Considering the size of the US, most birds will never see a tall building in their entire life.
But how many windmills will they see if we generate, say, 30% of our nation's electricity from wind? I don't know if bird or bat kills will be a serious problem or not, but it should definitely be researched.
If they really wanted to be fair, they'd charge every person hooked to the grid for their share of the fixed costs, PLUS the variable cost of how many kilowatt-hours they use. But in many places this is not currently legal.
Then we need to make it legal. We also need demand pricing, which I dislike, but which will mostly help solar people. New times require new laws. It would be nice if they could accurately reflect the cost of power, but I fear politics will make that impossible.
... but they're illegal because they won't spend a fortune fitting rare-earth metal infested catalytic converters and other emissions systems...
Rare-earths in a catalytic converter? That's the first I've heard of that. That could bring down the cost quite a bit, since rare-earths are quite a bit cheaper that the precious metals, like platinum and palladium, that I'm used to them using.
The proliferation risk is for the owner to put some uranium near the reaction chamber and let it turn into plutonium. There are easier ways to do this, and I really don't see it as a problem. Others, including the NRC, probably will.
The waste is certainly less than in current LWR plants, but it is only a little less than advanced reactors would create. Again, not really a problem, but perceived as one.
...released energy (a large chunk of which is energetic neutrons, i.e. not recoverable)...
The energy in neutrons is not unrecoverable. You would probably need to use a heat engine to get the energy out, but at high temperatures that could be efficient.
The break even point is somewhat arbitrary, as any neutrons out will give you some heat. All you have to do is harness it. In practice, though, about 10X break even is thought to be necessary. To be economic you would need much more, especially since fission is so easy. Most fusion reactions will also create waste, and any reaction that creates copious neutrons will be a proliferation risk. Aneutronic fusion is very hard, and the NRC would probably crush anything else.
It's a nice technical achievement, but I can't see us using it to produce electricity.
True, but as usual the "count the pennies" argument ignores what you get for those pennies, robots suck donkey balls are pretty much everything except repetitive mindless work and they're slow as frozen molasses.
Which is why I think we need to spend the next century or so making better and smarter robots. Once we have robots that can efficiently maintain a base it will be time to send humans there. Humans shouldn't have to waste time on drudge work in space.
Yeah, but keep tritium sitting around for a few decades and you get helium 3. Which I'm going to guess is a lot easier than mining the moon for it. It's also easier to mine thorium and burn it in a reactor than burn helium 3.
The fact that the author is buying into mining the moon for helium 3 shows he is an idiot.
The only time I'm sure it was more rapid than this was 800,000,000 years ago, when we went from a near snowball to a tropical world. There was no land life back then.
One of the counsellors at our high school got into programming, and he decided to teach us. This was an after school class for no credit, and our programs were to be run on the school district's IBM 1440 (mostly used for payroll, I think). The only language we could use was assembly, although on our one field trip to see the computer we were shown a huge stack of cards that we were told was a Fortran compiler that they never used. We punched our cards in the evening on the key punches used by the key punch class during the day, then he took the programs to the district center where they were run at night.
I programmed Conway's game of life and got to run. I felt guilty about how much paper I used. I recall that someone else tried to compute square roots, but was misled by a popular article on how to do it. Starting off using assembly language really helped understand what was going on in there.
People on welfare perhaps couldn't, but yuppies sure could. There are lots of $2000 appliances around today. I don't see why people buy them, but they do.
Yuppies started getting household microwave ovens in the early-to-mid eighties, and they didn't really penetrate to lower middle class until the early nineties.
A little earlier, I think. My college dorm got one in the middle of the '70s, and I think it was only around $500.
I wonder if the rare earths in the old panels make them a worthwhile "trade-in" option? Anybody know much of the various elements are present in panels?
I don't know exactly what they were made of (mostly silicon, though), but there are almost certainly no rare earths involved. Even today I can't think of any rare earth usage. I know of cadmium, tellurium, copper, indium, gallium, selenium, arsenic and silicon being used in solar cells, and none of them are rare earths.
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But how many windmills will they see if we generate, say, 30% of our nation's electricity from wind? I don't know if bird or bat kills will be a serious problem or not, but it should definitely be researched.
