Just so other folks understand, no-one has built and operated a thorium-fuelled molten salt breeder reactor so the design hasn't been tested as you claim.
Now you are changing the rules.
I didn't say that people were building thorium cycle molten salt reactors right now. I said we've proven that molten salt reactors do work. I said we've proven that thorium cycle fission does work, it was done in solid fuel reactors. I said that thorium cycle reactors are running right now, and India is doing it. Putting all these technologies together in one design is nearly trivial. One thing that must be done is make it big enough to support breeding, the bigger it is the easier it is to make sure the neutrons hit a thorium or uranium atom before it hits the wall of the container.
All we need to do is have the DOE decide that LFTR does sound like a safe design and issue a license. It is not the DOE's job to decide if LFTR is economical, just that it is safe.
The Powerpoint Rangers pushing thorium claim it would be easy to add a breeding core to such a design and there would be no serious technical challenges involved despite the very high temperatures involved, the intense radiation environment required for the breeding process and its effects on structures carrying molten fuel.
Now you are just telling me you watched none of the videos that I linked to. Just about any of the videos that feature Kirk Sorensen has him explain how they plan to design a core that can hold up to the temperatures of the molten salt, maintain integrity even with the given neutron flux, and assure that enough thorium is bred to maintain criticality.
The short answer to your concern is that the core is made of a high nickel alloy specifically designed for these high temperatures. They maintain breeding and criticality by making the core the right shape and size to make sure neutron loss is minimal. We've shown we can make a core that can maintain integrity under the neutron flux of these reactions because we've made breeder reactors before.
You keep talking about how it can't be done, the people that are making it happen will prove you wrong.
I am well aware of that but using "thorium fission" as a shorthand for "thorium cycle fission" seems common enough that I thought it would not need explanation. I assumed that people that knew what LFTR was would know what I meant and everyone else could search on "thorium fission" in Google, Wikipedia, or wherever and figure it out by clicking on the first link that shows up.
This breeding-fission process is a bit knife-edge compared to regular PWRs, BWRs and other uranium-fuelled reactors where only one neutron is required to fission a U-235 nucleus and produce 2+ more.
A lot of nuclear engineers seem to disagree with you. There are several techniques to make thorium cycle viable, the most popular are molten salt variations. Molten salt allows poisons that would normally accumulate in solid fuel to boil out. Iodine and xenon are the biggest concerns and those simply cannot remain in solution for long, and there are techniques to speed the removal from the core adding efficiency.
What recent developments in "thorium fission" can you point us at?
There's a lot of Powerpoint presentations and glossy brochures being waved around by folks looking to make a buck from research funding and subsidies but no-one is bending metal and pouring concrete right now on anything based on thorium as a primary source of nuclear energy.
I believe that China and India would disagree with you. Right now in the USA and Canada thorium fission is being held up by regulators that don't know what to do with thorium yet. I suspect we'll see a boom in LFTR and DMSR shortly after China demonstrates their first MSR. It used to be that the USA was first in technology, now we race to be second place.
Previous attempts to commercialise pebble-bed reactors capable of using some thorium such as the German THTR-300 were not a success.
Let's see, steam turbines, helium cooled core, small manufactured fuel pebbles, and a one off design. What could possibly go wrong? Water creeping into the helium coolant. Pebbled fuel breaking in the reactor and getting lodged in piping. Difficulty in sourcing fuel. Not a high point of thorium as a fuel.
LFTR uses molten salt as coolant and fuel carrier, any leaking between them does cause contamination but it will not stop operation. Leaks can be repaired and operation resumed. There is no water cooling to create concerns over flash boiling, corrosion of metals, or contamination of fuel. LFTR does not require "manufacture" of the fuel, it's a stable salt with very low chemical and nuclear reactivity. Once melted it can be simply poured into the core. Waste products are removed as part of normal operation, they won't accumulate to levels that would cause massive release if there is a catastrophic failure. Any kind of large failure would be limited to destruction of the core, it can't "blow it's top" like water cooled and solid fuel reactors of the past.
This design was tested and operating fifty years ago. However, because we've learned a lot in the last fifty years in material science, manufacturing, and so forth that design would not be considered viable today. What it does do is show the physics work and if we can only get the DOE to get their assess off their thumbs then maybe we can see thorium as a fuel before another fifty years pass.
Still? After all these years? Wow, must have been some party.
Okay, with that out of the way I'll try to be serious.
Nobody talks about the fact Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, and *ALL* of the recent highly-publicized decedents that interfered with police had marijuana in their blood.
Some surveys of Americans show regular marijuana use as high as 25% of the population. Few will show marijuana use lower than 10%. Marijuana users tend to be the kind of people that would find themselves running into police. Marijuana can be detected in the blood and urine of casual users for days, perhaps weeks, after last use. Regular users will show detectable amounts of marijuana metabolites for a month or more.
Warning, sloppy use of statistics follows....
Assuming 25% of the population has used marijuana in the last year, and marijuana use can be detected for a week, then my math tells me that picking 50 people at random will show a high probability of finding someone with THC detectable in their blood or urine. If 10% of the population are regular users where marijuana can be detected for a month then just pulling 10 people at random and you'll find someone with THC in their system. Add on top of that selection bias, people that don't have marijuana in their system after getting arrested or killed don't make the news, and you have a recipe for equating marijuana use with criminal behavior.
While we're at it lets test these people for alcohol. Alcohol use can also be detected for a long time after use, as long as four days. If you pick up someone for speeding on a Monday morning, and test them for alcohol use like we do for marijuana, then we're going to have to clear out a lot of prison space for all of those "drunk" drivers.
Having read the history of marijuana prohibition I see that the prohibition was not based on anything scientific. What it was based on was racism, immigrants from Mexico brought their marijuana habit with them and people were looking for ways to make them look like the bad guys. Same goes for opiates, the Chinese brought opium with them and that scared people. Considering the damage alcohol does to society I think we did Prohibition all wrong, keep the alcohol ban but let people get their weed and heroin. However, Prohibition was doomed to fail, it's not like it takes a chemical engineering degree to make a moonshine still. Same goes for marijuana, it grows every where, why else do you think it's called "weed"?
Opium, on the other hand, doesn't grow well in the USA so banning it here may have worked in the age of sail. Now, with two day express shipping from China, there is no hope to contain it.
While I agree with most of what you say I have to disagree here:
Solar is the only thing that scales (unless fusion finally stops being "just 20 years away").
Thorium fission can scale. Recent developments show that we can build small modular reactors as small as 20MW or so, and make them as big as one GW. Much bigger than a gigawatt or three and it starts to make sense to just build more smaller ones from the same dies, cheaper to build and manage.
It bothers me on how people will claim we can make wind and solar work if only we build a massive continent wide power grid to compensate for the unfavorable weather in parts of the nation. The problem I see is that "unfavorable weather" tends to include things like clouds, high winds, and lightning, things that tend to damage power grids. We don't need bigger power grids, we need them smaller. If power goes out in St. Louis then the people in Kansas City and Chicago shouldn't have to worry if the lights will go out when the sun goes down. That solar power on the coasts is going to have to cross the river, if the switching stations on either side were damaged in a storm then you don't have a big national grid any more.
Adding redundant power lines adds cost, which is reflected in people's utility bill. I'd rather see that money put toward thorium power than solar and power lines.
I like seeing things like this. I'm not excited about the solar power aspect, I actually think that is a fool's errand. I'm excited about seeing people research molten salt power transfer systems and high temperature power generation.
One big problem holding up research in molten salt fission reactors is that the power generation systems it relies upon for much of its efficiency gains have not been tested fully. If we can prove to the powers that be, like the US Department of Energy, that we can handle molten salts safely then we can get that much closer to getting a molten salt reactor built.
Looking into how these concentrated solar power plants work I had to ask myself, what do they do when the sun doesn't shine enough to keep the salt molten? They claim ten hours of storage capability, that might get them through the night I suppose. What if the morning sun is obstructed by clouds? Well, I found my answer when looking at the Ivanpah Solar Power Facility.
To get these things started in the morning takes a lot of natural gas. I understand the need for a power plant, any power plant, to have backup power on site in the case of the need to shut down the primary electric generation when there is loss of a connection to the grid. But the need to do this every morning does sound a bit counter productive. This is a plant that is supposed to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels. That's what I thought the whole point of solar power was supposed to be.
Perhaps, after we prove molten salt solar can work when the weather agrees, then we can put a small modular thorium reactor on the site to warm up the salt in the morning and provide a base load of power for when the sun doesn't shine. Of course, once you can show that small modular reactors of about 100MW capacity can keep the solar power plant running then people will begin to wonder why they bother with the large expensive solar tower when the reactor keeps running regardless of the weather. At some point they'll tear down the tower to make room for more reactors.
