Nuclear Energy, Yes or No?

[Lauren Hynde]

Or would that be best case?

I don't know, they may ask for the Statue of Liberty back.

 

[Colleen Thomas]

So, worst-case-scenario, France.

LOL,

Would that not be the greatest irony of all time? I can see the headlines in the Onion.

Pacifist nation nukes itself!

 

[china-doll]

Apparently a least one of the big oil companies sees a future in H2:


Shell Hydrogen Opens Fuel Station

Date Posted 11-18-2004
In Washington D.C., Shell Hydrogen has created a hydrogen filling station — the first of its kind for passenger vehicles — in order to provide fuel for General Motors' fleet of a half-dozen such vehicles. Located on Benning Road in the northeastern part of the District of Columbia, the project marks collaboration between the fuel giant and GM. The Dow Jones notes that the station is only an experimental service center, albeit one that could be seen as revealing a possibility of what the everyday driving experience could be like in the not-so-distant future. Shell Hydrogen, which opened a hydrogen station for fuel cell-driven buses in Iceland last year, is a subsidiary of the Royal Dutch/Shell Group.

 

[Lauren Hynde]

Apparently a least one of the big oil companies sees a future in H2:


Shell Hydrogen Opens Fuel Station

Date Posted 11-18-2004
In Washington D.C., Shell Hydrogen has created a hydrogen filling station — the first of its kind for passenger vehicles — in order to provide fuel for General Motors' fleet of a half-dozen such vehicles. Located on Benning Road in the northeastern part of the District of Columbia, the project marks collaboration between the fuel giant and GM. The Dow Jones notes that the station is only an experimental service center, albeit one that could be seen as revealing a possibility of what the everyday driving experience could be like in the not-so-distant future. Shell Hydrogen, which opened a hydrogen station for fuel cell-driven buses in Iceland last year, is a subsidiary of the Royal Dutch/Shell Group.

In Europe there are hundreds of hydrogen-powered passenger buses currently in circulation, as part of the CUTE project (funded by the European Union, DaimlerChrysler, BP and Shell)

I ride one of them almost every day of the week on my way to school.

 

[Lauren Hynde]

http://www.stcp.pt/images/noticias/H2Bus.jpg

 

[TheEarl]

Stars burn out and it isn't because they are out of things to react, if so there wouldn't be red dwarfs, or brown dwarfs. A star dies when it reaches the point of creating a certain element with the reaction, I want to say Iron, but I am not positive. From all I have read, if a star's mass goes beneath a certain level, then the gravitational pressure is no longer enough to sustain the reaction.

It would seem logical that if you started such a reaction, it would continue only so long as there was sufficient heat/pressure to sustain it. Once it broke the containment feild, it would seem that it would end, as it no longer had the requisite heat/pressure to sustain it.

Haven't read Hawking in quite a while, so I may be off base.

Colleen: The fusion does work on Blackman's Law (any system is limited by the reactant in least supply) and I think it is a mixture of iron, mercury and lead that result in the 'demise' of a normal sun. The mass doesn't really change (as much as these things can be ascertained), but with each step of fusion, the reactants become more and more difficult to fuse. The heavy metals cause the dissipation of the fusion and the collapse. If there's enough heavy metal and enough mass, then the collapse may create enough gravity to fuse the heavy metals (not sure into what though) and thus is the first stage of a black hole development.

The Earl

 

[Colleen Thomas]

Colleen: The fusion does work on Blackman's Law (any system is limited by the reactant in least supply) and I think it is a mixture of iron, mercury and lead that result in the 'demise' of a normal sun. The mass doesn't really change (as much as these things can be ascertained), but with each step of fusion, the reactants become more and more difficult to fuse. The heavy metals cause the dissipation of the fusion and the collapse. If there's enough heavy metal and enough mass, then the collapse may create enough gravity to fuse the heavy metals (not sure into what though) and thus is the first stage of a black hole development.

