AT LAST THE TRUTH!

[kyradawg]

Peace&Love , Darren

[solarguy]

While we're doing a little fact checking and refining, let's examine this statement:

"Solar seems like a free lunch until you realise how much energy goes into making just one cell." by K-dog.


Of course, we all know there is no such thing as a free energy lunch, unless you define the system in some creative way that physicists would scowl at.  It's the second half of the statement that I really take issue with.  K-dog, you are implying either that it takes more energy to make a cell than you ever get out, or you're implying that it takes so much energy to make a cell, that it's not very worthwhile.  Or maybe you are suggesting some third thing.  Certainly, there's been lots of internet gossip going around that says photovoltaic panels are a net energy loss.

Thoughtful scientists, lots of them, have studied this, a lot.  Here's summary by a guy who did a very sophisticated analysis of the underlying assumptions for many studies.  The bottom line is that a typical solar cell will return about 10X the energy invested in making it, including complete life cycle analysis, Ballance of System components, etc etc etc ad nauseum.


http://energybulletin.net/17219.html

By comparison, the EROEI for biodiesel is around 3 or 4 for virgin oil, and 5-7 for wvo (waste veggie oil).  Which is not to say I am in any way opposed to biodiesel, since I make it, use it and teach others to do the same.  It's just not the silver bullet that's going to fix all of our problems.

So I'm squarely in the group that says we're going to have to pull every trick in the book to make this work.  That means lots of conservation first, then all the assorted good ideas previously mentioned.  I do have reservations about lots of nuke, just because the long term EROEI just doesn't compute when you account for waste processing and storage for millenia.

Finest regards,

troy

[GuyFawkes]

So I'm squarely in the group that says we're going to have to pull every trick in the book to make this work.  That means lots of conservation first, then all the assorted good ideas previously mentioned.  I do have reservations about lots of nuke, just because the long term EROEI just doesn't compute when you account for waste processing and storage for millenia.

Finest regards,

troy

waste processing is easy.

1/ lots of what is "waste" today will be "raw materials" in 20 years time

2/ encase it in concrete or glass and dump it in subduction zones, you won't see it again for tens of millions of years.

[solarguy]

So I'm squarely in the group that says we're going to have to pull every trick in the book to make this work.  That means lots of conservation first, then all the assorted good ideas previously mentioned.  I do have reservations about lots of nuke, just because the long term EROEI just doesn't compute when you account for waste processing and storage for millenia.

Finest regards,

troy

waste processing is easy.

1/ lots of what is "waste" today will be "raw materials" in 20 years time

2/ encase it in concrete or glass and dump it in subduction zones, you won't see it again for tens of millions of years.

1.  To date, we have a pretty crappy record with nuclear reprocessing plants.  They were pretty smart engineers and you have often suggested that they're tried it all already.  I am not confident about betting the farm that they will get it all right the next time around.  I hope so.

2.  We have a time frame problem on this method.  If we dump it on the sea floor, at just the right spot, how long does it take before the material (which makes great dirty bombs) is totally reliably inaccessible to humans?

Glassification, even in situ, has had some promising results, but it takes an impressive amount of juice to melt all that sand to make glass to encase/entrain all that waste, even the low level/high volume stuff.

Finest regards,

troy

[GuyFawkes]

1.  To date, we have a pretty crappy record with nuclear reprocessing plants.  They were pretty smart engineers and you have often suggested that they're tried it all already.  I am not confident about betting the farm that they will get it all right the next time around.  I hope so.

2.  We have a time frame problem on this method.  If we dump it on the sea floor, at just the right spot, how long does it take before the material (which makes great dirty bombs) is totally reliably inaccessible to humans?

Glassification, even in situ, has had some promising results, but it takes an impressive amount of juice to melt all that sand to make glass to encase/entrain all that waste, even the low level/high volume stuff.

Finest regards,

troy

1/ even with the odd chernoby, global deaths are less than coal, it's like airlines crashes and road deaths, all the deaths happen on the roads, all the media focus on the airline.

