OT Hydrogen economy, not?

[danny burstein]

Oh please. Go read 'Blind Man's Bluff'.

I have... and I've met one of the authors.

The wire taps were *not* nuclear powered.

Not the initial one. But there were plans
for numerous extended duration taps which would
have used RTGs [a]. I don't know if any were
ever actively implemented, (no) thanks
to Ronald Pelton.

[a] I was a bit mistaken earlier when I mixed
and matched RTGs with "fission reactors".

 

[Eeyore]

Oh please. Go read 'Blind Man's Bluff'.

The wire taps were *not* nuclear powered. And there were more than one.
The boat responsible was also used several times to take divers to the tap
so that it could be serviced (batteries and blank tapes).

Go to wiki and you'll find which boats they were too (specially lengthened
IIRC).

Graham

 

[Eeyore]

Sorry, NO. I am not referring to SL-1. That was a relatively 'portable'
power plant built in the 50's that killed a crew performing maintenance one
night out in Idaho.

That answers my question too then.

I'm referring to a more recent research project to develop some high powered
'pulses' for another project in the mid 1980's.

I though the date was a bit late.

Graham

 

[Vaughn Simon]

Are you sure they were 'fission'? Many TNG's, but they weren't really
'fission reactors'. ISTR Voyager was one that was a 'concern' at the time
because it contained a toxic fuel, Pu.

Yes, fission reactors. ( Below from:
http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf82.html )

"Over 100 kWe, fission systems have a distinct cost advantage over RTGs.

The US SNAP-10A launched in 1965 was a 45 kWt thermal nuclear fission reactor
which produced 650 watts using a thermoelectric converter and operated for 43
days but was shut down due to a voltage regulator (not reactor) malfunction. It
remains in orbit.

(snip)

Between 1967 and 1988 the former Soviet Union launched 31 low-powered fission
reactors in Radar Ocean Reconnaissance Satellites (RORSATs) on Cosmos missions.
They utilised thermoelectric converters to produce electricity, as with the
RTGs. Romashka reactors were their initial nuclear power source, a fast spectrum
graphite reactor with 90%-enriched uranium carbide fuel operating at high
temperature. Then the Bouk fast reactor produced 3 kW for up to 4 months. Later
reactors, such as on Cosmos-954 which re-entered over Canada in 1978, had U-Mo
fuel rods..."



Vaughn

 

[Vaughn Simon]

About as much as other stupid ideas. A lot of roofs are already white,
or light colors to reduce the cooling load, and heating costs.

Not a stupid idea! Of course, I don't know why anyone (at least anyone in a
tropical climate like me) would have a dark roof to start with. If you were to
live in my neighborhood, the sight of Vaughn up on his roof with a paintbrush
would not be that unusal to you. I do it avery three or four years. The
materials to do it properly cost me about $1,000 and the job takes me months
with weather delays.

Now that I am over 60, I am not too sure how many of those paint jobs are
left in me.

Vaughn

 

[Eeyore]

You are absolutely right I am not British, and I am damn tired of
their bad behavior.

I doubt you have any serious experience of it.

The Norwegians DO. Hence the different attitude.

Graham

 

[Eeyore]

Why would you want to paint shingles?

To reflect IR. Alumium paint would probably be best.

About as much as other stupid ideas. A lot of roofs are already white,
or light colors to reduce the cooling load, and heating costs.

Not in Europe they aren't. Grey or brick red is more common.

Graham

 

[Eeyore]

In a true emergency, he could do a back-of-envelope (or even quick
mental) calculation of the fraction of the planet that's covered by
rooftops. You know, use some of those "number" things.

Albedo is not solely determined by rooftops.

Graham

 

[Eeyore]

I think we may have turned the heat OFF ten days in the last year.
It's 51F and foggy just now, predicted to peak at a scorching 58.

It's that damn global warming. They forgot to tell you it can go negative
too.

Graham

 

[Eeyore]

"Michael A. Terrell" wrote


Not a stupid idea! Of course, I don't know why anyone (at least anyone in a
tropical climate like me) would have a dark roof to start with. If you were to
live in my neighborhood, the sight of Vaughn up on his roof with a paintbrush
would not be that unusal to you. I do it avery three or four years. The
materials to do it properly cost me about $1,000 and the job takes me months
with weather delays.

Now that I am over 60, I am not too sure how many of those paint jobs are
left in me.

Taking the global view can make things look very different.

Graham

 

[Eeyore]

Thank you for that stunning insight. We can always count on you for
quantitative stuff like this.

There is a rather more inportant compenent of albedo which is cloud cover.

