5% 'full utilization' rate would be ~18 days a year that you need that $40 rental, though you have to remember that we're talking about a truck or a van here rather than a standard rental.
I personally think that $50-100 would be closer. If nothing else, consider a slight penaly for the hassle of the person having to go to the rental place(or have them pick them up), fill out the paperwork, etc...
So we end up with $900-1800/year in rental costs.
Hmm... My car is ~10 cents/mile for fuel cost. Let's say the larger vehicle is 20 cents. Let's figure on 3k miles/year.
That'd be $300/year in extra fuel costs. The people who buy the larger vehicle is still ahead.
Hmm... Ford Fusion, equiped, $22k. Ford Expedition, $42k.
Difference: $20k. Spread over a 5 year 0% loan, that's $4k extra a year in payments. Figure the thing will last 10 years, and it's $2k/year.
Yep, better to rent. On the other hand, the equations change if you 'need' the bigger vehicle something like 20% of the time. Equations change again if you're willing to get a $32k truck instead of the SUV. More use(depending), lower cost.
electric engine - power is just fine. See Tesla sports car for details.
Seeking extreme milage out of your vehicle? Funky body styling.
I've seen a very similar vehicle that was advertised as 100mpg, used a small gasoline engine.
The problem with most of these designs is that you'd have trouble fitting anything larger than a regular sized woman's handbag in the trunk, and they're only for two people.
So families and shopping trips are normally right out.
Note that I didn't mention the Aptera at all - I talked about electric vehicles, but no specific company or model. It could be a Tesla Volt - while it has similar cargo capacity is at least guarenteed to be a fun ride(if you're into that).
Probably even safer too.
As for the design, as another person noted, it's extreme streamlining to reduce air friction. You see this sort of stuff anytime you see extreme efficiency vehicles.
The EV1 was a more conventional design, as are any number of other attempts.
I doubt electrics will have enough torque to go over rocky terrain or through mud. Though, I suppose this is fine. It will just relegate the electric car to a commute car.
In a torque contest an electric motor of similar HP will slaughter most diesel engines, much less gasoline models.
The only thing holding back electric vehicles is the power source - batteries are simply too expensive and don't hold enough power.
Maybe not at the same time, but I've been known to be away from the internet for weeks at a time, I can read 2-5 books in a single day, and I don't always quite know what I'll want to read next.
Being able to haul around 1 device instead of 5 books is a real bonus.
At this point, the 100 books thing is more of a 'why the heck not' than a necessity. Just like that I think that any multihundred dollar device that uses flash memory should have at least a gig at this point.
Why put a gig in the kindle? Why not? It's not like it'd be that much more expensive, and it'd keep me from having to worry about tiny cards for that much longer.
I think you've hit upon the reason that not everyone drives a high-efficiency communter car - I drive a vehicle similar to one, and I've had to borrow larger vehicles more than once.
Add a family and I'd need a larger vehicle, but a commuter doesn't save enough money to justify owning an extra vehicle just for that. Taxes, insurance, and capital cost(buying or leasing it) kill the fuel savings.
So people buy a vehicle to meet 95-100% of their needs, even if the vehicle is only used to capacity 5% of the time.
This is where car sharing programs might not be a bad idea - I can pick up a van or a truck instead of a two door econobox when I need the extra capabilities for a day.
Though for the optimal apples-to-apples comparison, you might as well just take a given gasoline price and compute how much it costs to power one mile of travel for that price, vs. some existing car being used today.
Even with $3/gallon gasoline, my car is 10 cents a mile for fuel cost. I know what I pay per kwh, so a figure for how many kwh at the plug it takes to move a mile would make the calculation rather easy.
It'd also help highlight the difference between a reasonably fuel efficient car and a 15mpg truck or SUV.
I think that gasoline prices are too volitile, and driving habits too varied, to start sticking energy star tags with the 'we'd expect this to cost you $XXX in fuel a year' on them.
I've read the articles, of course, but I feel the need to respond to the part you quoted.
You see, I feel that the 300mpg figure is cutting it very close to being fraudulent, and at least deceiving.
