My new Danish energy idea about how to make wind power more useful.

[NNadir]

Every 20 minutes or so for the last 50 years, someone drags out the idea of running the world's cars and trucks on wind power. The idea is, apparently, to distribute a few billion tons of strong acids and heavy metals around the planet in a dumb ass fantasy to make wind, which blows when ever the hell it feels like it, and not necessarily when a bunch of German anti-nuke fundies want to put Weinerschnitzel in the toaster oven.

Rather than attempt the disaster of trying to cover the planet with vast piles of discarded batteries - which is, by the way what all batteries become in a very short period, I have an alternate suggestion.

I suggest that the renewable wind paradise in Denmark ban coal immediately, because it's a wind paradise, and instead hook up all of the alarm clarks in the country to anemometers. Whenever the wind blows, the alarm clock rings. In this way the Danes will know precisely when to run their toaster ovens, stereos, and of course, their electric pencil sharpeners.

After sufficient training in this area, the Danes will be qualified to train the Germans in the same procedure.

[0007]

1. I vote for methane digester's and steam engines

[kestrel91316]

2. How many nuclear plants are needed for your all-nuke utopia?

How much uranium will be needed to power them? How long will the world's uranium supply power all those plants? How much radioactive waste will be generated, and exactly how will YOU (yes, YOU, personally) secure that waste so it cannot harm anyone EVER? Because those of you who are pushing it are gonna be held personally responsible for the consequences this time if you shove it down our throats.

Oh, and when you've run out of uranium, what will you do?

You spend all day and night denigrating ALL alternative fuels - SHOW me how your solution meets your own obviously strict criteria of NO toxic waste and NO harm to people or environment. Or STFU.

[Juche]

3. Probably 2000

I think about 20% of humanities energy comes from nuclear plants, and there are 500 nuke plants on earth. In the US there are about 100 nuke plants that make 20% of our energy.

So if the grid were 100% nuclear I'd assume 2,500 nuclear plants would do it. Plus you'd need to double capacity over the next few decades as the third world industrializes.

As far as uranium, it can be mined from the ocean. And there is talk of using thorium. If the uranium from plants were reprocessed, I would assume humanity could meet the supply.

However nuclear power isn't a very good idea. Plants cost about $2 billion to build, take a decade or more to build and can still cause billions in property damage if an error occurs.

[NNadir]

5. I estimate about 12,000 plants.

This is an expansion of a factor of about 25 from current levels, and would produce close to 600 exajoules per year.

Each reactor could be fueled - with recyling for about 10 to 20 years on 100 metric tons of uranium. This means about 1.2 million tons of uranium and thorium. There should be very litte trouble with this, since uranium reserves maybe recycled from the crust and sea indefinitely, at least 3 billion tons are known to be solvated the oceans.

The thorium based fuels could be use to convert all of this uranium to plutonium 239 and 241.

It is easy to show that this is, especially with conservation and a smaller population, enough for many hundreds of years, century upon century.

If seawater is recharged through weathering/volcanic processes nuclear energy may well prove "renewable."

[Terry in Austin]

7. Yes, please show

> It is easy to show that this is... enough for many hundreds of years.

Along the way, it would be helpful to see your sources for estimated recoverable reserves worldwide. The sources I've found so far put the world's known and estimated recoverable uranium resources in the range of 3 to 6 million metric tons. True, there's a lot of hedge-room about defining "recoverable," but it's still in the same order of magnitude.

> uranium reserves may be recycled from the crust and sea indefinitely,

Are you saying that the same uranium can be used again and again without getting used up? And it yields the same amount of energy each time through? I'd really be interested in reading about that possibility, if you wouldn't mind mentioning a source or two.

Also, your citing of dissolved uranium in the oceans as a possible recoverable reserve is provocative, indeed. Maybe you could point us to some serious analyses of its feasibility. The prospect seems kind of futuristic, at first glance. But here we are in the future, so you never know...

[NNadir]

8. The topic of uranium recovery from seawater was covered in a series of papers in Ind. Chem Eng. Res.

I just pulled up the 15th in this series:

Egawa, et al, Ind. Eng. Chem. Res. 1994,33, 657-661. Other examples in the series can be found by following the internal references.

This series refers to amidoxime resins, although other research programs have focused on other options. The recovered side product is this case is vanadium.

An estimate for the cost of uranium so derived is about $200/kg, still more expensive than mined uranium. The enormous energy density of uranium however, still makes this the equivalent of gasoline at less than a penny a gallon.

Interestingly enough, the driving force for over coming the Free Energy of Mixing (i.e. the thermodynamic penalty for separation) is solar energy in the form of ocean currents. It is estimated that the intake systems on the cooling water from a ordinary nuclear plant cited on ocean front could provide about 1/4 of the uranium the plant needs.

I note that most of the world's thorium is contained in waste dumps left over from the manufacture of color TV's with CRT tubes.

Thorium reserves are 3 times larger than uranium reserves. Thorium cannot be recovered from seawater though, since it is not nearly as soluble as uranium.

[Viva_La_Revolution]

4. but Nuclear will save us, right?

:eyes:

[NNadir]

6. No, nuclear will not save us. It will simply do what it has done for 20 years.

It will be the largest, by far, form of climate change gas free primary energy.

Nothing will save us.

Ignorance has won and it's all over but the dying.

[jpak]

9. What a stupid post

More thatn 90% of lead acid batteries are recycled

http://www.leadacidbatteryinfo.org/lead-acid-battery-recycling.htm

Denmnark banned the construction of new coal plants in 1996 and has built large biomass co-generation plants since then...

http://www.power-technology.com/projects/avedore/

and the Danes are making hydrogen from excess wind power today...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=115&topic_id=99200

[NNadir]

10. Did your Mom send you to work in lead recycling plant in Maine?

No?

Why not?

In dumb fundie anti-nuke talk this kind of thing is called "jobs, jobs, jobs!"

In fact, it is productivity and not "jobs" that produces wealth. One may - and should - argue about the distribution of wealth - in another time new wealth was used to provide worker benefits like reduced working hours - but in fact, anti-nuke fundie religious posturing will provide poverty and not wealth.

Now about the wonders of recycling lead and other electronic waste, including the electronic waste that the solar industry would produce if it were not a trivial fantasy held by illiterate and morally indifferent brats.

There are electronic waste recycling plants in China and other Asian and African countries: There's a group of people called "environmentalists" who have some level of concern about that.

There are cities and towns in China and other parts of the world where the children have as much as 40 times the lead concentration as is considered the action level in the US.

You couldn't care less.

Banning the construction of new coal plants is not the same as banning coal.

Buying biomass plants is simply adding to air pollution the destruction to soil and water notwithstanding.

Frankly, I have no doubt that you find this post stupid, but then again Pat Robertson also finds me stupid. This a badge of honor. I would hold myself in contempt if you thought highly of me.

Basically the dumb fundie anti-nuke "renewables will save us" cult lives wholly on talk by distracted and morally indifferent yuppies who express contempt not only for science but for the 98% of humanity who live with less than half the wealth.