Here's an uncomfortable question.

[Username17]

Wait... WTF? There's no power in nuclear?

Are you extra retarded? Energy we are not using that we can use is real energy when we use it.

Having lots more Iron in the ground doesn't mean we don't have more iron in every possible useful sense when we dig it up, just because it was on earth, and is still on earth.

I believe that the thing you are responding to is about there being no power future in Nuclear. According to actual boosters of Nuclear Power, there are five million tonnes of Uranium in the world, with a plurality of it in Australia. That will last the world about a century. If we made a big investment into nuke plants, it would last the world about a decade. Maybe two if we found some big unknown reserves somewhere. There is just no way to power the world on Uranium. There isn't enough Uranium.

On the other hand, the sun is going to last us a couple of billion years. So while it is also a limited commodity, we are going to be able to use solar derived power for longer than life has so far existed on the planet.

What we're probably going to end up doing is to set up giant solar arrays either in the middle of the ocean or in space, and then use the power to extract hydrogen from the sea and then ship that gas in giant explosive cans to power plants all over the world where electricity will be made the old fashioned way by burning hydrogen. But we're moving really slowly on that, so we can probably expect some periods of rolling blackouts along the way.

-Username17

[Falgund]

I'm still rooting for a project to use a giant solar array in space that sends the energy to earth using a giant laser (which won't be used as a doomsday weapon. Promised.)
But maybe I watched too many James Bond/James Bond parody.

[Koumei]

I'm still rooting for a project to use a giant solar array in space that sends the energy to earth using a giant laser (which won't be used as a doomsday weapon. Promised.)
But maybe I watched too many James Bond/James Bond parody.

I'm pretty sure Sim City has that as one of their Disaster Scenarios: the laser misses the receptor dish, carving a hole through half the city and setting it ablaze.

[sabs]

more fun is the commercial airliners that get destroyed by accidentally flying through the giant laser beam.

[tzor]

I believe that the thing you are responding to is about there being no power future in Nuclear. According to actual boosters of Nuclear Power, there are five million tonnes of Uranium in the world, with a plurality of it in Australia. That will last the world about a century.

Uranium? I should expect that from an old 20th century dinosaur like you. That's so last century. It's good enough to get us to mid way in the 21st century before it starts gettiing old and quaint.

The 21st / 22nd century will be powered by Thorium. Basic prototypes are already underway, and we will bedinitely see the bugs out and major plants go online by 2050.

Forbes article.

Thorium is more abundant than uranium in the Earth’s crust. The world has an estimated 4.4 million tons of total known and estimated Thorium resources, according to the International Atomic Energy Association’s 2007 Red Book.

The most common source of thorium is the rare earth phosphate mineral, monazite. World monazite resources are estimated to be about 12 million tons, two-thirds of which are in India. Idaho also boasts a large vein deposit of thorium and rare earth metals.

Thorium can be used as a nuclear fuel through breeding to fissile uranium-233. For those technically-inclined readers, here is a geek-friendly explanation of what that means:

“Although not fissile itself, Th-232 will absorb slow neutrons to produce uranium-233 (U-233)a, which is fissile (and long-lived). The irradiated fuel can then be unloaded from the reactor, the U-233 separated from the thorium, and fed back into another reactor as part of a closed fuel cycle. Alternatively, U-233 can be bred from thorium in a blanket, the U-233 separated, and then fed into the core.

“In one significant respect U-233 is better than uranium-235 and plutonium-239, because of its higher neutron yield per neutron absorbed. Given a start with some other fissile material (U-233, U-235 or Pu-239) as a driver, a breeding cycle similar to but more efficient than that with U-238 and plutonium (in normal, slow neutron reactors) can be set up. (The driver fuels provide all the neutrons initially, but are progressively supplemented by U-233 as it forms from the thorium.) However, there are also features of the neutron economy which counter this advantage. In particular the intermediate product protactinium-233 (Pa-233) is a neutron absorber which diminishes U-233 yield.

[tzor]

I'm still rooting for a project to use a giant solar array in space that sends the energy to earth using a giant laser (which won't be used as a doomsday weapon. Promised.)
But maybe I watched too many James Bond/James Bond parody.

The earth has an annoying tendency to rotate on its axis. You need something that can cut through everything like a knife through butter but only get stopped under certain conditions, transmitting energy in the process. You don't need them to actually warp but that's extra credit.

Such things cuurrently exist, the problem is ccreating a combination of neutrino / perfect reaction medium that would be effective in getting the rays back to energy. Once this is done the Earth/Sun L5 solar array system would probably be the primary source of power in the 23rd century.

[Username17]

You know that thing where I said that we had five million tonnes of available Uranium and that wasn't nearly enough to get through this century? What makes you think that four and half million tonnes of Thorium is going to magically solve everything?

