http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kldA4nWANA8
This is the BAT, the world's first airborne, high altitude wind turbine. The turbine has a low weight, and is mounted within a helium balloon airframe. It sends power to the ground through its' tether, and can also provide Internet connectivity as well.
This is a good example of continuing development in the area of clean energy. It's something to be optimistic about; and we can hope that it is widely adopted.
That is really neat! I can see the applications in rural and remote areas if the cost point is decent with maintenance that doesn't require a degree to keep up with. Of course, places like Wyoming probably need not apply. The winds there would turn the bat into a migrating bird in a hurry, but there must be no shortage of places that would benefit.
Great find!
That is a brilliant idea.
In the UK, as an island, we have lots of wind and water to generate electricity but the local people always oppose new schemes because they don't want to see it on the landscape/seascape and have their properties devalued. Consequently the UK has a poor record on renewable energy despite being a perfect place for them. If the turbines could be at altitude one of the biggest stumbling blocks are removed.
At the moment the move towards nuclear seems to be too strong when there are cleaner alternatives.
Quote from: Pimander on October 25, 2014, 01:33:15 PM
At the moment the move towards nuclear seems to be too strong when there are cleaner alternatives.
Nuclear isn't all the horror that activists and reactionaries make a life's mission in depicting it to be. Old tech sure is....and new tech is nothing like it. I mean consider, when the Fuku reactor was 'state of the art', "Archie Bunker" was popular on TV....The Ford Pinto was being driven and considered by enough to be a decent car (rear end accidents not withstanding), while people wondered why a member of the Manson family would want to shoot President Ford. The world runs on antiques, then wonders why they utterly fail.
Pebble Bed and other technologies, where the default fail safe condition in catastrophic failure is a cold reactor, is the way though. Milking the last years from bad designs, outdated by average maintenance on 30 year old equipment has to be the worst way though.
Of course...Solar, Wind, Geothermal and Hydrothermal are still among the best ways and supplements. They just have nothing remotely like the scale required for even 1 developed nation, let alone a region or world of them.
Nuclear is NOT clean, is expensive and not renewable if you depend on mining for it. Any process that has waste that is toxic for thousands of years should be a last resort not a go to solution in my opinion.
Nuclear may not be as bad as some think but it is surely not the best solution. Your last paragraph I would agree with (except the UK could provide most of its needs except when it is not windy) but there are other possibilities that are suppressed or not yet viable but could be a solution. Magnetic harvesting is one and compact fusion could well help. Imagine a tiny fusion reactor in every home or a small one in every town.
Quote from: Wrabbit2000 on October 25, 2014, 03:03:52 PM
Nuclear isn't all the horror that activists and reactionaries make a life's mission in depicting it to be.
Yes, it is. With nuclear power, you are:-
a} Using a stationary nuclear bomb in order to drive a steam turbine. Yes, really. You are attempting to produce continual, miniature nuclear fission detonations within a reaction chamber.
b} Creating waste as a byproduct of said reaction, which we have no ecologically non-destructive means for disposing of. Burying it in the ground doesn't work. All that means is that the ground at a certain depth will end up irradiated. Matter/antimatter might be an order of magnitude more dangerous, but at least it would also be more clean.
Nuclear power is primitive, inefficient, completely unnecessary, and above all, horrifically dangerous.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqv0Y1t1bNw
I urge everyone here to watch this, to learn about positive alternatives.
Quote from: petrus4 on October 28, 2014, 12:51:32 PM
a} Using a stationary nuclear bomb in order to drive a steam turbine. Yes, really. You are attempting to produce continual, miniature nuclear fission detonations within a reaction chamber.
Are you sure about that? As far as I understand it there are no detonations (the sudden release of a big amount of energy in a short time), as there is no critical mass to achieve an unstoppable chain reaction, so the radioactivity, even if much stronger than on naturally occurring radioactive minerals, only creates high temperatures, that are used to drive the steam turbines.
QuoteI urge everyone here to watch this, to learn about positive alternatives.
