21st Century Energy

[AnGuy]

> surprised no one has mentioned methane generators. If one is going to be self sufficient, it's probably a good idea not to assume the city will take care of manure.

I looked into Bioreactors. The issue is low yield, unless you maintain a steady temperature (about 90 F) and you must maintain a precise PH level or the microbes become poisoned and stop producing methane. Very tricky to turn into a productive operation unless you have tons and tons of waste. In addition most of the gas produced is CO2, which needs to be filtered from the methane.

When it comes to energy, there is no free lunch.

[Richard Hester]

Low efficiency may not be a real issue if the starting materials are free and a nuisance anyway. After all, its to power one's household, not light the world. People used to get along fine with producer gas, manufactured from coke and air - it was a mix of CO and nitrogen, and still burned just fine. The temperature issue may be a problem, but I'm willing to bet someone is looking into genetically engineered bugs to optimize methane production. The process works pretty well in a cow's stomach after all....

[TBenson]

My 2 cents on this issue...

After years of working in Solar, renewables, etc. I've essentially given up. What's happened is I've finally really begun to appreciate the enormous difficulty of making wholesale changes to social infrastructure. It's all very nice to talk about building 300 million tiny steam engines, but it would take a war and death of millions to accomplish it. I'm not kidding about that.

The reality is, we'll never do that. Never. We'll burn gigatons of coal and destroy the ecology of the planet first. And the Chinese and the Indians, who will be demanding VASTLY greater energy growth than we will, are even less likely to try tinkering with steam engines.

Not to critique your idea Larry but I'm just getting cynical about the potential for change in the world.

Therefore, I've become almost totally converted to nuclear. We can build a couple thousand nuclear reactors, starting with classic light-water reactors, and transition to fast reactors in 20 -30 years, which will then serve to burn down all the used fuel from the LWRs. The remaining waste will be quite compact and easy to inject deep into the geostrata of the earth. There we have an energy system for the human race that will last a good couple hundred years for a 10 billion+ advanced human civilization. After that is not my problem.

Just my opinion. That's where I'm placing my bets.

[longstreet]

I agree that fission nuclear technology still has great merrit. Nuclear energy is nuclear energy.

[Goldenspark]

I agree with you Tom. The new Westinghouse design apparently produces less than 10% of the high level waste (cheap decommissioning) and is much cheaper and simpler to build They are about 1GW capacity I think.
There is no other option.

On the point of cars, steam is a good route to go. Modern flash steam boilers of about 50kW capacity could be designed to start up not much slower than a diesel. The prime fuel should be hydrogen from nuclear ideally, even though the energy density is low.
I understand the major car manufacturers are working on steam as a stop-gap for fuel cells, mainly because fuel cells are coming too slowly.
Oh, and steam cars with piston technology would require no gearbox, no clutch and give 100% torque at zero speed so can be controlled a bit like an electric car (smooth hill starts).
This done by PWM of steam pressure by the valves.

[Retric]

If your worried why not buy one of these http://
www.stirlingenergy.com/breaking_news.htm after they build there
300MW and 500MW power plants the price per unit should be
reasonable.

They should last for about 20 years with minimal upkeep and give you
around 25kw at close to grid price levels.

[AnGuy]

>After years of working in Solar, renewables, etc. I've essentially given up. What's happened is I've finally really begun to appreciate the enormous difficulty of making wholesale changes to social infrastructure

I completely agree with your statement. Solar for generating electricity is a dead end. Wind has some merit, but it is dependant on batteries, and batteries degrade pretty quickly. At the very best, batteries will need to be replaced every 5 to 10 years.

>Therefore, I've become almost totally converted to nuclear. We can build a couple thousand nuclear reactors, starting with classic light-water reactors

The issue that I see is that fission is never going to capable of a massive scale up. This is because we will hit a peak uranium curve well before we can build a sufficient number of fission plants to displace fossile fuels. Only 0.7% of natural uranium is fissable (U235) which means vast amounts must be mined to produce fuel rods to run commerical power plants. While natural uranium is widely distributed, it can only be mined with a positive return on energy at just a few dozen sites world wide. In addition, mining uranium is dependant on fossil fuels to power the mining equiment and to fire the smelting and refining plants. Breeder plants are also a pipe dream because the do not produce more fuel than consumed. Plutonium fuel is indeed generated, but the amount that can be harvested from spent fuel rods is less then the amount of fissible material contained in the original fuel rods. In my opinion, fission is nothing more than a short term patch to peak oil, and I have serious reservations whether it would even mitigate a energy crash if we started building new plants today.

