Re: This month's popular science - hydrogen powered hyper jet

calderhome@xxxxxxxxx <calderhome@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
SEE: http://home.att.net/~meditation/bio-fuel-hoax.html - with active
links!
- "The biofuel hoax is causing a world food crisis!"

And devaluing the US dollar as grain which would otherwise be exported
instead is internally consumed.

You did fail to mention the byproducts of corn-to-ethanol still have value
as an ingredient of livestock feed or that there is still corn oil
available as a food product.

Ethanol as a gasoline additive is one of the more benign (compared to
methy butyl tertiary ether (MTBE)) oxygenates which promotes cleaner
burning and raises octane rating promoting greater engine efficiency.

Of course the point is valid concerning energy profit (amount of diesel
fuel and petro-based ag-chems vs. ethanol yield.

And E85 is likely the highest concentration of ethanol which modern gas
engines can run cleanly on (exhaust from E100 isn't hot enough to make
catalytic converters work efficiently; incomplete ethanol has
formaldehyde and CO in its exhaust emissions).

The section on a nuclear-hydrogen economy is pasted below.--------

I missed its source.

[...]
Nuclear power plants do not contribute to global warming because
they release no greenhouse gases at all.

While the plant itself doesn't release any greenhouse gases, what about
all the conventional fuel needed to mine, transport and process enormous
quantities of uranium-bearing rock and the amount of electricity and
petroleum-derived chemicals needed to concentrate the uranium and enrich
it for use as fuel.

Let's not forget the large amounts of chemically and radiologically toxic
byproducts generated by uranium manufacture and the need to permanently
isolate them for hundreds of years (or longer) from the biosphere.


You do not need much land to
build a nuclear power plant,

Compared to biofuels (or solar fields) that is true.

However the nuclear plant has an economic lifespan of less than 40 years.
Once the plant is worn-out unless a new home can be found for hundreds of
tons of highly radioactive scrap metal (reactor vessel, reactor core etc.)
and the site of the old reactor decontaminated enough so a new one can be
installed (assuming the containment building after 40 years is good for
another 40 or more years) you have a piece of land which needs many years
and hundreds of millions of dollars to clean up enough to be reused.

The owners of the former Maine Yankee nuclear plant (1972-96) extensively
dcumented what they did to tear down and remove everything except the
spent fuel which now resides in five heavily-reinforced concrete "tombs"
until such time as the Department of Energy takes it off their hands.


and you do not need to make fertilizer to
make nuclear energy grow. Nuclear power plants are not vulnerable to
attack by viruses, bacteria, fungi, insects, or competing weeds, as
are biofuel crops.

Nuclear power plants in a "war" situation are very attractive targets.
Hence they rquire very high security including air defenses should the
threat get high enough.
While the threat of "terrorist" attacks intended to cause a large release
of radiation have been IMO highly overstated the risk IS present.
A greater risk is an attack that might not cause a radioactive crisis, but
rather a prolonged denial of service and consequent electricity shortages.


We need to get off the organic carbon cycle for
energy production and use inorganic nuclear power to produce the
highly concentrated energy supply that solar and wind power can never
hope to provide. Even by the most optimistic estimates, solar and
wind power can only hope to satisfy perhaps 20% of our future energy
needs.

Wm. Mook has posted quite a bit of information to sci.energy.hydrogen on
how solar electricity via electrolysis can make hydrogen in
quantities large enough to replace oil with much less toxic waste and
security baggage then nuclear energy has.

While manufacture of solar cells does involve toxic materials and
byproducts, these are much easier to responsibly manage than the
byproducts of nuclear energy.
(Hint: how much does a junk nuclear reactor assembly for a gigawatt
nuclear plant weigh? How much does the core-matrix weigh?)


Solar and wind power tap into natural energy sources that are
far too diffuse to be collected on a large enough scale to power an
advanced, industrialized nation. Solar and wind power currently
produce only about 2.4% of our nation's electricity, so even an
increase to 20% would be a major undertaking.

A major undertaking that is of critical importance to our future energy
security.

One of the added benefits of nuclear power is that we already own
huge amounts of nuclear fuel in the form of nuclear weapons materials,
which can be converted into fuel rods for civilian power production.

Much of this is Plutonium-239, which when made into reactor fuel requires
a reactor capable of handling the increased neutron "flux" for an
acceptable service life.
None of the current commercial reactors are up to the job.
While some experimentation with "mixed oxide" (uranium and plutonium)
has been done there are still issues with neutron flux which accelerates
weld cracking and general structural integrity of core matrices.