Where's the model ? Where's the data ? Increasing temps lead to more H2O
vapour with the potential for more clouds.

We call this negative feedback in my book IIRC.

Grahama

 

[Eeyore]

More brilliance! How *Do* you manage it?

Why not try it yourself ? It's good for the brain cells.

Graham

 

[Eeyore]

That is one thing that REALLY bugs me: People who think their tiny
view of the world is exactly like everywhere else, and what works in one
place will work everywhere. Then they complain about attitudes?

You mean like Americans ?

Seriously no offence intended. Just think it through. You're no dummy Michael.
Just think.


Graham

 

[Martin Griffith]

There is a rather more inportant compenent of albedo which is cloud cover.

Where's the model ? Where's the data ? Increasing temps lead to more H2O
vapour with the potential for more clouds.

O.K.
Where is "your model" and what are it's limits, and how did you test
it?

Where is "your data", like the stuff that "you" have actually
measured, around the world on a daily basis, every 10kM^ 3 for 50+
years

You must have some data of your own, that is utterly accurate,
absolutely accurate, that will never need to be modified when
technology improves by half a magnitude +- 3dB






martin

 

[Eeyore]

Since the Netherlands is barely the size of a major US city

I suggest you take a course in geography, or adjust your perspective.

Grahama

 

[Eeyore]

You've got to fly, or better yet drive, from coast to coast to
appreciate how big this place is. In a plane, you can go hours without
seeing more than sporadic signs of human effects. Driving Interstate
10 west from San Antonio, it can be days.

WHY do you have to fly that far ? Just because it's a big country ? Ever though
of dividing it into 'states' ?

Graham

 

[Don Klipstein]

Oh yeah, concrete surrounded by SALT -- that'll last a while! LOL!

I was talking about plugging up a mile long borehole with concrete.
Most of that mile will not be surrounded by salt.

Backfilling with, well, salt would work pretty well, I would think. And
there's no shortage of it around the mine site. Or sand, or dirt, or
whatever. If you still want to cap the last couple hundred feet with
concrete, that'd be fine too.

- Don Klipstein ([email protected])

 

[Don Klipstein]

30% sounds awfully low.

That has to be a pretty unefficient plant that are placed a very long
distance from where the power is used.

Most of the problem is converting heat energy from burning of fuel to
mechanical energy. 40% efficiency is good in that area. Motor vehicles
tend to achieve substantially less than that.

- Don Klipstein ([email protected])

 

[Don Klipstein]

Also, has anyone considered the "heat" pollution from our modern world? I
know that it's relatively small compared to the heat that hits us from the
sun, but doesn't all those engines, and nuclear plants, and coal plants, and
air conditioning, etc. all affect our environment?

Let's say we are now burning fossil fuels at a rate of burning 7
gigatons of carbon per year. This is probably slightly on the high side.

Just to simplify things, let's oversimplify "all fossil fuels" to
hexadecane, C16H34. Heat of combustion is 2,559.1 kcal/mole according to
the "Heat of Combustion" table in the CRC handbook for organic compounds.
This works out to 13.33 kcal or 55.8 kJ per gram of carbon burned,
including heat of vaporization realized from condensing the water vapor in
the exhaust to liquid water.

Multiply by 7E15 (7 times grams in a gigaton) and this means about 3.91
E20 joules of heat released per year from burning fossil fuels.

Meanwhile, sunlight in space averages about 1366 watts per square meter.
The Earth is about 12740 km in diameter, or 1.274E7 meters. Square that,
multiply by pi/4 and by 1366 and by 1/2 (the other half gets reflected
back out) and by number of seconds in a year (3.16E7), and the result is
sunlight delivering 2.75E24 joules of heat per year.
Fossil fuel burning produces heat in the ballpark of .000142 times the
amount of heat that the Earth gets from sunlight if I did not screw up
anything here.

- Don Klipstein ([email protected])

 

[Don Klipstein]

There is a rather more inportant compenent of albedo which is cloud cover.

Where's the model ? Where's the data ? Increasing temps lead to more H2O
vapour with the potential for more clouds.

More clouds requires a greater percentage of the Earth's surface to have
air over it having RH of 100%. Increasing temps also allows air to have
more water vapor without increasing RH.

We call this negative feedback in my book IIRC.

Increasing cloud cover was a widely spouted negative feedback mechanism
in the 1980's when "global warming" first started making the news as
something soon to come. Now that global temperatures warmed a goodly .4
degree C since we got good satellite monitoring of the atmosphere, worth
about a 2.5% increase in atmospheric water vapor content, I have not heard
of cloud cover actually increasing.

- Don Klipstein ([email protected])