Re: [Vo]:re the alternative history of LENR
On Thu, May 31, 2012 at 7:59 PM, Chemical Engineer cheme...@gmail.comwrote: This example, at its most simple message shows how corporations sometimes see new technologies in the opposite light even though the world might benefit. Agreed. Corporations sometimes see things in terms starkly different from what is understood to be in the common good. The tobacco companies in the US saw fit to advertise to adolescents a generation ago until the consequences of doing so (heavy penalties, lawsuits, etc.) outweighed the financial benefits. The logic of such advertising was impeccable -- if you get people hooked on cigarettes at a young enough age they will become lifelong consumers. But that logic was purely mercenary, blind to some basic things that the majority of people feel to be important and valuable; in this case, protecting the young from the predatory behavior of corporations. There are other examples of how the perceived interests of corporations differ significantly from the interests of society as a whole. These examples are helpful in understanding what underlies their behavior, in providing a cautionary tale of what one might be up against if remedial action of some kind is needed, and in offering insight into possible ways to encourage corporations to better align their behavior with the interests of the larger society. I don't think such examples are to be construed as reasons to avoid regulation or market interventions. The main challenge with interventions is that they often lead to unintended consequences. But being wary of unintended consequences is different from being concerned that companies will perceive things differently from ordinary people. My point here is that we should not be worried that corporations won't like the restrictions and inducements we decide to put in place, but we should be concerned about unintended economic consequences. Many of the big oil companies dabble in renewable energy because they do not feel threatened by it. kW/Mw scale LENR if/when it is proven may get ignored by big energy much like Kodak did with digital cameras. I suspect the energy companies will feel very threatened at some point. The lawyers will step out of the woodworks, and then if you want to develop or sell LENR devices you'll need to make a huge financial investment to satisfy certification requirements; even then, there will be onerous restrictions on selling to the mass market. It might take a generation or two to disentangle the technology from the webwork put up by vested interests. This will not have been a necessary outcome; it will have been the result of our particular willingness to coddle financial interests at this time in history. Eric
[Vo]:Yet another web site about cold fusion
http://www.lenrforum.eu
[Vo]:Piezonuclear Fission Reactions in Rocks
Every now and then a bold idea comes along which may (or will) significantly change our view of Earth's natural history... Piezonuclear Fission Reactions in Rocks: Evidences from Microchemical Analysis, Neutron Emission, and Geological Transformation http://vimeo.com/41901023 (from the 'Atom Unexplored' conference) harry
Re: [Vo]:Rama Found?
They are going back today: http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2012/05/29/truth-is-out-there-about-ufo-in-baltic-sea-swedish-scientists-say/ T
Re: [Vo]:Piezonuclear Fission Reactions in Rocks
http://www.mail-archive.com/vortex-l@eskimo.com/msg43458.html -Original Message- From: Harry Veeder lt;hveeder...@gmail.comgt; To: vortex-l lt;vortex-l@eskimo.comgt; Sent: Fri, Jun 1, 2012 11:24 am Subject: [Vo]:Piezonuclear Fission Reactions in Rocks Every now and then a bold idea comes along which may (or will) significantly change our view of Earth's natural history... Piezonuclear Fission Reactions in Rocks: Evidences from Microchemical Analysis, Neutron Emission, and Geological Transformation http://vimeo.com/41901023 (from the 'Atom Unexplored' conference) harry
Re: [Vo]:Yet another web site about cold fusion
Good website. They have pointer to a NanoSpire page I had not seen - http://jinnwe.com/quest.php?id=512 At the bottom is a fascinating youtube clip on the 'pistol shrimp' that uses cavitation to disable prey. BTW, Roger Stringham has also been working on cavitation based LENR (it may turn out to be confined hot fusion) for quite a while. His latest paper was published May 16, 2012 in JOURNAL OF CONDENSED MATTER NUCLEAR SCIENCE - vol.8 http://www.iscmns.org/CMNS/JCMNS-Vol8.pdf Model for Electromagnetic pulsed BEC Experiments (pp. 75-90) His research appears to be quite similar to Nanospire's. I do not know enough about cavitation-LENR to have an opinion on it. Lou Pagnucco Jed Rothwell wrote: http://www.lenrforum.eu