In addition there IS a lot of political baggage with plutonium due to the
small amounts of it needed to make a nuclear explosive.

And the Uranium-235 (Oralloy) is pretty much spoken for by Uncle Sam for
naval-propulsion. The nuke subs and aircraft carriers need much "richer"
fuels than civilian power-plants. As oil becomes more expensive and
supplies less reliable, watch smaller ships even down to destroyers go
nuclear.

Nuclear fuel rods can be reprocessed over and over again because
only a tiny portion of the nuclear material is actually used up during
each fuel cycle.

Tiny? I've seen about 1/2 the original U-235 is used.
Reprocessing in the USA may be needed in thye future; given the
security headaches involved with reprocessing plants its cheaper
to make new fuel and leave the spent rods in secure storage for now.
Don't forget the past history of nuclear fuel plants (Rocky Flats comes to
mind).

[...]
[Reprocessing] is part of the reason why
France's nuclear power program has been so successful. France relies
heavily on nuclear power plants and nuclear fuel reprocessing, and
thus France has the cleanest air and lowest electricity rates in
Europe.

And given the increasing population of Muslim criminals in France the risk
of plutonium extracted from spent nuclear fuel abused to make a "dirty"
bomb increases.

The fears many Americans have about civilian nuclear power plants
are largely unfounded.

Radiation is something that we can't see, feel (except in prompt-fatal
doses) or taste.
It boils down to TRUST - and Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and to a lesser
extent Davis-Besse were major breaches of trust.

Our latest nuclear reactor designs are
carefully engineered with many layers of redundant safety and security
features built-in.

Latest eh? All the US nuclear power plants in current production are based
on 1960s technology with updates added on.
Indeed nuclear power plants have what you say they have - for a damn good
reason - to PREVENT a Chernobyl-scale disaster or even the loss of a
billion-dollar-plus facility (like TMI).


One single disaster that occurred at an obsolete
Ukrainian reactor is no reason to be eternally afraid of all nuclear
power plants across the board. The old Chernobyl reactor used a
dangerous design that has never been used in the West, and which did
not even have a containment vessel. The 1986 Chernobyl accident was
caused by Soviet engineers conducting wildly irresponsible experiments
that were totally unrelated to normal civilian power production, and
which would never be allowed in the USA.

Chernobyl is an object-lesson of why there's so much "overregulation" of
the USA nuke power industry.


The Chernobyl accident
killed a total of 56 people, a great tragedy, but not a nation killing
disaster.

56 plant employees and emergency response people - some ordered at
gunpoint to attempt to put out the raging graphite fire which was being
kept going by the reactor's melted fuel load.

Excess illnesses, deaths and birth defects from the massive amounts of
radiation released at Chernobyl - a precise number will never be known due
to the polarity politics of the situation.

Far fewer people died at Chernobyl than on Japan Airlines
Flight 123 in 1985, when a lone 747 jetliner crashed and killed all
520 passengers.

I am sure many more than 520 people have had their lives cut short by
exposure to radiation and poisons released by Chernobyl.

Americans suffer over 40,000 deaths due to automobile
accidents every year, yet there is no great human cry to ban
automobiles.

No, however there was a great cry (expecially from the insurance
industry) for the auto industry to make their
products safer (which they have), most states require seat belt usage,
young drivers face more restrictions, many locales have police conduct
DUI, seatbelt and equipment roadblocks.

Airlines all over the world are held to high safety standards.

Nuclear power reactors do have worst case disaster scenios so horrid both
in human and economic terms that "do we need these, especially anywhere
near populated areas" is a very legitimate question.

Nuclear power plants in America have an excellent record for
safety and for clean, pollution free operation.

As long as you discount the spent fuel rods and in time the whole reactor
assembly when it reaches the end of its service life along with all the
other chem and nuke waste that's a byproduct of uranium and fuelassembly
manufacture.


By contrast, the over
600 coal burning power plants which produce approximately 49% of our
nation's electricity emit sulfur dioxide and oxides of nitrogen, which
combine with moisture in the atmosphere to form destructive acid
rain.

In the USA, coal plants are much cleaner than 20 years ago.
Coal itself will be made cleaner as the toxics will be removed from the
coal prior to burning with some of them having enough value to
partially offset the expense involved.


