[blue]

There has not been a new public nuclear power plant build in about 30 years. The technology has made leaps and bounds. Unfortunately the US public is stuch in the NIMBY (not in my back yard) state of mind. The other problem is the US gov is completely screwing up the waste disposal of the existing power plants, this will make building new ones even harder.

People like that make me ask the question "How many people have been killed by fossil fuel in the past 100 years?" and then "How many people have been killed by nuclear power?"

Nuclear energy is quite safe, new reactors really don't "meltdown" (IE, no catastrophic mushroom cloud).

People go ahead and point to Chernobyl...Chernobyl was an example of the Soviets doing insanely high risk things with a nuclear reactor (Like using graphite as a conductor...).

Soviets-dum

US-smrt

 

[RhinofromWA]

People like that make me ask the question "How many people have been killed by fossil fuel in the past 100 years?" and then "How many people have been killed by nuclear power?"

Nuclear energy is quite safe, new reactors really don't "meltdown" (IE, no catastrophic mushroom cloud).

People go ahead and point to Chernobyl...Chernobyl was an example of the Soviets doing insanely high risk things with a nuclear reactor (Like using graphite as a conductor...).

Soviets-dum

US-smrt

We still do't have anything in place to tke care of the spent fuel for a few million years......

 

[blue]

We still do't have anything in place to tke care of the spent fuel for a few million years......

Yes we do. Current methods keep waste contained safely until it's veritably harmless, due to the use of new MOX reactors (Uranium/Plutonium mix, uses up most of the plutonium, which is the primary safety concern with nuke waste.) Current storage methods (Cask bunkers) work fine with MOX waste, and it is extremely difficult to be used in weapons.

There are far more dangerous things transported through your backyard every day on railcars and in trucks without the same amount of safeguards that nuclear waste has.

Examples:

http://www.securityinfowatch.com/article/article.jsp?id=3280&siteSection=369
http://tv.ksl.com/index.php?sid=149751&nid=5

That butane spill was some scary business...imagine 5 city blocks vaporized by a couple sparks.

 

[Transcend]

The only real way to make hydrogen efficient as an energy source, is to produce it from wind, solar or tidal power sources, as they are all clean. The best way is to produce it from geothermal power as they do in Iceland. They are beginning to create a hydrogen economy, created exclusively from the vaste geothermal reserves under the country.

Is can take MORE dirty energy to create the hydrogen then woudl be created by the burning oil products. Seems a little silly to me, especially when you have to create huge amounts of infrastructure around it.

It isn't about reducing the need for foreign oil at all, it is about reducing the need for oil, period. Texas and Alberta could supply most of north america's needs on their own, only it isn't $ effective.

 

[budgetrider]

Soviets-dum

US-smrt

Ahem

Soviets-dum
US-dum
Can-smrt but too poweless to do N E thing

PS. the only reason NASA got to the moon is because a bunch of Canadian engineers went south after the conservative governmt axed the canadian aerospace industry in the 1950's under pressure from the US gov't. The US military and aerospace industry was feeling threatened because Canadian AVRO fighter jet prototypes were decades superior to everything they had.

 

[vtrider]

people here have been talking about biodiesal cars, and how they seem to be a good alternative. A buddy of mine has a jetta that runs on vegetable oil, provided, or course, that you still have to start it on diesel. The principal of all of this is using used cooking oil, which has been strained, refined, ect. As a fuel. The glow plugs that heat the fuel to combustable temperatures have to be modified, and the car must be warmed up, started up, and driven a short distance on diesel first. Then, he flips a switch, which pulls a lever to a valve in the fuel system, and changes the feed from his diesel tank to the 30 gallon vegetable oil tank in his trunk. It works pretty well actually, the only issue being that you have to secure vegetable oil from somewhere, then process it, and do it efficiently. This, however, is not a problem if you live near a mc donalds, or burger king, wendys, ect. They have to pay 8 ($8.00) a GALLON to have that used vegetable oil trucked away at the end of every week, and trust me, theres a lot of it. If you have a little chat with the manager of the restaurant, you can arrange a mutually beneficial deal. The one my friend has goes like this. He takes the oil at the end of the week, and the manager keeps whatever money it wouldve cost him to have it removed. 100% profit. not only does he get to use it to cook his money making foods, he then makes money on removal. simple enough. The only downsides that we've found are, that the car must be started and driven on diesal. You arent using that much diesal (i doubt he has to fill his tank more than twice a year), but its still some. You have to refine it, strain it perfectly, and thats time consuming. However, if you dont do such a great job straining, your glow plugs get clogged, and you must replace them. not pleasant.
You have to have a supply of vegetable oil.
Finally, the system isnt perfect. the car breaks occasionally, and he has to find a dealer that will service a vegetable oil modified car. I think he has one he sees now, but it took him a long time to find it.

