The eventual end of crappy lithium batteries?

D. Peter Maus wrote:

snip


As much as I can't believe I'm going to say this...ahem,


...we might wish to take a lesson from the French.


(sincerest apologies.)


They generate much of their energy from nuclear. They recycle and
reuse the depleted fuel, and unrecoverable waste is cast in glass
bricks. Glass bricks neither corrode, nor leak. And can be stacked
underground for centuries without incident.

As for generation...take a cue from the Navy. They've been using
nuclear energy to power carriers and subs for more than half a century,
now, without nuclear incident even after collision.

Instead of letting Brown and Root rape and pillage for billions, let
the Navy build reactors for the power grid, sell them to the
transmission companies. Help fund Naval development, and produce clean,
cheap energy in abundance.


It's not all sweetness and light in France either. During summer
heatwaves, the ambient temperature of rivers etc. used for cooling was
high enough to impair the cooling available without exceeding the
allowable exit water temperature. Coupled with peak electricity demand
for air conditioners, the nuclear stations were overloaded and forced to
reduce output, compelling the French to import about 2,000 MW daily from
adjoining countries. Google for 'french nuclear heatwave' and read.

Colin D.

Rich wrote:

And in France, 80% of their power is nuclear an they do it in about
1/1000th the space used up by wind turbines to produce the same amount
of energy.

But at times it seems they hired Homer Simpson as the Chief Security
Officer in the plant.

--
Bertrand

? "Alan Browne" ?????? ??? ??????
...
Allen wrote:
Jürgen Exner wrote:
Rich wrote:
[...]
issues put forth by the global warming kooks. Like covering thousands
of acres of land with solar cells or "wind farms" all of which are
pathetic energy producers.

Indeed, wind energy is so pathetic that it covered only 20% of Danmark's
energy needs last year. Of course the 20% of power coming from nuclear
plants in the USA is much more admirable.........

And in some regions wind energy covers much more, e.g. 71% in
Ostfriesland-Papenburg (region in North-Germany) in 2005. That's just a
tad more than the share of coal (49%) and nuclear power (20%) combined
in the USA.

Pathetic, indeed.

jue
One of the biggest problems that we have concerning electricity generation
is that there are far, far too many players of one-string fiddles (to make
it on topic). Where is it written that we should put all our eggs in one
basket? My preference would be to generate as much as we can via
renewable, non-polluting methods (wind, sun, tides) and supplement as
needed by other means--natural gas, nuclear, coal), each of which has
major disadvantages:

The real disadvantages of major renewables (solar, wind, wave, tide) is
that they suck for baseload. The only renewable that is great at baseload
AND peaking load is hydro.

Texas has more wind than any other US state. However, a couple years ago,
during a drop in wind while there was little available fast NG turbine
capacity available, ERCOT had to tell .
various .
industries to go offline for about 40 minutes or so to the tune of a few
MWatts until baseload could be built up again (coal and NG fired boilers
take a while to raise additional steam even if already fired up). NG
turbines can turn on quick (10 minutes or less) - but need to be
available - not always the case.

Nuclear will make a huge resurgence over the next 30 years (Great at
baseload, not peaking).

Renewables are a good fit between baseload and peaking load allowing the
baseload to be throttled a little bit. You just can't have too much of it
in the mix.
Wind turbines need electricity from the grid to start turning;when the wind
blows enough for them to start turning on their own, their electronics
"convert" them from motors to generators. Since the wind cannot be
controlled at will, unless we have a pact with God, when the wind stalls
again, the turbines don't stop, but get electricity again from the grid,
thus become from generators motors. Furthermore, wind turbines can't
generate reactive power, like "normal" plants, but instead they drain
reactive power from the grid. Here, in Crete, we have many wind turbines,
resulting in light "flickering". Base load plants run 24/7 (obviously)
preferably at full load. They need 8 hours for a cold start, and more time
to pick additional loads. The run 1 1/2 year before they must be shut down
for service.



--
Tzortzakakis Dimitrios
major in electrical engineering
mechanized infantry reservist
hordad AT otenet DOT gr

D. Peter Maus wrote:
On 10/13/09 17:40 , Alan Browne wrote:
D. Peter Maus wrote:
And when does this come on-line? Nuclear is stalled in the US due to
the blizzard of misinformation, and bad press of a couple of
accidents. Nuclear isn't even on the administration's agenda.

