etc) take up even more.
Perhaps, but my local power plant is only about the size of a hanger. Compared to less dense power supplies such as solar and wind, the footprint isn't a problem. We don't have any special need for it to be denser.
. Skewing the game by pretending solar never got to benefit from the economy of scale from microprocessor fabrication brings that crossover point down and makes even the nuclear dinosaurs look good. There's a lot of counterproductive bullshit being spread by those that spend more on lobbying than R&D. Also photovoltaics have their own practical existing niche so those that use them as a strawman in comparison to unbuilt reactors are setting themselves up for a fall.
Where did this come from? I actually proposed having 20% of the energy come from solar. Solar is still expensive, but then, ALL new power sources today are expensive. It makes sense to build solar in ideal areas, but 'ideal' doesn't cover more than a fraction of our electricity needs. And I certainly hope I haven't given the perspective that I want to build 'dinosaurs'. I want GenIV reactors, darn it! I want micro-nukes providing electricity and heat to small Alaskan towns!
Building Gen3 reactors for a bit would be to get the experience needed and to at least start replacing polluting coal and end of life nuclear plants.
Health effects of smoking is an interesting one that I didn't even think of - Nobody disputes the heatlh effects of smoking anymore, though some are more on the side of freedom than others. They don't dispute that smoking is bad, but dispute that it's the government's job to make people quit. That's valid in my opinion. Then there's the current rage with smoking - second hand smoke. Sure, there are nasty compounds in second hand smoke, but the real question would be - at the levels typically present, is it really a danger? It's like the global warming thing - will stopping enough CO2 to prevent sea level rise cause more economic damage than the rise? Honestly, I think that if it's not junk science we'd be setting acceptable levels, heck, regulating indoor air, rather than just going for bans. And I'm a non-smoker who dislikes smelling cigarettes. There's fancy filtration systems out there, there's those electronic cigarettes, there are options.
Another would be nuclear power - lowest lethality of all the power sources, even with creaky old power plants. New ones with proper planning would be an order of magnitude safer than even those old ones.
For organic produce - I don't mind them wanting it, especially if it tastes better. It's when, as ArcherB says, they work on banning the non-organic stuff without any serious knowledge of the relevant factors. Organic can actually be more toxic than non-organic, it all depends. I'd rather my food safety be decided by science, not some arbitrary declaration that 'ORGANIC GOOD', 'NON-ORGANIC BAD'.
We appear to have got some wires crossed about limits of heat input (Watts you can pump into the fluid) which is why I've been writing about flame temperature being a hard limit.
What set me off was your saying that nuclear plants run hotter than coal plants. I knew that to be untrue; thus responded. I acknowledged in my very first post that nuclear plants could be run hotter with modern designs, though I didn't specify changing the working fluid until later.
The thing about 'largest practical flame heated boilers' is that they're very easy to parallelize. You need more power, you add boilers. The local coal Heat&Power plant has 5 boilers, installed over a period of 35 years.
That's not as easy for nuclear plants, at least not yet. Liquid Thorium reactors are promising in this regard though.
Social liberals only want to support people who think like they do, and fiscal liberals only want to fund people who think like they do.
Still reads as true, doesn't it? I see the republican party as swinging more extremist at the moment, but let's face it: both sides want their policies passed.
And on the OP, I see a lot of anti-science and distrust on the liberal side as well. Homeopathy isn't restricted by political bias, but I have a distinct impression that those who resist vaccines and insist on buying organic tend to be more on the liberal side. All the 'food X' is good/bad for you based on the science of the week, etc...
Still, you have evolution, global warming, and support for junk(in my opinion) social science on the conservative side. I can accept the evolution as a number of loud religious nuts who have to have a literal reading of their holy book be true. Global warming, I'd have more respect if their disputes were more along the nature of the economic damage from controlling CO2 being higher than just accepting the sea level rise. A vaccine to prevent a cancer causing STD will encourage promiscuity? Really?
With respect, where the hell are you getting this from and why are you so confident? Your odd 620C isn't very hot at all - scroll down to superheated steam boilers:
1. Did you follow the links I posted? They're right there. 2. RDK8, Karlsruhe, Germany, 600C & 620C (reheat) steam temperature 46% net efficiency. I posted the temperatures as a link earlier, so why are you asking now?
Since with nuclear you don't hit the same limit of flame temperature so you can go far hotter and get greater efficiency, but you have to pay for that in other ways.
