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The New Atomic Age We Need

nytimes.com

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Re: The New Atomic Age We Need

#201

Post by DennisP »

greglindahl wrote: post #190
thebmax wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm all for innovation in storage and think there might be a breakthrough at some point. But this goes to the heart of it. Right now a fully renewable grid that matches what we currently have is not financially viable. Not saying it won't become so at some point but it's a high hurdle. All things considered having close to 100% reliable electricity in every home in America for less than ~$100/month is hard to compete…

That totally makes sense -- although renewable energy and energy storage have been making huge strides recently, let's assume that no further improvements will happen.

Yes, it makes about as much sense as the assumption by many renewables advocates that nuclear technology can't improve.

Re: The New Atomic Age We Need

#202

Post by merpnderp »

chefkoch wrote: post #172
merpnderp wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, that French design that has such a horrible safety record in France. Oh wait, it has an excellent record and France is still exporting power from those designs. And I don't think everyone knows that safety is not their primary concern. What other country shoots CEO's in the head when they put citizens at risk with poisoned products or environmental disasters?

Wie already know the flaws of this design, that's why there are newer safer designs like the epr are build or planned in the west. You can drive around in a 30 year old car without problem, but most people would prefer the safety standards oft today. And chinas track record in other parts of the energy business show that shooting that one CEO isn't that big of a help. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_coal_mini…

The problem is probably the newer designs don't have as many successful rollouts. And when spending 10 years and billions, predictability is important. But after Googling around, I do see France has some non-trivial issues with Chinese safety issues.

Re: The New Atomic Age We Need

#203

Post by selimthegrim »

ommunist wrote: post #103
jessaustin wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For some reason this reminded me of Anton and Ivan Vanko. Hopefully Tony Stark will stop fomenting regional conflict and just let Ivan get to work. b^)

In this particular case Tony lured Ivan to US, swamped his efforts, Ivan being not familiar with fund raising and PR, hoped that brilliance of his invention will shine through any sh#t. It did not.

Er, this is a cold fusion claim, is it not?

Re: The New Atomic Age We Need

#204

Post by prodmerc »

ommunist wrote: post #52
prodmerc wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean like the Toshiba 4S? Most countries have designs for awesome stuff (at least on paper), which is never implemented for various reasons.

Have a look on early woRking prototypes of self-driving version for circumpolar regions http://cont.ws/post/128573

Huh, that's really interesting. Truly land (and sea) mobile nuclear power plants - I wonder why they gave up on them?

Seems like an awesome idea for powering remote locations, for sure.

Maybe they were deemed unsafe for military operations?

Re: The New Atomic Age We Need

#205

Post by selimthegrim »

johncolanduoni wrote: post #117
Retric wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think you need to be overly generous when they suggest the UK needs to be both 100% energy independent and 100% free from fossil fuels, and grow 100% of it's food locally, when the UK imports ~35% of it's electricity in 2013 and ~40% of it's food (1). Let alone fossil fuels. And if we can't meet those goals we need to do X. 1: In 2010, the UK produced 73% of ‘indigenous-type foods’, and is about 60% self-suff…

I wasn't arguing for all his calculations, it's just that his evaluation of the theoretical limit of crystalline silicon cells is accurate. He is correct that it is unlikely that they will get much closer to the theoretical limit than 20% in real life situations. Some GenIV nuclear reactor technologies have a somewhat clearer path to viability than multi-junction solar cells, which have not been able to beat traditio…

There are multiple well-attested routes around the Shockley-Quiesser limit most of which do not involve just silicon. One, which MacKay touches upon, is multi-junction systems. Another, which he does not (not being an expert in the field) is via so-called multiple-exciton generation systems. Contrary to most engineers' understanding, this phenomenon is pretty well explained from the point of a low-energy continuum QFT for the materials that most care about for implementation. The real game changer would be to mate these systems with topologically nontrivial materials with surface charge transport protection. Unfortunately with current fabrication capabilities, 70% of the conductivity is in the bulk, which does not possess the topological prohibition to one-particle (or one e-h pair) backscattering. (It would also be interesting to see if the known allowability of 2 particle backscattering applies to excitons in these systems)

Re: The New Atomic Age We Need

#206

Post by ilaksh »

jensen123 wrote: post #194
ilaksh wrote: post #187

That equation changes when you move to a sustainable society. Much smaller residential plots in suburban/rural areas, cut out commuting by 60 plus percent by using Skype etc. Move to much smaller single passenger electric vehicles (300 pounds instead of 3000). Switch to high-tech (or low tech) efficient ultra-local food production, like potato bags on every roof, a tilapia farm on every corner. Solar on every roof, t…

I love this idea of tiny houses and 1-person vehicles! I'm currently living in an apartment and using public transportation, which of course is what many environmentalists are recommending. However, this is not a good solution because of the noise from neighbors. I'm currently tempted to move to a house and get a car, but of course, that is not good for the environment. The tiny house and tiny car idea solves this!