Because I really doubt that if you drained the batteries at the start that it'd get 300mpg, or even if you drove it over the test course in such a way that the battery was equally charged at the beginning and end. Say, 50% charge - enough room for regenerative braking to be utilized, not so low that the car's trying to charge the battery back up.
As such, I'd like to see some new figures quoted - average mileage per kwh, plus a figure for how many kwh the battery stores, then gas mileage as I proposed.
'300mpg over the first 300 miles' isn't as useful as '1 mile per kwh city, 250 kwh pack, 50 miles per gallon gasoline, 10 gallon tank'.*
*Plus the standard disclaimers about driving habits, patterns, routes make a difference here.
Your employer puts up solar panels in the employee parking lot for anyone driving an electric car to work. You park your car in the cool shade under the panels and plug in for a free 9 hour recharge.
It'd be cheaper to simply put up a carport and pay the electric bill each month. Discounting massive subsidization of the solar panels, of course.
Actually, make it simple. Put an AC plug next to every parking stall. In cold places we do it for block heaters. Employers pay for all sorts of perks to attract good employees. Why not add free recharge to the list.
This would work well, I think. Especially if you have the carport charging plugs be on a circuit that allows discretionary turnoffs by the power company - this would increase baseload and not peak.
The power company is willing to cut quite a deal per kwh for these deals, as baseload power can cost them a third or even less than their more expensive peak sources.
People complain about how slow charging will be - but a major difference between pouring gasoline into a car and charging the batter is that pouring gasoline pretty much needs to be an attended activity - charging a car you only need the 30 seconds or so to attach the plug, then remove it before you leave. Heck, you could even set it up so that the act of backing out of the slot disengages the cord, which is on a auto retraction wheel. With 130 miles of range current, I still wouldn't need to charge every day.
I'm sure there are all sorts of scientists and nuclear engineers that would be shocked at this. It most certainly is nuclear power - just it's not using criticality to generate even more power, so it's still limited by halflifes.
As for the turbine - I'll restate, have you worked on generator systems as tiny as this would be?
The stresses are different. Yes, you're going to need to maintain the utilization plant above this reactor.
But while 'expensive', it'd be nowhere near that of a gigawatt nuclear plant - more like systems maintenance for a hospital system.
I think that he more meant that there are large numbers of people living in areas where wind/solar/hydro won't work well; therefore we still need alternatives, and nuclear looks good because you can put it just about anywhere. Or at least find a location within 100 miles or so that's suitable, then bring the wires in.
Duh. Though from what I've read, the water going through the reactor system can be your primary steam line - it never makes direct contact with the reactor core. The reactor has it's own coolant that never leaves the core, and the heat exchange systems are built in and certified for no maintenance for the 40 year lifespan of the system. After that, the reactor is being taken in for disposal/refit/recycling anyways. This wouldn't be something you extend past the original lifespan like current large plants.
That has it's own chemistry controls as well. Most of your installed piping would have to be upgraded to keep your chemistry on the secondary side of the system in check too. Better keep another chemist on hand just for that.
I think that it depends. This sounds a lot like a new form of RTG, and they've allowed those to operate unattended for years, even decades.
So at best, you're going to need at least 1 person there 24/7 to monitor the thing.
And do what? It's completely automated in the sense that there are no controls. It's designed to automatically regulate itself, preventing a meltdown even if all flow stops.
Then you've got to take into account that there will be maintenance on that turbine.
They do maintenance on my furnace every year, doesn't mean that there has to be somebody on site all the time.
Let's not also forget there are chemistry controls on that water you just dumped in. So add a chemist to that roster we're building.
Especially with a sealed system, couldn't the guy overseeing the whole plant also do the chemical tests? After all, many pools get by on daily, weekly or even longer period tests. Car radiator fluid is changed only once evern 6-10 years now.
Let's not also forget there is shielding to prevent radiation exposure. Better have a radiologic controls technician on the job too to make sure we're not giving everyone radiation sickness.
How about the standard radiology tags and some geiger counters in strategic locations to make sure that the core isn't leaking for some oddball reason, and don't forget that the core is buried with no access.