Ah, I see the problem now. Okay, here's the reason why modern high efficiency fossil fuel plants have higher steam temperatures(And therefore efficiency) than traditional nuclear plants. You mentioned neutron bombardment, but neglect a crucial fact: Current nuclear power plant cores are liquid water cooled. Depending on the design, the water even acts as a moderator - no water, the reaction doesn't work right. In order to keep water liquid at these high temperatures, you have to pressurize the reactor. There's a limit on how much pressure you can build the vessel to withstand, thus the limit on steam temperature with BWR/PWR reactors. Now, if you switch to liquid metal, salt, or even helium you can do away with most of that pressure, and are thus free to raise the temperature. Heck, with the first two you can theoretically run the reactor at 1 atm. There's even some theoretical reactors that exceed the melting point of Uranium, and operate completely in a liquid state. Still, all the commercial nuclear reactors in the USA right now, and most of the rest of the world, are of the BWR/PWR type.
So, you've mentioned 2200K - 1, 927C. I've posted sources on A BWR operates at ~75 atm, and a PWR around 158. That limits a BWR to 269C, and a PWR to 315C using this calculator.
With fossil fuel power plants, as you've amply proven, you don't have any need for the water to be liquid, and you CAN get the temperatures up into the supercritical range.
Since with nuclear you don't hit the same limit of flame temperature so you can go far hotter and get greater efficiency, but you have to pay for that in other ways. Making it as large as you can makes some costs less of a percentage of the total which is why they have to be very large to compete.
The sources I'm seeing say that the large pressure vessel needed makes having it handle higher pressures MORE difficult, not less.
Either I must have missed the 6000BC steam powered industrial revolution or you've made a very incorrect assumption. Take a look at this paper which turned up near the top of a google search and note the flame regions at 2200K in a diagram in section 4.1 (http://flox.com/documents/03_Coal.pdf)
Why are you trying to prove me right? Back on the pollution stuff - there's a lot of cutting edge technology even in coal today.
I have no doubts they'll uncap some of the wells, that they'll get at least a few more years out of them. However, most of the older capped wells were always too low capacity - they're more likely to drill new ones in the same area that go deeper. Even then, they're unlikely to get 50 years out of one.
Where did my statement on Nuclear power temp go? - Yes, I very much know about the Carnot cycle, and it's not limited to nuclear power. It's for ALL heat engines. Basic synopsis from memory: temperature differential sets maximum efficiency. Increase the temp of your hot side, lower the temp of your cold, and efficiency increases. Theoretical efficiency is perfect only if you have an unlimited absolute zero heatsink.
In my earlier post, I mentioned that current nuclear plants only get up to around 350C. There are thus far theoretical ones that can get much hotter, but they have to move away from water as a coolant to do it. Hot side: 350C = 623k, Cold side: 100C = 373k, I use 100C as the cold side because even with tricks like lowering the pressure below 1 atm, you don't want the water vapor condensing in the turbines. Max efficiency: ~40%. Real world it's more like 30%. The coal plant that gets it's hot side up to 600C? 600C = 873k, 100C = 373k, 57%. Making the advanced coal plant actually MORE efficient thermally.
Sorry but you are wrong, there's those things called neutrons that do a lot of damage to materials that are not designed to survive being bombarded by them, there's the exotic stuff you need to handle liquid sodium cooling if it's there, temperatures and pressures are higher, the list goes on. If nuclear didn't give you more steam it would be fairly pointless wouldn't it? Hotter and higher pressure means you need to design for it, it should be obvious.
Okay, a nuclear reactor has to worry about neutron flux. In a clean coal plant you have to worry about the equipment that removes the mercury, lead, sulfur, and all the other pollutants. You have equivalents of catalytic converters, and as I mentioned, the temperature is actually lower in current nuclear plants. They need to move away from water cooling before they can get them hotter.
Look up "flame temperature". That's your limit with combustion. Nuclear has different limits. If nuclear couldn't give you hotter steam and a better temperature difference then nobody would have ever suggested nuclear power. Look up "carnot cycle" if you don't know of it yet. It's the idea behind nuclear power so if you don't know the simple concept of how it works then all you have to rely on is truth in advertising.
I listed my sources, did you check them out? How about you check your own sources? Charcoal can reach 750-1,200 C per the chart, and it's pretty much the same as coal. Also, you can boost temperatures by manipulating the atmosphere - coal plants today operate in 'forced draft' modes, much like how old time blacksmiths could melt iron with charcoal by operating a bellows to increase the temperature.
Not until after you've had one good pilot plant, as France shows where they recently had to fix a newly discovered fault in all of their standarised reactors.