License applications are up (26 reactors in queue) in the US and most
applications will go ahead with the first reactors expected on line ca
2018. Some of these will have federal loan guarantees.

So you're wrong about stalled. And you're wrong about policy.


I"m going to have to see that.

Our state reps and our Congressional representatives have all declared
that they will opposed implentation of any new nuclear facilities.
Period. I've heard this not only in Illinois, but Missouri, New York,
Wisconsin and Minnesota. Activist groups are interfering with process,
and the lawsuits to stop nuclear implementation are real.

Meanwhile, Dresden 1 has been closed since '78. Zion was last
operational in 1997. In all, 23 plants have been closed nationwide. 63
have been cancelled. Meanwhile prices for electric service skyrocket.

Consider also, that Illinois has enacted legislation prohibiting
transmission companies from buying energy outside of specified
proportions from sources including gas, oil, coal and nuclear. Exelon,
the primary generating company in the state, owns most of the nuclear
plants, but is prohibited from selling their nuclear generated
electricity to Edison, the transmission company, in sufficient
quantities to reduce electric rates. Edison may not purchase but a
specified percentage of nuclear from Exelon (between 10 and 20%), but
must purchase the bulk of its operating supplies of energy from coal,
oil and gas generation in specified proportions.

That, Mr Browne, would be stalled. And it would be stalled as a matter
of policy.

Fact is 26 reactors in 17 licenses are in process. Several are all but
approved and include federal loan guarantees. Much of this is based on
policy and congressional action since the 90's. Seems like policy is
proceeding apace (hint: 99.99% of federal policy goes on without you
reading about it in the papers or seeing a sound bite on the news). Is
there opposition? When isn't there (regardless of the issue)?)

That you don't like hearing the truth does not make it false.

It has been stalled indeed since Three-Mile. In the meantime everything
about the technology has improved and moved forward. As a major source
of baseload that emits very little carbon (even accounting for the huge
amount of concrete involved) it is fast becoming a viable choice again.

I _really_ suggest you begin some serious reading on the subject.







If the Navy can do it well, and civilian has a bad rep, then there is
a lesson to take. Profit and investment recovery aside.

Civilian only has a bad rep from the nuke-naysayers.


Ya THINK?




Again, if the Navy can do it, and we 't, we need to ta

Again, if you persist on referring to the Navy wrt to civilian
operations, which are quite different in nature, you are simply deluding
yourself.

I would even hazard a guess that for MW-h produced, the civilian sector
has had far fewer incidents of all kinds than the Navy.

ColinD wrote:


It's not all sweetness and light in France either. During summer
heatwaves, the ambient temperature of rivers etc. used for cooling was
high enough to impair the cooling available without exceeding the
allowable exit water temperature. Coupled with peak electricity demand
for air conditioners, the nuclear stations were overloaded and forced to
reduce output, compelling the French to import about 2,000 MW daily from
adjoining countries. Google for 'french nuclear heatwave' and read.

Effects of the environment affect all sorts of electrical production in
adverse ways - including the semi-voluntary shutting down of industry in
Texas for an hour or so a couple years ago. Reason: bad wind forecasts
had scheduled too much wind power in the mix (Texas is the largest wind
power generator). When the wind died off early, the grid was short
until other baseload could be brought online. A couple MW worth.

Likewise, Google will help you find it...

Perhaps wind, solar and wave should be used to store power (pumped hydro
and thermal storage (molten sodium) for two examples) and then used to
peak or supplement base load. This would decouple natural
unpredictability from the grid - which is sensitive enough as it is.

However, that would impair the economics of renewables even further
(less efficient).

On 10/14/09 13:41 , Alan Browne wrote:
D. Peter Maus wrote:
On 10/13/09 17:40 , Alan Browne wrote:
D. Peter Maus wrote:
And when does this come on-line? Nuclear is stalled in the US due to
the blizzard of misinformation, and bad press of a couple of
accidents. Nuclear isn't even on the administration's agenda.

License applications are up (26 reactors in queue) in the US and most
applications will go ahead with the first reactors expected on line ca
2018. Some of these will have federal loan guarantees.

So you're wrong about stalled. And you're wrong about policy.


I"m going to have to see that.

Our state reps and our Congressional representatives have all declared
that they will opposed implentation of any new nuclear facilities.
Period. I've heard this not only in Illinois, but Missouri, New York,
Wisconsin and Minnesota. Activist groups are interfering with process,
and the lawsuits to stop nuclear implementation are real.

