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Post by exoticimports on Sept 27, 2020 4:46:03 GMT -8
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Post by wingedwishes on Sept 27, 2020 6:44:28 GMT -8
So we have to decide which energy production way we want to go. Solar panels are apparently worse. spectrum.ieee.org/green-tech/solar/solar-energy-isnt-always-as-green-as-you-thinkGeothermal where available looks to me to be the cleanest followed by wind. I do not know the by products of wind turbine production though. Growing crops to make bio fuels has great potential though it is not being pursued much it seems. As the species matures, the adage adapt or die becomes more important. Adapt to preservation has dual meaning 1. adapt to survive the destruction we are causing or 2.adapt to prevent destruction. Both seek to preserve the species but in different ways. I still hold to teaching personal accountability over expecting a government to take care of everything. Good post EI (aka Exoticimports) |
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Post by nomihoudai on Sept 27, 2020 7:07:25 GMT -8
I think the topic is interesting but I think the article is not good. It paints a one sided picture based on wrong ideas.
Let me explain.
Recycling consists of 2 things, either the viable reuse of a compound or winning back the original compound and recreating it. The type of fiberglass used cannot really be recycled in the second way, but it can certainly be cut down and reused in applications if wanted.
Second the article talks about current wind turbine blades that are coming to their end of life. It does not deal with changes that we can make to them if the disposal of them was a problem.
Third, the article states "we cannot create more environmental damage". I do get that sentence when you talk about batteries that can leak reactive chemical compounds, I do get it with radioactive materials that are dangerous well beyond the most likely existence of humanity. But wind turbine blades made from non reactive stable fiber glass? Just toss them somewhere. It's not like it's radiating or we are running out of space in the US.
My electricity comes exclusively from wind turbines in Texas. I am using 4 times as much energy as I used to use in Germany, but the price I pay monthly is the same. I was experimenting with highly optimized electronics (the battery lives nowadays is not comparable at all to devices 5 years ago) and wanted to see if I can live off grid with a solar oven, but before that experiment I left the country. Here in Texas I am bound to the grid as I need a running AC.
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Post by kevinkk on Sept 27, 2020 8:34:18 GMT -8
We will run out of space at some point. Look at the EU, that's where everyone is headed at some point, or look at China, or India.
Just tossing used items in a canyon is not a solution to garbage.
My opinion, people don't "need" everything they think they do. We have space in the USA, sure, I'm not looking forward to any wind farms,
I've seen them already, and solar panels? Oh, ok, you still need batteries to store power from those and from wind.
Green energy isn't all it's cracked up to be and I don't want government making typical dumb decisions about what's best for "the American people"
while lining their pockets.
Recycling could be done more efficiently, but it doesn't line politicians pockets, even now, our trash is buried, very few are actually really
interested in the future, they claim it, and fly private and live in multi-million dollar houses. Ok, if I had the money, I'd probably be the same way,
I'll let you know later.
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Post by exoticimports on Sept 27, 2020 9:42:24 GMT -8
I’m sure there is a use for them. I don’t know the depth, I wonder if they’d make great Quonset huts. I knew they broke and wore out, I didn’t realize the quantity. One blade in our area is sheared in half, I can’t imagine what it was like when 30 meters of blade went flying.
As far as biofuel, corn was hot for years, now it’s some sort of bean. Our area this year is loaded with thousands of acres of beans.
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Post by gaspipe on Sept 27, 2020 9:49:55 GMT -8
Nuclear energy is a no brainer.
