damage from ethanol?

[Bob]

The last one In retrospect dumping the salt OUT OF the bags into wheel barrow ( clean) spreading around the pool with shovel might of been a better idea, to bad I didn't think of that.

[Bob]

Nukes will have a lot better chance when the operators take responsibility for the risks and waste issues. As long as they are dependent on waivers of responsibility from the govenrment to be able to operate the plants, I don't trust them, and I certainly don't want to finance their profits by paying for waste disposal and assuming the risk myself that they will contaminate my environment.

Bob

[Goedjn]

Well, strictly speaking, using hydrogen for energy-storage would probably help reduce pollution even if you burnt the same gasoline to generate the hydrogen as you normally would have to move the cars. It's a whole lot easier to tune/filter/catalyze one big-ass plant than 100,000 cars. Even counting a 30% loss in the conversion process.

[Jim Yanik]

"mrsgator88" wrote in news:Jnl8g.68792$ [e-mail]:

The biggest problem is storing enough hydrogen to have a practical range,next would be refilling the "tank". Hydrogen does not have the stored energy that gasoline has.

[trader4]

More double speak and an example of why we are where we are. You aren't "financing their profits by paying for waste disposal", any more than you are when you pay to have your trash taken away, or to have tires disposed of at an auto center. The waste disposal is being paid for by the nuclear industry and the power is still very competitively priced. The waste would already be at it's permanent resting place if it were not for environmental obstructionists who rather deal in pipe dreams than reality.

Even the socialist French get two thirds of their electric power from nuclear. We should be pursuing multiple solutions to our energy sources and nothing should be off the table. Everything has risks and trade offs. If someone came up with the idea of airplanes today, guys like you would tell us we shouldn't do it, cause a plane might crash in a city. Yet, we live with that and other similar risks every day.

[Sev]

Importing sunshine- in effect, that's what we'd be doing buying Brazilian ethanol. They have more of it than we do, though I doubt enough to supply more than a fraction of our needs. Yes, their ETOH is distilled from sugarcane waste, a pretty efficient system, unlike our corn subsidy /campaign cash based system. Perhaps we could help things by eliminating sugar quotas/ corn sweetener subsidies, letting more countries produce sugarcane/ethanol. Of course there is no free lunch- there is an impact to distilling biomass instead of returning it to soil. As for nuclear, I have generally been opposed, but willing to reconsider. However, I do think liability limits are a huge subsidy of dubious merit, as is waste disposal non-system we are still wrangling over. Who would want it in their backyard? These isotopes will be dangerous for many generations. I do think it is reasonable to pass some risks on to following generations, but are we so confident in the future integrity of our civilization to pass management of this risk to the future? I think that's a rather reasonable question. Fusion may yet pan out, and other technologies will undoubtedly improve, such as PV, but I think the one incontestable central strategy which multiplies the contributions of all others is conservation/efficiency. We have already demonstrated the force of this by those improvements which have made energy costs about 50% less per unit gdp than 30 years ago. Granted, some of the low hanging fruit has already been picked, but tech has progressed, and I believe we could quite easily repeat that feat in the next generation. I've read we are running some 20 large power plants just to keep warm our cell phone chargers and their kin- all those adapters for modern devices. More efficient design- available today- could eliminate 90% of that.

[en30303]

Nuke is not the only source of energy for hydrogen separation, just the cheapest for today's technology. Solar hydrogen, given proper development, will be clean and cheaper. But it will never get the chance if we take the fast route and jump to nukes.

[mm]

Of course there are diffreenceces and I'm not even saying that we could use the same percentage of ethanol, at least not any time soon, but I was addressing Richards request for a valid study that ethanol was a valid alternative. That statement alone, and certainly when combined with my original post seemed to mean he wasn't sure cars would run on ethanol, and without doing a lot of damage to engines.

Richard, if you meant something different, please let me know.

I don't see how this means this comparison isn't valid. It just means it has to be understood, including other factors.

[mm]

I wouldn't trust anything 60 Minutes said unless I also heard it from a reliable source. It's a trash show afaic and it frightens me that so many people who could make money elsewhere are willing to work for it. Details omitted unless someone asks.

