Let's just use D batteries. Good enough for a flashlight, good enough for a Macbook.
Ten years left to redesign lithium-ion batteries?
91–100 of 261 posts
Re: Ten years left to redesign lithium-ion batteries?
#92Earlier quoted context omitted.
The USA has plenty of rare elements to mind as long as the military doesn’t mind paying more. The USA is already a resource powerhouse, but China has undercut it severely in refining because they hadn’t been caring much about their environment. The USA military also really really excels at strategic logistics, I’m pretty sure they have more than just a few months stockpiled.
The military has to compete for these resources with the private sector, you might be surprised at just how much the current logistics toolchain simply buys from private companies off the shelf.
The government can, and will in any WWII-level war, choose to ration industrial metals that are in short supply. The US government in WWII effectively allocated who was allowed steel, copper, tin, cobalt, etc. to ensure that sufficient material was diverted to military needs.
Re: Ten years left to redesign lithium-ion batteries?
#93The problem with Rare Earth is that the West collectively acts like 3 year old who are to dumb to solve incredibly simple problems. Rare earth contained lots of Thorium and that has to be handled as nuclear waste and that means you have 1000s of tons of nuclear waste on your hands. This is of course completely idiotic because Thorium not really a big problem as it is not radioactive. The few Rare Earth mines that do…
Thorium is not much radioactive indeed, but radon it emits is. That's why f.ex. building houses on a granit (that is generally thorium rich) without proper ventilation underneath can result in serious health issues.
There's loads of cities built on and with granite, and long before any awareness of Radon came about, without undue health effects. Scotland particularly - Aberdeen is even nicknamed the Granite City. Modern levels of draught exclusion can make for a little more of a problem of course.
Re: Ten years left to redesign lithium-ion batteries?
#94The solution is investment in public transportation and a reduction in consumption.
There's absolutely no reason for most people in industrialized countries to own a car, other than the fact that the public transportation infrastructure sucks. With the shift of gas to electrically powered vehicles, there's even less of a reason for people to own an electric vehicle with a massive battery. We need higher density public transportation. Where the kwh of transporting a person goes down on average, thus reducing the need for more batteries.
As residential density increases, and road infrastructure can't keep up, we'll see a lot more bike paths, light and heavy rail, close proximity grocery stores, etc...
Look at Atlanta right now. Traffic is a clusterfuck, suburbs are also expanding, prompting more people to own a vehicle so they can get to downtown where the jobs are. You sit on the highway, and every single person is in a 5 person vehicle, only for 1 seat to be occupied. What a colossal waste from a utilization perspective.
Atlanta has decided to repurpose an old rail loop around the city and make a paved path around the entire city, which connects to other public infrastructure via auxiliary paths and existing trails. It is called The Beltline. It will take maybe another 10 years to complete the entire loop, but the city will be ready to handle the problems that will ensue decades from now.
Re: Ten years left to redesign lithium-ion batteries?
#95Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thorium is radioactive, just not very much. It's toxic in the way a lot of heavy metals are. https://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/toxprofiles/tp147.pdf
Yeah is radioactive but you can build a bed out of it and sleep on it so its not radioactive in any practical sense. And of course Toxic is not a problem because most of the metals a rare earth mine would deal with would be toxic. You can actually find heavily concentrated earth in the US that would basically count as nuclear waste because nuclear policy is so insane.
To Woah:
You might look here [0]. A great quote about the radiation levels: "Searching for uranium is in some ways easier than for other mineral resources because the radiation signature of uranium's decay products allows deposits to be identified and mapped from the air."
Key phrase:
mapped from the air
[0] http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fue...
Re: Ten years left to redesign lithium-ion batteries?
#96One of the more interesting aspects of modern global warfare is the fact that, should the world decide to stage another world war, pretty much everyone is going to run out of a lot of these strategic resources within a few months to years. This, plus the fact that nuclear warfare is going to be extremely limited due to lack of available weapons, and the virtual impossibility of invading a country you don't share a la…
> nuclear warfare is going to be extremely limited due to lack of available weapons There's 15,000, which is easily enough to destroy a lot of cities and kill maybe half the world's population? https://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/Nuclearweaponswhohasw... I'll admit that we don't know what total warfare looks like in the 21st century when jets take a decade to build. I suspect it would look a lot more like Syria.
Nuclear weapons won't target cities, there simply aren't enough weapons to hit all of the military targets, so none would be left over for counter value. It makes little sense to target civilians, who can't directly inflict damage on your nation's military or citizens, when you have available military targets that will further the accomplishment of objectives.
So all nuclear warfare in total war is counter force.
Re: Ten years left to redesign lithium-ion batteries?
#97The solution is investment in public transportation and a reduction in consumption. There's absolutely no reason for most people in industrialized countries to own a car, other than the fact that the public transportation infrastructure sucks. With the shift of gas to electrically powered vehicles, there's even less of a reason for people to own an electric vehicle with a massive battery. We need higher density publi…
People want a consistent, reasonable commute time.
Los Angeles's utilization rates for public transportation could probably be improved a great deal by giving buses priority over individual car traffic so that bus commute times were relatively short and predictably so.
But what a huge political battle would have to be won to change street and freeway use regulations...
Re: Ten years left to redesign lithium-ion batteries?
#98The problem with Rare Earth is that the West collectively acts like 3 year old who are to dumb to solve incredibly simple problems. Rare earth contained lots of Thorium and that has to be handled as nuclear waste and that means you have 1000s of tons of nuclear waste on your hands. This is of course completely idiotic because Thorium not really a big problem as it is not radioactive. The few Rare Earth mines that do…
Thorium is radioactive, just not very much. It's toxic in the way a lot of heavy metals are. https://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/toxprofiles/tp147.pdf
It looks like it's 10,000 times more radioactive than a natural mix of potassium isotopes so worrying on the "radon concentration in your basement" level not "radioactive waste" level.
Re: Ten years left to redesign lithium-ion batteries?
#99Oh god, another Erlich/Simons bet is needed: what's low is the level of rare earth exploration and exploitation not absolute supply. Is there a supply chain problem? Yes. Are we approaching a mad-max hell war for the last vestiges of humanities wonder mineral? Alas.. no. The ten years meme is based in a false premise. The article even says Australian known sources are only utilised at 14% and yet predicts a long term…
> what's low is the level of rare earth exploration and exploitation not absolute supply
This article is about cobalt and nickel, neither of which are rare-earths.
Re: Ten years left to redesign lithium-ion batteries?
#100Oh god, another Erlich/Simons bet is needed: what's low is the level of rare earth exploration and exploitation not absolute supply. Is there a supply chain problem? Yes. Are we approaching a mad-max hell war for the last vestiges of humanities wonder mineral? Alas.. no. The ten years meme is based in a false premise. The article even says Australian known sources are only utilised at 14% and yet predicts a long term…
> what's low is the level of rare earth exploration and exploitation not absolute supply This article is about cobalt and nickel, neither of which are rare-earths.
It's also fundamentally wrong in its headline and lede conclusion. And it even admits as much:
> Recycling cannot replenish supplies. Lithium-ion batteries last for 15–20 years, 3 times longer than the 5–7 years for lead-acid batteries. Refiners might exploit poorer quality ores, especially as prices climb. But greater processing costs would push the prices higher.
So... no. We aren't going to run out. We'll see a continuous bend in the demand curve as new production methods come online.
It's exactly the same logic that led to all the fretting about "peak oil" in the 90's and early 00's. No, all that happened (sadly) was that when gas crossed $3/gallon we suddenly invented fracking and prices stabilized.
Batteries will get more expensive. We'll survive.