Hmm... Are you completely reading my posts? I revised my post saying to make maybe a quarter of them AP1000, but then again you did mention 40 - and that would be a quarter. Of course, by my time scale we'd be breaking ground on the 40th reactor in the 9th year, which wouldn't leave time for more than a test advanced reactor to be breaking ground, much less completed and operating. The AP1000 is pretty much an evolutionary, not a revolutionary design. It shouldn't hold too many surprises. Still, we are looking at having 6-10 under major construction when the first comes on line, with two more about to be. Heck, with enough construction delays the ones started second might actually beat the first. Hmm... How long do you think the test plant needs to operate before you start duplicating it?
As for the construction bottlenecks -that's why I wanted to start with only 1 reactor. I just view the problem as big enough we really need to hurry on it. You're going to have to build manufacturing to build the manufacturing. Also, it gives you a year of experience with the construction of the first reactor before you start on the 2nd two, and so on...
As for economy of scale - like I said, it's mostly engineering savings. You only have to engineer ONE fix(hopefully), that you can spread to ~40 plants. Rather than the current situation of engineering a solution for one pretty much unique plant every time. Yes, a recall/fix costs more dollars when you have a lot of identical plants, but it's fewer dollars per plant because you don't have to duplicate all the work. Plus, something goes wrong in one plant, you can distribute the fix action to all of them, know what to look for in the rest. It happens with planes all the time.
China's reactors are ending up more expensive, yes, but let's face it: Prototypes tend to be expensive. I've seen figures that the first AP1000 is likely to cost almost twice as much as the next due to all the permitting and 'practical R&D'.
Call you names? That's not good debating technique. I might attack ideas, but not you. Line breaks would be nice though.
Why invent a new personal definition of peak oil? Just look it up instead of making shit up, but at least you had the decency to list your own personal definiton.
I thought my definition was pretty much standard? It's the point where oil production levels out and starts decreasing because extraction costs have risen to the point that increasing production further isn't economical. Whether that's because the economic gain is less than the cost, or because an alternate has risen that has a better benefit ratio.
There has been a lot of progress and reactors such as pebble bed (built) and accelerated thorium (under construction) are showing a lot of promise, and reactors such as the AP1000 (under construction) could come close.
Pebble bed reactors aren't showing as much progress as I'd like. I really like the promise of thorium. I'm not a fanboy of 1970's tech, matter of fact, I'd be supporting shutting down the reactors from that time period as soon as we finished replacing the coal power plants(sooner in a few cases).
The edge nuclear power has over coal and oil is much higher steam temperatures - that advantage comes with a cost in materials which becomes less important as the scale increases.
Source on this? Hate to break it to you, but to my knowledge coal plants(~374C) actually get their steam HOTTER than nuclear plants(~350C). Heck, there's a coal fired plant that reaches 600-620C. This could be fixed by newer nuclear plant designs, but the old designs just don't get that hot. I'm also irked that our environmental regulations often mean older, less efficient and more polluting plants keep operating under grandfather clauses than getting new plants built. That goes for ALL plant designs, coal, nuclear, even gas.
There's not much more 'exotic technology' in a nuclear reactor, one could even argue that there's less, than what's in a modern 'clean coal' plant.
At this time financial (not political) constraints along with the technological ones are preventing the construction of much in the way of nuclear reactors - in fact it's a political action to override that and get one built.
An absolutely HUGE portion of the cost is the permitting process, and that's political. Fix that and you'd see more reactors built. Personally, my goal power proportions is 40% nuclear, 20% wind, 20% solar, 20% other(hydro, biomass, etc...) Right now, about 20% of power in the USA is nuclear and is provided by 104 reactors. So figure on building ~208(increase to 40%, decommission the older less safe reactors). But new reactors tend to be bigger than the old ones: Another calc: 806.2 TWh/year. A 1 GW reactor like the AP1000 should produce ~8TWh a year. So replacement would only be 100 reactors, or 200 to both expand and replace. Of course, the AP1000 is actually a 1.2GW reactor, so it'd only be 167 reactors. Figure on a 5 year build, break ground on 1 this year, 2 next, then 3 and so on, and you'd be finishing up in 25 years assuming a few delays. Peak would be 18 years from now, starting up 14-18, depending on slippage and expansion. 167 more or less identical reactors would give you lots of comparative advantage on safety and maintenance engineering costs. Still, I think that making a quarter of them AP1000, and 75% other standardized designs would be good. Don't forget to set them up to use the waste heat for something useful, if possible. Up in Alaska use some of the micro-nuclear plants to also provide steam for heating buildings. Some of those are in the single digit to low double Megawatt. Heck, get a thorium design out, and at least build a test plant.