That's the whole point to me, moving towards small modular thorium reactors. Of all the technologies we have out there right now I see that as the one true solution. We'll still see wind, solar, hydro, geothermal, and so on in the times and places where it is cheap but small thorium molten salt reactors can be used in so many places. Make them on an assembly line like a Boeing airliner and we should see a new one built every month. In twenty years we should see the grid powered by more than 50% nuclear fission.
I still think that nuclear fusion will prove viable within my lifetime, but only when done on a multi-gigawatt scale. That is going to be very expensive to build initially but once built it should run for a long time using common elements as fuel. Until we have a leap in technology like that we have three choices: - Nuclear fission - Continued fossil fuel use, with all its pros and cons - Expensive unreliable wind and solar
So, go build your concentrated solar power plants, those would make great sites for a future thorium fission power plant.
Any advocate to reduce carbon output that also dismisses nuclear fission power is ignorant, insane, or has motives other than saving the planet.
Of all the technologies available to us this article advocates moving to solar PV, which is probably the most expensive energy source we have outside of burning diesel fuel. If you want to see an environmental disaster then tell people they have to rely on photovoltaic panels for power. As energy costs rise people will be crawling all over looking for something to burn for heat, light, and cooking. Trees will probably be the first things to go. Then people will burn trash. People will be burning tires.
Those with enough money to buy fuel for their cars will save up some for portable generators. Just think of a neighborhood in a summer heat with portable generators to run their air conditioners. The noise, smell, and smog will be unbearable.
These global warming alarmists are not going to win people over with a promise of higher energy prices and reduced standard of living. They need to offer more than a vague promise of saving the planet for some future generation. There won't be a future generation if we all starve, freeze, or see a plague kill us off.
The answer is thorium for energy. It's a known working technology. It doesn't create weapon grade material like uranium reactors, in fact it can burn the weapon grade stuff was have now. Also, if done right, it not only won't produce more nuclear waste but it can destroy the waste we have piled up now.
We have three choices: - Nuclear fission - Continued use of fossil fuels - Starvation, disease, and death
Any claims of solar power, nuclear fusion, algae based fuel, or other as yet undeveloped technology saving us is relying on some breakthrough in technology that we've been working on since we've been talking of the evils of technology that will render the world uninhabitable.
Odd, isn't it? These people that have been telling us all of how technology is going to kill us is now trying to convince us that technology is going to save us. Perhaps we've had the technology to save us all for a long time now but this past fear of technology has prevented its development to the point that we simply cannot save ourselves any more, it's too late.
Again, these people are insane, ignorant, or have motives other than saving the planet. Regardless, we need to use thorium for energy because it will keep the lights on and civilization running. Anything else will likely doom us one way or another.
How can you be THAT sure that nobody will ever let another Chernobyl happened?
Because Chernobyl happened. No one is going to ever repeat those mistakes again so long as people study their history.
Chernobyl was based on a design stolen from the USA which had known problems with runaway fission. The US engineers fixed the, then theoretical, problems before it was used in the USA but the Soviets didn't care. During construction money was running low so the concrete poured was routinely mixed down with sand with no quality checks that it still met specifications. Then the reactor was tested with safeties purposefully disabled. The people at the controls at the time were inexperienced. After all of that stacked on top of each other the damage was not near what people feared. Yes, sadly, a lot of people died. Many of the deaths were also the result of poor procedures, improper or nonexistent testing, and so forth that plagued its construction.
Not only have we learned from those mistakes we've learned more about how fission works. We will not build a reactor like that again also because we have found cheaper and safer ways to do it.
To those that claim only government regulation can prevent another Chernobyl I will say that Chernobyl was a government project from top to bottom. That's the case in a communist society like the USSR, everything wrong is the fault of the government because the government runs everything.
Look up a few things about molten salt reactors and you can see for yourself how safe fission power can be and has proven to be. A few acronyms you can look up: LFTR, WAMSR, IMSR, DMSR, ARE, MSRE, TEI, VHTR/LS-VHTR, MSW, MSFR, FLIBE, MSCR, EVOL.
Natural gas turbines cost about 1/2 coal plant, and 1/3rd to 1/5th that of a fission plant. Look on page 11 of this:
I was speaking of the cost of the power produced, not the capital expenses. Right now natural gas turbines are popping up everywhere because natural gas is cheap and because it isn't coal. Coal has it's own political problems preventing growth.
I realize that wind is being built up very quickly right now, I see the windmill parts going down the interstate every day. That can only go on for so long, at some point it will reach a peak where wind capacity overcomes the grid capability to compensate for the unreliable nature of the wind. Combining gas peaking power with wind and you get a price on par with that of fission, and you can only do that until the wind provides 30% of the grid power. We've squeezed about all we can out of wind power, we can't make big gains on efficiency like we used to any more.
Wind power will always rely on storage or peaking power. We don't have cheap storage outside of the few locations fortunate enough to have geologic features favorable for pumped water storage. If natural gas gets cheaper then we'll forget building the windmills and build more natural gas. Fission can only get cheaper by comparison either through changes in law, improvements in technology, or the rising cost of fossil fuels.
Experts on power grids have done studies and just about all agree that wind and solar can only provide 30% of grid power before bad things start to happen. Even a best case scenario doesn't allow for more than 50% or so. Where is the rest of the power going to come from? Fission. Fission is proven, it exists, and does not rely on unobtanium or favorable locations like access to favorable climate, gobs of flowing water, or geologic features. High temperature fission just needs a patch of terra firma and air, both of which are abundant.
What high temperature fission has is the capability to provide grid power on its own, it does not need peaking power plants and can be put anywhere.
That is nonsense, as no country is running 24/7 with "full power", power is a curve with a lower bottom at somewhere between 40% and 60% of your peaks during daytime.
I did not claim that a national grid requires "full power" 24/7, only that power is consumed 24/7. Solar PV peaks at noon while demand peaks at sunset. Wind is unpredictable, weather forecasts only go out for a week or so and then can only give generalities, not hour by hour wind speed. To make wind and solar work would require storage, which is right now too expensive to be worthwhile outside of a few localities. Some estimates by people that study this sort of thing have stated that wind and solar can provide no more than 30% of grid power before very "interesting" things start to happen. The last thing a utility wants is an "interesting" day.
That is double wrong. The most popular is pumped storage, because it is cheap and the secondary one is gas turbines because gas turbines are horrible expensive, however nearly as fast in reaction as pumped storage.
Pumped storage requires specific and rare geological features, natural gas can be put nearly anywhere. Pumped storage is also unpopular because of the environmental impact. So, outside of a handful of locations where the geology and environmental impact are favorable the only remaining option is natural gas.
That is again wrong, in most countries fission power is the most expensive power.
Fission is only expensive because of the popular opinion created from black swan events like Chernobyl. It's a political problem creating the cost, not a technological one. Even with all the political induced cost nuclear is cheaper that solar. The price difference between fission, coal, gas combined cycle, and some wind is so small that it can be for the most part ignored as noise. Coal and gas is only going to get harder to find and therefore become more expensive. Fission fuels are such a small portion of the operating cost that it can be ignored as noise. Fission may be the most expensive power but that only means perhaps double the price, not tenfold, give it a decade and we shall see what happens to coal prices.
That is wrong. Wind plants have a very high uptime, and build at suitable places a very high CF, too.
Assuming you are correct, that wind farms have a high up time, this up time is largely irrelevant so long as utilities cannot rely on the wind to blow in sync with demand. We'd have to have enough wind farms to produce the maximum required output in the calmest of weather, that costs money. Adding in solar doesn't help much since that also peaks at the wrong time, power consumption tends to peak near sunset. Again, people that study this have found that wind and solar above 30% of grid power will make things interesting for the grid. This is not only because of the unpredictable nature of wind and solar but also because the spinning rotors on windmills introduce harmonics on the grid that are difficult to manage. This spinning rotor problem has been studied for a very long time and with every spinning rotor added the computations required to manage the harmonics become more difficult. With a large and controlled rotor on a fission or coal plant the harmonics can be controlled, in part, by throttling the power plant. There is no throttle control on the wind.
Solar PV plants run with the sun. Solar thermal plants with molten salt storages run around the clock. With their peak around the daily peaks and at roughly 60% at night when demand is low.
Solar thermal plants are largely theoretical and reliant on a favorable climate. A solar thermal plant is useless in Alaska. Fission and coal don't care about the weather. High temperature fission is also freed from the need for large amounts of fresh water, air cooling even in the Arizona summer is sufficient.
Getting 10% of your electricity from wind is trivial. Daily demand varies more that 10% so all you have to do is what you've been doing for the current mix of coal, gas, nuclear, and hydro. People smarter than the both of us have spent a long time looking at this and have convinced me that having more than 30% of power from wind and strange things start to happen with the grid.
