Alternative Energy Thread

[Mr. Glass]

So... to get this out of other threads and to kickstart a new thread...

What's are your opinions on Alternative energy, Peak Oil, and energy related environmentalism?

This is an area where I tend to have a scattered view politically. I'm a big proponent of Nuclear power, but I am also a supporter of responsible environmentalism (i.e. I do not support groups like Green Peace and the Sierra Club) but rather I try to act as a good steward of the land I use, and I try to encourage others to do the same.

In the comming years our dependance on oil will only grow as a contentious issue in global politics. Some people may call me an alarmist or early adopter, but I think it's time to start thinking about this seriously as something to start implementing over the next 100 years. I'm under no dillusion that there's going to be a day where there's absolutly no oil left, but it will get more exspensive unless something changes.

Barring some new technology that finds a new source of fossil fuel (which is one of the things I think could happen, I don't think it's impossible) I'll list some of my favorites and I'd like to hear what some of you think.


Biomass - This is where we take anything we can grow: Corn, hemp, candle nut tree, and other oil crops, and process their seed/fruit to extract oil from it. This oil can then be processed into Biodiesel or Ethanol and used in slightly modified diesel or gasoline engines. The input energy is primarily solar with chemical process to back it up. Since I don't think the sun will burn out in my lifetime I consider it to be a pretty stable energy source for now. One drawback is the amount of land needed to produce enough oil crops to supply the demand, but limited experiments show that with proper agricultural husbandry we could have oil crops that produce 100x's more oil than what we have now. Biodielse is already catching on, and this is a technologgy that even if it doesn't take off full scale is here to stay and so I think it's worth looking into further.

Nuclear - The old splitting atoms trick. I'm sure Hokie could explain it better than I can, but basiclly you use the radioactive decay of uranium to heat up metal then transfer that heat into water and then spin a turbine with it. The input energy is from refined uranium, a finite but curently plentiful element we have laying around. It's not super easy to come buy, but enough of it's around that I think we could proabbly power humans well into the 30th century. While not a traditional "alternative" energy from a left Perspective I consider a very viable alternative to fossil fuels, so I include it in my list.

Tidal / Hydro power - We're starting to see evidence that daming up rivers all over the country has had a negative impact on the environment. A new form of Hydro power is around the corner - Tidal. By using high pressure hydrualic fluiid in giant under water cyliders, and big bouys, you can use tidal surge forces to generate tremendous amountf of power from a fairly small marine grid of generators. The energy input is lunar, using the tides caused by gravitational forces to move fluids through a turbine. They're cheap and easy to build, but they're limited to coastal areas with high tides.

Geothermal - Living in Hawaii for 12 years turned me on to geothermal. Most everytone there is against it because Hawaii is crawling with lunatic fringe whack jobs who hear a chemical name and go all batty. What they do is drill a hole into an exsisting fault line to a point where they come in contact with geothermal activity, i.e. magma or near magma rock. They then pump water into the hole and let the earth flash it into steam to run a turbine. The steam, when it comes up, is contaminated with Sulpher Dioxide the major component of Acid rain and a major I mean _MAJOR_ problem on the Big Island. Thing is, you can scrub sulpher dioxide out of the steam pretty well.... and what people don't aknowledge is that the volcanoes and steam vents are outting out millions of tons of this stuff, the impact the geothermal plant has is so minimal compared to a single eruption..... but i guess anything is too much for some people. They're as anti-geothermal as some people are anti-abortion. Anyways, the proposed plant would be able to supply the state with virtually free electricity for the next 1000 years but they'd rather prevent 0.0001% more polution instead.

TCP/TDP - No, not the Interwebs protocol, something covered in the 64 dollar thread... this is a process where a big machine mulches up organic wastes (old vegitables, animal dung, rendering wastes, even old folks diapers, etc...) and then heats and pressureizes it. The result is that all the long molecule hydrocarbon chains reform and are extracted. This fluid is equivlent to crude oil and can be proicessed in the exact same equipment and turned into gasoline your car wont know from the dinosaur stuff it had the day before. Right now the input energy is conventional electricity from the grid, as it's still in research and development phases across various labs world wide. Eventually the idea is that the energy input will be the waste, which as long as it has that organic waste will be self powering otherwise.