The taxes that pay for the tariffs runs about 4 cents a kwh(source in my original post), and I posted the 2011 rates for solar with citation. If you have a different source, please quote it.
That leaves 11 cents a kwh, vs.2111 through.2874. Around double for retail. The factor of 4 would be for utility, and you can say that comparing consumer power cost with power plant cost isn't valid, but that discounts that you're still forcing the power company to buy power that it has to distribute at double the price it sells it for. Also, not all German solar installs are by consumers, there are some commercial solar farms, and they still get a high rate. Thus my '2-4X' figure.
Does wikipedia count?.3549-.517 Euro per kwh, which has dropped to.2111-.2874 in 2011. The energy displaced is listed at.047 Euro.
That's in the range of 10X the cost, though with newer, lower levels it's more like 2-4X as expensive, depending on what figures you look at. Retail vs Utility, whether you count the surcharge per kwh that goes to pay for the subsidies as a cost non-subsidized power generation sources, etc...
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So, you're proposing we only use 'old technology'.
That means Film X-rays vs digital ones that reduce radiation exposure 50-90%
Rather than using digital cell phones transmitting 1/4 watt, we'd be using analog ones that transmitted at 4 watts.
Rather than using wifi, we'd just stick with old portable phones - 2.4Ghz, right next to your head, at like 10X the output.
The list goes on. As mentioned in other threads here, there's a big difference between ionizing and non-ionizing radiation.
Heck, you list Asbestos as an example - thing is, we knew the stuff was dangerous back before WWII, it's just that in the war rush we disregarded it in favor of getting more ships out.
In the end, you go back 'a few generations', you'll see more pollution, radiation, and other hazards at far lower utility level. We've done a lot in identifying causes of damage rather than just finding correlations between use of certain types of equipment and the condition being tracked.
I have a 'small' trailer for my motorcycle as well. It's probably a lot bigger than yours, but it sounds like you've struck a good balance. There's nothing particularly heavy about modern TVs, it's all the height and width. A small flat bed trailer gives you the expanded capacity when you need it, but doesn't cost you mileage all the time, unlike a bigger vehicle.
The main board thing is the nasty part, from what I understand they're all pretty much custom for that model TV, and there's too many of them to realistically stock in a shop, much less a van for home visits. In the old tube days you could fix 99% of TVs with something like 50 parts.
In which case I see more remote work coming up. I mean, I found my half hour each way commute draining after a time, I can't imagine doubling it.
Yeah, if the traffic isn't that busy, inductive in the roads wouldn't be cost effective. Still, they have 300 mile range EVs now, and if you get charging stations at work, you could start with full batteries each way. Only remaining problem would be the 'emergency trip home'.
And In-home TV repair with a VW diesel? Wouldn't a panel van be better? I'd think that you'd occasionally need to haul a whole TV... Anyways, you're correct with your assessment on hybrids not being great for pure highway driving, which is the diesel's strongest area, a good selection. The volt would also be a poor choice from the sounds of it, you'd lose most of the effect of a plug in, strong hybrid, with that many highway miles. 'Inner city taxi' is a better duty load for them.
Scuba Tanks? Really? They're not that common on boats and aren't optimized for holding hydrogen. It'd be like trying to hold sand in a wire collander intended to drain pasta.
I mentioned it working better with a massive cylinder at a factory - economy of scale. scuba tanks would actually be smaller than the ones mounted in a car.
I figure you wouldn't want to spend an hour at a 'gas station', besides, existing ones don't have enough parking. Restaurants, malls, even your general stores do.
Eating in at a McD's will generally take at least half an hour. A sit down place where they cook to order will take closer to the hour. Besides, if you're driving for long distances a good break with a good meal is a real stress reliever and makes for safer driving.
Well, a Volt isn't exactly #5, but good catch. I was picturing a pure electric vehicle with a small hitch and specialized power plug in the back; that way you avoid the expense of the engine - in both cost and weight, for normal trips that don't need it. And #6 would fix you right up.
So let's add one. I ordered them for what I saw as practicality/likelihood.
7. Buy a multi-fuel vehicle; plug-in hybrid of some sort if you make a lot of long trips
In your case, I'd consider utilizing mass transit - train or bus into city core; walk the rest of the way. I'd prefer a city core optimized for foot traffic - I live in the upper north, so to me this means skybridges and perhaps even slideways in the larger city centers. At an easy 3mph, a human can travel a mile in 20 minutes. If you figure that it takes 8 minutes to get to your car, start it up, get out of the parking spot and lot onto the road, then drive at 10mph average, then take another 8 minutes to park and get to the final destination, that's 21 minutes. With slideways doubling the walking speed to 6mph, that's more like 1.5 miles where going by foot is actually faster.