Anyhow, it seems like a decent enough system to me. I dont see why the car couldnt be started electrically, and then switched to oil, so you wouldnt have to use diesel, but thats pretty much the only downside. That and the high maintenance issues.

 

[Inclag]

US energy policy is fugged up. Energy policy, especially at the national level is waayyy too market driven here in the US. In some instances there are state policies that require certain percentage of power purchased from renewables, but I believe as of 2001 only 14 states had such policies and only one state had a tradeable renewable certificate program.

I just conducted an analysis using a modified DEA input based model and the data shows pretty explicitly how market driven we are. Data collected before the oil shocks shows very high efficiency in the main energy consumption sectors, but after the shocks there was extremely high inefficiencies which can be translated to technologies not being sufficient enough to handle what was happening. Unfortunately there wasn't the time or funding (this was only a school project) to benchmark against other industrialized European nations, but among the European nations the United Kingdom displayed some of the lowest efficiencies in energy consumptions compared to other European countries, and yet they are actually likely to meet their Kyoto Protocal goal of 12.5% drop in GHG emissions and 20% reduction in CO2 emissions relative to 1990 figures by 2010.

The United States has taken really no pro-active approach to addressing what is going to be an energy crisis that is going to happen in our lifetime. As of 2002 or maybe 2004 (I can't remember) Germany had 125% more installed wind power compared to the US which IMHO is pretty pathetic.

As for the whole hydrogen power deal is concerned, it's a peachy idea but there is nothing remote to an infrastructure or really implementation of it. Honestly this is just one of the reasons I hope gas prices sky-rocket, so idiot people realize that we have to do something.

 

[budgetrider]

Anyhow, it seems like a decent enough system to me. I dont see why the car couldnt be started electrically, and then switched to oil, so you wouldnt have to use diesel, but thats pretty much the only downside. That and the high maintenance issues.

Awesome friend you have there. But I think it would be impossible to have a bio diesel like your buddy's start electrically. You need the impact of a diesel cylinder firing to get enough compression to ignite the veg oil once it starts flowing into the cylinders.

 

[ALEXIS_DH]

biodiesel sounds like it would be pretty good idea for cars and stuff..

its a renewable fuel source that can be farmed, thus it could have a good impact in the employment levels in poor countries that could turn into biodiesel exporters....

 

[syadasti]

from slashdot.org

Environmental engineers at Penn State University and a research scientist at Ion Power Inc. have created an electrically-assisted microbial fuel cell that can be used to produce hydrogen from organic material. The amount of electricity needed for the process is less than the amount required to power a standard cell phone. This advancement can be used to produce hydrogen as a byproduct of water treatment. " Coverage at ScienceDaily as well.

Also, about fuel cells - most modern ones in use and development can run with reformers that take any hydrocarbon fuel and extract hydrogen from them - on a car or stationary natural gas fuel cell generation etc. The stationary units get around 80% efficiency as they recycle the waste heat to warm the factories they power...

 

[budgetrider]

its a renewable fuel source that can be farmed, thus it could have a good impact in the employment levels in poor countries that could turn into biodiesel exporters....

Good One!!! Lets turn all the blacks in Africa and Latinos in South America into farm slaves so we can truck around in our bio diesel Humvees!!

With colonial attitudes like that is it any wonder some of the poorer countries support terrorism?

 

[syadasti]

With colonial attitudes like that is it any wonder some of the poorer countries support terrorism?

Haha, thats a good one - Alexis_DH is South American

 

[ohio]

With colonial attitudes like that is it any wonder some of the poorer countries support terrorism?

Do you know what colonial means?

 

[budgetrider]

Sorry, I meant imperial - as in exploit other countries, not colonize them. I stand corrected.

 

[syadasti]

Sorry, I meant imperial - as in exploit other countries, not colonize them. I stand corrected.

Most poorer countries are centered around renewable resources and have been since the dawn of time - nothing wrong with them further developing their local industries (see fair trade farm products - benefit both the local people and the rain forest)

However agrobusiness with limited regulation they'd find would be a bad thing for third world countries if the production process was not sustainable (ie cattle/pig/etc)

 

[ALEXIS_DH]

Good One!!! Lets turn all the blacks in Africa and Latinos in South America into farm slaves so we can truck around in our bio diesel Humvees!!