We can make wind power work but it would involve massive changes to how the national power grid works, which would be very expensive. Not only would it be expensive, because putting large power cables over or under the Mississippi river is not easy, but it would create a vary fragile network. If there was a catastrophic loss of connection on one of those Mississippi crossings we'd see blackouts and brownouts nationwide.
Even if we could power the world with wind we would not want to. Making wind power work means relying on wind in California to power a Florida with calm winds. There's a lot of ways that could fail, badly.
Wind power, right now, costs three times what nuclear power costs, right now. Even a quantum leap in wind technology cannot make it cheaper than what nuclear fission could cost if only the Department of Energy would allow the building of a modern liquid fuel fission reactor. The Department of Energy has been subsidizing wind power for decades and it still cannot compete with fission power from the 1970s. I don't see a great future for wind power. Wind power will never go away, it's just too easy to get in many places, but it cannot power a first world economy.
Disasters and waste disposal issues for fission are only a concern if we keep doing it like we've done for the last 40 years. We've seen liquid fuel fission that promises to not only be "disaster" proof but can also "eat" the radioactive waste from the reactors we've used for decades.
Liquid fuel fission reactors like liquid fluoride thorium reactors (LFTRs) can be made to be walkaway safe, where any damage would be limited to the destruction of the reactor. LFTRs have safety mechanisms that prevent the possibility of "China Syndrome" style meltdowns. This is primarily because the fuel is already melted, loss of containment means removal of the mechanisms that maintain fission. If the reactor runs too hot a normal "scram" operation involves dumping the core fuel into a drain tank that removes the fuel from the core, the tank is designed in such a way that just air cooling prevents further damage. Thermal failure of the core, as in it gets so hot that it melts, mean the fuel spills onto the floor of the reactor building, and then flows into that same drain tank. It is impossible for a LFTR failure to result in a massive release of radiation.
Once the powers that be in the federal government realize the value of LFTR we will see fission not only get cheaper but also prove that fission does not mean we have to pile up radioactive waste. That "waste" we have now exists only because of federal government policies that prevent the reprocessing of spent fuel into new fuel and valuable industrial material. LFTR could prove to be a means for making reprocessing of "spent" fuel that is both economically and politically feasible. Much of what makes up "spent" fuel from current reactors is unburnt uranium, stuff that is no more radioactive than what was dug from the ground. If we can get that uranium out and turn it into something useful then not only have we just solve 90% of the "waste" problem but we've also solved an energy problem.
There's two ways to dispose of radioactive waste. One way is to store it away until it decays, which can take hundreds of years. (Anything that takes longer than hundreds of years to decay is "radioactive" only in the theoretical sense, it's not a hazard to life.) Another way to dispose of radioactive material is in a reactor. If we do it right then that reactor can not only destroy radioactive material but we also get valuable energy from it.
Like you say, if you ask someone from the 1970s about nuclear power they'll tell you about The China Syndrome. The reason we still think of fission power like we do in the 1970s is because not much has changed in fission technology since then. Why haven't we seen anything new in fission technology since the 1970s? Likely because we have the same people in the Department of Energy that we did in 1979. Time will prove that nuclear fission is safe, cheap, reliable, and the only option we have. That time may come, sadly, only because the people that are holding the technology back have died of old age.
Yes, you can make "technology advancement" arguments that the DOE forecasters are wrong, but the cost of wind and solar generators are dropping all the time, too, and storage options might get radically cheaper as well. I think investment in solar + wind + storage actually dwarfs investments in fusion, so the market seems intent on fulfilling DOE's prophesy.
Wind and solar will never compete with coal and fission. Part of this is because wind and solar require viable (read that as cheap, reliable, etc) storage to provide 24/7 power. Any energy storage system that can make wind and solar reliable will also serve to make coal and fission cheaper.
A big problem with any power plant that works by steam power, which coal and fission do, is that it does not respond well to large daily swings in power demands. To rectify this there are a large number of solutions, the most popular one because it is cheap is natural gas turbines. In this case "cheap" is relative because even though natural gas turbines cost three times that of coal and fission it is still the cheapest solution we have. Right now that is the same for wind and solar, to make wind and solar "work" there must be a ready reserve of natural gas turbines.
If we develop a technology that can store energy cheaper than it takes to produce it by natural gas turbines then all we'd need to do to get cheap and reliable power is to couple that storage with coal and fission. To compete with that wind and solar would have to be a fraction of the cost of operating a coal or fission power plant. Why a fraction of the cost? Because coal and fission can operate with better than 80% up time. Wind and solar can only operate with something like 30% up time. To compete with a one GW fission power plant would require three GW capacity wind and/or solar, along with this as yet undeveloped storage technology that is cheaper than natural gas.
I believe that after all the gains we've made in wind and solar in the last few decades we're seeing diminishing returns. We're getting real close to theoretical maximum efficiencies already, there just isn't much more room for improvement. If wind and solar require some cheap storage system to be viable then they are both fool's errands. While wind, solar, and storage are all noble efforts in solving our future energy needs none of them can compete with fission. Our future is a fission powered one, nothing else we've seen so far can compare, and that includes fusion.
Having been in the US Army and gone through the terrestrial navigation training in Basic Training I know that not to be true. All of these recruits graduated high school, were over 18 years old, and some of them could not read a compass. Unless you can show how a nautical compass is fundamentally different than a terrestrial one then I don't believe you.
Seems to me that teaching some basics of celestial navigation in the US Naval Academy is a very low cost solution to the potential issue of having common electronic navigation aids fail. Reading a compass may be very different than reading a sextant but having both skills could prove lifesaving in a real shooting war.
I realized upon re-read that the context of this was proposing instead of teaching celestial navigation that the Navy should instead have computers capable of celestial navigation.
Then you'd better call out the galley slaves with their giant wooden paddles, because I can't imagine any scenario where a ship's engine would be operational, but they couldn't generate a few watts of electricity out of it.
And Tepco couldn't imagine a scenario where they'd lose the generators, batteries, and grid power at the same time. How well did that work out for them? Sometimes the worst can happen and simple things like a sextant, clock, charts, compass, and two weeks of training at the Naval Academy can save a lot of people a lot of trouble.
Hell, this is the military, they don't mind forcing a few men to turn a crank on an alternator around the clock, to generate a little power, when needed. Seriously, who is teaching celestial navigation, instead of just including a $30 solar panel as a tertiary backup power source in the event of inconceivable system failures?
Who's teaching celestial navigation? The Merchant Marine Academy, the Coast Guard Academy, as well as numerous universities, trade schools, and enthusiasts. Let's assume you have power. Assume we have a computer capable of celestial navigation. Everything is fine. That is also a piece of equipment that is in need of training, maintenance, and so forth. At the same time the US Navy could invest that same amount of time and money on training and equipment and not only do they cover situations where GPS is down they also cover a number of situations that they haven't even thought of yet. A celestial navigation computer is going to be an expensive piece of equipment, one that is going to be vulnerable to many of the same things that can take out GPS. If you are going to have a back-up plan then why not make it one known to be very robust, relatively inexpensive, and needing little maintenance?
We aren't talking about your cellphone. Military equipment is specifically hardened against EMP. And even if it weren't, a spare handheld GPS unit stored in an antistatic bag with a few batteries is all you need for a fix.
Hardened against EMP does not mean it is incapable of being disabled by it, it means it can take a much greater hit and survive compared to others. Just like "bullet proof" doesn't meet it can stop every bullet, but it can stop the first two or three. Again, if you are going to have a back-up plan then it makes sense to make it as resistant as possible to whatever might take out your primary system.
A wise naval officer might want to buy an iPhone and a celestial navigation app, then keep it wrapped in foil in case of an EMP attack. Might be just what the Navy needs to win a war. It might also be wise to have some idea on how celestial navigation works so that if the app isn't working right away that the officer might know the best way to use that app and how to interpret the output. Same goes for an EMP hardened, US Navy standard issue, celestial navigation computer. Just knowing some basics on celestial navigation the operator, likely an officer in the Navy, would be able to tell if the computer is operating correctly and how to fix it if it isn't.
The compass is about the simplest interface around. There might well be the occasional person who can't figure it out, but most can, without trying. That's surely no reason to resort to celestial navigation training.
I suppose that in many situations that being able to read a chart, a compass, and some dead reckoning will be sufficient in most every case. However, these officers are going to be trained for war and be responsible for the lives of those under their command. It would seem prudent to take a few hours of their time to teach them the basics of celestial navigation so that if things go wrong in a big way we don't lose an entire flotilla because no one knew how to read a compass and chart correctly. Perhaps some light reading is in order: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Then you'd better call out the galley slaves with their giant wooden paddles, because I can't imagine any scenario where a ship's engine would be operational, but they couldn't generate a few watts of electricity out of it.