Meanwhile, Dresden 1 has been closed since '78. Zion was last
operational in 1997. In all, 23 plants have been closed nationwide. 63
have been cancelled. Meanwhile prices for electric service skyrocket.

Consider also, that Illinois has enacted legislation prohibiting
transmission companies from buying energy outside of specified
proportions from sources including gas, oil, coal and nuclear. Exelon,
the primary generating company in the state, owns most of the nuclear
plants, but is prohibited from selling their nuclear generated
electricity to Edison, the transmission company, in sufficient
quantities to reduce electric rates. Edison may not purchase but a
specified percentage of nuclear from Exelon (between 10 and 20%), but
must purchase the bulk of its operating supplies of energy from coal,
oil and gas generation in specified proportions.

That, Mr Browne, would be stalled. And it would be stalled as a matter
of policy.

Fact is 26 reactors in 17 licenses are in process. Several are all but
approved and include federal loan guarantees. Much of this is based on
policy and congressional action since the 90's. Seems like policy is
proceeding apace (hint: 99.99% of federal policy goes on without you
reading about it in the papers or seeing a sound bite on the news). Is
there opposition? When isn't there (regardless of the issue)?)

That you don't like hearing the truth does not make it false.

You're presumptions are all false, here.

Since you appear to be disinterested in any explanations, I'll
not waste my time.





It has been stalled indeed since Three-Mile. In the meantime everything
about the technology has improved and moved forward. As a major source
of baseload that emits very little carbon (even accounting for the huge
amount of concrete involved) it is fast becoming a viable choice again.

I _really_ suggest you begin some serious reading on the subject.


I would suggest you do the same. Starting with this thread. You
seem to have missed the key point that you and I are in agreement on
many of these points.

DAMN. WTF does it take, Brother.

D. Peter Maus wrote:
On 10/14/09 13:41 , Alan Browne wrote:
D. Peter Maus wrote:
On 10/13/09 17:40 , Alan Browne wrote:
D. Peter Maus wrote:
And when does this come on-line? Nuclear is stalled in the US due to
the blizzard of misinformation, and bad press of a couple of
accidents. Nuclear isn't even on the administration's agenda.

License applications are up (26 reactors in queue) in the US and most
applications will go ahead with the first reactors expected on line ca
2018. Some of these will have federal loan guarantees.

So you're wrong about stalled. And you're wrong about policy.


I"m going to have to see that.

Our state reps and our Congressional representatives have all declared
that they will opposed implentation of any new nuclear facilities.
Period. I've heard this not only in Illinois, but Missouri, New York,
Wisconsin and Minnesota. Activist groups are interfering with process,
and the lawsuits to stop nuclear implementation are real.

Meanwhile, Dresden 1 has been closed since '78. Zion was last
operational in 1997. In all, 23 plants have been closed nationwide. 63
have been cancelled. Meanwhile prices for electric service skyrocket.

Consider also, that Illinois has enacted legislation prohibiting
transmission companies from buying energy outside of specified
proportions from sources including gas, oil, coal and nuclear. Exelon,
the primary generating company in the state, owns most of the nuclear
plants, but is prohibited from selling their nuclear generated
electricity to Edison, the transmission company, in sufficient
quantities to reduce electric rates. Edison may not purchase but a
specified percentage of nuclear from Exelon (between 10 and 20%), but
must purchase the bulk of its operating supplies of energy from coal,
oil and gas generation in specified proportions.

That, Mr Browne, would be stalled. And it would be stalled as a matter
of policy.

Fact is 26 reactors in 17 licenses are in process. Several are all but
approved and include federal loan guarantees. Much of this is based on
policy and congressional action since the 90's. Seems like policy is
proceeding apace (hint: 99.99% of federal policy goes on without you
reading about it in the papers or seeing a sound bite on the news). Is
there opposition? When isn't there (regardless of the issue)?)

That you don't like hearing the truth does not make it false.

You're presumptions are all false, here.

Search the web. Easy enough to find. See Duke Energy 2008. See South
Texas Project. See Vogtle. See So. Carolina E&G. TVA. Unistar. And
so many more. Just because some states are slow, doesn't mean they all are.

Since you appear to be disinterested in any explanations, I'll not
waste my time.

Your explanations do not hold up to the facts.