2/ anyone with the tech to locate and recover to the surface multi ton blocks of non magnetic material while defending the surface vessels on station for days already has enough firepower to take on the USA

3/ with nukes, you have all the juice you want, ever seen the power a bauxite plant uses?

[rpg52]

Yes, one wee problem I hesitate to mention - finding more energy sources isn't a fix if we continue with the assumption that our population can continue to grow indefinitly.  As long as our basic assumptions include perpetual growth, we will never meet our energy "needs". 

I have confidence (even as a skeptic about the viability of human society), that if we can control human population growth rates, we are clever enough to solve the energy thing.  However, I have very little confidence that our growth rate can be solved before we overshoot the earths carrying capacity and collapse into chaos.  It has happened too many times before to blithly ignore.

Hate to rain on this parade of technical flaming, just passing along my $0.02.   
Ray

[Andre Blanchard]

1/ even with the odd chernoby, global deaths are less than coal, it's like airlines crashes and road deaths, all the deaths happen on the roads, all the media focus on the airline.

2/ anyone with the tech to locate and recover to the surface multi ton blocks of non magnetic material while defending the surface vessels on station for days already has enough firepower to take on the USA

3/ with nukes, you have all the juice you want, ever seen the power a bauxite plant uses?

Here is an achive of some older emails written by some people with actual experience, some interesting reading.
http://yarchive.net/nuke/index.html

[lgsracer]

I spent twenty years riding nuclear submarines, still have all the normal appendages. 150 feet was a far as you could get from the tea kettle. I picked more rem from the nuclear weapons than I did from the reactor. We are monitored very closely. Non-nuclear workers are only allowed 3 rem a year, nuclear worker 5. I never even came close to 3 rem a year. We had a saying you would pickup more lifetime living in Denver than on a boat.

[GuyFawkes]

I spent twenty years riding nuclear submarines, still have all the normal appendages. 150 feet was a far as you could get from the tea kettle. I picked more rem from the nuclear weapons than I did from the reactor. We are monitored very closely. Non-nuclear workers are only allowed 3 rem a year, nuclear worker 5. I never even came close to 3 rem a year. We had a saying you would pickup more lifetime living in Denver than on a boat.

yup, my old grantie cottage in corwall gave you a bigger dose than working in a nuke plant.

the one's I love are those that claim the radiation is dangerous AND it lasts a billion years.

[SHIPCHIEF]

Try:
http://www.kiddofspeed.com/default.htm
For a recent motorcycle trip thru the fallout zone of Chernobyl. I was impressed by the story, as well as the recovery in the area.
Scott E

[rocket]

for lgsracer.... the nuclear subs ran hot... 98 percent U235 compared to a commerical reactor that runs only 1.5% U235. must have been hard working on the sub with 4 foot concrete walls around the reactor (joking of course).

what happened to chernobyl is a lie... our government tricked them into running metallic uranium (all the easier to get metallic plutonium for bombs). the dumb potatoe farmers didnt take into consideration that the uranium would oxidize U + h2o = U0 + h2 when the free hydrogen reached about four percent all it took was a spark. nothing more than a hydrogen explosion

nuclear is safe, plentiful, renewable (when making plutonium from inert U238, U238 +N double beta (-e) decay over about 45 minutes = plutonium which is 8 times the energy as U235) and produces highly valuable isotopes.

[lgsracer]

Yes the reactors on subs use enriched uranium so they can go twenty years without refueling. The shielding is same as when they ran a more standard mix and had to be refueled every 8 to 10 years. Radiation is about the same remember time, distance shielding. The hottest thing I was ever around was the warhead on a subroc http://subroc.quickseek.com/. Missile launched nuclear depth bomb. Junior guys had to sleep in the torpedo room, where we kept the things, I slept over the warhead area. 34 millirem per hour on the warhead surface. Before they phased them out, they started installing lead sheets around the warhead or keeping them in the torpedo tubes. Damn things but out a lot of fast neutrons as well.