Then perhaps you aren't thinking hard enough.
Let's also consider a situation given in the linked article, the ship is fully operational but the Navstar GPS satellites are disabled. A GPS unit wrapped in aluminum foil won't save you then. The Chinese or Russian GPS systems might still be operational but in a time of war, where either nation might be the aggressor, they cannot be relied upon.
If during an attack the people responsible for the navigation of the ship are just then seeing a magnetic compass for the first time can you be certain they will read it correctly? Reliance on a single means of navigation is a single point of failure. If that fails, for whatever reason, and you have no backup, then you have problems. Seems simple enough to have the cadets learn some basics of celestial navigation while at the academy so that if they do find themselves in the unlikely situation of a ship that can move but the electricity is out that they can at least find their way home.
Being up shit creek and all I had was a paddle I'd think that knowing where I was would be the first concern.
Let's gather the situation here. Communication is down, weapons down to.50 M2 and small arms, no GPS, no power. Since the ship is likely steam or gas turbine powered the crew should still be able to get the ship to move. I presume as well that there are crew that are injured. This crew is also going to be in need of food, heat, and shelter. I'd think that what a wise captain would want to do is head for the nearest safe harbor for repairs. At a minimum getting to port would mean the crew can find food, heat, and shelter until the ship is repaired or they can be picked up in another.
Given that situation what should a captain do? Head to safe harbor, right? Okay then, to get there they will have to be able to at a minimum know which direction to sail. With a watch, compass, and charts one can do wonderful things. With a sextant and the knowledge to use it, miracles can be performed.
Even if it is a useful thing to learn, I don't see why everyone should have to learn it.
Seeing as it's being taught at the US Naval Academy it's only the officers that have to learn celestial navigation. I assume the enlisted ranks outside of the navigation ratings won't have to learn it, but those that wish to earn navigation ratings would.
Considering that any naval officer could at some point in their career be in charge of a vessel larger than a canoe it would be helpful, if not necessary, to know what every person under their command must do. They may have to teach someone how to do their job, such as an inexperience crew member or someone doing a job not normally assigned to them. They may have to check the work of a navigator, or no one on the crew (not dead or injured) was trained in navigation and may have to navigate on their own.
I believe that this is excellent training for a US Navy or Marine officer to have. If things really get bad the crew is going to look towards the highest ranking officer that is still standing, which might be the ensign or lieutenant fresh from the academy. One of the first questions asked, if not THE first question asked is, "Where are we?" If that officer cannot get a reading from the GPS, and the navigator is dead, then I'd hope they'd be looking for charts and a sextant rather than pissing their pants.
Also, there are several direct commission position in the US military that do not necessarily come from a military academy. You mentioned some that might not come from an academy. Some typical direct commission positions are those in medical, legal, and chaplain services. Less common direct commissions would be in engineering, logistics, sciences, and intelligence. These direct commission positions are not likely to be seen on a battlefield, or at sea.
Having talked to people that were on US Navy ships at about that time I was told that a common means of navigation was by land based radio navigation. One person described to me a rather large antenna array on the bow of the ship that could give the direction of a radio beacon. I was told that normally this was folded down so as to not interfere with the weapons but in a case of a need to get somewhere quickly they'd prop it up so they can get an accurate location and heading.
Knowing what I do about radio navigation at a minimum one could get a directional antenna and point it to a radio source near your destination and, assuming the antenna was in line with the direction of travel, just point the ship in the direction of the strongest signal. With a ship at sea aiming for Hawaii I'd think that someone on the ship would know how to operate the directional antenna and know the frequency of a radio transmitter on the island. That radio source didn't have to be a dedicated radio navigation aid, just something with a consistently strong signal like an AM radio station.
How far out to sea were you that nothing but GPS and star charts worked for you? I'd think that a couple of the communication guys would know enough about which stations were located where that you could navigate that way.
Also, given the year you said you were on cruise I have to wonder if you are referring to Navstar GPS or one of it's predecessors, such as TRANSIT.
I agree with you on every point except that of "Air Forces". Having read plenty of history I know that the Allied Forces of WWII came up with several ingenious ways to navigate in war time. You even pointed out a couple in your assessment of the other users of GPS, use of charts, compass, and bubble sextants.
While many of these are most convenient while in a larger aircraft, like a bomber or passenger plane, I've heard of systems that can work even in the confines of a single seat fighter. Examples of this are modified sextants that hang from the canopy, charts in a book strapped to a leg, along with the typical navigation aids common to all aircraft.
Inertial navigation has become increasingly accurate. Even handheld devices can reach accuracies that can be used to navigate within a building. Getting something accurate enough for a bombing run, or get a fighter jet back home, should be nearly trivial.
I'll also assume that military navigation could be brought up to speed quickly so that things like radio navigation by commercial radio transmitters would be viable, if only in "safe" territory. It's still useful to have such navigation in safe territory as it aids in logistics.
I will agree with you on your other points. The loss of LORAN does reflect poorly on the powers that be. At a minimum they could have left them standing just in case they were needed in the future. They didn't even have to maintain them, just let them slowly rot. It's much easier to repair them than to build them up from nothing. Perhaps they know something we don't. I suspect not though.
What if the issue is not lack of GPS but lack of electrical power?
Then the ship is dead in the water anyway. Duh.
Or, in the case of an EMP, the computers are scrambled?
Then none of the systems that allow the ship to be controlled or to fight are functioning either. Duh.
Having talked with several people that have been on actual US Navy ships I know what you proclaim is not true. Even today US Navy ships are largely powered by steam power plants with mechanical systems to operate them. There may be electronic systems to manage them in normal operation but there is always a manual override.
If the means to generate electricity is lost there is nothing that prevents the ship from being able to still propel itself.
Many of the weapons would also be capable of functioning without power. At a minimum the crew could operate small arms.
Assuming the ship is unable to fight then at a minimum being able to determine their position would be vital to either head to safe harbor (assuming the ship is still capable of moving under its own power) or be able to call for assistance. Being able to give your position before the radio is lost would be vital to a quick recovery. Yes, I realize that a radio requires electric power. There is a chance that one battery operated radio still works. A hand crank radio was standard issue equipment, I don't know how common they are any more.
In the case of more modern electrical propulsion ships the power generation and the propellers are quite close to each other. Damage to the power distribution systems may render a large portion of the ship without power but still capable of propelling itself. Navigation from the engineering deck is likely to be quite difficult, so someone on the deck is going to have to operate a compass, look out for obstacles, and so on, and let the crew below decks know which way to point the ship. Again the crew can either fight with whatever weapons they can without power, or tend to the ship as it navigates to port.
So, in the case of a steam ship a total loss of electrical power is merely inconvenient. In the case of an electric propulsion ship total loss of electric power is unlikely. In a total loss of electric power then, yes, the ship is dead in the water. In the case of partial loss of electric power the ship may still be able to move but normal means of communication and navigation are lost. Even in the case of total loss of power anything battery operated will work for a period of time, with a radio you can let people know where you are before it goes dead. If everything goes dead then nothing was lost by teaching celestial navigation but a week or two of time in the academy on computer navigation.
Assuming it's cloudy, you're GPS systems just went down, all radio navigation aids are lost, and all your compasses were demagnetized, then, yes, I assume one could say they are fucked.
One solution to this problem is like what reboot246 says in a sister post, have a sun stone as part of the celestial navigation gear. Another is to sail into a best guess of a safe direction until one can see a point of reference, be it a celestial object or terrestrial one.
Celestial navigation is not supposed to solve all navigation problems. What it is supposed to do is reduce the reliance on GPS to the point that should it go down you don't have a navy full of ships that can't so much as steer towards a safe harbor.
Having talked with people that sailed at sea, both for pleasure and for the US Navy, every ship has a number of readily available means to navigate. GPS is typically the primary means. Second on the list is likely to be radio navigation of one type or another. Third is typically dead reckoning. If you know where you were, what direction you are heading, and at what speed, you can usually keep sailing with relative safety and ease until you can restore one or the other means of electronic navigation. Those knowledgeable of celestial navigation can go without the electronic navigation for much longer and still reach their destination as scheduled. If it's cloudy while you are without electronic navigation aids then, yes, you will most likely arrive behind schedule.
In war you may not have the luxury of reaching your destination late.
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Just so other folks understand, no-one has built and operated a thorium-fuelled molten salt breeder reactor so the design hasn't been tested as you claim.
Now you are changing the rules.
I didn't say that people were building thorium cycle molten salt reactors right now. I said we've proven that molten salt reactors do work. I said we've proven that thorium cycle fission does work, it was done in solid fuel reactors. I said that thorium cycle reactors are running right now, and India is doing it. Putting all these technologies together in one design is nearly trivial. One thing that must be done is make it big enough to support breeding, the bigger it is the easier it is to make sure the neutrons hit a thorium or uranium atom before it hits the wall of the container.