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Post by kevinkk on Sept 27, 2020 15:56:10 GMT -8
Nuclear energy is a no brainer. Exactly! shoot all the nuclear waste into the sun. Problem solved. |
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Post by wingedwishes on Sept 28, 2020 5:58:25 GMT -8
Nuclear energy is a no brainer. Exactly! shoot all the nuclear waste into the sun. Problem solved. Would be cheaper maybe to launch it and then cleaner....as long as no failure to reach orbit happens. With turbine blades, if they are chemically inert, artificial reef material. |
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Post by exoticimports on Sept 28, 2020 6:11:35 GMT -8
Exactly! shoot all the nuclear waste into the sun. Problem solved. Would be cheaper maybe to launch it and then cleaner....as long as no failure to reach orbit happens. With turbine blades, if they are chemically inert, artificial reef material. Good idea. Better yet, seal the ends and anchor it for a FAD. And kids can play on it. Fill one with foam and you have a 30x10 meter dock. |
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Post by jshuey on Oct 11, 2020 7:12:35 GMT -8
It's worth noting, that these recurring "new releases" have ties back to the fossil fuel industry. I get one of these stories sent to me every month or so. john |
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Post by jshuey on Oct 11, 2020 7:52:44 GMT -8
Nuclear energy is a no brainer. Exactly! shoot all the nuclear waste into the sun. Problem solved. My first job out of school was at Battelle Memorial Institute working on the "Crystalline repository" project for high-level nuclear waste (aka, fuel rods). A bunch of ecologists were hired to help DOE think through options for storing the waste. At the time, Battelle had a tiny-little fission research platform (I think they hesitated to call it a reactor but to be honest, it was so damn secret that I wasn't sure exactly what happened inside that structure) located just outside of Columbus Ohio (since dismantled and cleaned up) and they had world-class people designing fuel rods for DoD applications. So why not add a few ecologists? First, shooting the stuff into space is a non-starter. The risk of a catastrophic, high consequence event is simply too high. Given the rate of failure for space shoots at the time, and the mount of material to be disposed of, several accidents were guaranteed during the process. Plus price.... Keep in mind that nuclear power was supposed to be "too cheap to meter" - $50M a ton to dispose of waste would probably disrupt that pricing model. Little interesting facts that I gleaned from the project. The repository will reach peak radio activity in a few thousand years. At that time, the heat from the stored materials will have raised the surface of the earth over the repository 3+ meters due to heat expansion. People of the future should stay completely out of the repository footprint - expected to cover tens-of-square kilometers. The idea was to surround the site with a series of monoliths, such that you could not enter the site without seeing two of these at a time. The monoliths would be inscribed with universally understandable pictographs saying "DANGER!!! KEEP OUT!!!" or something equally inspiring (in 10 thousand years - don't expect intelligent life to be able to read English). And they had to last 10-of-thousands of years... A nice design problem. Many of the sites we evaluated were just stupid. Salt domes along Lake Erie and the Gulf Coast. (Interesting thing about salt, is that it would "squish" back together following the work, sealing everything up as tight as a button). Granite domes in Maine and near Ashville, North Carolina. Thirty years later, I still don't think a real site has been chosen. Yucca Mountain in Nevada keeps inching forward along the process (I think currently that there are "test tunnels" being bored there). I think eventually it will just happen at Yucca Mountain without actually making a decision that local residents can react to. In the meantime, all that spent fuel is being stored in cooling ponds adjacent to the reactors themselves. In your back yard, so-to-speak. John |
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Post by exoticimports on Oct 11, 2020 9:37:08 GMT -8
It's worth noting, that these recurring "new releases" have ties back to the fossil fuel industry. I get one of these stories sent to me every month or so. john That may be so, but it doesn’t make it untrue. It’s important to have opposing interests , both sides expose flaws in the other. The wind farm supporters would never reveal discarded blades or deaths of birds. Whether the exposure of these things is from a competitor or not is immaterial, so long as it’s factual. It doesn’t mean wind isn’t the best alternative, it means we should be informed to influence from an intelligent position. And it’s always interesting to know who is keeping quiet or covering up something. |
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Post by 58chevy on Oct 11, 2020 10:03:30 GMT -8
Breeder reactors (nuclear reactors that produce more fissionable material than they consume) can be considered a renewable resource because the spent material (usually uranium, thorium, or plutonium isotopes) can be used as fuel again. The second usage produces another excess of nuclear fuel, and so on. Unfortunately they have not been in widespread use in the USA because of political opposition to all types of nuclear reactors. What the opponents don't seem to understand is that modern breeder reactors are much safer than early nuclear reactors. Long-term radioactivity is greatly reduced because the transuranic elements (those heavier than uranium) can be easily removed from the spent fuel. To me these reactors seem like a good short-term solution to energy production, until fusion reactors are perfected. Once fusion comes online, the world's energy problems will be over. Fusion reactors will produce primarily harmless helium as waste, which will escape into space. We have been living in close proximity to a giant fusion reactor for 5 billion years without suffering harmful effects (thanks to earth's atmosphere and magnetic field).