How about security guards too while we're at it. I'm glossing over many other positions, but you get the point.
Not really apparently, because at least to me it seems that you're applying big plant requirements to a small plant. Sure, a big city will have many water company employees - but my small town has one part timer.
The security aspect would be that to get to the reactor requires heavy equipment - there is no physical access outside of that. When it comes time for the refresh, they bring in a large crane, the site goes on alternate power, they open up the silo-like reactor housing, pull out the old reactor, put in the new reactor, hook things up, then seal everything back up.
You're right about this reactor not being 100% efficient. In terms of efficiency, even on enriched uranium, most plants don't even hit 25%. You certainly could use the heat to keep your apartments nice and toasty.
I figured a max of 30%, but I think we're close enough.
Please keep in mind though that unless you want to spread contamination everywhere you'll be using a secondary system for steam production.
Duh. Though from
That has it's own chemistry controls as well. Most of your installed piping would have to be upgraded to keep your chemistry on the secondary side of the system in check too. Better keep another chemist on hand just for that.
Again, why? There's not enough work for one chemist, much less two. Toshiba installs enough of these, you'd have quite a knowledge base, have somebody performing tech support that can tell you how to adjust your water chemistry using on-hand supplies. So you don't need a chemist so much as a guy who can operate the testing equipment per procedures.
I'm not up to par on my absorbtion cooler technology, but to run your turbine you're going to need a pretty significant pressure. In saturated systems this also means your temperature is going to be extremely high. Unless you like living in a sauna I'd recommend something like a nice R-12 refrigeration plant or something of the like. Better get a mechanic on site for that too:P
Uh, trigeneration plants have been around for decades. It's known technology, though they normally operate on oil or natural gas. Hospitals and other such buildings frequently have them. All we're really doing here is changing the heat source.
The way it works is that the steam goes through the turbine systems - after that it's both lower pressure and cooler. Then it's used to heat the water an
I suppose once you tap the ground and really get the juices flowing, the sulfur could get out of hand.
Exactly. Especially if you're tapping a deep thermal source that hadn't previously had access to the surface.
The point I try to make with nuclear plants is that they are safe. They can also be economical, in the sense that it's difficult for a company in Arizona to justify installing solar panels on the basis of not having to purchase the electricity over the course of the lifespan of the panels. Matter of fact, cost of capital alone tends to swamp any annual savings without massive government subsidies.
Whereas this nuclear plant could theoretically be installed and make the money back in ~10 years, especially if you take advantage of the locality of the plant and use a trigeneration system so you also save heating/cooling costs. The company would start saving money almost immediately if it's done by lease.
For all this stuff, my general yardstick is 'Can I expect to pay off the increased cost in ~5 years, discounting cost of capital?'. Spend $100 extra to save $25/year on a water heater with a 12 year warrenty(vs 6, to boot)? Sold. Spend $1000 dollars to save $25 of electricity in a year? No sale.
Yeah, it's a bit off. For some reason I pulled 28 amps@240 volts out of my head rather than going with the simple 'It's got a 5500W element in it'.
So that's 5.5 kw, not 6.7. But you're off as well, as in the USA a 30A, 240V installation is what could be considered normal for an electric water heater.
Here in the US, the water heater would definitly be considered power-consuming, but we manage with single phase 240V, normally a 50amp breaker for a combined stove/oven, 30A for the water heater, 30-50 amp for electric heat or AC.
Water heaters, in the USA, are standardly hard wired, not plugged into the wall. Just replaced mine last week, as a matter of fact. Installed it myself. A couple large wire nuts and a ground screw, 10 gauge wire is a pain compared to 12 or 14 gauge. Still easier than adjusting the plumbing(my new unit is quite a bit taller and wider due to increased insulation levels as I bought a higher end unit).
BTW 'Wall Wart' traditionally refers to a AC-DC converter at the end of a plug, generally large enough to block the other outlet(an annoyance if you want the other slot).
The main breaker for my turn of the century house is only 60amps, from the last time the service was updated. When I moved in it was a fuse with the old ceramic shutoff switch...