No thanks. :)
Quote from: petrus4 on October 28, 2014, 12:51:32 PM
Yes, it is. With nuclear power, you are:-
a} Using a stationary nuclear bomb in order to drive a steam turbine. Yes, really. You are attempting to produce continual, miniature nuclear fission detonations within a reaction chamber.
I hate to disagree....but having nuclear cores/rods and making it explode in a proper yield detonation are worlds and light years apart. A reactor cannot and will never succeed in producing a thermonuclear explosion. I mean, they don't 'just happen' as a result of error or failure conditions. They need very precise, very carefully constructed sequences of events to happen without deviation to produce anything but a dud and something like North Korea, to be blunt. ..or a meltdown, of course.
A reactor is, at its heart (and especially now that more materials are being used in prototype designs) simply radioactive material that generates heat by it's unstable nature in close proximity to other material in the same condition. (super laymen explanation there but there ya go).
If you don't remove the design issues of the old (currently running) generation of reactors, where it takes a positive action by operators to put it into a safe condition? Then we are asking for a meltdown. Not an explosion..and that still is flat out impossible to achieve in those conditions. What you CAN get...and what Fukushima DID get 3 times over are hydrogen explosions from the venting of gases secondary to a meltdown in progress or about to begin.
Pebble bed...by comparison to one alternative, is NOT a matrix of fuel and graphite rods which, in the wrong configuration, will cause catastrophic meltdown. It is a design which requires positive action to CAUSE the reaction and positive control to MAINTAIN it. Loss of that control (like the loss of electrical power at Fuku) results in the reactor returning to a cold and safe state.
^^^ That "Safe on fail" or defaut to safe, should be the ONLY design or form of reactor allowed in the public sector or energy generation. However, there are nuclear 'pod' designs that are 100% self contained and impossible to turn critical, designed to bury into a neighborhood and then power that whole neighborhood for a period of years. Those are examples of 'default to safe' reactor designs. It would take deliberate terrorist style sabotage to turn one of those into something deadly, IMO.
Some reference material: Pebble Bed Reactors - Princeton University (https://www.princeton.edu/~achaney/tmve/wiki100k/docs/Pebble_bed_reactor.html) and Modular Pebble Bed Designs - MIT (http://web.mit.edu/pebble-bed/)
Thorium also promises a solid and much better fuel to use than what has been used up to this point. We see...1970's garbage...and judge nuclear power by it. It would be like judging the safety of the automobile by examining a Ford Pinto. We'd conclude ALL vehicles are inherently dangerous and prone to gasoline explosion on impact ....when it was just a design issue. This nuclear design issue just happened to be key to most currently operating reactors in the world today. :(
Quote from: Wrabbit2000 on October 28, 2014, 04:30:58 PM
Thorium also promises a solid and much better fuel to use than what has been used up to this point. We see...1970's garbage...and judge nuclear power by it. It would be like judging the safety of the automobile by examining a Ford Pinto. We'd conclude ALL vehicles are inherently dangerous and prone to gasoline explosion on impact ....when it was just a design issue. This nuclear design issue just happened to be key to most currently operating reactors in the world today. :(
Gold. I stand corrected.
Quote from: Wrabbit2000 on October 25, 2014, 03:03:52 PM
Nuclear isn't all the horror that activists and reactionaries make a life's mission in depicting it to be. Old tech sure is....and new tech is nothing like it.
Yes it IS :P It is also a stupid waste of future resources
While Petrus is incorrect about the explosions in a reactor, he is correct about the fact that we are literally using the fuel in a glorified steam engine. And at the same time all the ACCESS radiation is poluuting every thing it touches for thousands of years
We have solar cells that absorb radiation directly and give us clean energy
WHY can we not make collectors that absorb the radiation from the fuel directly? Several have had ideas along that line... several of those were killed
Nuclear FUSION on the other hand, like HE3 fusion IS clean and super efficient. 25 tons of HE3 can power the entire USA for one year with cardboard shielding and no waste
So STOP wasting the radioactive material until we grow up beyond steam engines
BTW putting the waste underground IS a solutiion, as a) it came from the ground in the first place and radioactive decay is what keeps the core molten and b) stored underground future generations that learn how to use that wasted energy will have it to gig up again
QuoteI mean consider, when the Fuku reactor was 'state of the art',
Fuk U Shima was never state of the art. They CHEATED They cut costs and eliminated the middle step. They left out the heat exchanger and just pumped the radioactive water straight to the turbines. Day one after the tsunami hit all those pipes were scattered like toothpicks. They NEVER had any hope of containment from day one.