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Post by jshuey on Oct 11, 2020 10:33:35 GMT -8
It's worth noting, that these recurring "new releases" have ties back to the fossil fuel industry. I get one of these stories sent to me every month or so. john That may be so, but it doesn’t make it untrue. It’s important to have opposing interests , both sides expose flaws in the other. The wind farm supporters would never reveal discarded blades or deaths of birds. Whether the exposure of these things is from a competitor or not is immaterial, so long as it’s factual. It doesn’t mean wind isn’t the best alternative, it means we should be informed to influence from an intelligent position. And it’s always interesting to know who is keeping quiet or covering up something. exactly, it's worth noting. |
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Post by kevinkk on Oct 11, 2020 17:02:36 GMT -8
I saw some program about the suggestion of the monolith type storage facility and the issue of being understood.
I know we aren't going to launch nuclear waste, it was kind of a lighthearted attempt at ludicrous humor to a real
issue. Burying things that have reached their usefulness is the easy way out..
Power generation is a formidable topic,even here in Oregon, most of our power is Hydro, and there are problems with that.
I don't see solar or wind as ever becoming viable for a country as large as the USA.
It's a rainy sunday here.
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Post by jshuey on Oct 12, 2020 6:03:15 GMT -8
I saw some program about the suggestion of the monolith type storage facility and the issue of being understood. I know we aren't going to launch nuclear waste, it was kind of a lighthearted attempt at ludicrous humor to a real issue. Burying things that have reached their usefulness is the easy way out.. Power generation is a formidable topic,even here in Oregon, most of our power is Hydro, and there are problems with that. I don't see solar or wind as ever becoming viable for a country as large as the USA. It's a rainy sunday here. Sorry! Launching the waste was an option that was really evaluated by DOE! And you still hear people talk about it seriously. So I'm probably a bit touchy about it! Here in Indiana, one of the state governments that aggressively protects the coal industry, two regional power companies have committed to become 100% renewable in about 15-20 years. Both have aged coal plants that have to be replaced, and solar and wind in combination with storage are cheaper options. Both are taking first steps by building new transmission lines to feed power from wind fields and are building their own wind farms. Solar is also in the works, but here in farm country there is a lot pf resistance to converting a few thousand acres of row crop to solar. (and note that they have looked at urban roof-top, but the limiting factor is finding enough roof-tops that can support solar panels). Storage lags a bit behind, and as long as they have their old plants on-line, they can wait out technological advances for a few years. One of the issues that I can't understand, is why you can't elevate the panels and run mild grazing animals under them - aka sheep. The solar developers simply want nothing outside their control happening under those panels - frustrating to me. FYI - One of my roles at work is working with utilities as they make this transition. We developed a set of siting guidelines to use for wind, such that ecologically sensitive areas can be avoided (https://www.nature.org/en-us/what-we-do/our-priorities/tackle-climate-change/climate-change-stories/site-wind-right/) and I've been working with Purdue University Extension to develop guidelines for native pollinator friendly plantings under solar farms. Their first drafts were all about honey bees and red clover. Now we've included an ok mix of native species that could actually support common leps as hostplants and nectar sources. And today, a national holiday in the US (Indigenous American Day here at my PC employer - who happens to have a staff that includes lots of indigenous Americans across western and Latin America), I will send out a proposal to a wind developer to provide bat conservation that offsets the mortality caused from turbine strikes. John |
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Post by nomihoudai on Oct 12, 2020 6:50:16 GMT -8
One of the issues that I can't understand, is why you can't elevate the panels and run mild grazing animals under them - aka sheep. The solar developers simply want nothing outside their control happening under those panels - frustrating to me. Solar panels are brittle. When having no proper support they can damage easily. Wind will make them wobble due to sheering forces. That's why I think it will not work well. |
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Post by kevinkk on Oct 12, 2020 8:34:59 GMT -8
Ok, then. I am not surprised that launching nuclear waste was looked at, the government comes up with a variety of ideas...
Solar panels- they will take up a lot of space, and a roof being a "No brainer" think again.
Besides the structural issues, as a tradesperson, most of my work for 30 years has been roofing. Try putting a new roof
on a house with solar panels. Without forethought, which is the case about 99.999% of the time, it's a liability, and typically
the home owner simply trashed the panels, now maybe they'd be more efficient nowadays. But every good idea has some issue that we
don't find out about until later.