By the way, have you considered the cost of your commute? That living closer to your work might be better? Assuming you work 5 days a week, that's 25% more time, 500 extra hours a year dedicated to your job, plus fuel, plus car wear, etc... I believe that it's unsustainable for most people; the suburbs are eventually going to die. Note: This means attention needs to be paid in cities, building GOOD apartments and condos and such.
I've said for years that there's nothing wrong with electric vehicles that a batter that lasts twice as long at half the price wouldn't fix. That's actually a 4X improvement, approximately, but we've improved a bit over the last few years.
Long term, I think Lithium-Iron (LiFe) batteries are going to win the automotive market - a little less energy density(though they're working to fix that, of course), but they degrade so much slower that after the first year they actually hold more charge.
1. Battery swap
2. 30-60 minutes for a 80% charge is certainly possible. Eat in!
3. Rent a long ranged vehicle for the occasional trip
4. Fly or take train and rent a vehicle locally
5. Rent a trailer with a generator of some sort- as a bonus, it gives you extra cargo space for your long trip!
6. induction charging built into the very roads
Note that while it has the highest energy by mass, by volume it's actually pretty low, though it does beat LiIon. This also doesn't count the vessel needed to contain it - not a big deal for a massive cylinder at a factory, but it's a substantial mass/volume hit to include a 700 bar pressure vessel in a car.
As far as I'm aware, gearbox noise is still as significant an issue as aeroacoustic noise.
I've seen some literature that suggests they've changed designs to eliminate the gearbox by changing the generator design. Because the gearbox was expensive and one of the most maintenance intensive parts.
Of course, that might just be one manufacturer, there are dozens of wind turbine makers today, all with different designs.
Until relatively recently even Westinghouse was pushing hard to get taxpayers money to build TMI painted green instead of more recent technology.
The fixes implemented after TMI pretty much precludes another TMI. It's like continuing to lambast Pintos for catching on fire if Ford had implemented a fix as soon as it was discovered.
If you want to really simplify things, the AP1000 design is a generational change from the Babcock&Wilcox, given that both are PWR plants. But that would be a bit like comparing a 2000 model honda civic with a model T. - The new design boasts 50% fewer safety valves, 80% less safety piping, 85% less control cable, 35% fewer pumps, and 45% less seismic building volume. Eliminating parts might seem dangerous, but it also means that there are fewer things to break/go wrong.
I took it to mean that it'd be 'hard' in the sense that the rules are consistent, but the abilities would be along the lines of Star Trek.
I tend to go by 'person', not 'human', or 'alive'. 'Persons' get protection. That way intelligent aliens from Mars would get protections, as AIs and such would get protection. A brain-dead body isn't a person, thus not rating for the protection people get.
Heat is in Watts, but some confusion with temperature and some incorrect late night posts on my part didn't help.
'Heat' is temperature. Watts is power. The relations between the two is complex; but in general the more power involved, the faster the temperature gain/loss.
On the coal side adding more boilers and supporting infrastucture is difficult because for a few reasons - they are huge and take up a lot of land and all the associated requirements (eg. cooling water dam, ash dam, other ash storage, etc) take up even more.
Perhaps, but my local power plant is only about the size of a hanger. Compared to less dense power supplies such as solar and wind, the footprint isn't a problem. We don't have any special need for it to be denser.
. Skewing the game by pretending solar never got to benefit from the economy of scale from microprocessor fabrication brings that crossover point down and makes even the nuclear dinosaurs look good. There's a lot of counterproductive bullshit being spread by those that spend more on lobbying than R&D. Also photovoltaics have their own practical existing niche so those that use them as a strawman in comparison to unbuilt reactors are setting themselves up for a fall.
Where did this come from? I actually proposed having 20% of the energy come from solar. Solar is still expensive, but then, ALL new power sources today are expensive. It makes sense to build solar in ideal areas, but 'ideal' doesn't cover more than a fraction of our electricity needs. And I certainly hope I haven't given the perspective that I want to build 'dinosaurs'. I want GenIV reactors, darn it! I want micro-nukes providing electricity and heat to small Alaskan towns!
Building Gen3 reactors for a bit would be to get the experience needed and to at least start replacing polluting coal and end of life nuclear plants.
