Burning wind turbines - not very environmentally friendly.
Burning wind turbines - not very environmentally friendly.
But fortunately, they are extremely rare. Whereas all coal fired and natural gas generators burn all the time, every day, and they are even less environmentally friendly.
A nuke is environmentally friendly until the day it explodes from a hydrogen build-up, like the ones at Fukushima. From that moment on it is an environmental nightmare that will last hundreds of years, which cannot possibly be cleaned up. It is like Longfellow's little girl:
There was a little girl,
Who had a little curl,
Right in the middle of her forehead.
When she was good,
She was very good indeed,
But when she was bad she was horrid.
A nuke is as good as good can be, and cheap as cheap can be, until it suddenly becomes the worst and the most expensive source of energy ever devised. So expensive that two of them bankrupted the largest power company on earth. No sane power company exec would build such a thing today!
As I said, it resembles the Concorde supersonic passenger airplane, that went from being the safest modern airplane, with zero casualties, to being the most dangerous, with one crash in July 2000. That brought an abrupt, permanent end to that technology. Like the Hindenburg disaster in 1937. (A better form of supersonic aircraft might be developed, but the Concorde version is dead.) Nuclear fission power reactor technology came to an abrupt end with the explosion on March 12, 2011. I predict it will never be revived. The reactor in Georgia that ended up costing far more than any other source of energy was the nail in the coffin, but the technology was a dead duck before that. Some things cannot be fixed.
But fortunately, they are extremely rare. Whereas all coal fired and natural gas generators burn all the time, every day, and they are even less environmentally friendly.
In China & India a very large number of coal beds burn deep underground and make a large contribution to the overall CO2 emission.
The Green War on Clean Energy | City Journal (city-journal.org)
"The list goes on. Time and again, climate visionaries propose sweeping transformations of our way of life in the name of reducing emissions. But then they fail to build—or even actively oppose—the infrastructure necessary to make that dream a reality."
It's worse than that. The government wants to force more windpower, but not the standby storage such as water impoundment (my favorite).
The government wants to force more windpower, but not the standby storage such as water impoundment (my favorite).
The government cannot force anything. It does not tell the power companies what to do. It encourages or discourages various energy sources with tax policy, but that does not have a large effect. Standby water power is only available in a few places. There is no place in Georgia where you could use it. The land is too flat.
Just like storm water management ponds = bug nests ect.
they put things anyplace they think can do the job for later use.
first they tell us to not have standing water then they do this..everywhere.
first they tell us to not have standing water then they do this..everywhere.
You are talking about pumped water energy storage. The problem is not a lack of water. Georgia has lots of water. The problem is there are no high mountains where a large drop between the reservoir and lower land produces a lot of energy. It works best with a deep lake with relatively small land area.
Georgia does have 2 GW of pumped storage despite that. However other states with mountains are better suited for this.
There has not been much pumped storage construction in the U.S. since the 1970s. See:
Most pumped storage electricity generators in the U.S. were built in the 1970s
It's worse than that. The government wants to force more windpower,
Just to give you an update. European costs for 1kwh are now at 50 cents-- Lets rap the wind power!
(spot market + delivery is even higher!)
This all is thanks to the good old friends uncle Joe & Putin,Xsi that rape the underdog population to increase the power of the mighty few. Lets hope all have been boostered...
Display MoreYou are talking about pumped water energy storage. The problem is not a lack of water. Georgia has lots of water. The problem is there are no high mountains where a large drop between the reservoir and lower land produces a lot of energy. It works best with a deep lake with relatively small land area.
Georgia does have 2 GW of pumped storage despite that. However other states with mountains are better suited for this.
There has not been much pumped storage construction in the U.S. since the 1970s. See:
On topic, your on the money. but you know I also add print between the line's .drinking water from wells withing the bug nest storm water nests ect.. Crops ~ not growing quit right lately..
from the new rules- land management
no effort to use run off to power systems that could be helpful "in a time of need".ect.
its odd to me they don't think about this as a way to help
they just keep adding more bug nests- floods ect.
@Jed
Display MoreYou are talking about pumped water energy storage. The problem is not a lack of water. Georgia has lots of water. The problem is there are no high mountains where a large drop between the reservoir and lower land produces a lot of energy. It works best with a deep lake with relatively small land area.
Georgia does have 2 GW of pumped storage despite that. However other states with mountains are better suited for this.
There has not been much pumped storage construction in the U.S. since the 1970s. See:
It doesn't require a high drop. Check out the system at Ludington in Michigan. Think of it in terms like the old water wheels; rate of flow. They pump the water out of Lake Michigan and then let it run back through the pump/turbine. There's really no advantage pumping that water up a high elevation. Anyway they say that type of storage is the cheapest.