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Post by 58chevy on Oct 12, 2020 15:57:51 GMT -8
Another energy source that received attention in the '70s &'80s is solar power satellites. They would collect energy from the sun 24/7 and beam it to earth via microwaves. Collecting stations on the ground would convert the microwaves to electrical energy and distribute it through the grid. There would be no pollution, no threats to wildlife (except directly under the microwave beam) and no byproducts to dispose of. I'm surprised that this technology hasn't been developed. There were some technical challenges back then and the satellites would have been very expensive, but the benefits would be enormous. If one or two satellites were launched over each continent, nobody on earth would be without power. And nobody would be starving.
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Post by kevinkk on Oct 12, 2020 16:21:41 GMT -8
Another energy source that received attention in the '70s &'80s is solar power satellites. They would collect energy from the sun 24/7 and beam it to earth via microwaves. Collecting stations on the ground would convert the microwaves to electrical energy and distribute it through the grid. There would be no pollution, no threats to wildlife (except directly under the microwave beam) and no byproducts to dispose of. I'm surprised that this technology hasn't been developed. There were some technical challenges back then and the satellites would have been very expensive, but the benefits would be enormous. If one or two satellites were launched over each continent, nobody on earth would be without power. And nobody would be starving. Interesting, but I see it fraught with problems having microwave beams that would probably pose issues with aircraft as well as wildlife. But- there you go. Throwing out ideas is the way to get things done. One time at work we were arguing in the office, and this one person chimed in "I've never made a bad call at work". My response- "that's because you never make any decisions". End of argument. It's been a slow day here, except for forgetting to log in an entry in my checkbook and freaking out about fraud, arguing with city officials about Columbus Day aka Indigenous People's Day. Any one that wants to hear about that can ask. You might regret it. The short version- Oregon apparently decided in 2019 to give the knee high boot to Columbus, but there's more to the issue in my neighborhood. |
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Post by nomihoudai on Oct 12, 2020 19:49:09 GMT -8
The microwaves/lasers used to transport the energy will not be an issue.
The issue is the economic cost. On Wikipedia they explain that a transport cost of $200 per kg to space is needed. SpaceX has brought that cost from $54000 kg to $2700 per kg. We need a company that can operate 10 times cheaper than SpaceX to make it work.
I hope that the further development of AI will make a few of these things economically feasible.
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Post by wollastoni on Oct 13, 2020 1:46:44 GMT -8
Another interesting question is : what will happen when our species will have access to free infinite non-polluting energy. Of course the human-related global warming issue would be solved (which will be a great news).... But with infinite free energy, we would be stupid enough to use it to destroy even more our ecosystems, for money, for war and so on. Homo sapiens is a parasite species, my friends.  We will disappear with the death of our host... : nature. |
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Post by exoticimports on Oct 13, 2020 4:06:22 GMT -8
But every good idea has some issue that we don't find out about until later. WE being the general population, or in corporate, the team members. There is a problem that's gone way overboard, and that is group think. Some twit comes up with a good idea, and everyone is supposed to jump on board. Anyone who questions the idea or even suggests vetting is labeled as a non-team member. So anyone who wants to keep their job shuts their mouth. Meanwhile, it seems the more vague, more outlandish, and the greater the promise of profit, the more the idea is embraced by managing decision makers. In the commercial world, the sales guys then get the blame when this great idea won't sell. Where we now see recurring stupidity in the commercial world is decisions made by bean counters rather than engineers et. al. They pat themselves on the back for saving tons of money, put it on their resume; that it comes out five years later that the cheap solution is deficient doesn't matter, since the accountant and the managers have jumped ship. This problem certainly exists in the government world. And, though there are clinical trials and such with medicine, there are plenty of instances where known issues were, at best, sort of ignored. And, then there is the science world, which suffers the same problem- naysayers and critical thinkers are ostracized, fired, and sometimes even prosecuted! I've always invited everyone to play devil's advocate for my ideas. I WANT people to suggest potential flaws with my strategies and ideas. I'd much rather know early on than after wasting thousands of hours in development. It's not personal, and even if it is, if the adversary is right, they are right...still working to my benefit. Chuck |
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Post by exoticimports on Oct 13, 2020 4:09:38 GMT -8
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Post by exoticimports on Oct 13, 2020 4:29:46 GMT -8
... solar power satellites. They would collect energy from the sun 24/7 and beam it to earth via microwaves. Collecting stations on the ground would convert the microwaves to electrical energy ... one or two satellites were launched over each continent, I just can't imagine that THIS would be weaponized! (laugh laugh) Chuck |
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