DailyDirt: Harnessing A Lot Of Energy Ain't Easy
from the urls-we-dig-up dept
We’ve mentioned some advances in fusion energy research not too long ago, and it looks like Germany is ready to take a few more baby steps towards figuring out how to control insanely hot plasma. Still, we’re a long way from plentiful fusion-generated electricity (not counting solar), but if we want to stop burning fossil fuels, we’re going to need to do some more research.
- German Chancellor Angela Merkel flipped the switch on the Wendelstein 7-X stellarator to start testing its experimental plasma conditions that could lead to a fusion generator someday. Germany has spent over a billion euros and two decades building this experimental device which will never actually generate more energy than it consumes. Let’s hope they learn a lot from this facility — and maybe we’ll have a new source of clean, convenient energy in a few more decades. [url]
- Nuclear reactors using fission (not fusion) are relatively expensive compared to other sources of energy. The history of small or modular nuclear reactors also suggests that there’s not much advantage in small scale nuclear power plants. Dealing with radioactive waste also just scares people away from fission, too. [url]
- If Back To The Future taught us anything, it’s that a lightning strike has enough energy to send a car through time itself — if you only knew where lightning was going to strike. Unfortunately, 1.21 gigawatts isn’t as useful as you might think, and capturing the energy of a lightning bolt doesn’t get you all that much energy (unless you could do it continuously somehow). [url]
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Filed Under: angela merkel, energy, fission, fusion, lightning, nuclear energy, stellarator, wendelstein 7-x
Comments on “DailyDirt: Harnessing A Lot Of Energy Ain't Easy”
Solar Updraft Towers
If you build solar updraft towers offshore of desert areas, you could intentionally build it to try to induce thunderstorms either inside the tower, or immediately downwind of it. Either way you would have the opportunity to try to capture and use the resulting discharges.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_updraft_tower
It’d be cool if they could harness lightning to start fusion reactions…
maybe ... a few more decades
Maybe not that many more decades…
Sigh
So many billions for magnetically confided plasma fusion, and so few millions for polywell. 🙁
German Renewable Energy
I would not hold my breath on that idea! If this were not their sign I do not know what would be.
Dezember 6, 2014 German Renewable Energy Keeps Blacking Out! Supply Often Less Than 2% Of Wintertime Demand
The folly of Germany’s mad rush into renewable energy, and the country’s hysterical obsession with its suicidal fast-track shutdown of its stable base-electric-power generation.
http://notrickszone.com/2014/12/06/german-renewable-energy-keeps-blacking-out-supply-often-less-than-2-of-wintertime-demand/
Nov 30, 2015 IEA’s World Energy Outlook 2015
The CSIS Energy and National Security Program is pleased to host Dr. Fatih Birol, Executive Director at the International Energy Agency to present the IEA’s World Energy Outlook 2015.
https://youtu.be/1e1iQEFflLA
Re: German Renewable Energy
Not to mention they import energy. Guess from whom and guess which type is the main source…
Fossil Fuels have been Humanities Best Friend
Still, we’re a long way from plentiful fusion-generated electricity (not counting solar), but if we want to stop burning fossil fuels, we’re going to need to do some more research.
While it is true that burning fossil fuels may release harmful pollutants into the environment human use of fossil fuels is directly responsible for humanities exponentially increased standards of living and increased life span gained since the beginning of the industrial revolution.
Fossil fuels when ‘cracked’ play the starring role in all Western persons lives on a daily basis from refrigeration, cooking, travelling, fertilizers, pharmacheuticals, plastics, communications, etal. The benefits reaped by fossil fuel usage by humanity are incalculable.
Link to list of everyday products created via cracking long chain hydrocarbons:
http://www.ranken-energy.com/Products%20from%20Petroleum.htm
The use of fission to boil water, spin turbines and generate electricity is the height of human insanity.
During a nuclear generating stations operation what is known as the nuclear fuel cycle occurs which involves the generation of many dangerous non-naturally occurring radioisotopes and tremendous amounts (tens of thousands of tons) of other highly radioactive waste (eg nuclear fuel) some short lived some very long lived.
http://www.nrc.gov/materials/fuel-cycle-fac/stages-fuel-cycle.html
The US government in the 70 years after the beginning of the Manhattan Project at it’s Hanford Washington site (other sites too) is still bumbling it’s way through multi-tens of billions of dollars in failed clean up efforts from removing plutonium leeched into the top soil to stopping tens of millions of gallons of highly radioactive effluent slowly leaking from single-walled 70 year old storage tanks into the surrounding environment and water supply.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanford_Site
In the 60 years that the fission for electricity generation experiment has run it’s course there still is no long term storage facility solution to be found in the US and some of the toxic by-products already released into the environment thus contaminating large areas totaling millions of square miles and poisoning us for billions of years (eg depleted uranium) to come.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yucca_Mountain_nuclear_waste_repository
PS The scientific jury is still out on the origins of long chain hydrocarbon deposits.
The highlighted paragraph and sentence below were excerpted from:
Petroleum Its Origin
The precise details regarding the twin problems of origin, and migration and accumulation of petroleum have yet to be fully answered. Recent advances in analytical chemistry and geochemistry have advanced the knowledge and understanding, but issues remain to be resolved.
There are two theories of origin: Organic (bionic) or Inorganic (abionic).
http://dnr.louisiana.gov/assets/TAD/education/BGBB/3/origin.html
We are thinking of storing the energy of a lightning strike but what about the static that actually ends up generating such discharges? Would it be possible?
Small nuclear reactors may be expensive, but large ones . . . well, the infrastructure cost of the plants themselves is expensive, but the production cost of the energy is cheap.
Of course, on the safety front, the safest reactors are the newest models, while we’ve been so worried about safety in the U.S. that we haven’t let anyone build them (or any new reactor) and instead keep extending the permitted operational life of the old ones. 9_9
We Must Not Allow A Fusion Gap!
The Chinese are showing the world how it’s done.
Re: We Must Not Allow A Fusion Gap!
A private US company claims to be able to control its plasma indefinitely…
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20101201/12170612080/dailydirt-making-progress-towards-fusion-again.shtml