Health effects of smoking is an interesting one that I didn't even think of - Nobody disputes the heatlh effects of smoking anymore, though some are more on the side of freedom than others. They don't dispute that smoking is bad, but dispute that it's the government's job to make people quit. That's valid in my opinion. Then there's the current rage with smoking - second hand smoke. Sure, there are nasty compounds in second hand smoke, but the real question would be - at the levels typically present, is it really a danger? It's like the global warming thing - will stopping enough CO2 to prevent sea level rise cause more economic damage than the rise? Honestly, I think that if it's not junk science we'd be setting acceptable levels, heck, regulating indoor air, rather than just going for bans. And I'm a non-smoker who dislikes smelling cigarettes. There's fancy filtration systems out there, there's those electronic cigarettes, there are options.
Another would be nuclear power - lowest lethality of all the power sources, even with creaky old power plants. New ones with proper planning would be an order of magnitude safer than even those old ones.
For organic produce - I don't mind them wanting it, especially if it tastes better. It's when, as ArcherB says, they work on banning the non-organic stuff without any serious knowledge of the relevant factors. Organic can actually be more toxic than non-organic, it all depends. I'd rather my food safety be decided by science, not some arbitrary declaration that 'ORGANIC GOOD', 'NON-ORGANIC BAD'.
We appear to have got some wires crossed about limits of heat input (Watts you can pump into the fluid) which is why I've been writing about flame temperature being a hard limit.
What set me off was your saying that nuclear plants run hotter than coal plants. I knew that to be untrue; thus responded. I acknowledged in my very first post that nuclear plants could be run hotter with modern designs, though I didn't specify changing the working fluid until later.
The thing about 'largest practical flame heated boilers' is that they're very easy to parallelize. You need more power, you add boilers. The local coal Heat&Power plant has 5 boilers, installed over a period of 35 years.
That's not as easy for nuclear plants, at least not yet. Liquid Thorium reactors are promising in this regard though.
Social liberals only want to support people who think like they do, and fiscal liberals only want to fund people who think like they do.
Still reads as true, doesn't it? I see the republican party as swinging more extremist at the moment, but let's face it: both sides want their policies passed.
And on the OP, I see a lot of anti-science and distrust on the liberal side as well. Homeopathy isn't restricted by political bias, but I have a distinct impression that those who resist vaccines and insist on buying organic tend to be more on the liberal side. All the 'food X' is good/bad for you based on the science of the week, etc...
Still, you have evolution, global warming, and support for junk(in my opinion) social science on the conservative side. I can accept the evolution as a number of loud religious nuts who have to have a literal reading of their holy book be true. Global warming, I'd have more respect if their disputes were more along the nature of the economic damage from controlling CO2 being higher than just accepting the sea level rise. A vaccine to prevent a cancer causing STD will encourage promiscuity? Really?
With respect, where the hell are you getting this from and why are you so confident? Your odd 620C isn't very hot at all - scroll down to superheated steam boilers:
1. Did you follow the links I posted? They're right there.
2. RDK8, Karlsruhe, Germany, 600C & 620C (reheat) steam temperature 46% net efficiency. I posted the temperatures as a link earlier, so why are you asking now?
Since with nuclear you don't hit the same limit of flame temperature so you can go far hotter and get greater efficiency, but you have to pay for that in other ways.
Ah, I see the problem now. Okay, here's the reason why modern high efficiency fossil fuel plants have higher steam temperatures(And therefore efficiency) than traditional nuclear plants. You mentioned neutron bombardment, but neglect a crucial fact: Current nuclear power plant cores are liquid water cooled. Depending on the design, the water even acts as a moderator - no water, the reaction doesn't work right. In order to keep water liquid at these high temperatures, you have to pressurize the reactor. There's a limit on how much pressure you can build the vessel to withstand, thus the limit on steam temperature with BWR/PWR reactors. Now, if you switch to liquid metal, salt, or even helium you can do away with most of that pressure, and are thus free to raise the temperature. Heck, with the first two you can theoretically run the reactor at 1 atm. There's even some theoretical reactors that exceed the melting point of Uranium, and operate completely in a liquid state. Still, all the commercial nuclear reactors in the USA right now, and most of the rest of the world, are of the BWR/PWR type.
So, you've mentioned 2200K - 1, 927C. I've posted sources on
A BWR operates at ~75 atm, and a PWR around 158. That limits a BWR to 269C, and a PWR to 315C using this calculator.
With fossil fuel power plants, as you've amply proven, you don't have any need for the water to be liquid, and you CAN get the temperatures up into the supercritical range.