The purpose of using steam would apply only if there is a drastic infrastructure meltdown, which no electricity was distributed to civilians. Those that are tech-savvy could generate their own power. However, I imagine that the gov't could continue to supply electricity to the majority of the country using nationwide rolling blackouts (ie 4 hours on, 20 housrs off), assuming that the electrical grid can be maintained. In such a situation a household equipped with a small steam power plant could provide electricity during blackout periods, and not dependant on Wind or Sunshine. In addition, in the winter, a co-generation system could be use to provide both heat and electricity. The major issue with steam is that it is dependant on a burnable materal and its low efficiency that any home constructed system would provide. However, depite these short comings, it seems that steam would be worthwhile in a post peak oil economy. Only time will tell what the future has in store for us. The question you need to ask yourself, if a energy crash does occur, what tools and resources will I want to keep?

>The reality is, we'll never do that. Never. We'll burn gigatons of coal and destroy the ecology of the planet first. And the Chinese and the Indians, who will be demanding VASTLY greater energy growth than we will, are even less likely to try tinkering with steam engines.

I also agree that we will use coal, wood and anything else. Today we are already destroying the ecology worldwide and we haven't even technically reached Peak oil. I suspect that once the energy crunch enters the equation some changes will probably occur to reduce ecological destruction (at least globally). This is because demand for air travel, luxuries, cars, and any goods or services that require lots of energy will crash. Tens of millions of jobs in India and China will disapper. In fact there was an recent article that stated 70,000 texttile jobs disappeared because of the high oil prices. Take for instance, slash and burn farming in the Amazon forest. This practice will end because it will be too expense to export farm goods. We also have the potential of a global pandemic with the bird flu which could make a substantial reduction in the population. We also likely endure widespread disease and malnutrition in a post peak oil economy which would further reduce population. In the end, the world population will likely experience a reduction of at least 5 billion people during the next thirty years after peak oil begins.

The real immediate danger I see for the US and other major industrialized countries, is becoming cut off from foriegn oil imports. I believe exports will likely be dramatically reduced once peak oil is global acknowledge. Most exporters at completely dependant on oil exports (such as the Middle East) and use oil exports to supply thier countries with food, building materials, medicine, etc. If I was an oil exporter I would cut back exports in order to conserve my oil reserves for as long as possible, because when the oil field run dry, my country will cease to exist! In addition, 90% of all oil exports are politically unstable muslum nations. Should a revolution begin in Saudia Arabia, the Industrialized world will be in big trouble. Few people realize how depend the Industrialize world is dependant on SA. if Oil production stops in SA, so does the industrialized world.

[AnGuy]

>If your worried why not buy one of these http://
www.stirlingenergy.com/breaking_news.htm after they build there
300MW and 500MW power plants the price per unit should be
reasonable.

Unlikely, See Text:

"The cost for each prototype unit is about $150,000. Once in production SES estimates that the cost could be reduced to less than $50,000 each, which would make the cost of electricity competitive with conventional fuel technologies."

http://www.sandia.gov/news-center/news- ... rling.html

In additon:

"Stirling Energy Systems for small-scale applications are not currently available at the present time. Our systems are intended for utility-scale applications ranging from 1 MW to 1,000 MWs or more"

http://www.stirlingenergy.com/faq.asp?Type=all


To my knowledge, every solar power farms constructed has been a dismal failure. I expect this one will be a failure too. The reason why they have business is because of a huge grant given by the gov't. Even if it was a good solution, manufacturers will probably be kept busy for decades just supplying to commerial energy companies and gov'ts. They'll have no time to deal with the small scale home owner.

In addition what do you do when there is no sunlight (night, rain, snow, cloudly days)? Steam can work 7/24/365.

[AnGuy]

>On the point of cars, steam is a good route to go. Modern flash steam boilers of about 50kW capacity could be designed to start up not much slower than a diesel. The prime fuel should be hydrogen from nuclear ideally, even though the energy density is low.

Hypothetically, if one has access to hydrogen it would be more practical to burn it in a Internal Combustion Engine instead. However ,Hydrogen is also a dead end. It would far more pratical to produce diesel using the Fischer-Tropsh method. Search for posts about hydrogen on this site for more info on why hydrogen is dead.

[longstreet]

Are you sure about your facts Anonymous Guy? I'm pretty sure there is enough uranium, and also that breeder reactors can make more usefull fuel than they consume. I think I read somewhere an estimate of a billion years, or some crazy number, worth of fissionable fuel even assuming we never learn to efficiently travel in space in that time.

