Oil vs. Alternate Energy Sources

[Aravis]

What are your thoughts and/or recommendations?

[Tenarke]

One theoretical source of energy is controlled fusion.

We know that a thermonuclear fusion reaction is possible; it’s what makes the H bomb go bang. Since it is not limited by a minimum critical mass it might even be a practical small power source. The problem of radioactive waste product is also much less than with uranium or plutonium fission.

Unfortunately, though this possibility has been under study for over 50 years now no one has as yet been able to either crack the problem or to demonstrate that it is impossible. I have been interested to see articles from time to time that someone might be close to a breakthrough, but to date – no joy.

Since 2002 various labs have been looking at a phenomenon called sonoluminence. Roughly, bubbles in various liquids are imploded by very high frequency, very high amplitude sound waves creating very small volumes of extremely high temperatures and emitting light.

In 2002 the labs at Oak Ridge believed that they saw evidence that a small fusion reaction had occurred transforming a bit of heavy hydrogen into helium. Since that time, the reporting physicist, Dr. Taleyarkin has left Oak Ridge and now teaches at Purdue.

Subsequently a Dr. Putterman attempted to repeat this experiment at the University of California without success. This may or may not be significant. Putterman was not able to completely duplicate Taleyarkin’s set up due to budget constraints.

Additional funding has now been found and they are going to try again,

The odds are probably very long against, but I will try and keep my eye on this.

[Tenarke]

There has been more progress in the development of the hydrogen cell powered automobile.

Honda has produced a few hand built copies of its model FCX. This is about the size of their Civic sedan though considerably heavier. The fuel cell produces 80KW, or about 107HP. It carries 8.3 lbs. (4 Kgs) of hydrogen compressed to about 5,000 psi (340 Atmospheres). This gives it a range of only 190 miles to get to the next 5,000 psi hydrogen station.

I’ve seen nothing about price, or where one would go to buy one if one had the price; so, I suppose that these must still be considered prototypes.

There are mixed opinions as to the impact of a large scale increase in hydrogen production. If separated from hydrocarbons the quantity of carbon dioxide, the “greenhouse gas”, produced might nearly equal that of the petroleum fueled vehicles being replaced. If produced by electrolysis from water, the impact on the power grid would have to be met by new power plant development of some sort, hopefully not carbon fueled.

I am generally encouraged by this development and will continue to watch it. There are, however considerable problems left to be worked out.

No matter how clever we are, you still can’t get something for nothing.

[Aravis]

You bring up good points Tenarke, ones which I hadn't considered as I applauded this new car. It's never easy, is it?

[pinkozcat]

Some of our buses are being run on hydrogen fuel as a trial - not sure how it is going, though. I think that the idea is that the whole fleet will eventually change over from fossil fuel.

Western Australia is also in the forefront of the development of solar how water systems and most houses have them - no need for a compass here; one only has to look at the roofs to see which direction is north.

I only pay for hot water for about 5 months of the year and the rest of the time I'm trying to use up the hot water to prevent the tank from boiling.

There are also a couple of wind farms to generate electricity although I rather see them as pollution of a different sort - they take up a lot of space and are not very pretty.

However, with all these initiatives our government is building yet another coal-fired power station to placate the mining unions.

[Tenarke]

Here is an interesting article from NYT on possible improvements in Nuclear Power production. As the article points out this is not new technology, having been developed back in the ‘60s. It provides a way to extract more useful energy – i.e. electricity – from uranium fission while creating cooler, easier to dispose of, waste.

www.nytimes.com/2005/12/27/science/27nuke.html?th&emc=th

Note that the objections to this proposal are not technical but economic and political. The current U 235, water cooled, slow neutron reactor would produce power and “breed” plutonium. This would be burned by a second, sodium cooled, fast neutron reactor to produce additional power and a cooler, less radioactive ash.

The two problems are the additional reactor which would more than double the cost of the total plant and the fact that weapons grade plutonium would be produced at one point in the process. This latter is what we fear Iran and North Korea are up to now and what that fuss is all about.

We have been talking before about replacing carbon based fuels with hydrogen. Though this would reduce “greenhouse” emissions it would have an impact on the electrical grid. If an acceptable breeder reactor could be developed that might be one solution to the problem. It appears, however, that clean energy is not going to come cheap.