Quote"Archie Bunker" was popular on TV....The Ford Pinto was being driven and considered by enough to be a decent car (rear end accidents not withstanding), while people wondered why a member of the Manson family would want to shoot President Ford. The world runs on antiques, then wonders why they utterly fail.
So WHY have we not upgrades from Archie Bunker Nuclear Steam Engines?
::)
QuoteOf course...Solar, Wind, Geothermal and Hydrothermal are still among the best ways and supplements. They just have nothing remotely like the scale required for even 1 developed nation, let alone a region or world of them.
HE3 is the key to all our energy needs. We can wait till hell freezes over before the mad scientists give us 'Free Energy" Even if the do give us a working model it will take years to implement
But HE3 is here NOW (has been for many years in the black world as shown by Pimanders post with the space drive) HE# is lying around on the surface of the moon several million metric tons of it 100 tons will power the world for a year... so there are over 10,000 years of stored energy just lying around for the taking'' Clean efficient and safe with tremendous output. A small HE3 reactor can power a space craft easily
What is the hold up? Well the Oil Barons would lose their shirt LOL
Quote from: Wrabbit2000 on October 28, 2014, 04:30:58 PM
Thorium also promises a solid and much better fuel to use than what has been used up to this point.
Thorium is good. Tons of that on the lunar surface as well
Buy your mineral rights today
(http://www.thelivingmoon.com/43ancients/04images/Moon4/thorium_01.jpg)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68A_HPYGdlk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68A_HPYGdlk
Quote from: zorgon on October 28, 2014, 07:46:46 PM
Yes it IS :P It is also a stupid waste of future resources
I definitely disagree on this. Too many hundreds of full scale reactors have been in 24/7 operation for 60 years or more now, with
TWO major accidents, to suggest the technology itself is flawed or unsafe. The designs and technology simply require a factor to be central which IS inherently imperfect and prone to fault. That's what I was saying earlier. Man is the factor 'modern' or currently operating designs require. As Fukushima showed, if man makes poor decisions with other issues already pushing the facility into crisis? You have a double or triple meltdown. .....despite the fact two reactors at Fukushima remained in perfect condition throughout and could, if the Japanese desired, be brought back on-line for power generation today.
The difference between units 1-4 and the surviving units 5 and 6? About 30 feet in elevation. Nothing more...nothing less. If 1-4 hadn't had backup generators at grade level? The physical plant was in good condition following the quake, and it was in operable condition to the second the wave crossed the reactor buildings ....and took their outdoor grade level generators off to God knows where (were they ever even found??). Further, Fuku has a sister facility about 7 kilometers south on the coast and sharing similar designs. It survived the disaster fine, and was shut down in a controlled way. It also wasn't subject to seeing everything not made of concrete washed away with a wall of water. Different geography...and that made all the difference between a footnote and a catastrophe.
We not only have designs that weren't great, even when they WERE "state of the art" and "new", but they are located in the WORST places I can imagine. Along Oceans, Rivers and lakes. Basically where any major accident will be amplified 100 fold by the nature of the immediate surroundings. Idiocy....so they could have easy and plentiful water for cooling. Well....they could have put Fukushima back a few miles, routed the water TO them, and the disaster wouldn't have a fountain of doom pouring into the Pacific today. (Chernobyl wasn't pretty..but it wasn't catastrophe. Geography and something for scale, made all the difference there)
I think we're on a topic which has two distinct levels of discussion though. What SHOULD be...and what human needs demand right now.