Then we need to make it legal. We also need demand pricing, which I dislike, but which will mostly help solar people. New times require new laws. It would be nice if they could accurately reflect the cost of power, but I fear politics will make that impossible.
Rare-earths in a catalytic converter? That's the first I've heard of that. That could bring down the cost quite a bit, since rare-earths are quite a bit cheaper that the precious metals, like platinum and palladium, that I'm used to them using.
You've just described one way that friction works, not that it doesn't apply.
Last I heard, hard drive heads flew over the disk surface on a thin film of air. It's hard to see that working in a vacuum.
Good tip.
An eagle is traditionally made of gold is is worth ten dollars. They went away in 1933, though, so perhaps there is a new meaning.
Tesla's currently using cells that are around 250 Wh/kg.
You could do the shoot on the Vomit Comet. It would be a lot cheaper, although not very comfortable.
The proliferation risk is for the owner to put some uranium near the reaction chamber and let it turn into plutonium. There are easier ways to do this, and I really don't see it as a problem. Others, including the NRC, probably will.
The waste is certainly less than in current LWR plants, but it is only a little less than advanced reactors would create. Again, not really a problem, but perceived as one.
The energy in neutrons is not unrecoverable. You would probably need to use a heat engine to get the energy out, but at high temperatures that could be efficient.
The break even point is somewhat arbitrary, as any neutrons out will give you some heat. All you have to do is harness it. In practice, though, about 10X break even is thought to be necessary. To be economic you would need much more, especially since fission is so easy. Most fusion reactions will also create waste, and any reaction that creates copious neutrons will be a proliferation risk. Aneutronic fusion is very hard, and the NRC would probably crush anything else.
It's a nice technical achievement, but I can't see us using it to produce electricity.
There are three classes:
Challenger: This is the main race.
Cruiser: Sort of road worthy cars, judged on practicality as well as the race placement.
Adventure: Last year's Challenger Class, just to let people compete with prior cars.
No, it was much colder at the peak of the last glaciation. I doubt we were all that close then, but who knows?
Which is why I think we need to spend the next century or so making better and smarter robots. Once we have robots that can efficiently maintain a base it will be time to send humans there. Humans shouldn't have to waste time on drudge work in space.
Yeah, not a real license. I don't care, I still want one.
Yeah, but keep tritium sitting around for a few decades and you get helium 3. Which I'm going to guess is a lot easier than mining the moon for it. It's also easier to mine thorium and burn it in a reactor than burn helium 3.
The fact that the author is buying into mining the moon for helium 3 shows he is an idiot.
I find cooking slightly easier in metric. It still takes me a moment to remember how many teaspoons are in an eight of a cup, for instance.
The only time I'm sure it was more rapid than this was 800,000,000 years ago, when we went from a near snowball to a tropical world. There was no land life back then.
It probably won't get that bad, though.
Gas is cheap and nuclear is not popular. China is supposed to be working on it, though.
One of the counsellors at our high school got into programming, and he decided to teach us. This was an after school class for no credit, and our programs were to be run on the school district's IBM 1440 (mostly used for payroll, I think). The only language we could use was assembly, although on our one field trip to see the computer we were shown a huge stack of cards that we were told was a Fortran compiler that they never used. We punched our cards in the evening on the key punches used by the key punch class during the day, then he took the programs to the district center where they were run at night.
I programmed Conway's game of life and got to run. I felt guilty about how much paper I used. I recall that someone else tried to compute square roots, but was misled by a popular article on how to do it. Starting off using assembly language really helped understand what was going on in there.
There also seem to be no flights from the LA or San Diego areas to Hawaii. But I've been on those flights.
Yes.
People on welfare perhaps couldn't, but yuppies sure could. There are lots of $2000 appliances around today. I don't see why people buy them, but they do.
A little earlier, I think. My college dorm got one in the middle of the '70s, and I think it was only around $500.
I don't know exactly what they were made of (mostly silicon, though), but there are almost certainly no rare earths involved. Even today I can't think of any rare earth usage. I know of cadmium, tellurium, copper, indium, gallium, selenium, arsenic and silicon being used in solar cells, and none of them are rare earths.