Re: Mega Earthquake San Francisco - 2011

: "Norm D. Plumber" <nom-de-plume@xxxxxxx>
: The only device I'm aware of that creates electricity directly from
: heat is the thermocouple and those seem to have been set aside as
: hopelessly inefficient.

Thermionic and MHD widgets. Unless there's some reason not to count
them as "direct". I hadn't heard of IR photovoltaics, but I don't see
why they wouldn't be just as direct as themocouples.

: So-called modern technology stumbles along with what is known to work,

Yep. Nobody ever tries anything new. Ben Franklin developed the LED,
the fluorescent tube, the electroluminescent panel, and the carbon arc,
and nobody's tried other ways to make light since.

: Message-ID: <9a6bq6hq7srn1gjqe9pnomrhea7i8q0nc1@xxxxxxx>
::: Are there nuclear devices that create electricity without going
::: through that messy leaky steam business?
:: Yes. RTGs for example.
: It's my understanding that those are low-power and fairly
: low-efficiency.

To be fair, you didn't ask for high efficiency nor high power. And the
amount of power is mostly limited by the application. If you needed
megawatts, you could generate them with thermionic widgets; it'll just
produce more waste heat than other methods.

But, if you want efficiency, aiui running the heat through an MHD and then several stages of steam turbine has yielded 60% or so.

And so far, I still don't follow why Steam Is Eeeeeeevil.
.

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