All we need to do is have the DOE decide that LFTR does sound like a safe design and issue a license. It is not the DOE's job to decide if LFTR is economical, just that it is safe.
The Powerpoint Rangers pushing thorium claim it would be easy to add a breeding core to such a design and there would be no serious technical challenges involved despite the very high temperatures involved, the intense radiation environment required for the breeding process and its effects on structures carrying molten fuel.
Now you are just telling me you watched none of the videos that I linked to. Just about any of the videos that feature Kirk Sorensen has him explain how they plan to design a core that can hold up to the temperatures of the molten salt, maintain integrity even with the given neutron flux, and assure that enough thorium is bred to maintain criticality.
The short answer to your concern is that the core is made of a high nickel alloy specifically designed for these high temperatures. They maintain breeding and criticality by making the core the right shape and size to make sure neutron loss is minimal. We've shown we can make a core that can maintain integrity under the neutron flux of these reactions because we've made breeder reactors before.
You keep talking about how it can't be done, the people that are making it happen will prove you wrong.
Thorium (specifically Th-232) doesn't fission.
I am well aware of that but using "thorium fission" as a shorthand for "thorium cycle fission" seems common enough that I thought it would not need explanation. I assumed that people that knew what LFTR was would know what I meant and everyone else could search on "thorium fission" in Google, Wikipedia, or wherever and figure it out by clicking on the first link that shows up.
This breeding-fission process is a bit knife-edge compared to regular PWRs, BWRs and other uranium-fuelled reactors where only one neutron is required to fission a U-235 nucleus and produce 2+ more.
A lot of nuclear engineers seem to disagree with you. There are several techniques to make thorium cycle viable, the most popular are molten salt variations. Molten salt allows poisons that would normally accumulate in solid fuel to boil out. Iodine and xenon are the biggest concerns and those simply cannot remain in solution for long, and there are techniques to speed the removal from the core adding efficiency.
What recent developments in "thorium fission" can you point us at?
Here's a good place to start:
https://www.youtube.com/user/g...
There's a lot of Powerpoint presentations and glossy brochures being waved around by folks looking to make a buck from research funding and subsidies but no-one is bending metal and pouring concrete right now on anything based on thorium as a primary source of nuclear energy.
I believe that China and India would disagree with you. Right now in the USA and Canada thorium fission is being held up by regulators that don't know what to do with thorium yet. I suspect we'll see a boom in LFTR and DMSR shortly after China demonstrates their first MSR. It used to be that the USA was first in technology, now we race to be second place.
Previous attempts to commercialise pebble-bed reactors capable of using some thorium such as the German THTR-300 were not a success.
Let's see, steam turbines, helium cooled core, small manufactured fuel pebbles, and a one off design. What could possibly go wrong? Water creeping into the helium coolant. Pebbled fuel breaking in the reactor and getting lodged in piping. Difficulty in sourcing fuel. Not a high point of thorium as a fuel.
LFTR uses molten salt as coolant and fuel carrier, any leaking between them does cause contamination but it will not stop operation. Leaks can be repaired and operation resumed. There is no water cooling to create concerns over flash boiling, corrosion of metals, or contamination of fuel. LFTR does not require "manufacture" of the fuel, it's a stable salt with very low chemical and nuclear reactivity. Once melted it can be simply poured into the core. Waste products are removed as part of normal operation, they won't accumulate to levels that would cause massive release if there is a catastrophic failure. Any kind of large failure would be limited to destruction of the core, it can't "blow it's top" like water cooled and solid fuel reactors of the past.
This design was tested and operating fifty years ago. However, because we've learned a lot in the last fifty years in material science, manufacturing, and so forth that design would not be considered viable today. What it does do is show the physics work and if we can only get the DOE to get their assess off their thumbs then maybe we can see thorium as a fuel before another fifty years pass.
I'd like french toast in the Renaissance.
Rodney King has crack cocaine in his system too.
Still? After all these years? Wow, must have been some party.
Okay, with that out of the way I'll try to be serious.
Nobody talks about the fact Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, and *ALL* of the recent highly-publicized decedents that interfered with police had marijuana in their blood.
Some surveys of Americans show regular marijuana use as high as 25% of the population. Few will show marijuana use lower than 10%. Marijuana users tend to be the kind of people that would find themselves running into police. Marijuana can be detected in the blood and urine of casual users for days, perhaps weeks, after last use. Regular users will show detectable amounts of marijuana metabolites for a month or more.
Warning, sloppy use of statistics follows....
Assuming 25% of the population has used marijuana in the last year, and marijuana use can be detected for a week, then my math tells me that picking 50 people at random will show a high probability of finding someone with THC detectable in their blood or urine. If 10% of the population are regular users where marijuana can be detected for a month then just pulling 10 people at random and you'll find someone with THC in their system. Add on top of that selection bias, people that don't have marijuana in their system after getting arrested or killed don't make the news, and you have a recipe for equating marijuana use with criminal behavior.
While we're at it lets test these people for alcohol. Alcohol use can also be detected for a long time after use, as long as four days. If you pick up someone for speeding on a Monday morning, and test them for alcohol use like we do for marijuana, then we're going to have to clear out a lot of prison space for all of those "drunk" drivers.
Having read the history of marijuana prohibition I see that the prohibition was not based on anything scientific. What it was based on was racism, immigrants from Mexico brought their marijuana habit with them and people were looking for ways to make them look like the bad guys. Same goes for opiates, the Chinese brought opium with them and that scared people. Considering the damage alcohol does to society I think we did Prohibition all wrong, keep the alcohol ban but let people get their weed and heroin. However, Prohibition was doomed to fail, it's not like it takes a chemical engineering degree to make a moonshine still. Same goes for marijuana, it grows every where, why else do you think it's called "weed"?
Opium, on the other hand, doesn't grow well in the USA so banning it here may have worked in the age of sail. Now, with two day express shipping from China, there is no hope to contain it.
While I agree with most of what you say I have to disagree here:
Solar is the only thing that scales (unless fusion finally stops being "just 20 years away").
Thorium fission can scale. Recent developments show that we can build small modular reactors as small as 20MW or so, and make them as big as one GW. Much bigger than a gigawatt or three and it starts to make sense to just build more smaller ones from the same dies, cheaper to build and manage.
It bothers me on how people will claim we can make wind and solar work if only we build a massive continent wide power grid to compensate for the unfavorable weather in parts of the nation. The problem I see is that "unfavorable weather" tends to include things like clouds, high winds, and lightning, things that tend to damage power grids. We don't need bigger power grids, we need them smaller. If power goes out in St. Louis then the people in Kansas City and Chicago shouldn't have to worry if the lights will go out when the sun goes down. That solar power on the coasts is going to have to cross the river, if the switching stations on either side were damaged in a storm then you don't have a big national grid any more.
Adding redundant power lines adds cost, which is reflected in people's utility bill. I'd rather see that money put toward thorium power than solar and power lines.
I like seeing things like this. I'm not excited about the solar power aspect, I actually think that is a fool's errand. I'm excited about seeing people research molten salt power transfer systems and high temperature power generation.
One big problem holding up research in molten salt fission reactors is that the power generation systems it relies upon for much of its efficiency gains have not been tested fully. If we can prove to the powers that be, like the US Department of Energy, that we can handle molten salts safely then we can get that much closer to getting a molten salt reactor built.
Looking into how these concentrated solar power plants work I had to ask myself, what do they do when the sun doesn't shine enough to keep the salt molten? They claim ten hours of storage capability, that might get them through the night I suppose. What if the morning sun is obstructed by clouds? Well, I found my answer when looking at the Ivanpah Solar Power Facility.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
To get these things started in the morning takes a lot of natural gas. I understand the need for a power plant, any power plant, to have backup power on site in the case of the need to shut down the primary electric generation when there is loss of a connection to the grid. But the need to do this every morning does sound a bit counter productive. This is a plant that is supposed to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels. That's what I thought the whole point of solar power was supposed to be.
Perhaps, after we prove molten salt solar can work when the weather agrees, then we can put a small modular thorium reactor on the site to warm up the salt in the morning and provide a base load of power for when the sun doesn't shine. Of course, once you can show that small modular reactors of about 100MW capacity can keep the solar power plant running then people will begin to wonder why they bother with the large expensive solar tower when the reactor keeps running regardless of the weather. At some point they'll tear down the tower to make room for more reactors.