Hydrogen - I think we beat this one to death. I think we'll see more and more hydrogen over the next 10 years, but it will probably be 25-30 years before you can walk into a ford dealer and buy a hydrogen car. We need more sources of hydrogen and better storage capabilites. The effciency isn't at all in question.

Photovoltaic (solar panels) - These are sort of a catch 22. The process that foes into making the silicon wafers used in PV cells is killing the environment. Whole towns in south america where we mine the raw materials have died off, and the toxis sludge byproduct is as bad as nuclear wastes and almost as hard to dispose of. It's practicle in remote locations or for small applications, but on a large scale I dont see PV cells saving us.

Thermal solar - Take a big chunk of land, now cover it in mirrors. Aim the focal point of the mirrors on a big water tower painted black. When the sun comes up the water is turned into steam and spins a turbine. There is a pilot project for this near Albuquerque, I've gone to see it and flown over it a few times. It's a col idea, but exspensive, and it's at the whim of the sun. It would be useless in the pacific northwest, for instance. Takes a lot of land to do also, so that's something to take into consideration some times.

Anyways.... I'm sure there's others, but thats my list for now, interested to hear what you all have to say about it too.

-Doug

[Argonath]

Our best bet for fueling the home would be cold fussion. The only problem is that we don't have cold fussion. fussion, we do have, but no way to contain ANY form of fussion reaction. I had a theory of smashing particles together so fast that it mold together. During the speed up of the particles, the friction of the air would burn them to extreme temperatures, sorta like a shuttle coming into the atmosphere. The only existing thing that can do that, to my knowlegde, is a particule accelerator, and I don't think it can even make the particles go that fast.
I just thought of Angeles and Demons, the book before the Da Vinci code. It is true that we have created EXTREMELY small amunts of anti-matter, and there's a lot of energy in anti-matter, let me tell you. But the amount they have could probably only power a battery. It's almost microscopic. But, mabye anti-matter is the way to go.

[teens4bush]

I'm all for alternate energy sources, but I still believe we shoudl use the oil we have, especually in Alaska. Nuclear power is good, and I also believe reviving coal could be an idea worth looking at, but the Green Party would be against it because it apparently is quite pollutive.

[short circut]

Our best bet for fueling the home would be cold fussion. The only problem is that we don't have cold fussion. fussion, we do have, but no way to contain ANY form of fussion reaction. I had a theory of smashing particles together so fast that it mold together. During the speed up of the particles, the friction of the air would burn them to extreme temperatures, sorta like a shuttle coming into the atmosphere. The only existing thing that can do that, to my knowlegde, is a particule accelerator, and I don't think it can even make the particles go that fast.
I just thought of Angeles and Demons, the book before the Da Vinci code. It is true that we have created EXTREMELY small amunts of anti-matter, and there's a lot of energy in anti-matter, let me tell you. But the amount they have could probably only power a battery. It's almost microscopic. But, mabye anti-matter is the way to go.

why not jsut figure out away to induce a strong but small gravitational field.
i bet that would work

[HOKIEHUNTER]

coal is very much a lively industry. the problem isn't that we're not producing much coal, the problem is that China is buying the hell out of it. It's almost impossible to buy a shipment of coal without having to outbid China for the load.

I originally wanted to get a mechanical engineering degree and a physics degree so that i could work on particle accelerators. they are an incredibly intrusting tool and have many uses, but the scientific community has all but given up on cold fusion. particle accelerators send the particles in one direction. a clash of particals moving at such high speeds (near the speed of light KE = m*v^2) would produce a collision that would most definetly not be cold...

nobel scientists have been working on cold fusion forever. i'm pretty sure that if it can be achieved it'd be one hell of a difficult process.

the nuclear power process is both complicated and not. the basic tenats:
-fuel rods are activated.
-fuel heats up and heats water around it.
-water reaches very high temperature but does not boil b/c the lines are pressurized
-the superheated water enters a component called a steam generator
-a steam generator is nothing more than a really, really big heat exchanger.
-the stream of radioactive water transfers its heat to the non-radioactive water entering the SG.
-this extremely high pressure steam spins a turbine which produces electricity.
-the steam enters the cooling tower (the big funny shaped buildings you see
-when the clean steam is cooled, it is realeased into cooling ponds and later back into the river / lake it was drawn from.
-the superheated water loses its heat in the SG and returns to the fuel.

this is how a pressurized water reactor works. there are many kinds of reactors, but this is the most prevalent. this is the very much dumbed down version.