For the NAMBYs among us, if you want to slow Biden's push for windpower get your state to pass a law requiring standby storage adequate to the wind farm be done by the developer at the same time. I'd love to see the people that want to put those 12 wind turbines near here also have to put in a new dam at Redridge and pump/turbines.
There's always hope for hot fusion guys.
Fusion Turns Up the Heat Matthew Zepf Helmholtz Institute Jena, Jena, Germany
August 8, 2022• Physics 15, 67
A laser-fusion scheme has achieved ignition—an important step on the road to energy production.
The National Ignition Facility (NIF) uses the world’s largest laser to heat and compress a small capsule containing hydrogen fuel and thereby induce nuclear fusion reactions in the fuel (Fig. 1), an approach known as inertial confinement fusion [1]. In early 2021, a team at NIF achieved a major milestone by showing that they could produce a burning plasma [2], a state in which the dominant source of fuel heating is self-heating due to fusion reactions—rather than external heating by the laser pulses. Today, NIF reports that they have reached another milestone in fusion research: they produced a plasma in which self-heating locally surpasses not only the external heating but also all loss mechanisms, fulfilling the so-called Lawson criterion for fusion ignition [3–5]. The result brings the scheme tantalizingly close to a holy grail of the field—getting fusion to produce a net energy greater than that contained in the driving laser pulses.
In the burning-plasma state attained in 2021, the laser still had to deliver a lot of energy to keep the fusion reaction going. However, for a “fire” to start spreading through the fuel, it should sustain itself without further energy input. To achieve that condition, the reaction must produce more energy locally than it loses to the environment. The excess energy can then heat other parts of the fuel up to the point that they also start undergoing fusion. In physical terms, the heating of the fuel generated by fusion must exceed the losses due to heat conduction and radiation. This is exactly what happens when we ignite and burn traditional fuels like paper, wood, or coal: the heat from the burning part increases the temperature locally and sets fire to the adjacent, previously cold, fuel.
Display MoreThere's always hope for hot fusion guys.
https://physics.aps.org/articles/v15/67
Fusion Turns Up the Heat Matthew Zepf Helmholtz Institute Jena, Jena, Germany
August 8, 2022• Physics 15, 67
A laser-fusion scheme has achieved ignition—an important step on the road to energy production.National Ignition Facility Figure 1: Artist’s rendering of NIF’s laser beams entering through openings on either end of a hohlraum containing the target pellet. By compressing and heating the target, the beams induce nuclear fusion in the pellet.
The National Ignition Facility (NIF) uses the world’s largest laser to heat and compress a small capsule containing hydrogen fuel and thereby induce nuclear fusion reactions in the fuel (Fig. 1), an approach known as inertial confinement fusion [1]. In early 2021, a team at NIF achieved a major milestone by showing that they could produce a burning plasma [2], a state in which the dominant source of fuel heating is self-heating due to fusion reactions—rather than external heating by the laser pulses. Today, NIF reports that they have reached another milestone in fusion research: they produced a plasma in which self-heating locally surpasses not only the external heating but also all loss mechanisms, fulfilling the so-called Lawson criterion for fusion ignition [3–5]. The result brings the scheme tantalizingly close to a holy grail of the field—getting fusion to produce a net energy greater than that contained in the driving laser pulses.
In the burning-plasma state attained in 2021, the laser still had to deliver a lot of energy to keep the fusion reaction going. However, for a “fire” to start spreading through the fuel, it should sustain itself without further energy input. To achieve that condition, the reaction must produce more energy locally than it loses to the environment. The excess energy can then heat other parts of the fuel up to the point that they also start undergoing fusion. In physical terms, the heating of the fuel generated by fusion must exceed the losses due to heat conduction and radiation. This is exactly what happens when we ignite and burn traditional fuels like paper, wood, or coal: the heat from the burning part increases the temperature locally and sets fire to the adjacent, previously cold, fuel.
Great but they have failed 4 times to replicate in the last year.
In the burning-plasma state attained in 2021, the laser still had to deliver a lot of energy to keep the fusion reaction going. However, for a “fire” to start spreading through the fuel, it should sustain itself without further energy input.
This is wishful thinking. Kinetic fusion never delivers a stable plasma and of course a LASER is not able to produce enough pressure to stop neutrons......
It doesn't require a high drop. Check out the system at Ludington in Michigan.
True, but I think it is more cost effective with a large drop. The reservoir can be smaller and the turbines produce more power. The ones in places like Switzerland have large drops and they are supposedly cost effective and energy efficient. They have small, deep lakes. In Georgia you could only have large, shallow lakes for an equivalent amount of water and the kinetic energy. That's more expensive.