The Earl

thanks Earl. I'm a little tipsy, so I'll have to wait till in themorning or that to sink in

*HUGS*

 

[Weird Harold]

The idea of a runaway fusion reaction has been played around with in many sci-fi books over the years, but that doesn't mean it's real science.

Anyone know for sure?

As a long time Science fiction fan, I'd say Science Fiction has always been more concerned by runaway FISSION reactions. Problems with fusion reactors have always been about "uncontained" reactions in fusion plants big enough to power a starship faster than light -- an impossible construct as far as today's science can predict.

A terrestrial fusion reactor such as the ITER, would never produce the kind of power a SF FTL- starship requires. In fact most SF FTL power-plants anti-matter reactors rather than "fusion" plants.

From the reported power levels of experimental fusion reactors, I'd expect a few broken windows in the lab at most from a containment field failure -- maybe as much damage as cuople of "Cherry Bomb" firecrackers would cause.

If they ever manage to develop a sustained and controlled fusion reaction, the size of the reaction is going to be limited to roughly equivalent to the heat output of a Fossil Fuel fired generating plant.

If the containment field fails, the fuel supply would also fail and the reaction would continue for about a billionth of a second -- that might be enough to destroy the interior of the reactor building, but probably not enough to singe the paint on the cars in the parking lot -- especially if the building is engineered properly so that any explosion is directed straight up.

Chin-Doll:
Apparently a least one of the big oil companies sees a future in H2:


Shell Hydrogen Opens Fuel Station

Date Posted 11-18-2004
...

Thanks for the article. (and thanks for the picture Lauren.)

I did know that several different mass transit and fleet applications were being developed for H2 powered vehicles.

I wonder what process Shell is using to collect the H2 for their filling stations. I doubt that it's electrolysis just yet, because the demand isn't nearly high enough to make it economical.

 

[TheEarl]

I wonder what process Shell is using to collect the H2 for their filling stations. I doubt that it's electrolysis just yet, because the demand isn't nearly high enough to make it economical.

Probably actually the H2 byproducts from industrial chemical reactions that you were talking about. I can't wait till they start spreading in England.

Harold: Just out of interest - when you talk about H2 powering cars, are you thinkin of a regular combustion engine, or a Hydrogen Fuel Cell? That is one area where the technology is nearly in place - some of the most efficient energy generation in the world. Of course the major disadvantage is that our cars won't go 'brrom-broom' anymore, but that's a price Ithink we'll have to pay.

The Earl

 

[Colleen Thomas]

Colleen: The fusion does work on Blackman's Law (any system is limited by the reactant in least supply) and I think it is a mixture of iron, mercury and lead that result in the 'demise' of a normal sun. The mass doesn't really change (as much as these things can be ascertained), but with each step of fusion, the reactants become more and more difficult to fuse. The heavy metals cause the dissipation of the fusion and the collapse. If there's enough heavy metal and enough mass, then the collapse may create enough gravity to fuse the heavy metals (not sure into what though) and thus is the first stage of a black hole development.

The Earl

Thnnks Earl for the clarification. I used to find astrophysics so incrdibly intrigueing, but haven't read much on it in the past few years and I guess I am getting old, as things don't srping as readily to memory as they once did.

*HUGS*

 

[Weird Harold]

Harold: Just out of interest - when you talk about H2 powering cars, are you thinkin of a regular combustion engine, or a Hydrogen Fuel Cell?

I'm talking about retrofitting almost any internal combustion engine with a different carburator or fuel injection system and changing the timing slightly -- along with a couple of other minor modifications -- to permit it to use H2 instead of gasoline or diesel.

The conversion is very similar to conversion to run on Propane/LPG, Methane, or any other gaseous fuel.

The milage and horsepower are severely reduced but the conversion is actually fairly simple for most cars.