[Miro Satan Fan]

Couldn't we get hydrogen from say water?
I am not arguing, I know little in the field of chemistry.
I remember an expertiment in H.S where we had to do something along that line.

[Mr. Glass]

Hokie.... hold still I wanna pick yer brain.

One of the big drawbacks of a traditional reactor is the use of water to transfer the heat, right? I've read about a system that replaces the internal water with an alloy of lead/bismuth/nickel (I think) that melts at the right temp and signifigtly reduces the radiation transfer to the water for running a turbine... I think that's how it goes.

So the question I guess is.... any links to where I could find out more about this, first off... and second... is this something that's actualy being done, or just a research project? have you even heard of this? I know I didn't dream this up... but if I did, does it sound feasable then? heh.....

Oh and next.... I was reading about the little decay reactors in sattalites and how they're looking to use a similar process with beta particles converted directly into electrons somehow for small batteries for consumer products. If you know anyone working on that, and they need testers for that stuff... I'll do it... just provide me with some of those doseometer badges or whaterv they are and stuff so I can be sure I'm safe :P I want a radioactive sticker on my battery...like for reals.

My mom wouldn't let me in her house with it I bet. My dad would want to take it apart. I'd use it to taunt my hippy friends.

who have smoke detectors in their houses.....

heh...

I can always use anti-anti-nuke fodder, so lemme have it... this is deff one place we agree I think: it's fun to mess with the misinformed people (left and right, really, but more left) about energy stuff.

I do advocate for people before profits, and safety is an area that I think can never be "the best" there's always room for improvement.... of course... as Hokie will tesitfy I'm sure, safety is #1 at these plants on most practical matters. Accidents DO happen, and I think stupid lawsuits are a waste of time and money which could be used to avoid another accident... but things can ALWAYS be better... anyways enough ranting for now, got a phone call

-Doug

[Argonath]

why not jsut figure out away to induce a strong but small gravitational field.
i bet that would work

That might work also. I have so little knowlegde on the matter that I'm not even sure my idea makes sense to begin with.

[HOKIEHUNTER]

MG, I've personally not heard too much about such reactors. They may be out there, but my company doesn't have anything to do with them (as far as I know). There might be something along the lines of the process water heating those metals in a heat exchanger which would then heat the turbine water, but right now the water that actually spins the turbine is on a seperate loop (indirectly meet in a heat exchanger) and never comes in contact with radiological particles. yes, beta / gamma particles may pass through the water, but they do not stick there. the outside loop is clean.

As far as the fuel cell batteries, that stuff is most likely being researched by national labs and universities. While i think it's really neat and would love to have a battery that lasted for decades, i'm not sure we'll be seeing them anytime soon. If / when the public embraces nuke power and gets over chernoybal (so many operator / gauge errors you wouldn't believe that have been replaced by computers) and understands the cleanliness / efficiency of nuke power, side products like these little batteries might become feasible.

another fun fact about "doseometers" is that they do nothing at all to protect you... they just tell you how much radiation you've already recieved. I don't have the exact number onhand as to how much radiation you're allowed to recieve on an annual basis, but if i remember correctly its something along the lines of the equivalence of 5-10 x-rays. maybe less, i can't remember the number off hand. when you reach your maximum dose, you're out. you're done working in nuke plants for the year. the amount of safety training it takes just to enter a plant is incredible.

