President at Calvert Cliffs

Date: Jun 22, 2005

President at Calvert Cliffs

Date: Jun 24, 2005

Well, he talks a good talk...but he skimmed over an awful lot of material.

Let's focus on Energy policy:

Solar and hydrogen, and increased efficiency.

Good things all around, but let's break it down:

Solar power is great. It can be a valuable suppliment; it can be used to provide power in remote areas off the grid. It cannot supply an industrially significant source of energy to the economy without paving over most of Nevada and Arizona with solar panels. Solar power satellites are a future possibility, but as yet we are barely able to keep a space station floating, and we have no capability to launch anything heavier than 50 metric tons into earth orbit.

Increased efficiency. Also sounds great. Most vehicles using internal combustion engines achieve about 25-35% thermodynamic efficiency. Some diesels have achieved 50%. So switching most IC engines to diesels ought to achieve a real increase in efficiency of almost 50% over gasoline engines. How about that?

Still with increasing demand, I'll bet than any decreases in fuel consumption by increased efficiency will be more than offset by increases in demand anyway. Efficiency can only achieve so much before the thermodynamic limit of a system is nearly reached. After that, increases in efficiency are exponentially more difficult to achieve.

Hydrogen: All fine and good, except for one thing. Hydrogen requires an energy source to extract it--either by burning natural gas in the hydrogen 'reforming' process, or in electrolysis where electricity is needed to split water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen. Still, the basic problems of energy production must be addressed before hydrogen may be used as a substitute for petroleum.

This is why I am an advocate of nuclear power as a prime mover source--it can offer industrially significant sources of energy while still being relatively clean from mine to waste storage. If it is done right with careful reprocessing and blending to remove transuranics from the waste stream so that they can be 'burned' as fuel, then relatively short lived fission products can be extracted and need be stored for only centuries instead of millenia (a much easier technological problem to solve!)

Date: Jun 25, 2005

Just note ... there are many energy sources ..

Nuclear is great , but don't forget Methane Hydrate as a potential energy sources.

And add more research on using the nuclear waste - no waste just atoms in the wrong arrangement.

Also, lets improve just the energy distribution system by figuring out a better way then the power lines - UGH. Look at the energy we just throw away.

Date: Jun 25, 2005

I've looked at the methane hydrates ices for a while--their very interesting. I would imagine that it should be possible to create an undersea harvester that mechanically breaks up the chunks and then uses thermal decomposition to free the methane. Piping it to the surface ought to be fairly straightforward, although if not properly dehydrated, high pressure methane with a high moisture content will 'recondense' into methane hydrates within the extraction line to the surface. I'm not sure of the energetics (without doing a detailed engineering analysis) but in thick deep sea beds, it may be favorable from an energetics point of view with respect to tar sands. However, when factoring in operating costs of servicing large, complex, operating machinery operating at substancial depths, it becomes doubtful if it could be done economically.

Also there is the issue of destabilizing the mud slopes of the continental shelfs--that could be very bad news indeed.

Eventually I can imagine somekind of cryogenically cooled superconducting primary power distribution grid. Experiments have been done in the Japan, Europe, and the United States on superconducting transformers, generators, and power cables with favorable results. The needed infrastructure is still, very substantail. And there is the added problem of dealing with a 'quench' -- when part of a superconducting line catastrophically reverts back to normal conduction.