First, we have what COULD be...SHOULD be...and WOULD be...if we had different leadership. Money isn't the issue, as nuclear is infinitely more profitable (in potential anyway) in a perfect world than oil can ever be. Nuclear just needs rocks in close proximity to generate heat by their nature, and power is generated the old fashioned way from there. Water heated to spin massive turbines, which operate good old fashioned electrical generators. Precisely the same tech a hydroelectric dam uses, sans the heat. (gravity forming kinetic energy in water turns those turbines). Same concept tho... So SHOULD it be this way?
No... Of course not... There ARE Alternatives. If we had seen a 'moon shot' level of commitment and urgency back in the 90's or even 10 years ago? We'd likely have a healthy % of power generation from "renewable" sources and net 0 pollution from it in the end. We haven't though, and to this day, "Alternative Energy" is the biggest running scam known to man. Not because it HAS to be...but because those running it are greedy bastards looking for short term profit statements and not long term for a nation's health.
QuoteWhile Petrus is incorrect about the explosions in a reactor, he is correct about the fact that we are literally using the fuel in a glorified steam engine. And at the same time all the ACCESS radiation is poluuting every thing it touches for thousands of years
The current designs do, yes. They pollute as if that were the point of the effort in terms of the nuke waste. Then again, the nuke waste wouldn't BE half the problem it is if politicians weren't determined to block any dump site .....AFTER spending billions to milk all the construction dollars they can, of course. (Yucca Mountain is a monument to the hypocrisy of problem solving in the nuclear field). We've littered the oceans in AT LEAST 4 BIG sites of open nuclear waste dumping. "We" being the member nations of the Nuclear Club, and not a one is innocent on that. Bury the stuff....and it goes where it came from in a far more controlled environment than nature had it.
QuoteWe have solar cells that absorb radiation directly and give us clean energy
Indeed...We do. It's a hope I share with you. However, after over 25 years of developing it? It still represents only 8% (http://www.errorsofenchantment.com/2013/05/31/subsidies-and-electricity-generation-which-sources-produce-and-which-simply-suck-up-tax-dollars/) of what 330 million Americans need to have their light switch turn a light on. Nuclear AND petroleum are finite resources. Not finite in our lifetimes (despite fear mongering over peak oil nonsense) but our kids or their kids could see a true exhaustion of it. So we DO absolutely need that 'moon shot' to develop tech. Until then tho? Power Plants are needed today. Not a year from now or a decade from now when alternatives will generate the wattage. Tech is what it is when the need is right now, and electricity literally determines life and death in the modern world.
QuoteWHY can we not make collectors that absorb the radiation from the fuel directly? Several have had ideas along that line... several of those were killed
Nuclear FUSION on the other hand, like HE3 fusion IS clean and super efficient. 25 tons of HE3 can power the entire USA for one year with cardboard shielding and no waste
So STOP wasting the radioactive material until we grow up beyond steam engines
I agree 100%. Helium-3 is a wonder and a true magic bullet solution when compared to the primitive options we've been using. It's potential and ability to supply power is incredible and I stumbled over that one in the 90's. Now...find us a way to not only make lunar round trips routine and regular, but viable for commercial transport of serious mass and weight coming back each time. When we have THAT one solved, the moon is literally only a question of time and patience to going even further to what may show more promise than even H3. We're still not in the ballpark of "truck drivers" making regular runs from the moon to the Earth's surface and back.
QuoteFuk U Shima was never state of the art. They CHEATED They cut costs and eliminated the middle step. They left out the heat exchanger and just pumped the radioactive water straight to the turbines. Day one after the tsunami hit all those pipes were scattered like toothpicks. They NEVER had any hope of containment from day one.
Okay... I'm not doubting what you're saying in contributory causes to the ultimate failure. However, I will say I'm very familiar with the order and sequence of events from the quake to the last blast and Japanese essentially calling it a lost cause to meltdowns. I see a clear, logical and very sensible chain of events that lead from the water washing away power for cooling systems, to the emergency venting to prevent a containment pressure explosion, only to turn the reactor buildings into improvised hydrogen bombs.....which promptly blew, as one might have expected. Where are you seeing the additional factors which doomed things more than having lost the ability to POWER cooling systems before the cores forced that venting as the only choice in a nightmare situation?