Mr. Glass here's some fodder for you hippie friends:
Nuclear waste is not a liquid, gel, fluid of any type. it is a ceramic - a solid byproduct contained in its fuel rods and later giant casks. These giant casks are currently welded shut, but can easily be checked for radiological "leaks," etc. it's not the glowing green ooze that creates animals with 2 heads or turns lizards into godzilla. to give you a magnitude of the effect of "raw" nuclear waste, if you laid a spent fuel assembly on the goal line of a football field and started running toward the endzone from the 50 yard line, you might make it to the 20 yard line and then you's drop dead. nuclear waste can most definetly be harmful, but like i said we understand that and contain it properly.

The water the nuke plants release back into the lake / river they recieved it from (not radiological water) is cleaner than the water they extract.

The 100 or so nuke plants in the country prduce 20% of the nations power at the cheapest rate compared to any other source.

those canisters you spoke of are indeed quite interesting. they did all sorts of tests before releasing them for use:
-dropped them off a 30 foot cliff onto a metal spike
-ran a locamotive into them at 100 mph. (completely demolished the locamotive, did very little to the tank.
-the shot the thing with missiles and only very small holes opened, but not enough to emit radiation above government mandates.
if i can find the link with the pictures I'll post it. These containers have an escort with them. these are the typical men in black type deal. if they see you so much as pull a camera to take pictures of the tanks rolling by they will be on you like you wouldn't believe. if you even appeared to be attacking a container, your life would be over so quickly you wouldn't know what hit you. not guys to screw with...
http://www.nei.org/index.asp?catnum=3&catid=740

nuke power has no carbon emmissions. only waste that can be managed / reprocessed. uranium mining is safe and fairly simple.

tin is another metal that is is radioactive (as are most elements to a certain degree). you get more radiation for a single can of beer than you do from living next to a nuke plant.

nuke plants put a lot back in to the community. they know they are an eyesore, so they sponsor all sorts of events as well as providing jobs to the local community.

nuclear power is not suceptible to fluxuation. it is constant. raw material prices really aren't changing, and no environmental conditions prohibit power production.

nuclear power is the most regualted industry in the world and has so many safety factors it's almost overly redundant.

the new plants my company is designing and building (in finland) can melt down completely and still not emit a single millirad of radiation. these plants are incredibly impressive, and quite amazing when you look into them...

Wind power is inefficient. In order to produce enough power for America you'd have to clear cut forests to provide room for all the windmills. birds flying through the windmills will be demolished by the blades. clearcutting to provide room will be ugly and misplace windlife. People today whine about how cell towers are an eyesore... windmills will be even worse. If you build windmills of shore, the cost of managing them (salt corrosion) will be incredible.

Solar power: cloudy day = no power... A study was done (don't have the #'s onhand) that showed that in order to provide enough power for the state, Utah would have to be completely covered in solar cells. Utah is not that populated and is a pretty big state. do you know how well things would grow / survive with no sunlight?

for the tidal power, how will that affect marine habitat? how will that affect endangered sea turtles? the costal environment is a very delicate one... do we want to add these cells there?

[Mr. Glass]

Heh, those canisters are amazing, the truck's theyr on have exsplosve bolts in the wheels and a GPS system deisgned to blow them if the course deviates like 0.5% withtou clearance. As for taking pictures and stuff... I don't know if that's such a big deal now. I know the protesters always line up when they come through, and they certainly have cameras. I've seen them throw stuff at the trucks....

As for an escort, it's hardly MIB style... it's usually 2 vans and a half dozen or so local police cars that escort it through town. The rest of the time I think they only have one lead and one follow van, which are white, and marked. They go through towns at like 3-4 am when no one is looking to avoid protests.... personally I'm amazed so many people wake up that early to protest ANYTHING....

whate else... oh windpower...yeah I know it's a joke. As for off-shore... stainless steel and plastics can get around corrosion issues... but still, it's both an eyesore and a problem for birds.

As for the tidal power stuff they're doing it in places like Norway. From what I've seen it's done in already developed bays and inlets, and the impact on wildlife should be no more than what would be offset by building a large nuke plant. The bouys move very slow, only traveling maybe 40 feet over the course of an entire day. Unlike the spinning blades of a wind turbine, they'd be very easy to navigate around. The saltwater based hydraulic fluid is enviormentally neutral in case of spills.