That's the whole point to me, moving towards small modular thorium reactors. Of all the technologies we have out there right now I see that as the one true solution. We'll still see wind, solar, hydro, geothermal, and so on in the times and places where it is cheap but small thorium molten salt reactors can be used in so many places. Make them on an assembly line like a Boeing airliner and we should see a new one built every month. In twenty years we should see the grid powered by more than 50% nuclear fission.
I still think that nuclear fusion will prove viable within my lifetime, but only when done on a multi-gigawatt scale. That is going to be very expensive to build initially but once built it should run for a long time using common elements as fuel. Until we have a leap in technology like that we have three choices:
- Nuclear fission
- Continued fossil fuel use, with all its pros and cons
- Expensive unreliable wind and solar
So, go build your concentrated solar power plants, those would make great sites for a future thorium fission power plant.
Any advocate to reduce carbon output that also dismisses nuclear fission power is ignorant, insane, or has motives other than saving the planet.
Of all the technologies available to us this article advocates moving to solar PV, which is probably the most expensive energy source we have outside of burning diesel fuel. If you want to see an environmental disaster then tell people they have to rely on photovoltaic panels for power. As energy costs rise people will be crawling all over looking for something to burn for heat, light, and cooking. Trees will probably be the first things to go. Then people will burn trash. People will be burning tires.
Those with enough money to buy fuel for their cars will save up some for portable generators. Just think of a neighborhood in a summer heat with portable generators to run their air conditioners. The noise, smell, and smog will be unbearable.
These global warming alarmists are not going to win people over with a promise of higher energy prices and reduced standard of living. They need to offer more than a vague promise of saving the planet for some future generation. There won't be a future generation if we all starve, freeze, or see a plague kill us off.
The answer is thorium for energy. It's a known working technology. It doesn't create weapon grade material like uranium reactors, in fact it can burn the weapon grade stuff was have now. Also, if done right, it not only won't produce more nuclear waste but it can destroy the waste we have piled up now.
We have three choices:
- Nuclear fission
- Continued use of fossil fuels
- Starvation, disease, and death
Any claims of solar power, nuclear fusion, algae based fuel, or other as yet undeveloped technology saving us is relying on some breakthrough in technology that we've been working on since we've been talking of the evils of technology that will render the world uninhabitable.
Odd, isn't it? These people that have been telling us all of how technology is going to kill us is now trying to convince us that technology is going to save us. Perhaps we've had the technology to save us all for a long time now but this past fear of technology has prevented its development to the point that we simply cannot save ourselves any more, it's too late.
Again, these people are insane, ignorant, or have motives other than saving the planet. Regardless, we need to use thorium for energy because it will keep the lights on and civilization running. Anything else will likely doom us one way or another.
How can you be THAT sure that nobody will ever let another Chernobyl happened?
Because Chernobyl happened. No one is going to ever repeat those mistakes again so long as people study their history.
Chernobyl was based on a design stolen from the USA which had known problems with runaway fission. The US engineers fixed the, then theoretical, problems before it was used in the USA but the Soviets didn't care. During construction money was running low so the concrete poured was routinely mixed down with sand with no quality checks that it still met specifications. Then the reactor was tested with safeties purposefully disabled. The people at the controls at the time were inexperienced. After all of that stacked on top of each other the damage was not near what people feared. Yes, sadly, a lot of people died. Many of the deaths were also the result of poor procedures, improper or nonexistent testing, and so forth that plagued its construction.
Not only have we learned from those mistakes we've learned more about how fission works. We will not build a reactor like that again also because we have found cheaper and safer ways to do it.
To those that claim only government regulation can prevent another Chernobyl I will say that Chernobyl was a government project from top to bottom. That's the case in a communist society like the USSR, everything wrong is the fault of the government because the government runs everything.
Look up a few things about molten salt reactors and you can see for yourself how safe fission power can be and has proven to be. A few acronyms you can look up: LFTR, WAMSR, IMSR, DMSR, ARE, MSRE, TEI, VHTR/LS-VHTR, MSW, MSFR, FLIBE, MSCR, EVOL.
Natural gas turbines cost about 1/2 coal plant, and 1/3rd to 1/5th that of a fission plant. Look on page 11 of this:
I was speaking of the cost of the power produced, not the capital expenses. Right now natural gas turbines are popping up everywhere because natural gas is cheap and because it isn't coal. Coal has it's own political problems preventing growth.
I realize that wind is being built up very quickly right now, I see the windmill parts going down the interstate every day. That can only go on for so long, at some point it will reach a peak where wind capacity overcomes the grid capability to compensate for the unreliable nature of the wind. Combining gas peaking power with wind and you get a price on par with that of fission, and you can only do that until the wind provides 30% of the grid power. We've squeezed about all we can out of wind power, we can't make big gains on efficiency like we used to any more.
Wind power will always rely on storage or peaking power. We don't have cheap storage outside of the few locations fortunate enough to have geologic features favorable for pumped water storage. If natural gas gets cheaper then we'll forget building the windmills and build more natural gas. Fission can only get cheaper by comparison either through changes in law, improvements in technology, or the rising cost of fossil fuels.
Experts on power grids have done studies and just about all agree that wind and solar can only provide 30% of grid power before bad things start to happen. Even a best case scenario doesn't allow for more than 50% or so. Where is the rest of the power going to come from? Fission. Fission is proven, it exists, and does not rely on unobtanium or favorable locations like access to favorable climate, gobs of flowing water, or geologic features. High temperature fission just needs a patch of terra firma and air, both of which are abundant.
What high temperature fission has is the capability to provide grid power on its own, it does not need peaking power plants and can be put anywhere.
That is nonsense, as no country is running 24/7 with "full power", power is a curve with a lower bottom at somewhere between 40% and 60% of your peaks during daytime.
I did not claim that a national grid requires "full power" 24/7, only that power is consumed 24/7. Solar PV peaks at noon while demand peaks at sunset. Wind is unpredictable, weather forecasts only go out for a week or so and then can only give generalities, not hour by hour wind speed. To make wind and solar work would require storage, which is right now too expensive to be worthwhile outside of a few localities. Some estimates by people that study this sort of thing have stated that wind and solar can provide no more than 30% of grid power before very "interesting" things start to happen. The last thing a utility wants is an "interesting" day.
That is double wrong. The most popular is pumped storage, because it is cheap and the secondary one is gas turbines because gas turbines are horrible expensive, however nearly as fast in reaction as pumped storage.
Pumped storage requires specific and rare geological features, natural gas can be put nearly anywhere. Pumped storage is also unpopular because of the environmental impact. So, outside of a handful of locations where the geology and environmental impact are favorable the only remaining option is natural gas.
That is again wrong, in most countries fission power is the most expensive power.
Fission is only expensive because of the popular opinion created from black swan events like Chernobyl. It's a political problem creating the cost, not a technological one. Even with all the political induced cost nuclear is cheaper that solar. The price difference between fission, coal, gas combined cycle, and some wind is so small that it can be for the most part ignored as noise. Coal and gas is only going to get harder to find and therefore become more expensive. Fission fuels are such a small portion of the operating cost that it can be ignored as noise. Fission may be the most expensive power but that only means perhaps double the price, not tenfold, give it a decade and we shall see what happens to coal prices.
That is wrong. Wind plants have a very high uptime, and build at suitable places a very high CF, too.
Assuming you are correct, that wind farms have a high up time, this up time is largely irrelevant so long as utilities cannot rely on the wind to blow in sync with demand. We'd have to have enough wind farms to produce the maximum required output in the calmest of weather, that costs money. Adding in solar doesn't help much since that also peaks at the wrong time, power consumption tends to peak near sunset. Again, people that study this have found that wind and solar above 30% of grid power will make things interesting for the grid. This is not only because of the unpredictable nature of wind and solar but also because the spinning rotors on windmills introduce harmonics on the grid that are difficult to manage. This spinning rotor problem has been studied for a very long time and with every spinning rotor added the computations required to manage the harmonics become more difficult. With a large and controlled rotor on a fission or coal plant the harmonics can be controlled, in part, by throttling the power plant. There is no throttle control on the wind.
Solar PV plants run with the sun. Solar thermal plants with molten salt storages run around the clock. With their peak around the daily peaks and at roughly 60% at night when demand is low.
Solar thermal plants are largely theoretical and reliant on a favorable climate. A solar thermal plant is useless in Alaska. Fission and coal don't care about the weather. High temperature fission is also freed from the need for large amounts of fresh water, air cooling even in the Arizona summer is sufficient.
Basically eve
Getting 10% of your electricity from wind is trivial. Daily demand varies more that 10% so all you have to do is what you've been doing for the current mix of coal, gas, nuclear, and hydro. People smarter than the both of us have spent a long time looking at this and have convinced me that having more than 30% of power from wind and strange things start to happen with the grid.