Carter

[TBenson]

Interesting comments Anonymous guy, but regarding breeding plutonium...actually it's not at all difficult to breed more plutonium than the U235 that you are consuming. There have been many, many reactors already tested that burn up to 30% of the uranium, which includes essentially ALL of the .7% U235 plus another 30% of the U238. Additionally it's already been demonstrated that you can also breed Thorium in a 50/50 mix with the uranium.

What this all means...with properly designed reactors, current Uranium stocks are good for a minimum 200 years. Just the burnt leftover fuel currently being stored at reactor sites across the US could be burnt down in advanced reactors to provide 100 of those 200 years.

Plus, there are vast Uranium deposits we haven't even found yet, simply because nobody is looking.

Plus, we could use Thorium.

The bottom line is, nuclear fuels in advanced reactors could power the entire planet earth for a thousand years.

The claim that "the mining and extraction of Uranium requires burning more fossil fuels than the Uranium produces" is utterly untrue. In fact, the energy content of Uranium is so astronomical, it is by far the LEAST energy to mine and process of any energy source.

[MARK-HARRISS]

I think there's three times as much thorium as any uranium, and all of that can used as a fuel once it's been irradiated.

[Richard Hull]

As I said before, to keep the US going with electricity pouring out of the outlets using only internal supplies, and not one imported BTU, it will be a situation of only coal or nuclear or both...........probably both. All the renewables will be relegated to the job of assist only.

Richard Hull

[Goldenspark]

"Wind has some merit, but it is dependant on batteries"
Not correct. There is now a massive push for offshore wind and wave that connects direct to the grid. Wind generators at 5MW each are possible now, with designs looking to go to 10MW. There is no doubt that these renewables must figure in the energy economy, if only because their time to generate is relatively short.

[AnGuy]

>...actually it's not at all difficult to breed more plutonium than the U235 that you are consuming. There have been many, many reactors already tested that burn up to 30% of the uranium, which includes essentially ALL of the .7% U235 plus another 30% of the U238. Additionally it's already been demonstrated that you can also breed Thorium in a 50/50 mix with the uranium.

No, That would mean nuclear energy is perpetual device. Creating more energy then consumed. All energy systems have entropy. When U235 splits, two neutrons are produced. At least one neutron must be used split another U235 atom so the reaction can continue. Plutonium is created when U-238 captures a thermal neutron . The U-239 decays into Pu-239. However very many neutrons are lost, becuase they are not captured and exit the bounds of the reactor, or are absorbed by other elements inside the reactor. The end result is the breeder reactors make better use of the U235 supply but the do not produce more fuel than consumed. Otherwise there would be no need to continue mining Uranium. Also remember the original purpose of breeder reactors was to create fissible material for bombs, not power generation.

>Plus, we could use Thorium.

Natural Thorium is non fissible becuas the fissible isotopes have short half-lives. India converts non-fissible Thorium into fissible material by using a small stock of Uranium. India has large quanities of Thorium but have very little Uranium and I believe they import all of their Uranium. Converting U238 into P-239 is more efficient anyway. India must use Thorium simply because they dont have any large natural uranium mines, and want to make the most of the fissible material they have on hand.

The only naturally occuring fissible materal available on Earth is U-235. Miniscule amounts of Th-233 or other fissible materials exist because of U-235 decay chain. This is because all fissible isotopes except U-235 have very short half-lives (on a Geological time scale). During the past 4.5 billion years, all Fissible materials have decayed into no-fissible materials. U-235 has a very large half-life, however even much of the planet's original stock of U-235 has already decayed. This is why only 0.7% of natural Uranium consists of U235.

[longstreet]

I think you have a misunderstanding of what nuclear energy is. There is a huge amount of energy stored in the strong force. I hate making generalities, but really anything above iron has energy stored such that when atoms are broken apart the resulting matter has less energy in the strong force, giving off the difference as kinetics. The problem is getting a neutron to effectively split the atom.

Think of it as a giant brick sitting next to a ledge. U-235 can easily fall off the ledge and we extract the energy when it does, but U-238 is a little more stable so it doesn't fall off as much. When you breed plutonium it is much easier to push off, and you only sacrifice a tiny amount of energy to do it. The ledge is still huge and you can still get a lot of energy when it falls off, a lot more than what you used to make it a little less stable.

Even assuming you are cleaver enough to do all nuclear transitions there is a hard limit to the energy you can get. But this has nothing to do with entropy. If you want to talk about converting the nuclear heat into electricity, then that's where entropy comes in. But not in converting nuclear energy to kinetic/heat energy. That is more of a conservation of energy problem.

edit: I happen to think that I should say there is no problem with entropy because the potential energy of the system does not increase when you breed plutonium. Potential nuclear energy is always decreasing in all these reactions. It's just there is so much of it that we can waste some to make it easier on our reactors.