Unless someone is digging around in the breaker box with a big screwdriver a home will almost never get near 50 amps of draw
I have mostly electric everything, but haven't managed to pop the 60 amp breaker yet. Even during a test where I ran hot water enough to turn my water heater on, turned on the oven and all four burners, and ran the dryer on 'high'.
Still, I'd pop it rather easily if I had electric heat or air conditioning in the summer and tried that.
So I figured 50 amps for a *maximum* draw.
Battery banks are expensive, but the general idea is a good one. There are solutions if you have the money and are willing to be creative. There's service level UPS solutions that utilize large flywheels, for example.
Doesn't have to be that expensive. This reactor being set up as a leasing program that includes disposal. No refueling occurs in the 40 year lifespan. IE in 40 years the lease expires, Toshiba comes by and collects the reactor. Japan, at least, practices reprocessing so the waste stream isn't that large.
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With a 130 or 300 mile range, you'd still be good to go unless your commute is what I'd consider crazy.
As for the school nurse, how do you think that people without vehicles currently manage? 'Sorry, It's going to be an hour before the bus gets here.'?
5% 'full utilization' rate would be ~18 days a year that you need that $40 rental, though you have to remember that we're talking about a truck or a van here rather than a standard rental.
I personally think that $50-100 would be closer. If nothing else, consider a slight penaly for the hassle of the person having to go to the rental place(or have them pick them up), fill out the paperwork, etc...
So we end up with $900-1800/year in rental costs.
Hmm... My car is ~10 cents/mile for fuel cost. Let's say the larger vehicle is 20 cents. Let's figure on 3k miles/year.
That'd be $300/year in extra fuel costs. The people who buy the larger vehicle is still ahead.
Hmm... Ford Fusion, equiped, $22k. Ford Expedition, $42k.
Difference: $20k. Spread over a 5 year 0% loan, that's $4k extra a year in payments. Figure the thing will last 10 years, and it's $2k/year.
Yep, better to rent. On the other hand, the equations change if you 'need' the bigger vehicle something like 20% of the time. Equations change again if you're willing to get a $32k truck instead of the SUV. More use(depending), lower cost.
electric engine - power is just fine. See Tesla sports car for details.
Seeking extreme milage out of your vehicle? Funky body styling.
I've seen a very similar vehicle that was advertised as 100mpg, used a small gasoline engine.
The problem with most of these designs is that you'd have trouble fitting anything larger than a regular sized woman's handbag in the trunk, and they're only for two people.
So families and shopping trips are normally right out.
I mentioned thist stuff here, a little later in the thread.
Note that I didn't mention the Aptera at all - I talked about electric vehicles, but no specific company or model. It could be a Tesla Volt - while it has similar cargo capacity is at least guarenteed to be a fun ride(if you're into that).
Probably even safer too.
As for the design, as another person noted, it's extreme streamlining to reduce air friction. You see this sort of stuff anytime you see extreme efficiency vehicles.
The EV1 was a more conventional design, as are any number of other attempts.
I doubt electrics will have enough torque to go over rocky terrain or through mud. Though, I suppose this is fine. It will just relegate the electric car to a commute car.
In a torque contest an electric motor of similar HP will slaughter most diesel engines, much less gasoline models.
The only thing holding back electric vehicles is the power source - batteries are simply too expensive and don't hold enough power.
Maybe not at the same time, but I've been known to be away from the internet for weeks at a time, I can read 2-5 books in a single day, and I don't always quite know what I'll want to read next.
Being able to haul around 1 device instead of 5 books is a real bonus.
At this point, the 100 books thing is more of a 'why the heck not' than a necessity. Just like that I think that any multihundred dollar device that uses flash memory should have at least a gig at this point.
Why put a gig in the kindle? Why not? It's not like it'd be that much more expensive, and it'd keep me from having to worry about tiny cards for that much longer.
How about a little something for those of us who think numerically?
They don't want us, because we'll never buy their product, because 5 minutes with a napkin and a pen and we'll figure out that it's a bad idea.