[...] A single 1,000 megawatt coal burning power
plant can release as much as 12.8 tons of thorium and 5.2 tons of
uranium every year, both radioactive metals which naturally occur in
coal. The uranium figure includes 74 pounds of uranium-235, the
highly fissionable form of uranium used to make atomic bombs.

Classic nuclear-industry propaganda. "Can" =! "does".
Would you have any specifics such as which gigawatt coal plants are that
dirty?


Coal
burning power plants also release microscopic particulate matter which
clogs the lungs and is attributed to causing approximately 24,000
unnatural premature deaths in the United States every year, which is
428 times the Chernobyl death toll.

Once again that bogus (optimistic) Chernobyl stat.


Why is there so little fear of coal burning power plants, but so
much hysterical fear of much safer and healthier nuclear power? The
answer is that nuclear power has been unfairly demonized by a
Hollywood entertainment industry trying to make a quick buck (The
China Syndrome, The Simpsons, etc.), and by scientifically
undereducated politicians and environmental activists.

I recall a lot of conspiracy talk due to the coincidence of the release of
the China Syndrome and the release of an estimated 50,000 Curies worth of
radioactive krypton and iodine from the partially-melted Three Mile Island
reactor when the hydrogen level in the containment building approached the
lower explosive limit and the designers of that building wouldn't
guarantee it's integrity should such an explosion occur.


There has
never been a single death attributed to American nuclear power plants,
which produce electricity at an average cost of less than 3 cents per
kilowatt-hour (2008 estimate), a rate comparable to hydroelectric
power and less than natural gas or coal.

That must be why when the steam generators start leaking after 25 years or
so service the utilities shut the plant down for good rather than spend
$300M and 3 years for a new steam generator.

There are about 14 perma-shutdown nukes; they are still consuming
ratepayer dollars (via plant decommissioning surcharges on electric bills)
while producing no power.

Consider that the cost of nuclear fuel is set by the DoE; it may be
artificially low.

The cost of coal power is
even more expensive if you figure in damage to buildings due to acid
rain and other air pollutants, and increased human health costs: the
monetary value of 24,000 human lives plus those who are simply made
ill.

Building newer, more efficient standardized nuclear power plant
designs using mass production techniques for major structural and
control components can make nuclear power a real bargain.

OK so what designs are going to be used? Is the industry still
in love with gigawatt leviathans or is there any significant movement
towards smaller sizes and designs with more flexible output which
would reduce the need for costly (cost per kw) peaking plants.

Just like
automobiles and televisions sets, the more you build using the same
design, the cheaper they become and the more predictable and reliable
they become. For the total US cost of the Iraq War, estimated to be
well over 2,000 billion dollars (2 trillion), we could have built at
least 500 1,600 megawatt nuclear power plants, outputting 800,000
megawatts total. That would have given the United States virtual
energy independence, almost doubling our current national electric
generating capacity of 906,155 megawatts (peak capacity for 2006).

Nuclear energy isn't going to help much with our current transportation
needs although cheaper electricity would facilitate more railroads being
converted to electric from Diesel power.


Nuclear power is the only technology that can produce an
extremely high volume of energy using only a tiny amount of land and
at reasonable cost, all without emitting any greenhouse gases
whatsoever.

Again, forgeting about needed security zones around the plant, plus the
land consumed by uranium mining and the conventional fuels needed.
And all nuclear power plants have Diesel-powered generators running on
hot-standby 24x7 to guarantee no matter what there will be electric power
for the reactor feedwater pumps and controls.

That is why the father of the living earth Gaia theory,
British atmospheric scientist James Lovelock, stated that nuclear
power is the only way to have a large human population on this planet
without causing global warming and destroying the environment. Please
read James Lovelock's public statement on nuclear energy, Nuclear
power is the only green solution, at:
http://www.ecolo.org/media/articles/articles.in.english/love-indep-24-05-04.htm

The economic benefits of a nuclear based, hydrogen fueled economy
are spectacular,

Mainly to the entrenched nuclear energy interests.

[chop hydrogen stuff for brevity]

I agree that biofuels can't replace petroleum unless some major
breakthroughs occur; they could help out on a regional basis though

And hydrogen will be indeed the Fuel of the Future along with
solar energy, coal-to-liquids, nuclear energy and wind power.


--
The published From: address is a trap.
.

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