Here is a page that describes this better: http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hb ... ucbin.html

Carter

[Richard Hull]

All fission energy is just the reclamation of locked down fusion energy and that is the stored dynamic energy of gravitation that fused such atoms in the first place. All nuclear energy be it fusion or fission, as it occurs in nature, is 100% gravitational in origin.

There is no perpetual moion machine here, just a nearly undamped oscillator universally exchanging potential energies.

Fission is not much different from burning coal or oil except one utilizes chemical (electron orbital or coulombic exchanges) and the other uses gravitational exchanges long ago locked within the various nuclear forces.

Richard Hull

[AnGuy]

>Think of it as a giant brick sitting next to a ledge. U-235 can easily fall off the ledge and we extract the energy when it does, but U-238 is a little more stable so it doesn't fall off as much.

Only odd numbered isotopes are capable of sustaining fission reactions . Odd number isotopes such as Pu-239, U237, U235,U233,Th233, etc. release more than one neutron when they are split. Even number isotopes decay with alpha particles or release less than two neutrons when split and therefore cannot be used to sustain the reaction . Even numbered istopes such as U238 also required vast Neutron Energies to be split. I believe U238 requires Neutron energies > 1 MeV to split. These higher energy Neutrons tend to pass through heavy isotopes without any interactions. In breeder reactors, the neutrons produced by U235 are slowed down so they can be captured by U238 which later transmute from U239 to Np239 to Pu-239.


>Even assuming you are cleaver enough to do all nuclear transitions there is a hard limit to the energy you can get. But this has nothing to do with entropy.

Sure it does. The lower the entropy a system has, the more difficult it is to extract energy. Its seems very unlikely that we will be able to extract energy from the nuclear interactions you are suggesting. Fusion is probably by far much more practical, and after 50 years and 100 billions poured into Fusion reseach, we still can't get a positive energy gain.

>I hate making generalities, but really anything above iron has energy stored such that when atoms are broken apart the resulting matter has less energy in the strong force, giving off the difference as kinetics. The problem is getting a neutron to effectively split the atom.

There lies the true problem. Virtually every atoms doesn't want to give up free neutrons. In 99.9% of all instances of natural radioactive, atoms give up a alphas instead of free neutrons.

BTW: The original point I was making was on the practicality of using Fission as a fossil fuel replacement. The bottom line is that nuclear fission isn't going to save us from an energy crash, at best it could postpone the inevitable by a couple of decades (probably a lot less). Certainly once Peak Oil is global reconized those that have large Uranium reserves aren't likely going to want to share it with the have-nots, especially since its easily weaponized. Those with remaining Oil reserves are likely to act similarly. Thoses that have neither Oil or Uranium (or lack the capacity to use Nuclear Energy) are screwed. Peak Oil will result in Peak Energy since mining and refining Uranium is dependant on Oil.

Heres a couple of good articles to read:
http://www.dieoff.com/page125.htm (Energy's role in our civilization development)

http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/ (Peak Energy)

[AnGuy]

>>"Wind has some merit, but it is dependant on batteries"

>Not correct. There is now a massive push for offshore wind and wave that connects direct to the grid. Wind generators at 5MW each are possible now, with designs looking to go to 10MW. There is no doubt that these renewables must figure in the energy economy, if only because their time to generate is relatively short.

I was referring to wind generation for individual homes. As far as commerical system there are limits too. Wind generation is dependant on a steady stream of wind. Not every place is suitable. and the amount of wind provided at any given time is unpredicable. For instance, One minute a 10 MW wind turbine might actually produce10 MW of power, but the next minute, the wind speed might fall and the turbine will only generate 3 MW. Unfortunately, electricity supply isn't elastic. If the load is 10 MW its needs a steady supply at 10MW, other wise pretty much all devices using electricity stop working. In many devices, noisy power will result in an early demise. Any national power grid based solely on Wind must include a fast storage system that can steady the output during wind power output fluxuations. It probably very unlikely that a system robust enough could be implemented without the use of base load fossil (or nuclear) power plants.

[Q]

i thought this was a good place to post this.

today's edition of the asheville citizen times had a small article on the front page about how duke power is wanting to build a new nuclear plant somewhere in the carolinas. the time table suggested is that the site should be choosen by the end of next year, and the reactors should be online by 2015 (assuming that the plan goes through).
not much else was said, though most of the article was the typical responces from the obviously "against anything nuclear" crowd. the only posative aspect mentioned in the article was that it would generate roughly 1000 full time jobs.
some how i doubt that nuclear power will be considered before it will be to late to build.