The 21st / 22nd century will be powered by Thorium. Basic prototypes are already underway, and we will bedinitely see the bugs out and major plants go online by 2050.

Uh... sure. In 2050 we will run out of Uranium. then we will switch over to Thorium. And then we will run out in 2100. Where do you think the 22nd century is going to get Thorium from?

-Username17

[Kaelik]

I believe that the thing you are responding to is about there being no power future in Nuclear.

I certainly hope that's what he meant, because that's way less retarded than what he said, which is of course, that there is no real power, not no real future.

Of course, even that is premised on our inability to figure out controlled fusion in the next couple hundred years.

[Stahlseele]

You know that thing where I said that we had five million tonnes of available Uranium and that wasn't nearly enough to get through this century? What makes you think that four and half million tonnes of Thorium is going to magically solve everything?

The 21st / 22nd century will be powered by Thorium. Basic prototypes are already underway, and we will bedinitely see the bugs out and major plants go online by 2050.

Uh... sure. In 2050 we will run out of Uranium. then we will switch over to Thorium. And then we will run out in 2100. Where do you think the 22nd century is going to get Thorium from?

-Username17

Maybe one gets more power out of the thorium than one would out of the uranium and thus need less?

[Grek]

A few misconceptions to clear up:

Putting solar panels on every rooftop in hopes of generating sufficent energy to run things would A] be completely unfeasible economically and B] fuck up the environment so bad I don't even have words for how bad it would be. We absolutely do not want to be fucking with the earth's albedo like that. Making solar panels out in the ocean, in the gobi desert, or anywhere else on earth is a terrible idea for similar reasons.

There is currently a little over 4.8 billion kilograms of uranium that can be economically mined from known uranium mines. This does not count currently undiscovered mines, non-uranium fissionable materials like thorium, nuclear "waste" that is usable as a fissionable fuel in breeder reactors or uranium/thorium/other fissionables in existing mines that is currently non-economical to mine but are projected to become economical when/if the demand for fission fuel increases. Frank's projections of "running out of uranium by 2050" and "running out of thorium by 2100" are pretty naive.

Building solar panels in outer space is a pretty excellent idea, and one that I endorse whole-heartedly. Using that energy to ship canisters of hydrogen fuel down to earth in huge canisters is not. That is a uniformly awful suggestion. Not only would the massive capital costs and inherent difficulties in landing giant explosive canisters onto the earth without them exploding make the entire endeavour unprofitable, but you would actually be better off using the giant laser beam idea Falgund brought up. Or just moving to outer space, because if we have the resources to send up all these solar panels, we obviously have the resources to be building some goddamn O'Neill cylinders.

[Stahlseele]

Why LASER of all forms? O.o
Why not Microwave or something?

[Username17]

Who the fuck said anything about shipping canisters of hydrogen back and forth from space? That's retarded. The point is that you use the energy on collectors in the Pacific Ocean and then you crack water in the ocean, and you distribute the hydrogen in canisters to the needy world's powerplants by boat and train.

Because setting up microwave collection stations in or even near cities is not feasible or safe and setting up superconductive conduit all the way from the collectors to the cities is absurd. Hydrogen burns 100% clean and is a great way to store and ship energy. It just doesn't produce any energy. You need solar collectors for that.

Putting solar panels on every rooftop in hopes of generating sufficent energy to run things would A] be completely unfeasible economically and B] fuck up the environment so bad I don't even have words for how bad it would be. We absolutely do not want to be fucking with the earth's albedo like that. Making solar panels out in the ocean, in the gobi desert, or anywhere else on earth is a terrible idea for similar reasons.

Uh... what? That's completely wrong on a whole fuck tonne of levels. First of all, solar collectors in space that ship energy to us? That puts exactly the same amount of extra energy into the Earth as with absorbing energy on the ground with terrestrial solar collectors. We're talking state function parity. Exactly the same number of Joules, by definition. Except that that solar collectors on Earth would actually also negate whatever absorption that would have been going on underneath them, meaning that the total heat increases would be much less. Depending on what kind of solar collector you are using and what they do with the non-absorbed wavelengths of light, they might actually be heat neutral or heat positive on the ground, but they are always going to be adding heat to our planet if you put them in space. Always.

Secondly, economically? Solar Power is already cheaper than coal. We subsidize the fuck out of coal, not the least of which is that 30,000 Americans a year die from coal pollution and we force the rest of society to simply bear that cost. Solyndra failed not because they couldn't drop their price per kilowatt hour, but because they could not drop their prices as fast as the competing silicon technology did. And it gets better. Photovoltaics are getting cheaper even as mining coal becomes more expensive. The projected point at which solar panels cost less than coal even after coal's titanic subsidies is projected to be in... about 3 years.