Capabilities are not enough to justify the price.
I think you've hit upon the reason that not everyone drives a high-efficiency communter car - I drive a vehicle similar to one, and I've had to borrow larger vehicles more than once.
Add a family and I'd need a larger vehicle, but a commuter doesn't save enough money to justify owning an extra vehicle just for that. Taxes, insurance, and capital cost(buying or leasing it) kill the fuel savings.
So people buy a vehicle to meet 95-100% of their needs, even if the vehicle is only used to capacity 5% of the time.
This is where car sharing programs might not be a bad idea - I can pick up a van or a truck instead of a two door econobox when I need the extra capabilities for a day.
Though for the optimal apples-to-apples comparison, you might as well just take a given gasoline price and compute how much it costs to power one mile of travel for that price, vs. some existing car being used today.
Even with $3/gallon gasoline, my car is 10 cents a mile for fuel cost. I know what I pay per kwh, so a figure for how many kwh at the plug it takes to move a mile would make the calculation rather easy.
It'd also help highlight the difference between a reasonably fuel efficient car and a 15mpg truck or SUV.
I think that gasoline prices are too volitile, and driving habits too varied, to start sticking energy star tags with the 'we'd expect this to cost you $XXX in fuel a year' on them.
I've read the articles, of course, but I feel the need to respond to the part you quoted.
You see, I feel that the 300mpg figure is cutting it very close to being fraudulent, and at least deceiving.
Because I really doubt that if you drained the batteries at the start that it'd get 300mpg, or even if you drove it over the test course in such a way that the battery was equally charged at the beginning and end. Say, 50% charge - enough room for regenerative braking to be utilized, not so low that the car's trying to charge the battery back up.
As such, I'd like to see some new figures quoted - average mileage per kwh, plus a figure for how many kwh the battery stores, then gas mileage as I proposed.
'300mpg over the first 300 miles' isn't as useful as '1 mile per kwh city, 250 kwh pack, 50 miles per gallon gasoline, 10 gallon tank'.*
*Plus the standard disclaimers about driving habits, patterns, routes make a difference here.
Your employer puts up solar panels in the employee parking lot for anyone driving an electric car to work. You park your car in the cool shade under the panels and plug in for a free 9 hour recharge.
It'd be cheaper to simply put up a carport and pay the electric bill each month. Discounting massive subsidization of the solar panels, of course.
Actually, make it simple. Put an AC plug next to every parking stall. In cold places we do it for block heaters. Employers pay for all sorts of perks to attract good employees. Why not add free recharge to the list.
This would work well, I think. Especially if you have the carport charging plugs be on a circuit that allows discretionary turnoffs by the power company - this would increase baseload and not peak.
The power company is willing to cut quite a deal per kwh for these deals, as baseload power can cost them a third or even less than their more expensive peak sources.
People complain about how slow charging will be - but a major difference between pouring gasoline into a car and charging the batter is that pouring gasoline pretty much needs to be an attended activity - charging a car you only need the 30 seconds or so to attach the plug, then remove it before you leave. Heck, you could even set it up so that the act of backing out of the slot disengages the cord, which is on a auto retraction wheel. With 130 miles of range current, I still wouldn't need to charge every day.
Radioactive decay is neither of those.
Yes it is. It's just spontaneous.
We're also splitting hairs on size, - I used a hospital in my example - which probably uses more power than my small town.
How many manhours of maintenance would be required a year for a turbine this small?
What if it sacrifices some efficiency for longevity/ease/quickness of maintenance, using the cogeneration facilities to make up the difference?
Whoa, hold on there! RTG is not nuclear power.
I'm sure there are all sorts of scientists and nuclear engineers that would be shocked at this. It most certainly is nuclear power - just it's not using criticality to generate even more power, so it's still limited by halflifes.
As for the turbine - I'll restate, have you worked on generator systems as tiny as this would be?
The stresses are different. Yes, you're going to need to maintain the utilization plant above this reactor.
But while 'expensive', it'd be nowhere near that of a gigawatt nuclear plant - more like systems maintenance for a hospital system.