 

[Lauren Hynde]

I wonder what process Shell is using to collect the H2 for their filling stations. I doubt that it's electrolysis just yet, because the demand isn't nearly high enough to make it economical.

I can tell you that for the CUTE project, each city has different processes for locally producing hydrogen.

In Porto, where I live, and in Stuttgart, the primary sources of H2 are steam-reformer devices (which reform methanol or natural gas molecules into H2 and CO2)

in www.fuel-cell-bus-club.com:
The steam-reformer is designed for small production-quantities and can be operated flexibly from 40 to 100 % of its power. This kind of technology and design of a compact-steam-reformer that is built on skids, paves the way for a decentralised hydrogen-supply-concept in the future.
The produced hydrogen is stored in a tank-system in order to provide enough hydrogen to fill up the buses at the filling-station.

In Amsterdam, they use electrolysis, with all the electricity necessary for the process coming from renewable sources:
Using renewable energy which together with water is the basis for hydrogen production on-site. A pressurised electrolyser produces high quality hydrogen and stored in on-site storage tank. The next step is to fill up the busses to 350 bar with a compressor connected to a high-pressure storage system at 420 bar. The filling time will be about 10 minutes.

In Barcelona:
Hydrogen will be produced by means of an electrolytical process. Besides from the grid, electrical power will be partly obtained through solar panels, some of them installed in the depot where the buses will be maintained, so that a renewable process of hydrogen production and utilization will be shown and demonstrated.
Hydrogen will be stored on board the buses in gaseous form, and acompression station will be installed in the depot that will allow filling the buses during their idle period at night. Safety checks will be carried out on a daily basis. The amount of gas, and the pressure under which it is stored, will give the buses enough daily running range to cover the scheduled routes.

In Hamburg, the process is similar to Amsterdam's.

London isn't planning to use H2 produced locally, but rather use a third-party supplier of liquid hydrogen obtained from crude oil refining.

In Madrid, they're using on-site hydrogen production via natural gas reforming.

In Reykjavik, they're using electrolysis with all the electricity coming from renewable sources (geothermal and hydroenergy).

In Stockholm, they're using electrolysis with all the electricity coming from hydroenergy.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

Fusion works by forcing hydrogen atoms together to form helium. (Actually they use deuterium, which is the isotope of hydrogen that has a neutron in there with hydrogen's lone proton.) There's tremendous repulsive forces between the positive charged hydogen nuclei until they get close enough for the strong force to take over (the strong force is what holds protons together in the nucleus), then the excess energy is given off as new helium nuclei are formed. This is the reaction that happens in stars and fuels our sun.

It takes tremendous pressure and temperature to get the deuterium nuclei to fuse, and there's simply no way we can maintain these conditions on earth for any length of time. Fusion reactors are therefore designed to operate in pulses or bursts, containing the deuterium plasma in magnetic fields. Should the containment fail, the reaction simply stops. Deuterium is not radioacive and non-toxic in the concentrations we're talking about.

The only waste products of fusion are helium. No radioactive waste or toxic products at all. The big problem with fusion is, of course, the difficulty in achieving the initial conditions. As far as I know, to date no fusion reactor has managed to put out more energy than it consumes, but they're still working away at it.

---dr.M.

 

[TheEarl]

I'm talking about retrofitting almost any internal combustion engine with a different carburator or fuel injection system and changing the timing slightly -- along with a couple of other minor modifications -- to permit it to use H2 instead of gasoline or diesel.

The conversion is very similar to conversion to run on Propane/LPG, Methane, or any other gaseous fuel.

The milage and horsepower are severely reduced but the conversion is actually fairly simple for most cars.

I would have said that if conversion to H2 was possible, then we should go the whole hog and use hydrogen fuel cells. Quiet, exceedingly efficient and getting better all the time.

The Earl

 

[Weird Harold]

I would have said that if conversion to H2 was possible, then we should go the whole hog and use hydrogen fuel cells. Quiet, exceedingly efficient and getting better all the time.

