Re: European Union cuts back Biofuel use

On Tue, 8 Jul 2008 11:20:44 -0700, "Frank Howell" <fphowell@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:


Kinda ironic that they will get their fondness wish: A world with out fossil
fuels, except dirty ol' coal.
I see the coming years filled with irrational programs and paralysis aimed
at preserving the unpreservable. Short term solutions will flourish at the
expense of the future with social upheaval and government dysfunction
becoming the norm.

Man, Frank, you missed taking your happy pill again today, didn't you? Why do
y'all fall into this doom and gloom crap? We've been through this before.

Here's my prediction. This is a good old fashioned inflation cycle. Prices
will generally rise and along with them, wages until the personal cost of
energy will resume its normal percentage of a household budget.

Meanwhile many billions of dollars in scientific, corporate and middle/upper
class welfare will be handed out for boondoggle crap like biofuels, solar this
and thats and so on. Most of it will be harmless except to our collective
pocketbooks but some, such as forcing "green" (sic) solar and wind power onto
utilities will destabilize the grid, cause blackouts and great harm.

Meanwhile the evil oil and utility companies will continue to do what they've
always done - supply reliable energy at modest cost, the above electricity
exception noted, of course.

Did you know that there are around 50 applications on file with the NRC for
new nuclear units? Some are in the mere conceptual stage while others are
well along with the site approval process. It looks like the average size
will be around 600 MWe (larger than I had hoped) and all will come from
overseas manufacturers, though GE and Bab*** & Wilcox will be the nominal
names plastered on some of them. These will all be one of several standard
designs with NRC type-acceptance. Large chunks of the plant will be
shop-fabricated and assembled on-site. The streamlined license process that
the NRC has designed should let them speed toward construction in just a few
years.

I hadn't kept up in recent years so when a friend pointed me to the NRC doc
(no, didn't save the URL, sorry), I was pleasantly surprised. I had no idea.
I wish I were a bit younger and had better health. I'd love to go nukin'
again.

The other major problem is the power transmission grid. In many places (not
so coincidentally, mainly the blue states), the grid is at it its breaking
point, with transmission lines and transformer being pushed far beyond their
ratings.

For reasons that I don't quite understand, proposing a new transmission line
brings out about as many kooks as did nuclear power a couple of decades ago.
Utilities are doing some fairly desperate things such as stacking new line
triplets on top of existing towers (maintenance and weather nightmares),
converting to HVDC where the voltage on a given line can be raised to at least
1.414 times that of the AC voltage and the amount of power transmitted at the
same amperage increased accordingly. (very expensive and the long term
reliability of the converter equipment isn't yet known.)

Of course, all of these measures are expensive and the power rates in the blue
states reflect same. One would think that 20 cents a kilowatt-hour and more
(what a friend of mine in southern CA is paying) would make even the worst
NIMBYs reconsider.

The RV biz is going to do exactly the same thing that it did in the early 80s.
Go through a shake-out while people panic and then come back with better
built, more efficient and (unfortunately) more expensive units.

Meanwhile technology breakthroughs will disrupt things in unimaginable ways.
Consider just one emerging technology - AMTEC

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alkali-metal_thermal_to_electric_converter

(I have no idea how accurate this Wiki entry is so take the details with a
grain of salt.)

I was aware of sodium-sulfur batteries and how high their energy density is
(and how bad I want a set for my EV) but I wasn't aware of this derivative
technology. I found this in the context of a discussion on my private mailing
list about technologies that might be used to improve the efficiency of the
plain old IC engined car. Technology that could, for example, make use of the
wasted heat going out the cooling system and exhaust to improve mileage.

Direct heat-to-electricity is the Holy Grail for power generation. No moving
parts, nothing to wear out and apparently no material incompatibilities. While
the operating temperature is probably a bit high for use on a vehicle, think
of the fixed applications.

Consider this. Buried deep in the foundation of your house, embedded in
concrete and far out of reach of the mythical terrorists is a capsule
containing about 10 kilograms of Pu-238. A softball sized chunk. This is an
isotope of Plutonium that is not suitable for weapons use but, owing to its
short ~88 year half-life, is a prodigious producer of heat. Here is a photo
of a pellet of Pu-238 glowing red hot from self-heating.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Radioisotope_thermoelectric_generator_plutonium_pellet.jpg

This 10Kg of Pu would produce something in the neighborhood of 6000 watts of
heat. Continuously and with no external input. Attached to this heat source,
perhaps through a molten metal (lead, bismuth, etc) circuit is an AMTEC that
generates 1,200 watts of electrical energy (assuming 20% conversion
efficiency). That's 1,200 watts continuously, 24/7, 365 days a year. It will
have dropped to half that in about 88 years - a single Pu lifetime.