It has been stalled indeed since Three-Mile. In the meantime everything
about the technology has improved and moved forward. As a major source
of baseload that emits very little carbon (even accounting for the huge
amount of concrete involved) it is fast becoming a viable choice again.

I _really_ suggest you begin some serious reading on the subject.


I would suggest you do the same. Starting with this thread. You seem
to have missed the key point that you and I are in agreement on many of
these points.

But not those that count. For example the 26 US reactors under license
process, some backed by US Fed loan guarantees. You don't seem to like
that ... inconvenient truth.

And your assertions regarding US Navy nuke operations as an example to
civil operations are just plain ... naive.


DAMN. WTF does it take, Brother.

It takes you to go read. I've put out all the data you need to find the
rest.

On 10/14/09 15:31 , Alan Browne wrote:
D. Peter Maus wrote:
On 10/14/09 13:41 , Alan Browne wrote:
D. Peter Maus wrote:
On 10/13/09 17:40 , Alan Browne wrote:
D. Peter Maus wrote:
And when does this come on-line? Nuclear is stalled in the US due to
the blizzard of misinformation, and bad press of a couple of
accidents. Nuclear isn't even on the administration's agenda.

License applications are up (26 reactors in queue) in the US and most
applications will go ahead with the first reactors expected on line ca
2018. Some of these will have federal loan guarantees.

So you're wrong about stalled. And you're wrong about policy.


I"m going to have to see that.

Our state reps and our Congressional representatives have all declared
that they will opposed implentation of any new nuclear facilities.
Period. I've heard this not only in Illinois, but Missouri, New York,
Wisconsin and Minnesota. Activist groups are interfering with process,
and the lawsuits to stop nuclear implementation are real.

Meanwhile, Dresden 1 has been closed since '78. Zion was last
operational in 1997. In all, 23 plants have been closed nationwide. 63
have been cancelled. Meanwhile prices for electric service skyrocket.

Consider also, that Illinois has enacted legislation prohibiting
transmission companies from buying energy outside of specified
proportions from sources including gas, oil, coal and nuclear. Exelon,
the primary generating company in the state, owns most of the nuclear
plants, but is prohibited from selling their nuclear generated
electricity to Edison, the transmission company, in sufficient
quantities to reduce electric rates. Edison may not purchase but a
specified percentage of nuclear from Exelon (between 10 and 20%), but
must purchase the bulk of its operating supplies of energy from coal,
oil and gas generation in specified proportions.

That, Mr Browne, would be stalled. And it would be stalled as a matter
of policy.

Fact is 26 reactors in 17 licenses are in process. Several are all but
approved and include federal loan guarantees. Much of this is based on
policy and congressional action since the 90's. Seems like policy is
proceeding apace (hint: 99.99% of federal policy goes on without you
reading about it in the papers or seeing a sound bite on the news). Is
there opposition? When isn't there (regardless of the issue)?)

That you don't like hearing the truth does not make it false.

You're presumptions are all false, here.

Search the web. Easy enough to find. See Duke Energy 2008. See South
Texas Project. See Vogtle. See So. Carolina E&G. TVA. Unistar. And so
many more. Just because some states are slow, doesn't mean they all are.


Again, your presumptions, here, are false.

On 10/14/09 15:31 , Alan Browne wrote:

I _really_ suggest you begin some serious reading on the subject.


I would suggest you do the same. Starting with this thread. You seem
to have missed the key point that you and I are in agreement on many
of these points.

But not those that count. For example the 26 US reactors under license
process, some backed by US Fed loan guarantees. You don't seem to like
that ... inconvenient truth.

And your assertions regarding US Navy nuke operations as an example to
civil operations are just plain ... naive.


Well, thank God, we have you to point that out.

Your presumpions, here, are false.




DAMN. WTF does it take, Brother.

It takes you to go read.


Again, your presumptions, here, are false.

D. Peter Maus wrote:
On 10/14/09 15:31 , Alan Browne wrote:

Search the web. Easy enough to find. See Duke Energy 2008. See South
Texas Project. See Vogtle. See So. Carolina E&G. TVA. Unistar. And so
many more. Just because some states are slow, doesn't mean they all are.


Again, your presumptions, here, are false.

Not presumptions. Facts. Facts that you can find on the web. For that
matter there is a single web page that summarizes all the current
projects, their status and much, much more. Shouldn't take you more
than 1 minute on Google to find it.