The Earl

Which is more likely to be accepted by the average person -- $2,000 for a conversion of their existing vehicle or $45,000 for a completely new car?

I agree that hydrogen fuel cells are an avenue that needs to be explored, but it's a technology that will be a "rich man's toy" for quite a long time -- especially as it affects transportation.

Hydrogen Fuel Cells on a large scale as power generating stations for the electrical grid are a use that isn't being explored much as an alternative to fossil fuel powered generation of electricity.

Lauren Hynde:I can tell you that for the CUTE project, each city has different processes for locally producing hydrogen.

In Porto, where I live, and in Stuttgart, the primary sources of H2 are steam-reformer devices (which reform methanol or natural gas molecules into H2 and CO2)

Thanks for the link.

The steam reformer technology sounds like it's just moving the CO2 production away from the streets; I hope it's just a temporary source of hydrogen to prove the viability of H2 power.

I'm encouraged that so many places are using solar power to electrolize their hydrogen because that's the direction we need to go to eliminate fossil fuels from our economy.

 

[Lauren Hynde]

The steam reformer technology sounds like it's just moving the CO2 production away from the streets; I hope it's just a temporary source of hydrogen to prove the viability of H2 power.

It's a step in the right direction, at least. Nature has its own way of dealing with CO2. It's the CO(1) that currently rules the streets that needs to be eliminated.

 

[Weird Harold]

Nature has its own way of dealing with CO2. It's the CO(1) that currently rules the streets that needs to be eliminated.

True, CO is a direct and immediate dnger to people, but CO2 is a "greenhouse gas" and humanity is producing it faster than nature can deal with it -- not to mention the equatorial rainforests that handle most of the planet's CO2 are being destroyed so nature's ability to handle even "normal" amounts of CO2.

Anything that moves up the day when the world relies on clean power instead of fossil fuels is a step in the right direction but I do hope the steps that just move the problem of CO2 production to a new location are strictly temporary measures.


A lot of the solutions to our power problems are really just means to shift the location and type of pollution out of sight.

That's one of the big arguments gainst current solar technology; manufacturing Solar Cells economically generates a lot of pollution potential because of the toxic byproducts of the manufacturing process. It's not the same kind of pollution as fossil fuels produce, nor is it as pervasive, but it's still pollution.

Nuclear Power Plants present the same kind of problem; we trade greenhouse gasses and acid rain for concentrated waste that remains lethal for centuries.

I don't think we'll ever completely eliminate pollution, but we can make an effort to provide solutions that do more than localize and concentrate the main pollutants we're trying to eliminate.

 

[gauchecritic]

True, CO is a direct and immediate dnger to people, but CO2 is a "greenhouse gas" and humanity is producing it faster than nature can deal with it -- not to mention the equatorial rainforests that handle most of the planet's CO2 are being destroyed so nature's ability to handle even "normal" amounts of CO2.

Except that trees produce no net excess to the total. Sure they breathe it in during the day but they 'give off' co2 at night and as they die.

Certain algae on the other hand use up co2 and give off oxygen whatever the time of day. In fact something like 80% of the atmosphere's oxygen is produced by these micro-organisms.

That's not to say that razing forests is a good idea or at worst negligable.

 

[fifty5]

True, CO is a direct and immediate dnger to people, but CO2 is a "greenhouse gas" and humanity is producing it faster than nature can deal with it -- not to mention the equatorial rainforests that handle most of the planet's CO2 are being destroyed so nature's ability to handle even "normal" amounts of CO2.

Anything that moves up the day when the world relies on clean power instead of fossil fuels is a step in the right direction but I do hope the steps that just move the problem of CO2 production to a new location are strictly temporary measures.


A lot of the solutions to our power problems are really just means to shift the location and type of pollution out of sight.

That's one of the big arguments gainst current solar technology; manufacturing Solar Cells economically generates a lot of pollution potential because of the toxic byproducts of the manufacturing process. It's not the same kind of pollution as fossil fuels produce, nor is it as pervasive, but it's still pollution.