1,200 watts is 28kWh a day and about 880kWh per month. That's what the
average household uses in electricity. But it gets better. The heat rejected
from the AMTEC at an estimated 500 deg F, is very high quality and can run a
sterling engine heat pump, a sterling engine generator, absorption
refrigeration, provide comfort heat and hot water, heat your hot tub, melt the
snow from your driveway and any number of other heat-related tasks.

With so much of the house's energy usage supplied directly by the heat from
the RTG, the electrical demand is minimal - lighting, entertainment and a few
ohter things. 880kWh would likely be much more electricity than a house would
use in a month.

Some of that essentially free energy could be used to electrolyze water so
that one could continue to cook with "gas", the gas being hydrogen this time.
It might also be the only way that the "hydrogen economy" might ever make any
sense.

Pu-238 is cheap, being a currently unwanted byproduct of nuclear fission. In
its oxide form, it is a chemically stable ceramic. It emits no penetrating
radiation (alpha emission only) and is easily contained. Other than the AMEC,
nothing in this scenario is exotic. Even taking the AMEC out of the picture
and using all the heat to run Sterling engines (a 100+ year old technology),
the system still works. The AMEC simply makes it work better.

Increase the size of the system, perhaps by 2, and one can fuel his electric
car with almost free energy.

Maintenance would involve little more than an annual survey by a
health-physicist to make sure the Pu capsule hasn't leaked, lubricating any
motors or other mechanisms and cleaning the dirt off the various heat
radiators.

The cost would be modest, much less than a mid-sized car today, and could be
financed as part of the mortgage if desired. Currently, the free piston
Sterling generator is probably the most expensive part and that's only because
they're currently hand-made. They're no more complicated and use no more
exotic materials than a home air conditioner compressor.

Visualize this energy architecture. Nuclear plants are built near
manufacturing centers to provide both electricity and process heat to the
factories. Others are built near large cesspools, er, cities to supply those
high density loads with both electricity and thermal energy (steam). The
reactors are designed to breed both Pu-239 for recycling into new nuclear fuel
and Pu-238 to be used for radiothermal heat sources.

Houses for ordinary people would not be connected to the grid but would use
RTG systems as described above. McMansions, commercial districts and so on
would need and pay for grid power.

Remember when you're considering this idea that the initial fuel load is your
lifetime fuel supply. With an 88 year half-life, the system will still be
making half its initial heat when you're in the geezer's home. You (or
probably your dad) pays for the fuel once and that's it.

An economy would build around the fuel. It may be that after 40 years the
system isn't supplying one person's energy needs or perhaps his needs have
increased and he needs a larger heat source. Partially depleted capsules
would be removed by specialists and replaced by new ones with the old ones
headed off to be recycled or installed in smaller generators.

The sealed capsule emits no radiation so there is none of the bubble suits,
long handled manipulators or any of the other "nuclear" stuff you see in SciFi
movies. If the capsule wasn't red hot, you could handle it with your bare
hands. It would be transported in a container suitable to provide cooling,
security from theft and protect it from damage in the event of a traffic
accident.

The only thing blocking a "nuclear economy" such as this is the political
will. Wouldn't "energy too cheap to meter*", as famously described by AEC
chairman Lewis Strauss be nice? There is no technical barrier to that
condition, just lack of political backbone.

John


* When Strauss said the following:

"It is not too much to expect that our children will enjoy in their homes
electrical energy too cheap to meter, will know of great periodic regional
famines in the world only as matters of history, will travel effortlessly over
the seas and under them and through the air with a minimum of danger and at
great speeds, and will experience a lifespan far longer than ours as disease
yields and man comes to understand what causes him to age."

in 1954, he was NOT saying that energy would be free, as he has been widely
accused of. What he was saying was that energy sufficiently cheap to generate
makes it not worth the cost and effort to meter. Most of the cost would be in
the infrastructure to get the energy to you. Just as your internet service is
too cheap to meter and is instead billed at a flat rate, so could electricity.

Interesting, isn't it, that all of his predictions except for electricity have
already or are coming true.

Further reading on the topic

http://www.atomicinsights.com/AI_03-09-05.html
--
John De Armond
See my website for my current email address
http://www.neon-john.com
http://www.johndearmond.com <-- best little blog on the net!
Tellico Plains, Occupied TN
Hell is truth seen too late. -Hobbs

.