I agree Fuku was doomed from the moment the water washed over them, but I'd say it was a result of no power to run cooling systems which require it. In the ultimate irony the world learned from that? A nuclear power station of the common designs requires OUTSIDE power to keep from blowing up in a giant hydrogen blast before melting down completely. We solve that by reactors that default or fail INTO a safe mode and not away from ever reaching one again.
QuoteSo WHY have we not upgrades from Archie Bunker Nuclear Steam Engines?
Above my pay grade...and meanwhile..the solutions don't physically exist in ways or on scales needed, while the electricity remains a survival need in most of the world. (If nothing else..think back to your classes on habitation and survival zones. Humans can only live in a shockingly small area of this planet without artificial means to offset climate/temperature. It was a shock to first realize and learn that.)
QuoteHE3 is the key to all our energy needs. We can wait till hell freezes over before the mad scientists give us 'Free Energy" Even if the do give us a working model it will take years to implement
Again, the only supply sufficient and known to exist is within sight....but line of sight goes a long way in space. Find a way to make commercial transport off the moon's surface a viable industry, and we'll have our H3 based power in short order. They'll find another way to rape us on billing...don't worry. lol...
QuoteBut HE3 is here NOW (has been for many years in the black world as shown by Pimanders post with the space drive)
It is here, and I have little doubt it is very much used by our Government and others. It DOES exist on Earth, so they can scrape it to some degree that way...and they may very well have secret space programs to recover more of it. They could literally and legitimately call that a top national security priority to give it carte blanche secrecy protections as well as near unlimited budgets within needs. After all, the prize for that effort is, as we agree, power for next to nothing. At lest when yield to mass and energy to generate is taken into account. Yup.. Power for nothing ....Now get enough of it to supply 330 million people ....or 7-8 billion....as most of them haven't seriously begun forming a demand yet. I don't think much of this is based in solutions or ideas as the problem. It's scale to an enormous demand which has just started to demand more.
Just to add a thought to this. Fuku is a story I threw myself so totally into back when it happened, I almost lost myself for how BAD the situation was and still is there. The very first story I threw myself into after leaving my trucking career and long before I learned perspective or how to turn off emotion with this stuff. There is a BIG thing I came away from it with tho.
Almost EVERY currently operating nuclear plant in the world could be Fukushima. They are ONE power failure away from it. Almost...every...single...one of them. That power failure would have to be extended, and include emergency backup power like Japan saw. Still....if that happens to a modern reactor in the U.S. before they've had a chance to shut it down and make it safe? Well...these nutty designs we're using don't cool themselves, and of course, that's kinda the point. They keep rising until they melt soil itself to go down.
It almost happened, had river conditions continued to get worse and a couple other factors which didn't pan out to be likely after all, had happened. That plant was on the Missouri River outside Omaha. (Fort Calhoun in the Spring of 2011 (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/21/us/21flood.html)).
I think, at a MINIMUM....Every single nuclear facility in the world, in a rotation to make sense and keep it real, be forced to shut down 100% from ALL outside electrical power for at least 72 hours in real world operation. Not table top theory and not manufacturer's specs to promise it'll all work as advertised. Every last one that cannot default to a cold state in failure should have to do that and be shut down if they fail and have to return to outside power before the pre-determined deadline or "end of disaster" that would be simulating.
Without that? We're just that ONE power failure away...and I have at least 3 nuclear power plants within a distance to be at least concerned with. How about everyone else? (Those are just what I know of in the public record, of course)
Quote from: Wrabbit2000 on October 29, 2014, 12:58:44 AM
Indeed...We do. It's a hope I share with you. However, after over 25 years of developing it? It still represents only 8% (http://www.errorsofenchantment.com/2013/05/31/subsidies-and-electricity-generation-which-sources-produce-and-which-simply-suck-up-tax-dollars/) of what 330 million Americans need to have their light switch turn a light on.
In Portugal, in 2013, only less than 1% of the electricity used was from solar sources, but 58.3% of all the electricity used was from renewable sources, mostly from wind and hydroelectric power stations.