Nuclear Power Plants present the same kind of problem; we trade greenhouse gasses and acid rain for concentrated waste that remains lethal for centuries.

I don't think we'll ever completely eliminate pollution, but we can make an effort to provide solutions that do more than localize and concentrate the main pollutants we're trying to eliminate.

Hydrogen is a great storage medium - either via by-products of other processes, or of electricity that is generated, but not used (hydro or atomic, off-peak). It simply isn't (if I understand correctly) a significant primary energy source.

Atomic (fission) energy has all sorts of long-term issues (but do keep in mind that the longer the half-life, the less the actual radiation), but its big plus is that it's available. When I did the relevant Open University course (back in 1980) the total amount of 'spent fuel' (which is usable in fast breeder reactors) in store in the UK was greater than the total amount of energy available from all UK sources of coal. I don't have any update info about that, but the tad I have read suggests that'll have increased over the last quarter century.

It seems to me that what's really needed is 'joined up thinking' (in the current argot). The big issue (from the electricity generation pov) with nuculer is that it is slow to switch on and off (compared with, say, gas turbines). A policy to use 'off-peak' atomic - and the peaks in wind, etc. generation - to produce hydrogen, to smooth out the peaks and troughs in demand and supply, could help significantly.

Actually, it seems to me, 'only' a storage medium could be a helluva help.

Smoothing out demand variation could offer a great deal, but it needs massive scale organisation.

Just my 2-pennorth.

Eff

 

[Weird Harold]

Hydrogen is a great storage medium - either via by-products of other processes, or of electricity that is generated, but not used (hydro or atomic, off-peak). It simply isn't (if I understand correctly) a significant primary energy source.

Batteries are a much better storage medium than H2 would be -- if you're going to use it where you produce it to generate electricity. The loss involved in generating the H2 plus the loss involved in burning H2 to generate electricity is very close to 100%

H2 isn't considered a "primary energy source" only because gram for gram it is about 1/100th as powerful as hydrocarbon fuels like Gasoline and storage of gaseous hydrogen takes a lot of volume for the same amount of energy and storage of liquid hydrogen takes a big volume of insulation and or refrigeration equipment.

Consequently H2 fueled vehicles require refueling more often and/or pay a heavy weight penalty for their fuel storge system.

Those are not insurmountable problems because there is simply more Hydrogen than there are fossil hydrocarbons and it's easier to get to.

When I did the relevant Open University course (back in 1980) the total amount of 'spent fuel' (which is usable in fast breeder reactors) in store in the UK was greater than the total amount of energy available from all UK sources of coal.

We do need to make some effort to recycle spent reactor fuel instead of just burying it. It's not a difficult process to extract the useable fuel and useful transuranics from spent fuel, just expensive.

It seems to me that what's really needed is 'joined up thinking' (in the current argot). The big issue (from the electricity generation pov) with nuculer is that it is slow to switch on and off (compared with, say, gas turbines). A policy to use 'off-peak' atomic - and the peaks in wind, etc. generation - to produce hydrogen, to smooth out the peaks and troughs in demand and supply, could help significantly.

Actually, it seems to me, 'only' a storage medium could be a helluva help.

I'd hope for a more effcient storage system than creating and burning Hydrogen on site to smooth out the demand/load equation.

H2 would be more useful as a "transportation medium" than a "storage medium" -- the main benefit of an H2 powered system is that it's a simple way to move energy from where it's plentiful enough to waste on electrolysising Hydrogen from water to where power is harder to produce.

 

[fifty5]

H2 would be more useful as a "transportation medium" than a "storage medium" -- the main benefit of an H2 powered system is that it's a simple way to move energy from where it's plentiful enough to waste on electrolysising Hydrogen from water to where power is harder to produce.

You said what I meant better than I did!

Eff