The ones in places like Switzerland have large drops
Grad Dixance has the power of a Nuke. The can bring it of in less than a minute to balance the network.
25th August 2022 Lithium
It’s been almost a year since lithium prices hit an inflection point to all time highs and three months since a controversial Goldman Sachs research note predicting a price crash on increased lithium supply.
Yet Benchmark’s global average lithium prices have held steady since April’s record high levels, with Chinese technical and battery-grade lithium carbonate prices continuing to increase. That’s in stark contrast to other battery metals such as cobalt and nickel, where prices have fallen this year.
Since the beginning of June Chinese battery-grade lithium carbonate prices have increased marginally but year-to-date Chinese battery-grade lithium carbonate prices have risen by 90% while lithium hydroxide is up by 127%.
At the same time competition for future lithium has only intensified as automakers from Ford to Stellantis sign agreements to lock up supply.
Government policy is also kicking demand into a new gear with the passing of the Inflation Reduction Act in the US which will only accelerate the need for automakers to secure lithium sources, especially in North America.
This week Mercedes-Benz and Volkswagen both announced they would look to secure battery raw materials such as lithium in Canada, as part of an agreement with the Canadian government.
“Government sway is now in play and we are seeing it in full force in the USA and just the beginning in Canada,” Simon Moores, chief executive of Benchmark, said. “The lithium ion battery is now geopolitical. And if EVs mean lithium ion batteries, then EVs mean mining.”
So, what are the short and long-term drivers of the current market?
Nuclear Power and Electric Cars - Dream or Reality? | EVision EVs
Nuclear Fusion – A Better Choice for Electric Cars?
Nuclear fusion works in a different way to fission in that it seeks to combine the atoms rather than split them. This method is much safer than fusion and won’t lead to the type of disaster we have seen in the past.
Briefly, and in very over-simplified terms, fusion works by combining the nuclei of atoms to create a huge amount of energy. Unfortunately, like magnets with the same polarity, these nuclei repel each other with great force. In order to remove this repulsion it is necessary to heat the nuclei to extreme temperatures. And by ‘extreme’ I mean around 100 million degrees.
Using nuclear fusion to create energy has not yet been achieved on Earth (it happens naturally in hot stars, such as the sun). However, there is a huge global collaboration of scientists working on various technological advances in the field of nuclear fusion and they believe we may not be too far off achieving that ultimate goal. If fusion can be achieved, it will provide almost unlimited cheap and clean energy. There are no carbon or greenhouse gas emissions from fusion. Nor is there any harmful waste material to dispose of. This is why there is so much interest in it.
Of course, there are even more barriers to seeing nuclear fusion in powering electric cars. Firstly, recreating the amount of heat needed to enable fusion will be a massive challenge. Secondly, the size of the current fusion machines are really big. You would need to be able to scale it down to a size that could fit into electric cars. Not even a Maxus eDeliver 9 electric van would be big enough at the moment!
These challenges may be a step too far for electric cars. However, never say never. If fusion can be achieved, then making fusion reactors suitable for other uses may be the next step.
Cold fusion is something NASA have been working on for some time, and it does seem to be the best bet of the lot for electric cars of the future.
Despite the name, cold fusion is nothing like either fusion or fission. Whereas fusion and fission work on using strong nuclear force to create energy, cold fusion works by harnessing the power from weak nuclear force. Capturing this energy is difficult though.
Cold fusion, or LENR (Low Energy Nuclear Reaction) as it is also known, works by sucking hydrogen atoms into a nickel lattice and then oscillating them at high frequency. This forces the electrons into the protons and creates slow-moving neutrons. The nickel absorbs the neutrons, making them unstable. Then the nickel strips the neutrons of its electrons so that it becomes a proton. This reaction turns the nickel into copper and creates a lot of energy in the process.
Experts believe that this process could be achieved by replacing nickel with carbon. Not only would could fusion not have a carbon footprint, it could be used to repurpose carbon already around us, making the process carbon negative
Get lost during that explanation? Don’t worry, even my eyes seemed to cross while explaining it.
The important bit is that you have energy created at the end of this process. There is also no carbon footprint and no waste material. The process is also very safe and can be done on a much smaller scale than with fusion or fission. This is what makes it the most suitable for using in homes or electric cars.
However, and there is a big one, NASA have still not cracked cold fusion but are said to be close. It turns out that creating cold fusion is hard (anyone surprised?). If it can be solved though, then NASA could be on the brink of changing the world as we know it. Electric cars could run off unlimited energy and never need to be charged again. This is the ultimate utopian dream. Hopefully it will become a reality in years to come.
@Shane
I'm skeptical about that forcing of the electron into the proton to make a neutron. That would require about one and half of an electron's mass of energy. Seems excessive.
