In message , Tim Watts wrote
But has battery technology actually improved that much recently? In portable electronic equipment it is the reduction in the silicon geometry, requiring less power, that has improved battery charge life. It is the improvements in the electronics technology and not the battery technology.
Car with a built in nuke genset?
A typical lithium battery is at least 50% of the theoretical energy density. Its hard to see things improving much.
Now you are talking..
I wonder what current you can pull from one of those? The wiring in it might not be up to much, but its probably got a decent sized feeder under it!
Gas Turbine?
e.g.
Gordon
A friend of mine altered one of those "Nuclear power? No thanks" bumper stickers so it read "Nuclear powered. No tank".
100A at a guess.
The last exposed lampost I saw [1] was just tapped into one of the phases in the street into a 16A MCB for the actual lamp.
[1] Thanks to a female driver in a BMW on 1 way street doing a 3 point turn. The damage knocked out one of the phases at the hotel I was working in.
I have noticed that you tend to think that we are looking for a single answer to our energy needs, and vilify anything that can't do that. In your case its nuclear. Like oil, whichever non-renewable fuel you opt for *will* run out. I agree that we need nuclear but we also need as wide a range of energy sources as we can make work. The sun is an obvious source, even if not to you. When you think of solar methods you assume they will be stuck in the present. We are at the Newcomen steam engine stage of solar - very poor efficiency and rather expensive at present. It'll never fly! But there is a survival imperitive and lots of money to be made, so you can be sure that the solar methods in twenty, perhaps even ten, years time will be greatly better than now. What we need is a wide mix of sources, with as high a percentage of renewables as is feasible.
Many moons ago someone did produce a prototype electric car that incorporated a small diesel generator (basically the V twin engine from a small dumper truck). The idea was to charge the batteries from the mains as normal but also to run the diesel generator at a fixed (very efficient) load/throttle setting so it acted as a range extender. Using lead acid batteries (this pre-dated Lithium by decades!) it gave a useful range of a few hundred miles and average fuel efficiency of 100MPG or better.
No we don't. This is another renewables fallacy.
I think you should buy a computer made out of germanium transistors. And wire your house up with iron wire, not copper.
We need one source that works, and is cheap. There is no reason whatsoever to have sources that don't work and aren't cheap just because of 'diversity'
Its not a bloody biosystem.
The sun is an
That because I can Do Sums, understand entropy and complicated things like overall systems analysis. It obvious to ME that its pointless to even try, in the same way I understand that a lithium battery powered airliner will never make it across the Atlantic.
You don't have to have a degree in engineering and electrical sciences, but it helps..
No I simply have to assume they will not break the laws of physics.
We are at the Newcomen steam
20% is as good as any steam loco ever got, and we are close to that.on PV.and for all time.
Actually pure solar powered aircraft have flown.
There is. and nuclear is the answer to that one.
and lots of
Indeed, but only by giving solar a guaranteed subsidy we cant afford, which does nothing to actually reduce our energy needs in any other way.
o you can be sure that the solar methods in twenty,
No we don't. renewable energy is not usable energy at any scale. Its pure fantasy to pretend it ever could be.
It only exists because of the incredible lack of education and sheer intellectual laziness of people like you, who have simply failed to run the numbers and consider the real implication of what - say - pulling
30% of the sunlight off the face of the UK would do to e.g. plant life. And indeed the climate.All renewable energy has a massive impact on the environment by its very nature. It requires huge structures to *alter* the natural flow of sunlight, tidal power rainfall or wind. Because the energy density is so low.
By contrast a nuclear set is tiny. It has virtually no impact at all.
I will ignore the comments you make about me and my knowledge, as you do not know.
If we produce all of our energy from nuclear sources where do you imagine the 'waste' energy will go? Out into space? The waste energy from renewables would have been here anyway. If you know theromodynamics as you allege you will know that all processes produce a high percentage of non-usable energy dependent on the start and finish temperatures.
Why not - that's where most of the rest goes.
Perhaps. Do you know? The point I was making is that the waste from renewables is here already. Nuclear generates *new* waste energy. It is not as benign as TNP implies and to suggest otherwise distorts the argument. I believe we need nuclear but it is certainly not the *only* answer. Far from it. Apart from anything else, nuclear fuels *will* run out.
We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember The Natural Philosopher saying something like:
You're full of it today. Tell that to the thousands of diy solar folk who are quite happily heating their water for free and the cost of some recycled materials.
In your own way, you're just as wild-eyed and bushy-haired as the treehugging wankers on the other side.
yes. Its hardly a huge fraction of the total.
Or you could pump it into the deep crust and heat the earth's core up.
0000001 degrees C.
All free energy - low entropy energy - ends up as low grade heat.
And its because the renewables take a large proportion of the free energy out of natural thermal flows, and turn it all into low grade heat just as much as the nuclear - that they disrupt the environment MORE.
OTOH a few new nuclear stations will be a much simpler more reliable more ecologically sound bet....
I don't think for a moment that renewables could cope with what the worlds demands are likely to be when the Oil gets that low. Unless we are going to have a sea change in the way we work and behave and expect...
ALL of the rest ...
The only issue with AWG is by how much the earth's temperature will rise before it does..
And that's where I have a big problem. In order to heat the earth surface, you need to reduce the troposphere temperature otherwise the radiation outwards will be the same.
But a cold troposphere and a hot atmosphere means a lot of thermal activity.
Which will naturally carry hot air upwards where it can radiate more..
So I don't see the earth warming up much at all. I do see more violent weather though..as the excess surface energy gets mixed up and dissipates itself finally in te upper atmosphere where it can all radiate away.
When the universe dies a heat death, yes.
And all we have left is cold iron.
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