Re: takes 1.5 gallons gasoline to produce 1 gallon ethanol in modern agriculture
- From: mmeron@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 26 Jun 2006 00:30:38 GMT
In article <pan.2006.06.25.20.05.19.560375@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>, The Ghost In The Machine <ewill3@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:
On Thu, 22 Jun 2006 07:15:33 +0000, mmeron wrote:If it is close enough to the Sun (anywhere between Venus and Mars at
In article <pan.2006.06.22.06.57.14.728236@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>, The Ghost In The Machine <ewill3@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:
On Tue, 20 Jun 2006 22:02:09 +0000, habshi wrote:
I am dead serious . A tennis ball sized ball of plutonium can
destroy a small city , so much is needed to run a farm tractor for say
50 years , Ghost ?
There are a fair number of issues in any sort of nuclear reaction
facility, which is one reason why they are so complex (and not even
invented before about 1945, with the US Manhattan project and, shortly
afterwards, the Russian equivalent).
I do know that a small amount of plutonium can drive a spacecraft for many
years, simply because of the radioactivity thereof; no chain reaction is
required. However, spacecraft do not need quite as much power (after
being launched) as a farm tractor, especially when plowing.
Said plutonium doesn't drive the spacecraft since the spacecraft
doesn't need to be driven (it coasts). It just provides power for
onboard instrumentation.
Mea culpa...though there is an ion engine out there, which exhausts xenon
gas. I don't know its actual power source offhand.
least) then solar will do fine. Much further, you could use a
plutonium source but this'll be very measly propulsion, not much poser
there.
Sure, "if". In practice, you can extract the power by adding this 1
More pertinent data is also available, however:
http://www.opendemocracy.net/globalization-climate_change_debate/2587.jsp
67,000 tonnes of fuel per year produce 363 GW. This translates into
2.123 kg/second fuel consumption rate. Dividing further by 363 GW, and
assuming one needs 200 kW of power at most, one can compute that 1 g of
plutonium would last over 2 years. However, there are a fair number of
problems scaling down; a large engine loses less heat than a small one
because of the square-cube problem. A far more practical solution would
be to use battery-powered tractors, recharged by a nuclear power plant
in the vicinity on a regular basis.
If it is minute it might not need much shielding and if it is energy
surplus then we can free much land for other uses.
I rather doubt that. For starters, that 1 g of plutonium might also
yield a dandy bomb, since it has the explosive power of 40.9 kg of
dynamite. Did you want the tractor to plow the field, or plow through
everything in the immediate vicinity? :-)
1 g of plutonium has zero explosive power. There is no linearity here.
Unless you've a critical amount, or at least an amount which can be
squized into being critical, you've no explosive power. Not that this
means that it is useful for powering a tractor, mind you:-)
Good point. I'll admit my working assumptions for critical mass is a few
pounds of the stuff so I kinda goofed here...however, if it is
somehow possible to extract the energy from that 1g of plutonium all at
once, one would still have a dandy bomb. :-)
gr to an already critical mass. By itself, no, not really.
But if not, just buy more nuclear powered tractors and tinker a bit... :-)Yeah, tinkering is always fun:-)
Mati Meron | "When you argue with a fool,
meron@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx | chances are he is doing just the same"
.
- Prev by Date: Re: GRAVITATION
- Next by Date: Re: A word about most of you :-)
- Previous by thread: Nonrenormalization vs Renormalization 78: dy/dt = ky(1 + y)
- Next by thread: A Small Miracle
- Index(es):
Relevant Pages
|