Covering cities with solar panels isn't some weird future pipe dream. Economically, we should be doing it already. And in a few years there won't be any excuse for not doing it.

-Username17

[JigokuBosatsu]

Yessir, when Billybob went to get another can of hitemp lube for the ol' pelletmill and found the box was empty and it turned out WEREN'T NOBODY MAKIN ANY MORE...

That is when Peak Oil fucked us.

EDIT: Added note to emphasize lack of sarcasm.

[Grek]

Making hyrogen fuel in the ocean is a great deal more reasonable than making it in space. Assuming the technical problems involved in shipping hydrogen are resolved, anyways.

The economic issues preventing terrestrial solar energy from becoming a big deal are threefold:
1. Dust, water, leaves, soil, ash, mud, sand and anything else that blows around in the wind will cover the solar panels and need to be removed. You will need to hire workers to inspect and clear the solar panels, or to inspect and repair the machinery that you use to do the clearing for you.
2. Cloud cover, the day-night cycle, refraction and any number of other factors will all decrease the energy output for solar panels on earth to below half of what you'd get from an equal number of solar panels at a lagrangian point.
3. Animals, plants, harsh weather and even vandalism will result in some fraction of our terrestrial solar panels being damaged or destroyed each year. These will need to be replaced.

That completely neglects the environmental impact, if the economic issues aren't enough to convince you why it would be a bad idea. Covering a large stretch of land with solar panels will increase the local albedo, which will result in more light being reflected back into the atmosphere, which means higher atmospheric temperatures and warm fronts radiating off from every direction around the polar panel array and fucking up the weather for miles and miles around.

[tzor]

Actually if you want a really simple system (which might FUBAR us worse than global warming) then you throw solar panels in Geo Sync obit that beam "cosmic rays" on ocean surfaces. It is believed that cosmic rays increase the absorption of water in the atmosphere thus this could MASSIVELY increase rainfall. Such rainfall excess could be used to power hydroelectric dams.

[tussock]

@Stahlseele, yes, pumped hydro is about 80% efficient as a battery, clean, and probably the best night-store solution if you have sites for it.

There's one undeveloped mountain site in New Zealand (Lake Onslow) that can be made to hold enough power to run the whole country for a year if everything else failed (given some serious upgrades to the lines infrastructure). 800m of fall on a big lake: E = mgh.

@hyzmarca, rapid climate change is a mass extinction event. Most species of plant and animal on land and sea will go extinct if we burn all the available coal, and may do anyway with increasing odds as we fail to transition off it very soon now.
That's the alternative to trashing some amount of desert, of which you don't need much to generate what we use now. Little piece of desert vs most of everything.

@Kaelik. Yes, nuclear is tiny in the long term. The amount of useful ore is already about half spent, and even if you triple the power by recycling it the sum just doesn't matter. Solar thermal plants are expensive and slow to repay, but they are functionally unlimited by ores or pollution and have vastly larger potential power per day and unlimited potential over time.

100 years from now we've either gone to renewable energy long ago or we're in a 6 degree+ climate shift and global power output like the 1930's trying to bootstrap baseline wind and solar off the smell of an oily rag.

@Grek, albedo is irrelevant. Seriously, some black + some white = grey like now. White paint is cheap. Painting everyone's roof white would cool cities already, more if you paint the roads white.



@everyone; space is ludicrously expensive. Pie in the sky bullshit. Hydrogen is a gas battery, but a really shitty one, mostly a con. You know how electric cable buses and trams work? With the hook? That's your future, immobile power sources are massively more efficient wherever you can run a cable.

[tzor]

@Grek, albedo is irrelevant. Seriously, some black + some white = grey like now. White paint is cheap. Painting everyone's roof white would cool cities already, more if you paint the roads white.

Actually you should go for the mirror effect. Not only does shiny metal reflect more light, metal roofs are harder to catch fire. Key West mandated a metal roof policy after a wild fire burned down half the city by jumping from rooftop to rooftop.

[Kaelik]

@Kaelik. Yes, nuclear is tiny in the long term. The amount of useful ore is already about half spent, and even if you triple the power by recycling it the sum just doesn't matter. Solar thermal plants are expensive and slow to repay, but they are functionally unlimited by ores or pollution and have vastly larger potential power per day and unlimited potential over time.

Being "tiny" in the long term, by which of course, we mean nearly infinite, doesn't mean it's not real. It means we can't have it for a plan as our only option, it doesn't mean it's not a significant and awesome way to hold us over for the next 100-200 years while we work on other things. That's still real.

[Username17]

That completely neglects the environmental impact, if the economic issues aren't enough to convince you why it would be a bad idea. Covering a large stretch of land with solar panels will increase the local albedo, which will result in more light being reflected back into the atmosphere, which means higher atmospheric temperatures and warm fronts radiating off from every direction around the polar panel array and fucking up the weather for miles and miles around.