With colonial attitudes like that is it any wonder some of the poorer countries support terrorism?

the reality (as sad as it is).. is that places like south america have extremely high sub-employment levels (around 50%) plus around 10% unemployment...

a newly created demand for biodiesel would in turn create a demand for those workers in SA or africa o asia that otherwise would have ZERO chance of landing a job, let alone a decent job... thus creating the posibility for wealthy (or at least not as poor as now) agroindustrial countries, which in turn will improve current work conditions and wages for said people.

kinda like switching from the world importing oil from places like arabia, where the oil industry is quite centralized and makes rich very few people and not as labor intensive as farming would be...

so in the bigger picture would be a change for good insted of having a few families in the middle east making billions of bucks.. having this billions of bucks paid toward sustainable agroindustries in nations, where this billions would in turn be wages (or higher wages due to the higher demand of labor) to workers who otherwise would be unemployed, or underemployed (that is making less than 100 bucks a month)....

 

[fluff]

Ahem

Soviets-dum
US-dum
Can-smrt but too poweless to do N E thing

PS. the only reason NASA got to the moon is because a bunch of Canadian engineers went south after the conservative governmt axed the canadian aerospace industry in the 1950's under pressure from the US gov't. The US military and aerospace industry was feeling threatened because Canadian AVRO fighter jet prototypes were decades superior to everything they had.

Werner Von Braun must be spinning in his grave...

 

[budgetrider]

Werner Von Braun must be spinning in his grave...

Ok so a former German has some claim to the moon as well. Former Avro engineers - first to use titanium in aerospace, first to use carbon fiber, first to use fly by wire, first to hit Mach 2.5 without a rocket ...

 

[budgetrider]

so in the bigger picture would be a change for good insted of having a few families in the middle east making billions of bucks.. having this billions of bucks paid toward sustainable agroindustries in nations, where this billions would in turn be wages (or higher wages due to the higher demand of labor) to workers who otherwise would be unemployed, or underemployed (that is making less than 100 bucks a month)....

You have a point, but the problem is large scale low quality farming (we're talking growing fuel grade stuff not human consumption grade food) tends to keep people poor as well. Maybe the wealth isn't as concentrated as in oil patch economies, but it's not that great either.
To make biodiesel as cheap as possible and trust me we will want it to be as close to the price of regular diesel as can be it would have to be farmed on a massive super-fazenda scale - which can only be done by corporations or mega-size landowners - both of whom have historically paid only subsistance wages.

 

[ALEXIS_DH]

dont start with that "before them was him who was XYZ-an" because i can claim peruvian Pedro Paulet was the first person who build a liquid fueled rocket engine in 1895 and invented the first modern rocket propulsion system in 1900 .... and who even von braun regarded decades later as "helping man reach the moon"

so he owns them all the germans and canadians...

 

[ALEXIS_DH]

You have a point, but the problem is large scale low quality farming (we're talking growing fuel grade stuff not human consumption grade food) tends to keep people poor as well. Maybe the wealth isn't as concentrated as in oil patch economies, but it's not that great either.
To make biodiesel as cheap as possible and trust me we will want it to be as close to the price of regular diesel as can be it would have to be farmed on a massive super-fazenda scale - which can only be done by corporations or mega-size landowners - both of whom have historically paid only subsistance wages.

you are right.. but its also true that for those people thats is their only hope to land a job.. so its a matter of the lesser of 2 evils..

either they get a low paying job and hopefully it will help to improve their lifes and maybe improve their kids lifes.. OR they get no job at all, and have to live doing temporary jobs that are actually worse and pay even less, and their kids are sentenced to a life of misery with no hope at all of improvement...

would they be better with farming demand than without it??
i seriously doubt.... even if the "improvement" still sucks, is still an improvement, and hopefully the more demand the higher the wages and the bigger the improvement..

unfortunately, its not like most people have any other realistic option... usually the more demand for poor countries goods raises the living standards....
the more demand there is for farming biodiesel.. the more realistic options for improvement (job openings and more competition for labor, thus higher wages) there are...

 

[budgetrider]

U R right. Something is better than nothing.

 

[mack]

TDI

Turbo Deisel Injected
50mpg
Runs on Biodeisel
Power of a V6 engine

And think if you made it as weak as those little hybrid cars!
And put in a deiselelectric generator for electirc powered parking/urban driving etc.

Maybe the idea was just too efficient.

The problem with this is way too much sulfur out put. It is impossible to put a catylitic converter (not to be confused with the fuel cell one) on a diesel engine, as the membrane gets swamped with sulfer and nothing happens. We have a diesel bug, and it is very good on gas. Too bad it is yeller one.

It only has 90 horspower.