As for solar...there's 2 ways to go abrou it right now... photovoltaics, which is innefficient and hurts the environement....then there's passive solar where you use mirrors to reflect the light up and heat water in a tower... this way is a bit more efficient, but it still takes up HUGE tracts of land and would not suffice for general consumption. It does have a use in remote locations where traditional power isn't available.

As for a plant being an eyesopre... I'm probably the exception here, but I've always thought those cooling towers look bad ass. It's funny how many people thinkthe gas plant here is a nuke plant because of that cooling stack. What most poeple DO NOT know is there's a research reacotr on campus just a few blocks from my house that was built in the 50s and leaks like submarine w/ screen doors. It's a tiny one, and the building it's in is pretty safe... but still.... people are just so clueless.

Heh, and yeah... Waste is a ceramic or glass... not a glowing green ooze. lol

-Doug

[spike]

The reason that people think of solar panels as not going to save us is probably because they released them before they perfected the technology, virtually killing it before it started.

[Android]

So... to get this out of other threads and to kickstart a new thread...

What's are your opinions on Alternative energy, Peak Oil, and energy related environmentalism?


-Doug
Wow, what do you know, we do agree on some things. :icon_wink I think the first step would be to better educate people of these ideas. (Corney I know but hey, its true). Like you stated in your post, every wack job will freak out on you if you mention any thing chemical or nuclear or reactive. That's the first problem, how would we get anything out in the main stream with the fanatics that think they understand physics and the funding of the special interests groups backing them up? Hate to sound so negative but that's my first concern and its the first thing to come to mind. Not saying we shouldn't try either. Its like the wackos in California, all concerned about the trenches needed for the natural gas lines in the dirt. Or the wind mills chopping up birds. I always wonder what those people do. Do they drive? Heat their house? Or do they just ride their bikes made out of cauliflower in circles to stay warm in the winter. Again, not saying it cant be done but there is some work there.
I like the hybrids for now, short time span but it gets people thinking and improving on the idea. That's about the only way to have an efficient electric motor is to produce the power on board. Too many losses producing the electricity two or four hundred miles away to do any good especially since we are probably burning nasty diapers or coal to produce that "clean power" in the first place! Like we wrote weeks ago, don't get me started on that farce. For now, improvements of what we have but we had better be thinking and building new on the edge things in a hurry as well. The internal combustion engine design is over a hundred years old. Think about that.

[God v2.0]

nuclear power all the way, its the cleanest, most efficient, highest yeild and with all the new tech, probably the safest.

Cold fusion would be nice, but the (i think it calls for tritium and deuterium?) we dont have yet

[spike]

*scream* God v2.0....nuclear power the safest?? im horrified...Just look at what happened at Chyernoble (not sure how to spell it). and then what nearly happened at Three mile island. Please don't call Nuclear power the safest. But cold fusion however..thats what we need.

[God v2.0]

Chernobyl and even 3 mile island were decades ago. Technology has progressed now to make nuclear power even safer than it was at 3 mile island. France has the most nuke plants in the world, and stilli is accident free.

THey arecertainly safer than coal and oil, how many fires were started because of them or tehir support buildings?

[Madcowhunter]

*scream* God v2.0....nuclear power the safest?? im horrified...Just look at what happened at Chyernoble (not sure how to spell it). and then what nearly happened at Three mile island. Please don't call Nuclear power the safest. But cold fusion however..thats what we need.

Chernobyl was die mainly to a design flaw in the control rods. The control rods are inserted into the reactor, this process is supposed to slow down the reaction, but due the design flaw, the reaction sped up, this process was left un-noticed by the operators. The reactor became unstable and led to disaster.

This isn't a random occurence in Nuclear Fission, it is a preventable flaw. Nuclear Powerplants are much safer now.

Nuclear Fission can supply our entire future needs for electricity.

Nuclear Fusion, is a much more difficult (and expensive I'm sure) process, you're basically replicating the power a shining star, or even the power that provokes a nuclear explosion.

[Madcowhunter]

I would also suggest biomass, as it is probably our most reusable resource.

Geothermal energy is also very intersting, but last I heard its research is still in production.