Q

[longstreet]

A couple of decades? We have plenty of fissile fuel to last a lot longer than that. I think you are drastically underestimating the amount of energy available to us with our current technology that is just waiting for politics to release.

And please stop confusing entropy. For one, *increasing* entropy makes it harder to extract energy, not the other way around. This has to do with chaotic probability of kinetic interactions. For example if you have a completely stationary set of balls held together by gravity, and you drop another ball from a height, it is statistically improbable that any ball will ever reach that height again because that would mean every other ball is again absolutly stationary. This has nothing to do with nuclear energy because we aren't trying to raise the potential nuclear energy at all. We are decreasing it by 200Mev with every reaction and not looking back. Who cares if we need a 5MeV neutron if we're going to get that much more energy back.

edit: I'm sorry, that wasn't very studious. But really, we are not breaking the 2nd law of thermodynamics by breeding plutonium.

Carter

[Richard Hull]

It will never be too late to build nuke plants. It might be too late to build them safely due to immediate power needs. This worries me as it might throw fission power back to the TMI knee jerk response if some slap-dash fission put-up crumbles early in its carreer. The old jobs are still kickin' and way beyond their design period which is a tribute to those old engineers and construction companies. The old ones need to be replaced now as they too might suffer increased risk of disaster or mischance due to sheer age and degradation of materials. Still we would blame the technology and never ourselves for a failure.

By the way, even numbered elements self-fission on their own without any neutrons. (not sustainable) The most rapid self-fissioner among the natural even numbered elements would be stock U238 and one of the slowest would be common Thorium 232. Admittedly the rate is slow per unit atomic density, but it is real and measurable, nonetheless.

Many folks don't know this, especially as regards thorium.

Richard Hull

[AnGuy]

> It might be too late to build them safely due to immediate power needs. This worries me as it might throw fission power back to the TMI knee jerk response if some slap-dash fission put-up crumbles early in its carreer.

I would suspect the number of engineers that persued a career in nuclear engineering have all but vanished and those with the skills and knowledge are on the cusp of retirement. I suspose that we could always import engineers from abroad, since most of the world did not abandon Nuclear Energy.

About a year ago northeastern states sued many of the business using coal fired plants in the midwest, blaming them for air pollution. Even if the Businesses decide to build new Nuke plants, I would suspect that many states and organizations would block any construction for quiet sometime. Since some states produce power with hydro and coal, they might not want trucks loaded with waste passing through on their way to Nevada.

[DaveC]

Want is an amazing motivator. The reason we can entertain so many alternatives, without regard to practicality right now, is that we are not yet in want.. in the US.

When the new prices of natural gas, filter through the market, the next thing to rise will be electricity, along with all other fossil fuels. It seems that everyone understands that you make more money at 2x$ per unit, than at 1x$ per.

Today a friend was telling about a metal treating company that is facing a 4x increase in their fuel costs, already. It could well put them out of business. Or.... it could finally get them to upgrade their furnaces.

But either way, we have few options but to pay the price.

Without a nuclear option right now, supply and demand will equilibrate... somewhere, but many will not like the price.

Dave Cooper

[Richard Hull]

Dave is right. The is no WANT yet, save for "want of will".

Nuclear and coal are our only real option when quads of power are needed just to stay flush in future. The closer we get to the WANT, the options we have narrow tremendously. We now fiddle as Rome burns.

A tremendous debt overburden in the private sector alone will certainly be the trigger to major issues coming to the fore much sooner than expected as real money will be needed when prices skyrocket.

Soddy was right in his latter day musings as an economist. He might also be correct in his assumption that only nuclear energy will pull us out of the bottomless energy well.

Lots of mouths in developing nations trying to feed off the tit that we have suckled on for years. Suddenly we have to compete, just as our industrial base is disappearing in favor of the information age which lures us not to get our hands dirty making things anymore.

We are the future Great Britain. We will survive and remain solid, but our glorious age as a world class, dominant nation is just about lost. Unfortunately, the resources for any aspiring nation taking on this mantle in a sustainable fashion are just not there anymore. Certainly not at the level of the Victorian age, English empire or the level attained by the United State's meteoric rise after 1900.

Economic ruin due to a call on debt and energy's failure to sustain people in comfortable, affordable surroundings will bring about a transformation. How unsettling it will be will have to wait for future eyes to see.

Richard Hull