Interesting things from treehugger.com

[unixronin]

Found by cymrullewes, Treehugger posts teasers on:

• Multipurpose broad-spectrum OLED panels -- It's a window!  It's a light panel!  It's a HD TV!  The article -- or the USC researcher quoted in the article -- tosses around a claim of "100 percent efficiency out of a single, broad spectrum light source."  I'll believe THAT when I see it.
• "Zero footprint energy" in Ontario -- or, lease-to-own your own ground-source heating/cooling plant.  US power utilities would probably hate it enough to buy a Congressman or six to pass a law making it illegal.

Comments

[smandal.livejournal.com]

Sorry, that's $0.10/kw-hr on the grid, so 40000 hours of use (4.5 years of continuous operation). Film panels last several years and crystalline panels last decades. So, my pessimism is reduced. However, there's still the availability issue (peak usage, night-day), and $0.01/kw-hr is still possible through nuclear.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

$0.01/kw-hr is still possible through nuclear.

So they keep on telling us, anyway. Remember the early claims ofnuclear power yielding "electricity too cheap to meter"? There isn't a nuclear power utility in the world that's delivered on that prmise yet, nor one that looks likely to. In fact, now that a number of nuclear plants have completed their entire design lifecycles, some experience seems to indicate that the costs of fully decommissioning a nuclear plant and dealing with the radioactive waste it produces may exceed the sum of the cost of building the plant in the first place and all the revenues generated from it during its lifetime.

[smandal.livejournal.com]

The costs you cite are largely independent of the amount of electricity being produced by a nuclear plant. In fossil plants, fuel accounts for a clear majority of all operating costs.

If the US had grown up with nuclear instead of fossil, we might see a different, flat-rate pricing model. Or, since distribution networks are tied to neighborhoods like water and sewage, handled entirely at community level.

[ilcylic.livejournal.com]

But they're still toxic as all get out.

-Ogre

[smandal.livejournal.com]

True. The question is, does it bother you more than the carbon output from fossil power, or the impact on the landscape from hydropower?

[ilcylic.livejournal.com]

Pretty much.

I think Nuclear is the way to go. The problem is, as part of arms limitations treaties, we're forbidden from reprocessing fuel rods. Fuel rods go in at 100% capacity, and come out and get thrown away (realistically: stored forever) at 95% capacity. And we can't recycle them because Carter signed away our right to do so.

-Ogre

[smandal.livejournal.com]

I imagine that this is of strategic importance -- have some moral authority over other countries who want nuclear power, to keep them from making the step to weapons processing.

This, I think, is the most important criticism of nuclear power.

[ilcylic.livejournal.com]

Except for the fact that fuel rods are 5% pure enriched uranium, and weapons grade is 95% pure. And the techniques involved aren't really the same.

We're the only country who has ever used nuclear weapons against another nation. We have no moral authority, at all.

Wind and solar cannot provide enough power. Fossil fuels will choke us out, even if global warming turns out to be a scam. Unless someone pulls off fusion, our choices are nuclear, or a massive reduction in capacity. I like the SCA, but I don't really want to live in the middle ages.

-Ogre

[smandal.livejournal.com]

Except for the fact that fuel rods are 5% pure enriched uranium, and weapons grade is 95% pure. And the techniques involved aren't really the same.
So is it possible to reprocess fuel-grade uranium into weapons-grade uranium? Otherwise, why would one sign away reprocessing liberties?

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

It is perfectly possible to reprocess fuel-grade into weapons-grade uranium, and you can make a perfectly viable bomb using nothing but U-235. Little Boy, one of the only two nuclear weapons used in anger¹, was a uranium bomb. It's even easier to reprocess weapons-grade plutonium out of "spent" fuel rods.

Unfortunately, we are cursed in this regard with a gaggle of stupid politicians who stubbornly and defiantly persist in believing, against all reason and evidence, that it's possible to put the genie back into the bottle. One more case of inability to learn from the lessons of history.







[1] Though it may not stay that way long if the Prophet Dubya gets his way.

[smandal.livejournal.com]

The logic here being that once nuclear weapons became commonplace, there's no sense putting restrictions on reprocessing spent rods? Hmmm ... well, doesn't reprocessing afford states with less industrial capacity than the US a shortcut to getting weapons-grade uranium? Or are you saying that it doesn't matter either way?

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

I'm saying that it's foolish of them to think they can put the genie back in the bottle; knowledge of the basics of nuclear technology is sufficiently widespread, and enough nuclear material is known "mislaid" or unaccounted for, that any government that wants badly enough to develop some kind of minimal nuclear capability is going to be able to do so sooner or later.
Hell, you can build a quite functional single-stage atomic bomb given nothing more than a three-meter chunk of 12" drain pipe, some epoxy resin or bolts, a piece of light rope and access to a metal-turning lathe, if you can get your hands on the nuclear material. It'll be crude, it'll be inefficient, it'll be low-yield and dirty, but it'll work and probably deliver in the 10KT range. And some of the "unaccounted for" losses of nuclear material are measured in tons.

[smandal.livejournal.com]

Right, but i'm talking about strategic capabilities, like producing many megaton warheads.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Oh, I was just citing the drainpipe bomb as an example of something virtually ANYONE could build. Even the most incompetent government ought to be able to manage something much more professional and effective.

[smandal.livejournal.com]

Ic.

Thanks for letting me pick your brain -- nuclear weapons are a weak spot in my education.

[koyote.livejournal.com]

.01 cents (in 1950 dollars, 2006 dollars?) per is a good goal, but this is one of those areas where the arbutrary money measurement may not be a good indicator of actual value....

Storage isn't a huge deal here- with a truly global distributed grid (and we're 85 to 95% there depending on who you talk to) you can move power around. Also, solar isn't a single answer- and isn't meant to be.

Leaving aside the continuous PV bias of most people (if yoou've ever used a propane powered fridge, you can see how solar AC would be of some use), combined with *distributed* wind generation (it has to be distributed to work in a large scale - multicontinental- grid) combined with solar, mid scale hydro, and nuclear for major energy density sites would kick us off fossil fuels for power generation in a couple years. not a couple decades. And the nuclear is almost a bone to the old school centralisation memeset, bucky's math never really indicated a need for it.

There are a lot of silly politics and general distrust for large money making organizations that have a history of lying to the public in the way of growth of central nuclear ppower generation. Unless I find a realistic answer to this, I'll continue to support the fulleresque distributed global grid using wind/solar/hydro/geothermal and whatever else we find suited to a local site :)

[smandal.livejournal.com]

I like the vision, but I'm skeptical that you can avoid centralized, high-energy-density tech for population-dense areas (which is most of the United States). And nuclear is a good option. It is true that the nuclear industry in the US has been rather byzantine, with competing interests between hawks who want to elevate our general nuclear tech, environmentalists who want to run it into the ground, and bureaucrats who like being in the middle of the whole mess.

Three Mile Island (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Mile_Island) and Shoreham Nuclear (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoreham_nuclear) are wonderful examples of this brain-clog -- working technology with bad PR and opportunistic regulation.