Right, thanks for pointing that out. I have had similar thoughts about public transportation and apartments which is part of what lead to this idea.

They could be human powered or maybe self-driving transport pods, much more efficient than cars or buses. Also, airtight construction helps a lot with noise pollution from neighbors.

Re: The New Atomic Age We Need

#207

Post by ommunist »

selimthegrim wrote: post #203
ommunist wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In this particular case Tony lured Ivan to US, swamped his efforts, Ivan being not familiar with fund raising and PR, hoped that brilliance of his invention will shine through any sh#t. It did not.

Er, this is a cold fusion claim, is it not?

nope, this is different completely. the Gritskevitch idea is to get electric current from magnetism of liquid toroid propelling without friction. This was built in the late USSR. Two proof of concepts in Vladivostok, and one fully operational >2MW HMD generator in Armenia. The PPT I found at padrak with google search contains actual contacts of the son of the inventor. Yes, it's the odd place, but it seems, American Association of Clean Energy is not existing yet, so cannot host such things. I cry, when such tech is marginalized. Unfortunately for us, PR genius rarely shares the engineering brain, Tesla was an exception.

Re: The New Atomic Age We Need

#208

Post by Gravityloss »

nickhalfasleep wrote: post #119
Gravityloss wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

US has lots of sunny areas with little people, agriculture or wildlife, but UK doesn't. Many European countries are dense and cloudy. It can still help.

I'm surprised they don't invest in production just south in North Africa, it would be pretty trivial to lay cables across to Gibraltar. They would of course have to do it with a sense of economic fairness and fairly pay the countries in money and technology / education transfer.

It's quite unstable politically.

Spain might be a better bet.

On the other hand, maybe one could just move people to Spain and avoid this whole electricity transportation mess.

Re: The New Atomic Age We Need

#209

Post by draaglom »

chaz72 wrote: post #107
draaglom wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While the overall issue is not about redistribution in the traditional sense, the battle lines often are. On the one hand you have capitalist-optimists like Thiel who basically focus on increasing energy output from non-carbon sources (which tends to mean: nuclear). The effect is to maintain the status quo (everyone can keep on using energy without worrying about depleting a public good). On the other hand you have t…

Was it a "redistribution of wealth" when paint makers were told "hey, stop making paints with lead in them, people are getting hurt"? If it was, was that a bad thing? I would argue it was sure inconvenient for paint companies but a net gain to society. Perhaps some level of funding should be given to these companies as we take their rights away - and perhaps not, depending on how foreseeable and expensive their issue…

As to your first point: I agree with you, both redistribution of wealth and regulating companies can be very good (even necessary) things.

Acting on climate change is one of those necessary things.

W.r.t the OP though: anecdotally the point sometimes does seem to be to take their income away - I've met many people who appear to have chosen their position on climate change because it happened to be the anti-establishment one.

Re: The New Atomic Age We Need

#210

Post by chaz72 »

draaglom wrote: post #209
chaz72 wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was it a "redistribution of wealth" when paint makers were told "hey, stop making paints with lead in them, people are getting hurt"? If it was, was that a bad thing? I would argue it was sure inconvenient for paint companies but a net gain to society. Perhaps some level of funding should be given to these companies as we take their rights away - and perhaps not, depending on how foreseeable and expensive their issue…

As to your first point: I agree with you, both redistribution of wealth and regulating companies can be very good (even necessary) things. Acting on climate change is one of those necessary things. W.r.t the OP though: anecdotally the point sometimes does seem to be to take their income away - I've met many people who appear to have chosen their position on climate change because it happened to be the anti-establishm…

Well, at the time the OP mentioned it, I had never heard of people choosing a position on climate change just because of who would get hurt by the process of addressing it. I still have never heard an example, and I've certainly never spoken to such a person.

I'm not disputing your experience. Some people are just contrary.

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