SUSTAINABLE LIVING:The Fading of the Oil Economy

[GRG55]

Re: SUSTAINABLE LIVING:The Fading of the Oil Economy

...They would burn more filthy coal in the Mojave Desert to generate electricity...

Steve you are closer to Mojave than I so correct me if I am misinformed.

For reasons I cannot fathom (having driven through it a few times), Mojave seems to be a centre for an unbelievable amount of innovation. This goes back a long way. A lot of the early work to optimize the aerofoils on wind turbines was done in Mojave in the early 1980's. One of the most creative and prolific aeronautical engineers in the world, Burt Rutan, runs his company, Scaled Composites, out of Mojave (Google "Spaceship One"). Obviously there's a lot of cross-pollination going on there.

Here's an iTulip thread reference that didn't get a lot of attention when it was posted, but contains info on some things going on in Nevada and Mojave, CA that I strongly believe will evolve into commercial scale solar electric generation (I was first put on to this very high temperature reflector-array technology by an electrical engineering friend of mine in the Middle East of all places).
http://www.itulip.com/forums/showthr...jave#post29570

Maybe they do burn coal in Mojave, but I can't imagine the people that live there supporting any increase in that activity.

[Starving Steve]

Re: SUSTAINABLE LIVING:The Fading of the Oil Economy

Hi Jam:

A good website for you on atomic energy is: www.pushback.com .

A good read on the 2000 tons/yr. of radioactive emissions from coal-fired power plants is Publication #26 from the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, available at the pushback website above.

Nuclear power plants re-cycle most of their atomic waste, but for more information on the subject, please contact Dr. Bill Wattenburg at the website above or contact the O.R.N.L. thru the U.S. Department of Energy website.

I am just Starving Steve, a substitute teacher and a little Joe Six-pack.

[Starving Steve]

Re: SUSTAINABLE LIVING:The Fading of the Oil Economy

I am on the central coast of California, just to the north-west of the Mojave Desert by about 150 air miles.

Actually, the southern and western San Joaquin Valley is part of the Kern Desert, which is an extension of the Mojave Desert. A finger of the Kern Desert is just east of me by about 50 miles. The Kern Desert receives well under 10 inches of rain per year, and parts of the Kern Desert receive under 5 inches per year.

As for the people of the Mojave Desert, some are what I would call "divergent thinkers", and yes, some of these people in the Mojave Desert have been responsible for some really interesting inventions.

Edwards Air Force Base is a hub for research and development in civil aircraft, for example. E.AFB is near the town of Mojave, Calif.

And yes, one of the big solar energy projects in the U.S. is in the western Mojave. It is a solar power plant that produces steam using mirrors, and the steam turns a turbine to produce electric power. I think they call that thermal-electric solar power, if my memory serves me correctly.

Anyway, the story with this plant is that it produces electricity at a very high cost--- like 33cents per kwh.

But anyway, this plant does what it does. I guess at such a cost, the plant is a research facility in the field of solar energy. In other words, the plant wastes time and energy, and the plant survives by sucking-off of government research grants.

[phirang]

Re: SUSTAINABLE LIVING:The Fading of the Oil Economy

There are some decent solar thermal systems that have LCOE < $0.20/kWh, plenty decent.

I used to cover solar equities, and I just cringed when I heard the demand projects from mgmt... ugh. The most important part of the solar supply chain is cheap, dirty coal power from China(need the power to forge polySi ingots, etc). My last potential future boss said I was wasting time when I concerned myself with the thermal coal market and its effect on solar ingot prices... gah, idjits, as mark twain would say

The only hope is something like Nanosolar with a EROEI < 1 mth. The rest is shyte, imho. Even FSLR doesn't operate at the high voltages nanosolar does, and so FSLR can't compete on BOS (balance of system) costs with Nanosolar.

Now, we just need yield... *sigh*. If we can get power conversion > 20% (and under diffuse light!!!) and EROEI < 1mth, then we really do have a revolution in distributed power generation.

Those long solars now: watch out: this is a fossil derivative play. If you think fossils will correct, you should take profits unless you're plugged into future eps.

The other renewable techs are very site-specific... what about Thorium? Isn't thorium the silver bullet of fissile fuels?

[Starving Steve]

Re: SUSTAINABLE LIVING:The Fading of the Oil Economy

Thorium is a decay product of uranium, and some thorium isotopes are very radioactive; other isotopes such as 232 are only slightly radioactive.

One or more of the isotopes of thorium can be fisioned in reactors to generate heat. Because thorium is more plentiful in the Earth's crust than uranium, thorium may someday replace uranium as a fuel source for reactors.

The health issue with thorium is when thorium is released into the atmosphere from traditional coal-fired power plants, or wherever coal is burned--- even at home in a fireplace or furnace. Smoke or dust particulates of thorium can cause lung cancer when breathed into the lung.

Both uranium and thorium are found in coal beds, and when coal is burned, these elements can be ingested into the human lung and cause cancer.

Finally, no such releases of uranium or thorium have ever occurred from atomic power plants in the Western world. These releases come from coal combustion, as discussed above.

A total of 2000 tonnes per year of radioactive material are released into the atmosphere by burning coal, and the world can thank the environmentalists who killed nuclear power for this. The article explaining this environmental disaster in detail is available at www.pushback.com.