Since with nuclear you don't hit the same limit of flame temperature so you can go far hotter and get greater efficiency, but you have to pay for that in other ways. Making it as large as you can makes some costs less of a percentage of the total which is why they have to be very large to compete.
The sources I'm seeing say that the large pressure vessel needed makes having it handle higher pressures MORE difficult, not less.
Either I must have missed the 6000BC steam powered industrial revolution or you've made a very incorrect assumption. Take a look at this paper which turned up near the top of a google search and note the flame regions at 2200K in a diagram in section 4.1 (http://flox.com/documents/03_Coal.pdf)
Why are you trying to prove me right? Back on the pollution stuff - there's a lot of cutting edge technology even in coal today.
I'm sure there's more, but I have to go.
I have no doubts they'll uncap some of the wells, that they'll get at least a few more years out of them. However, most of the older capped wells were always too low capacity - they're more likely to drill new ones in the same area that go deeper. Even then, they're unlikely to get 50 years out of one.
Where did my statement on Nuclear power temp go? - Yes, I very much know about the Carnot cycle, and it's not limited to nuclear power. It's for ALL heat engines. Basic synopsis from memory: temperature differential sets maximum efficiency. Increase the temp of your hot side, lower the temp of your cold, and efficiency increases. Theoretical efficiency is perfect only if you have an unlimited absolute zero heatsink.
In my earlier post, I mentioned that current nuclear plants only get up to around 350C. There are thus far theoretical ones that can get much hotter, but they have to move away from water as a coolant to do it.
Hot side: 350C = 623k, Cold side: 100C = 373k, I use 100C as the cold side because even with tricks like lowering the pressure below 1 atm, you don't want the water vapor condensing in the turbines.
Max efficiency: ~40%. Real world it's more like 30%.
The coal plant that gets it's hot side up to 600C?
600C = 873k, 100C = 373k, 57%. Making the advanced coal plant actually MORE efficient thermally.
Sorry but you are wrong, there's those things called neutrons that do a lot of damage to materials that are not designed to survive being bombarded by them, there's the exotic stuff you need to handle liquid sodium cooling if it's there, temperatures and pressures are higher, the list goes on. If nuclear didn't give you more steam it would be fairly pointless wouldn't it? Hotter and higher pressure means you need to design for it, it should be obvious.
Okay, a nuclear reactor has to worry about neutron flux. In a clean coal plant you have to worry about the equipment that removes the mercury, lead, sulfur, and all the other pollutants. You have equivalents of catalytic converters, and as I mentioned, the temperature is actually lower in current nuclear plants. They need to move away from water cooling before they can get them hotter.
Look up "flame temperature". That's your limit with combustion. Nuclear has different limits. If nuclear couldn't give you hotter steam and a better temperature difference then nobody would have ever suggested nuclear power. Look up "carnot cycle" if you don't know of it yet. It's the idea behind nuclear power so if you don't know the simple concept of how it works then all you have to rely on is truth in advertising.
I listed my sources, did you check them out? How about you check your own sources? Charcoal can reach 750-1,200 C per the chart, and it's pretty much the same as coal. Also, you can boost temperatures by manipulating the atmosphere - coal plants today operate in 'forced draft' modes, much like how old time blacksmiths could melt iron with charcoal by operating a bellows to increase the temperature.
Not until after you've had one good pilot plant, as France shows where they recently had to fix a newly discovered fault in all of their standarised reactors.
Hmm... Are you completely reading my posts? I revised my post saying to make maybe a quarter of them AP1000, but then again you did mention 40 - and that would be a quarter. Of course, by my time scale we'd be breaking ground on the 40th reactor in the 9th year, which wouldn't leave time for more than a test advanced reactor to be breaking ground, much less completed and operating. The AP1000 is pretty much an evolutionary, not a revolutionary design. It shouldn't hold too many surprises. Still, we are looking at having 6-10 under major construction when the first comes on line, with two more about to be. Heck, with enough construction delays the ones started second might actually beat the first. Hmm... How long do you think the test plant needs to operate before you start duplicating it?
As for the construction bottlenecks -that's why I wanted to start with only 1 reactor. I just view the problem as big enough we really need to hurry on it. You're going to have to build manufacturing to build the manufacturing. Also, it gives you a year of experience with the construction of the first reactor before you start on the 2nd two, and so on...