The economic issues are that we are currently subsidizing the fuck out of coal, and that if we gave equal subsidies to solar instead it would be cheaper. That is the economic issue. We could save money and save lives by switching to solar panels tomorrow.

As for the Albedo issue: you are retarded. Increasing albedo is a good thing, because the current largest problem of the whole fucking planet is the thing where global temperatures are going up and the ice caps are melting and global albedo is dropping. If we could actually put together enough solar mirrors to cause a substantial impact to global temperature rise, that would be fucking fantastic.

I mean seriously: did you just make an "Oh noes! Global cooling!" argument in 2011?

-Username17

[Username17]

@everyone; space is ludicrously expensive. Pie in the sky bullshit. Hydrogen is a gas battery, but a really shitty one, mostly a con. You know how electric cable buses and trams work? With the hook? That's your future, immobile power sources are massively more efficient wherever you can run a cable.

Uh... that's stupid. Like, really really stupid.

Hydrogen fuel cells are not being discussed. Burning actual hydrogen and running turbines is being discussed. Like we do now for oil, except that we can make hydrogen gas from sea water. The Pacific Ocean is really fucking big and there are things we can do at the equator that are not possible at the latitudes of Chicago.

We can have hundreds or even thousands of square miles of solar collectors out there and disturb actually relatively little life. Because the surface of the middle of the ocean is a desert and the benthic regions don't get any light anyway. The problem is: we can't run cables to Chicago with that. We actually need power plants in Chicago to produce power for Chicago.

So our choices are either to fill batteries in the Pacific or to produce fuel in the Pacific and then burn it in Chicago. The latter is vastly more efficient. We can reduce Chicago's power plant requirements by putting solar collectors on Chicago's rooftops, and we should probably do that. But that doesn't get past the night time problem.

-Username17

[K]

I suspect the future of energy production will be something like this, though solar updraft towers are interesting too.

[tussock]

@everyone; space is ludicrously expensive. Pie in the sky bullshit. Hydrogen is a gas battery, but a really shitty one, mostly a con. You know how electric cable buses and trams work? With the hook? That's your future, immobile power sources are massively more efficient wherever you can run a cable.

Uh... that's stupid. Like, really really stupid.

I do that quite often, but I'm'a stick with this one for a bit yet.

So our choices are either to fill batteries in the Pacific or to produce fuel in the Pacific and then burn it in Chicago. The latter is vastly more efficient. We can reduce Chicago's power plant requirements by putting solar collectors on Chicago's rooftops, and we should probably do that. But that doesn't get past the night time problem.

First up, Hydrogen tanks are batteries, no matter how you take the power back out. Not great ones either, you can't ignore the energy losses in conversion. It's just that it's liquid which people like, being convenient for exchange and arbitrary division to many end users (and piggybacking on current vehicle infrastructure, which it doesn't, but that's what they say).

But HVDC lines already work for shifting big power, proven tech, 1% loss per 1000km, plus 1% conversion at either end, just a few tens of billions to connect up the whole of North America. Make your power across little bits of Texas and Mexico, away from common storm systems, use it wherever you want at 90%+ efficiency. If you must use Hydrogen production for a battery rather than pumped water (because maybe USians are too stupid to work out how to pump water up a mountain, or something), make it right were you burn it with that solar electricity, save all the transport issues (because transporting power via HVDC has already solved those problems, and is what people are going to use in North Africa and Europe, what they already use to trade power between states).

But why would anyone build solar collectors in the pacific? That's where hurricanes and other massive storm systems live. You know the rule of thumb for any construction built over even sheltered water is seven times the costs, and things on the open ocean have quite a limited size due to wave action, particularly if they're not self-mobile, and groups can be crashed together by waves and wind, and so on, and so on.

Given that solar electric already has an energy return of only 4.5 to 1 or so over it's whole life, you can't risk construction of solar collectors out there on the ocean. People keep trying that shit with wave machines and the ocean kills them all in just a few months.


But keep talking, you might teach me something else yet.

[Prak]

I'm still waiting for us to cover mercury in solar panels...

[Stahlseele]

Why Mercury?
The Moon would be a much more logical place for those, right? O.o

[tzor]

Why a planet? You want a relatively stable location RELATIVE TO YOU. That throws out almost all planets because they orbit differently than you do. The only stable points from a solar power perspective are the L4/L5 Earth/Moon points or the L4/L5 Earth/Sun points. Such locations can support MASSIVE structures where the only technical problem is the pressure of the solar wind.

Oh right. I almost forgot. Gravational lock equations don't only lead to a 1:1 lock. Mercury doesn't have one side facing the sun all the time. The number of days to a year, however is a perfect integer. So Mercury isn't as good for solar power collection as you might otherwise think.