We can make wind power work but it would involve massive changes to how the national power grid works, which would be very expensive. Not only would it be expensive, because putting large power cables over or under the Mississippi river is not easy, but it would create a vary fragile network. If there was a catastrophic loss of connection on one of those Mississippi crossings we'd see blackouts and brownouts nationwide.
Even if we could power the world with wind we would not want to. Making wind power work means relying on wind in California to power a Florida with calm winds. There's a lot of ways that could fail, badly.
Wind power, right now, costs three times what nuclear power costs, right now. Even a quantum leap in wind technology cannot make it cheaper than what nuclear fission could cost if only the Department of Energy would allow the building of a modern liquid fuel fission reactor. The Department of Energy has been subsidizing wind power for decades and it still cannot compete with fission power from the 1970s. I don't see a great future for wind power. Wind power will never go away, it's just too easy to get in many places, but it cannot power a first world economy.
Disasters and waste disposal issues for fission are only a concern if we keep doing it like we've done for the last 40 years. We've seen liquid fuel fission that promises to not only be "disaster" proof but can also "eat" the radioactive waste from the reactors we've used for decades.
Liquid fuel fission reactors like liquid fluoride thorium reactors (LFTRs) can be made to be walkaway safe, where any damage would be limited to the destruction of the reactor. LFTRs have safety mechanisms that prevent the possibility of "China Syndrome" style meltdowns. This is primarily because the fuel is already melted, loss of containment means removal of the mechanisms that maintain fission. If the reactor runs too hot a normal "scram" operation involves dumping the core fuel into a drain tank that removes the fuel from the core, the tank is designed in such a way that just air cooling prevents further damage. Thermal failure of the core, as in it gets so hot that it melts, mean the fuel spills onto the floor of the reactor building, and then flows into that same drain tank. It is impossible for a LFTR failure to result in a massive release of radiation.
Once the powers that be in the federal government realize the value of LFTR we will see fission not only get cheaper but also prove that fission does not mean we have to pile up radioactive waste. That "waste" we have now exists only because of federal government policies that prevent the reprocessing of spent fuel into new fuel and valuable industrial material. LFTR could prove to be a means for making reprocessing of "spent" fuel that is both economically and politically feasible. Much of what makes up "spent" fuel from current reactors is unburnt uranium, stuff that is no more radioactive than what was dug from the ground. If we can get that uranium out and turn it into something useful then not only have we just solve 90% of the "waste" problem but we've also solved an energy problem.
There's two ways to dispose of radioactive waste. One way is to store it away until it decays, which can take hundreds of years. (Anything that takes longer than hundreds of years to decay is "radioactive" only in the theoretical sense, it's not a hazard to life.) Another way to dispose of radioactive material is in a reactor. If we do it right then that reactor can not only destroy radioactive material but we also get valuable energy from it.
Like you say, if you ask someone from the 1970s about nuclear power they'll tell you about The China Syndrome. The reason we still think of fission power like we do in the 1970s is because not much has changed in fission technology since then. Why haven't we seen anything new in fission technology since the 1970s? Likely because we have the same people in the Department of Energy that we did in 1979. Time will prove that nuclear fission is safe, cheap, reliable, and the only option we have. That time may come, sadly, only because the people that are holding the technology back have died of old age.
Yes, you can make "technology advancement" arguments that the DOE forecasters are wrong, but the cost of wind and solar generators are dropping all the time, too, and storage options might get radically cheaper as well. I think investment in solar + wind + storage actually dwarfs investments in fusion, so the market seems intent on fulfilling DOE's prophesy.
Wind and solar will never compete with coal and fission. Part of this is because wind and solar require viable (read that as cheap, reliable, etc) storage to provide 24/7 power. Any energy storage system that can make wind and solar reliable will also serve to make coal and fission cheaper.
A big problem with any power plant that works by steam power, which coal and fission do, is that it does not respond well to large daily swings in power demands. To rectify this there are a large number of solutions, the most popular one because it is cheap is natural gas turbines. In this case "cheap" is relative because even though natural gas turbines cost three times that of coal and fission it is still the cheapest solution we have. Right now that is the same for wind and solar, to make wind and solar "work" there must be a ready reserve of natural gas turbines.
If we develop a technology that can store energy cheaper than it takes to produce it by natural gas turbines then all we'd need to do to get cheap and reliable power is to couple that storage with coal and fission. To compete with that wind and solar would have to be a fraction of the cost of operating a coal or fission power plant. Why a fraction of the cost? Because coal and fission can operate with better than 80% up time. Wind and solar can only operate with something like 30% up time. To compete with a one GW fission power plant would require three GW capacity wind and/or solar, along with this as yet undeveloped storage technology that is cheaper than natural gas.
I believe that after all the gains we've made in wind and solar in the last few decades we're seeing diminishing returns. We're getting real close to theoretical maximum efficiencies already, there just isn't much more room for improvement. If wind and solar require some cheap storage system to be viable then they are both fool's errands. While wind, solar, and storage are all noble efforts in solving our future energy needs none of them can compete with fission. Our future is a fission powered one, nothing else we've seen so far can compare, and that includes fusion.
every child can read a nautical compass.
Having been in the US Army and gone through the terrestrial navigation training in Basic Training I know that not to be true. All of these recruits graduated high school, were over 18 years old, and some of them could not read a compass. Unless you can show how a nautical compass is fundamentally different than a terrestrial one then I don't believe you.
Seems to me that teaching some basics of celestial navigation in the US Naval Academy is a very low cost solution to the potential issue of having common electronic navigation aids fail. Reading a compass may be very different than reading a sextant but having both skills could prove lifesaving in a real shooting war.
I realized upon re-read that the context of this was proposing instead of teaching celestial navigation that the Navy should instead have computers capable of celestial navigation.
Then you'd better call out the galley slaves with their giant wooden paddles, because I can't imagine any scenario where a ship's engine would be operational, but they couldn't generate a few watts of electricity out of it.
And Tepco couldn't imagine a scenario where they'd lose the generators, batteries, and grid power at the same time. How well did that work out for them? Sometimes the worst can happen and simple things like a sextant, clock, charts, compass, and two weeks of training at the Naval Academy can save a lot of people a lot of trouble.
Hell, this is the military, they don't mind forcing a few men to turn a crank on an alternator around the clock, to generate a little power, when needed. Seriously, who is teaching celestial navigation, instead of just including a $30 solar panel as a tertiary backup power source in the event of inconceivable system failures?
Who's teaching celestial navigation? The Merchant Marine Academy, the Coast Guard Academy, as well as numerous universities, trade schools, and enthusiasts. Let's assume you have power. Assume we have a computer capable of celestial navigation. Everything is fine. That is also a piece of equipment that is in need of training, maintenance, and so forth. At the same time the US Navy could invest that same amount of time and money on training and equipment and not only do they cover situations where GPS is down they also cover a number of situations that they haven't even thought of yet. A celestial navigation computer is going to be an expensive piece of equipment, one that is going to be vulnerable to many of the same things that can take out GPS. If you are going to have a back-up plan then why not make it one known to be very robust, relatively inexpensive, and needing little maintenance?
We aren't talking about your cellphone. Military equipment is specifically hardened against EMP. And even if it weren't, a spare handheld GPS unit stored in an antistatic bag with a few batteries is all you need for a fix.
Hardened against EMP does not mean it is incapable of being disabled by it, it means it can take a much greater hit and survive compared to others. Just like "bullet proof" doesn't meet it can stop every bullet, but it can stop the first two or three. Again, if you are going to have a back-up plan then it makes sense to make it as resistant as possible to whatever might take out your primary system.
A wise naval officer might want to buy an iPhone and a celestial navigation app, then keep it wrapped in foil in case of an EMP attack. Might be just what the Navy needs to win a war. It might also be wise to have some idea on how celestial navigation works so that if the app isn't working right away that the officer might know the best way to use that app and how to interpret the output. Same goes for an EMP hardened, US Navy standard issue, celestial navigation computer. Just knowing some basics on celestial navigation the operator, likely an officer in the Navy, would be able to tell if the computer is operating correctly and how to fix it if it isn't.
The compass is about the simplest interface around. There might well be the occasional person who can't figure it out, but most can, without trying. That's surely no reason to resort to celestial navigation training.
I suppose that in many situations that being able to read a chart, a compass, and some dead reckoning will be sufficient in most every case. However, these officers are going to be trained for war and be responsible for the lives of those under their command. It would seem prudent to take a few hours of their time to teach them the basics of celestial navigation so that if things go wrong in a big way we don't lose an entire flotilla because no one knew how to read a compass and chart correctly. Perhaps some light reading is in order:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Then you'd better call out the galley slaves with their giant wooden paddles, because I can't imagine any scenario where a ship's engine would be operational, but they couldn't generate a few watts of electricity out of it.
Then perhaps you aren't thinking hard enough.