As for economy of scale - like I said, it's mostly engineering savings. You only have to engineer ONE fix(hopefully), that you can spread to ~40 plants. Rather than the current situation of engineering a solution for one pretty much unique plant every time. Yes, a recall/fix costs more dollars when you have a lot of identical plants, but it's fewer dollars per plant because you don't have to duplicate all the work. Plus, something goes wrong in one plant, you can distribute the fix action to all of them, know what to look for in the rest. It happens with planes all the time.
China's reactors are ending up more expensive, yes, but let's face it: Prototypes tend to be expensive. I've seen figures that the first AP1000 is likely to cost almost twice as much as the next due to all the permitting and 'practical R&D'.
Call you names? That's not good debating technique. I might attack ideas, but not you. Line breaks would be nice though.
Why invent a new personal definition of peak oil? Just look it up instead of making shit up, but at least you had the decency to list your own personal definiton.
I thought my definition was pretty much standard? It's the point where oil production levels out and starts decreasing because extraction costs have risen to the point that increasing production further isn't economical. Whether that's because the economic gain is less than the cost, or because an alternate has risen that has a better benefit ratio.
There has been a lot of progress and reactors such as pebble bed (built) and accelerated thorium (under construction) are showing a lot of promise, and reactors such as the AP1000 (under construction) could come close.
Pebble bed reactors aren't showing as much progress as I'd like. I really like the promise of thorium. I'm not a fanboy of 1970's tech, matter of fact, I'd be supporting shutting down the reactors from that time period as soon as we finished replacing the coal power plants(sooner in a few cases).
The edge nuclear power has over coal and oil is much higher steam temperatures - that advantage comes with a cost in materials which becomes less important as the scale increases.
Source on this? Hate to break it to you, but to my knowledge coal plants(~374C) actually get their steam HOTTER than nuclear plants(~350C). Heck, there's a coal fired plant that reaches 600-620C. This could be fixed by newer nuclear plant designs, but the old designs just don't get that hot. I'm also irked that our environmental regulations often mean older, less efficient and more polluting plants keep operating under grandfather clauses than getting new plants built. That goes for ALL plant designs, coal, nuclear, even gas.
There's not much more 'exotic technology' in a nuclear reactor, one could even argue that there's less, than what's in a modern 'clean coal' plant.
At this time financial (not political) constraints along with the technological ones are preventing the construction of much in the way of nuclear reactors - in fact it's a political action to override that and get one built.
An absolutely HUGE portion of the cost is the permitting process, and that's political. Fix that and you'd see more reactors built. Personally, my goal power proportions is 40% nuclear, 20% wind, 20% solar, 20% other(hydro, biomass, etc...)
Right now, about 20% of power in the USA is nuclear and is provided by 104 reactors. So figure on building ~208(increase to 40%, decommission the older less safe reactors). But new reactors tend to be bigger than the old ones: Another calc: 806.2 TWh/year. A 1 GW reactor like the AP1000 should produce ~8TWh a year. So replacement would only be 100 reactors, or 200 to both expand and replace. Of course, the AP1000 is actually a 1.2GW reactor, so it'd only be 167 reactors. Figure on a 5 year build, break ground on 1 this year, 2 next, then 3 and so on, and you'd be finishing up in 25 years assuming a few delays. Peak would be 18 years from now, starting up 14-18, depending on slippage and expansion.
167 more or less identical reactors would give you lots of comparative advantage on safety and maintenance engineering costs. Still, I think that making a quarter of them AP1000, and 75% other standardized designs would be good. Don't forget to set them up to use the waste heat for something useful, if possible. Up in Alaska use some of the micro-nuclear plants to also provide steam for heating buildings. Some of those are in the single digit to low double Megawatt. Heck, get a thorium design out, and at least build a test plant.
The taxes that pay for the tariffs runs about 4 cents a kwh(source in my original post), and I posted the 2011 rates for solar with citation. If you have a different source, please quote it.
That leaves 11 cents a kwh, vs .2111 through .2874. Around double for retail. The factor of 4 would be for utility, and you can say that comparing consumer power cost with power plant cost isn't valid, but that discounts that you're still forcing the power company to buy power that it has to distribute at double the price it sells it for. Also, not all German solar installs are by consumers, there are some commercial solar farms, and they still get a high rate. Thus my '2-4X' figure.
Production, not usage though. It's now a global product.
Does wikipedia count? .3549-.517 Euro per kwh, which has dropped to .2111-.2874 in 2011. The energy displaced is listed at .047 Euro.
That's in the range of 10X the cost, though with newer, lower levels it's more like 2-4X as expensive, depending on what figures you look at. Retail vs Utility, whether you count the surcharge per kwh that goes to pay for the subsidies as a cost non-subsidized power generation sources, etc...