At the scale this thing operates at, I'm not sure that they'd allow net metering.
So you'd either have to be separated from the grid or have a relatively even draw.
And I know about the 200 amp thing - but you gotta plan for worst cases.
If this works out, it's fiscally feasible all over the place. Especially if it can be adapted to co/trigeneration.
I can see waiting lists happening.
I think that he more meant that there are large numbers of people living in areas where wind/solar/hydro won't work well; therefore we still need alternatives, and nuclear looks good because you can put it just about anywhere. Or at least find a location within 100 miles or so that's suitable, then bring the wires in.
correction:
Duh. Though from what I've read, the water going through the reactor system can be your primary steam line - it never makes direct contact with the reactor core. The reactor has it's own coolant that never leaves the core, and the heat exchange systems are built in and certified for no maintenance for the 40 year lifespan of the system. After that, the reactor is being taken in for disposal/refit/recycling anyways. This wouldn't be something you extend past the original lifespan like current large plants.
That has it's own chemistry controls as well. Most of your installed piping would have to be upgraded to keep your chemistry on the secondary side of the system in check too. Better keep another chemist on hand just for that.
I think that it depends. This sounds a lot like a new form of RTG, and they've allowed those to operate unattended for years, even decades.
:P
So at best, you're going to need at least 1 person there 24/7 to monitor the thing.
And do what? It's completely automated in the sense that there are no controls. It's designed to automatically regulate itself, preventing a meltdown even if all flow stops.
Then you've got to take into account that there will be maintenance on that turbine.
They do maintenance on my furnace every year, doesn't mean that there has to be somebody on site all the time.
Let's not also forget there are chemistry controls on that water you just dumped in. So add a chemist to that roster we're building.
Especially with a sealed system, couldn't the guy overseeing the whole plant also do the chemical tests? After all, many pools get by on daily, weekly or even longer period tests. Car radiator fluid is changed only once evern 6-10 years now.
Let's not also forget there is shielding to prevent radiation exposure. Better have a radiologic controls technician on the job too to make sure we're not giving everyone radiation sickness.
How about the standard radiology tags and some geiger counters in strategic locations to make sure that the core isn't leaking for some oddball reason, and don't forget that the core is buried with no access.
How about security guards too while we're at it. I'm glossing over many other positions, but you get the point.
Not really apparently, because at least to me it seems that you're applying big plant requirements to a small plant. Sure, a big city will have many water company employees - but my small town has one part timer.
The security aspect would be that to get to the reactor requires heavy equipment - there is no physical access outside of that. When it comes time for the refresh, they bring in a large crane, the site goes on alternate power, they open up the silo-like reactor housing, pull out the old reactor, put in the new reactor, hook things up, then seal everything back up.
You're right about this reactor not being 100% efficient. In terms of efficiency, even on enriched uranium, most plants don't even hit 25%. You certainly could use the heat to keep your apartments nice and toasty.
I figured a max of 30%, but I think we're close enough.
Please keep in mind though that unless you want to spread contamination everywhere you'll be using a secondary system for steam production.
Duh. Though from
That has it's own chemistry controls as well. Most of your installed piping would have to be upgraded to keep your chemistry on the secondary side of the system in check too. Better keep another chemist on hand just for that.
Again, why? There's not enough work for one chemist, much less two. Toshiba installs enough of these, you'd have quite a knowledge base, have somebody performing tech support that can tell you how to adjust your water chemistry using on-hand supplies. So you don't need a chemist so much as a guy who can operate the testing equipment per procedures.
I'm not up to par on my absorbtion cooler technology, but to run your turbine you're going to need a pretty significant pressure. In saturated systems this also means your temperature is going to be extremely high. Unless you like living in a sauna I'd recommend something like a nice R-12 refrigeration plant or something of the like. Better get a mechanic on site for that too
Uh, trigeneration plants have been around for decades. It's known technology, though they normally operate on oil or natural gas. Hospitals and other such buildings frequently have them. All we're really doing here is changing the heat source.