[Android]

Chernobyl was die mainly to a design flaw in the control rods. The control rods are inserted into the reactor, this process is supposed to slow down the reaction, but due the design flaw, the reaction sped up, this process was left un-noticed by the operators. The reactor became unstable and led to disaster.
.... and the fact that they were in the middle of a serious safety test, not too mention the test was running late and the crew of experienced personnel who started the test left for the day and handed it over to a much much less qualified personnel. Typical dumb ass human error. I love the National Geographic channel, "Seconds From Disaster", you should watch it.
Even the Russians changed all of the designs and safety steps because of that. It seems they don't like radioactive fall out either!

[Madcowhunter]

I'm telling ya, Nuclear Power! That's the one thing the French got right. I believe 90% of electricity in France comes from nuclear fission. Last I heard anyways.

[FKLBRLS]

Here's what I think the future could be like.

Electricity generated by:
A. Geothermal
B. Nuclear Fission
C. Cold Fusion
D. We could use solar panel-like devices to heat our swimming pools. My aunt's old house in Oregon had a big indoor pool and when they replastered it (8 or so years of leaving it alone without draining it produces so much mold and shit you have to replaster it), they put in a heater system where water is pumped through a bunch of small tubes lined up on the roof. From a distance they look like solar panels.

Cars, planes, etc could be run on:
A. Biomass
B. Ethanol (hey it works in Brazil, the only thing that runs on oil is it's aircraft)
C. TCP/TDP

If there were an easier way to isolate hydrogen, that would also be a good fuel for cars, planes would still have to run on biomass.
To make hydrogen a good alternative, we would first have to design a tank for cars in which it doesn't break or explode even in an accident. Without this, car crashes would be huge deadly explosions. Next, we would have to find a good way to isolate hydrogen. Electrolysis is a good start but I think if we design better spacecraft maybe we could harvest hydrogen from places like Jupiter or Saturn.

Another idea of mine, and although it doesn't concern fuel types, but it does concern the environment; we could put electrostatic precipitators on the exhuast pipes of airplane engines. Electrostatic precipitators is what they use in those Ionic Breeze things, they charge the air around them so that particles would stick to a grid. A byproduct of this is ozone is created as oxygen is electrocuted. If we put these on the backs of airplane engines, 1st of all the exhaust wouldn't be so polluting, and 2nd, the ozone created could add to the ozone layer. Then when the plane is on the ground, the precipitators are turned off so that the extra ozone isn't lying around on the ground.

[Madcowhunter]

Ethanol is a product of biomass, I think we should start using ethanol a lot more.

[Argonath]

The only problem with ethanol is aquiring more of it. The way the make ethanol (So i have heard) is through corn, mostly. America is going to need to annex Canada for fueling the nation alone! You need A LOT of corn for it. hehe, corn. . .

[Android]

The only problem with ethanol is aquiring more of it. The way the make ethanol (So i have heard) is through corn, mostly. America is going to need to annex Canada for fueling the nation alone! You need A LOT of corn for it. hehe, corn. . .
Or how about this, pay our farmers to grow it like we used to do.

[Mr. Glass]

I would also suggest biomass, as it is probably our most reusable resource.

Geothermal energy is also very intersting, but last I heard its research is still in production.


Biomass is a great source, in this country the best source of biomass is Hemp...hrm.

Anyways... Geothermal is a very real technology already in use on the BIg Island of Hawaii. I lived about 10 miles from the station, it's a great technology and it provides a lot of power for very little input. Water is plentiful in Hawaii, and all you need to do is pump it down under high pressure, and boom! Steam! Steam = Energy.

Unfortuneatly Geothermal has a messurable environmental impact, which means people who don't understand such matters freak out when they hear stuff like sulpher dioxide are getting into the air, so they protest the site almost continuously since it opened in the 80s.

Still a small test site, a research level geothermal plant, provides power to half the island. Electricity isn't too bad there, 8¢ per kWH or so.Aside from the vog (Volcanic Smog) from the volcanoes the air is nice and clean....

-Doug

[Argonath]

Or how about this, pay our farmers to grow it like we used to do.

If we did that, we'd have another Dust Bowl incident. I don't want to be eating "Freedom Peanuts" and the like. Not again.