Let's also consider a situation given in the linked article, the ship is fully operational but the Navstar GPS satellites are disabled. A GPS unit wrapped in aluminum foil won't save you then. The Chinese or Russian GPS systems might still be operational but in a time of war, where either nation might be the aggressor, they cannot be relied upon.
If during an attack the people responsible for the navigation of the ship are just then seeing a magnetic compass for the first time can you be certain they will read it correctly? Reliance on a single means of navigation is a single point of failure. If that fails, for whatever reason, and you have no backup, then you have problems. Seems simple enough to have the cadets learn some basics of celestial navigation while at the academy so that if they do find themselves in the unlikely situation of a ship that can move but the electricity is out that they can at least find their way home.
Navigation will be the last of your worries then.
Being up shit creek and all I had was a paddle I'd think that knowing where I was would be the first concern.
Let's gather the situation here. Communication is down, weapons down to .50 M2 and small arms, no GPS, no power. Since the ship is likely steam or gas turbine powered the crew should still be able to get the ship to move. I presume as well that there are crew that are injured. This crew is also going to be in need of food, heat, and shelter. I'd think that what a wise captain would want to do is head for the nearest safe harbor for repairs. At a minimum getting to port would mean the crew can find food, heat, and shelter until the ship is repaired or they can be picked up in another.
Given that situation what should a captain do? Head to safe harbor, right? Okay then, to get there they will have to be able to at a minimum know which direction to sail. With a watch, compass, and charts one can do wonderful things. With a sextant and the knowledge to use it, miracles can be performed.
Someone mod the parent post up.
HDOP would be flashing red on the bridge and they would be all fat and happy sailing at full speed.
In the middle of the North Atlantic what is there to hit?
Perhaps with a renewed focus on training techniques that don't rely on toys, the USN will stop having the most collision-dented ships in NATO.
Oh, yeah, you can hit other ships in your flotilla.
At least you still consider us your "American friends".
Even if it is a useful thing to learn, I don't see why everyone should have to learn it.
Seeing as it's being taught at the US Naval Academy it's only the officers that have to learn celestial navigation. I assume the enlisted ranks outside of the navigation ratings won't have to learn it, but those that wish to earn navigation ratings would.
Considering that any naval officer could at some point in their career be in charge of a vessel larger than a canoe it would be helpful, if not necessary, to know what every person under their command must do. They may have to teach someone how to do their job, such as an inexperience crew member or someone doing a job not normally assigned to them. They may have to check the work of a navigator, or no one on the crew (not dead or injured) was trained in navigation and may have to navigate on their own.
I believe that this is excellent training for a US Navy or Marine officer to have. If things really get bad the crew is going to look towards the highest ranking officer that is still standing, which might be the ensign or lieutenant fresh from the academy. One of the first questions asked, if not THE first question asked is, "Where are we?" If that officer cannot get a reading from the GPS, and the navigator is dead, then I'd hope they'd be looking for charts and a sextant rather than pissing their pants.
Also, there are several direct commission position in the US military that do not necessarily come from a military academy. You mentioned some that might not come from an academy. Some typical direct commission positions are those in medical, legal, and chaplain services. Less common direct commissions would be in engineering, logistics, sciences, and intelligence. These direct commission positions are not likely to be seen on a battlefield, or at sea.
There's probably an app for that.
Having talked to people that were on US Navy ships at about that time I was told that a common means of navigation was by land based radio navigation. One person described to me a rather large antenna array on the bow of the ship that could give the direction of a radio beacon. I was told that normally this was folded down so as to not interfere with the weapons but in a case of a need to get somewhere quickly they'd prop it up so they can get an accurate location and heading.
Knowing what I do about radio navigation at a minimum one could get a directional antenna and point it to a radio source near your destination and, assuming the antenna was in line with the direction of travel, just point the ship in the direction of the strongest signal. With a ship at sea aiming for Hawaii I'd think that someone on the ship would know how to operate the directional antenna and know the frequency of a radio transmitter on the island. That radio source didn't have to be a dedicated radio navigation aid, just something with a consistently strong signal like an AM radio station.
How far out to sea were you that nothing but GPS and star charts worked for you? I'd think that a couple of the communication guys would know enough about which stations were located where that you could navigate that way.
Also, given the year you said you were on cruise I have to wonder if you are referring to Navstar GPS or one of it's predecessors, such as TRANSIT.
I agree with you on every point except that of "Air Forces". Having read plenty of history I know that the Allied Forces of WWII came up with several ingenious ways to navigate in war time. You even pointed out a couple in your assessment of the other users of GPS, use of charts, compass, and bubble sextants.
While many of these are most convenient while in a larger aircraft, like a bomber or passenger plane, I've heard of systems that can work even in the confines of a single seat fighter. Examples of this are modified sextants that hang from the canopy, charts in a book strapped to a leg, along with the typical navigation aids common to all aircraft.
Inertial navigation has become increasingly accurate. Even handheld devices can reach accuracies that can be used to navigate within a building. Getting something accurate enough for a bombing run, or get a fighter jet back home, should be nearly trivial.
I'll also assume that military navigation could be brought up to speed quickly so that things like radio navigation by commercial radio transmitters would be viable, if only in "safe" territory. It's still useful to have such navigation in safe territory as it aids in logistics.
I will agree with you on your other points. The loss of LORAN does reflect poorly on the powers that be. At a minimum they could have left them standing just in case they were needed in the future. They didn't even have to maintain them, just let them slowly rot. It's much easier to repair them than to build them up from nothing. Perhaps they know something we don't. I suspect not though.
Wow. Just... wow. Of all the things I wrote you focus on a typo I made in the first line. Did you even read the rest of the post?
What if the issue is not lack of GPS but lack of electrical power?
Then the ship is dead in the water anyway. Duh.
Or, in the case of an EMP, the computers are scrambled?
Then none of the systems that allow the ship to be controlled or to fight are functioning either. Duh.
Having talked with several people that have been on actual US Navy ships I know what you proclaim is not true. Even today US Navy ships are largely powered by steam power plants with mechanical systems to operate them. There may be electronic systems to manage them in normal operation but there is always a manual override.
If the means to generate electricity is lost there is nothing that prevents the ship from being able to still propel itself.
Many of the weapons would also be capable of functioning without power. At a minimum the crew could operate small arms.
Assuming the ship is unable to fight then at a minimum being able to determine their position would be vital to either head to safe harbor (assuming the ship is still capable of moving under its own power) or be able to call for assistance. Being able to give your position before the radio is lost would be vital to a quick recovery. Yes, I realize that a radio requires electric power. There is a chance that one battery operated radio still works. A hand crank radio was standard issue equipment, I don't know how common they are any more.
In the case of more modern electrical propulsion ships the power generation and the propellers are quite close to each other. Damage to the power distribution systems may render a large portion of the ship without power but still capable of propelling itself. Navigation from the engineering deck is likely to be quite difficult, so someone on the deck is going to have to operate a compass, look out for obstacles, and so on, and let the crew below decks know which way to point the ship. Again the crew can either fight with whatever weapons they can without power, or tend to the ship as it navigates to port.
So, in the case of a steam ship a total loss of electrical power is merely inconvenient. In the case of an electric propulsion ship total loss of electric power is unlikely. In a total loss of electric power then, yes, the ship is dead in the water. In the case of partial loss of electric power the ship may still be able to move but normal means of communication and navigation are lost. Even in the case of total loss of power anything battery operated will work for a period of time, with a radio you can let people know where you are before it goes dead. If everything goes dead then nothing was lost by teaching celestial navigation but a week or two of time in the academy on computer navigation.
Assuming it's cloudy, you're GPS systems just went down, all radio navigation aids are lost, and all your compasses were demagnetized, then, yes, I assume one could say they are fucked.
One solution to this problem is like what reboot246 says in a sister post, have a sun stone as part of the celestial navigation gear. Another is to sail into a best guess of a safe direction until one can see a point of reference, be it a celestial object or terrestrial one.
Celestial navigation is not supposed to solve all navigation problems. What it is supposed to do is reduce the reliance on GPS to the point that should it go down you don't have a navy full of ships that can't so much as steer towards a safe harbor.
Having talked with people that sailed at sea, both for pleasure and for the US Navy, every ship has a number of readily available means to navigate. GPS is typically the primary means. Second on the list is likely to be radio navigation of one type or another. Third is typically dead reckoning. If you know where you were, what direction you are heading, and at what speed, you can usually keep sailing with relative safety and ease until you can restore one or the other means of electronic navigation. Those knowledgeable of celestial navigation can go without the electronic navigation for much longer and still reach their destination as scheduled. If it's cloudy while you are without electronic navigation aids then, yes, you will most likely arrive behind schedule.
In war you may not have the luxury of reaching your destination late.