The way it works is that the steam goes through the turbine systems - after that it's both lower pressure and cooler. Then it's used to heat the water an
How does having a random number on the receipt prevent "You're fired/expelled/don't get paid/etc... if you don't produce your receipt"?
I suppose once you tap the ground and really get the juices flowing, the sulfur could get out of hand.
Exactly. Especially if you're tapping a deep thermal source that hadn't previously had access to the surface.
The point I try to make with nuclear plants is that they are safe. They can also be economical, in the sense that it's difficult for a company in Arizona to justify installing solar panels on the basis of not having to purchase the electricity over the course of the lifespan of the panels. Matter of fact, cost of capital alone tends to swamp any annual savings without massive government subsidies.
Whereas this nuclear plant could theoretically be installed and make the money back in ~10 years, especially if you take advantage of the locality of the plant and use a trigeneration system so you also save heating/cooling costs. The company would start saving money almost immediately if it's done by lease.
For all this stuff, my general yardstick is 'Can I expect to pay off the increased cost in ~5 years, discounting cost of capital?'. Spend $100 extra to save $25/year on a water heater with a 12 year warrenty(vs 6, to boot)? Sold. Spend $1000 dollars to save $25 of electricity in a year? No sale.
Somebody's going to want to take over the lease payments... Besides, there should be a disposal bond as well.
At this level it would be easy to make it a closed system; you'd probably want distilled water for this application anyways.
Especially with a trigen plant, you'd be left with water that's merely warm by the time you're ready to send it back into the reactor.
The only regular water use would be the water for regular household use in stuff like faucets, showers, washers, etc...
Yeah, it's a bit off. For some reason I pulled 28 amps@240 volts out of my head rather than going with the simple 'It's got a 5500W element in it'.
So that's 5.5 kw, not 6.7. But you're off as well, as in the USA a 30A, 240V installation is what could be considered normal for an electric water heater.
Here in the US, the water heater would definitly be considered power-consuming, but we manage with single phase 240V, normally a 50amp breaker for a combined stove/oven, 30A for the water heater, 30-50 amp for electric heat or AC.
Water heaters, in the USA, are standardly hard wired, not plugged into the wall. Just replaced mine last week, as a matter of fact. Installed it myself. A couple large wire nuts and a ground screw, 10 gauge wire is a pain compared to 12 or 14 gauge. Still easier than adjusting the plumbing(my new unit is quite a bit taller and wider due to increased insulation levels as I bought a higher end unit).
BTW 'Wall Wart' traditionally refers to a AC-DC converter at the end of a plug, generally large enough to block the other outlet(an annoyance if you want the other slot).
The main breaker for my turn of the century house is only 60amps, from the last time the service was updated. When I moved in it was a fuse with the old ceramic shutoff switch...
Unless someone is digging around in the breaker box with a big screwdriver a home will almost never get near 50 amps of draw
I have mostly electric everything, but haven't managed to pop the 60 amp breaker yet. Even during a test where I ran hot water enough to turn my water heater on, turned on the oven and all four burners, and ran the dryer on 'high'.
Still, I'd pop it rather easily if I had electric heat or air conditioning in the summer and tried that.
So I figured 50 amps for a *maximum* draw.
Battery banks are expensive, but the general idea is a good one. There are solutions if you have the money and are willing to be creative. There's service level UPS solutions that utilize large flywheels, for example.
Doesn't have to be that expensive. This reactor being set up as a leasing program that includes disposal. No refueling occurs in the 40 year lifespan. IE in 40 years the lease expires, Toshiba comes by and collects the reactor. Japan, at least, practices reprocessing so the waste stream isn't that large.
It's definitely greener than nuclear, but we shouldn't argue about what's the greenest, as long as it's green
Not necessarily. I've seen reports that some geothermal plants are plagued with stuff like sulfer and heavy metal releases.
If you're in a spot where the Earth is conducive to it, the technology has been licked.
Then you use it where it makes sense. Meanwhile what are the rest of us in the world supposed to use?
Oh, and it's not in your post, but hydroelectric(Dams) actually do have some rather serious enviromental concerns...