[mm]

No, we do hear about that but it is referred to as fuel cell research. I think we've been using it since the 60's in manned spacecraft to make electricity, and it has advantages in space, but like the other poster said, not in cars except for pollution issues. It transfers pollution issues to the power plant

Is

No. That's the other side of your statment below, that policitics is dirty, is let's blame politics even when it has nothing to do with it.

[Goedjn]

If you're willing to pay me $250,000, then not only can you store it in my back yard, you can store it in my basement. I want to move to someplace at least 200' above sea-level, anyway.

[mm]

You meann nuclear power? The electricity generated at nuclear power plants is no better at splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen than is any other electricity.

Hydrogen doesn't have any other relationship with nuclear power plants.

(except that if cold fusion is ever developed, it will *use* hydrogen, not generate it.)

It's no less of a problem then, except generation of electricy might be cheaper, especially as the cost of oil goes up. We could also burn coal to make eletricity to generate hydrogen.

[Robert Gammon]

Well to each of us, we have varying opinions on 60 Minutes.

Folks over 50 place a GREAT deal of trust in most things that are shown on 60 Minutes as they have shown themselves to be EXTREMELY reliable in what they say over the decades that they have been on TV. No, they are not infallible, and they do have bias that shows from time to time in their reporting. However, among news folk, they represent very nearly the BEST available.

That said, Politicians and News People share many common characteristics. They BOTH love making mountains out of molehills and they will both do almost anything to gain public attention.

This previous statement is as bad as the Illegal Immigrant discussion, we paint all illegal immigrants with the same paint brush, we paint all politicians with the same paint brush and we paint TV news people all with the same brush.

No not all illegals have done anything wrong OTHER than cross the border illegally, no not ALL politicians are immoral, corrupt money and attention grabbing idiots, and not all news people will do ANYTHING possible to INVENT a news story when there is none.

[Goedjn]

If you have the electricity to make hydrogen, what do you need the hydrogen for?

[trader4]

No, nukes aren't the only source of energy for hydrogen. We could continue to make it out of natural gas, where most of it comes from today. But Dooh! What good is that, we could just burn the natural gas! Or we could use oil, but same problem. Or hydroelectric plants, but just about all the easy ones have been built and there are serious environmental consequences to building more. (As in the usual pie in the sky, free lunch environmentalists will object to all of them and block it) That's why nuke is the most obvious source to generate the hydrogen. It's here and cost effective.

As for solar, it's an option, but a long way from reality. Right now you can install a system for your house for $60K. Only problem is, it's an economic disaster, even at today's energy prices and no credible experts have any way to dramatically reduce the cost.

[Rich256]

I am seeing many what appear to be knowledgeable people saying it is not worth the effort.

But that is argued by others:

Or would effort be better spent trying to recover the shale oil in the west?

Shell says they have a method to extract it.

[trader4]

The point is the hydrogen is just an energy transport vehicle. So, if not nuclear, then where do you propose to get the energy from? Import more oil? Burn natural gas? Just use the oil or gas then and forget the hydrogen. Hydroelectric? All the easy sites are done, and there are serious environmental issues with any more sites. Nuclear is cost effective and readily deployable. That's why it makes the most sense as a source of energy to generate hydrogen.

(except that if cold fusion is ever developed, it will *use* hydrogen,

Sure you could burn coal, but how realistic is that? You've got lots of people running around saying that global warming is gonna kill us all. You think building more fossil fuel plants, especially coal fired ones that not only generate CO2 but other difficult to deal with pollutants, is a reasonable approach?

So, again, where is the energy going to come from for this pie in the sky hydrogen?

[Joseph Meehan]

The last one In retrospect dumping the salt OUT OF the bags into wheel barrow ( clean) spreading around the pool with shovel might of been a better idea, to bad I didn't think of that.

[gfretwell]

The problem is there isn't much chance of increasing US sugar cane production. It only grows in the sub-tropics and Florida is trying to throw the cane farms out. They an an ecological disaster ... as wouild any farming effort large enough to replace oil would be. Brazil is destroyng the rain forest to make ethanol. That is worse than the "oil problem"

[gfretwell]

Water is "hydrogen ash". It takes more energy to get the hydrogen out than you get when you burn it again.