Re: [Vo]:re the alternative history of LENR
Jed, Just a fact check. You don't know how many times I have heard that a solar site 100 miles to the side in the Mohave could generate all of the power requirements for the US. Some numbers based upon most efficient claimed CSP plant: (approx 2 to 3 times more efficient than PV but much more expensive) 370 MW Nominal generation requires 3500 acreas (largest, most efficient claimed US solar thermal plant being constructed) 350,000 mirrors (assuming they are clean) Generates power ~10 hours/day To cover peak US demand of 768,000 MW you would need 781 MILLION mirrors that only cover you 10 hours per day. The 110Mile x 110Mile plot is idle at night. With thermal storage you would need to more than double the area if you wanted to store during the day and generate at night, taking up 60% of the Mohave. You can double this area for utility scale PV which, although cheaper is ~ half the efficiency of CSP/acre, in which case you would need a larger Mohave. You also need to develop weather technology to keep all clouds out of the desert... Also, your Robots will need to clean 781 million mirrors per month (monthly cleaning cycle) in the heat and sand of the desert. Plus where will you get the water to clean them or power for your army of hundreds of thousands of robots? If you cannot clean 781 MILLION mirrors per month you will need more, less efficient dirty mirrors and more space You will also pay 4 times more for this electricity than you are paying now. Also, from a strategic defense standpoint, it would be very easy for an enemy to blast one large nuke off over the desert and shatter all of those mirrors. I am OK with distributed PV on rooftops but get the crap out of the desert and give the BILLIONS to homeowners to subsidize installations. Solar City has a much better business model. I admire your creativity and regurgitating green fluff but I think you are drinking your own bath water and they are WASTING OUR MONEY On Thu, May 31, 2012 at 3:55 PM, Jed Rothwell jedrothw...@gmail.com wrote: Chemical Engineer cheme...@gmail.com wrote: You mention projects that are advancing human civilization and many were great investments. Are you OK spending billions on green projects that have 1/100th or less the energy density/potential of existing fossil fuels . . . Which projects do you mean? I am not aware of anything like that. The energy density of uranium fission plants is not as good as existing fossil fuels, because uranium ore density is so low, but I still prefer uranium reactors to coal-fired plants. The power density of solar cells is low but as long as they are cheap it does not matter. (Energy density is meaningless in a solar cell or wind turbine; the energy will last for billions of years.) We are not running out of space on the roofs of houses, or in the deserts of the southwest. A solar array 100 miles to the side could generate all of energy in the U.S., and there are hundreds of miles of empty land in places like Arizona and North Africa. Are you OK filling up the deserts with solar panels full of dust?. Better than building more coal fired plants and filling people's lungs with dust. It is not problem keeping the panels clean with robots. It does not take much water or overhead. Wind now supplies 2% of electricity. It could be increased to 20% with today's distribution technology. That would displace half of coal fired electricity. In North America, it would be way cheaper than adding that much nuclear power (~100 reactors). I guess you would recommend a Billion Dollar DOE investment in Rossi's company at this point? maybe a GigaCAT? Of course not. Anyway, Rossi will take any investment money from anyone. I know several people with millions of dollars burning a hole in their pockets. They are pounding on his door. He will not take one dollar from them. He will not surrender any control over the product. - Jed
Re: [Vo]:re the alternative history of LENR
Well, at 40% efficiency, you need 1.6Km^2 for every gigawatt, So, 30X30 km2 will do it. Maintenance is hard but in terms of area, it is not something spectacular. Consider the reservoirs of the 2 most powerful hydroelectric dams: Itaipu reservoir has 1350km^2 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Itaipu_Dam Three Gorges Dam has has 1045km^2 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Gorges_Dam And new technologies are being developed for peaceful purposes. Not in stupid drones. 2012/6/1 Chemical Engineer cheme...@gmail.com Jed, Just a fact check. You don't know how many times I have heard that a solar site 100 miles to the side in the Mohave could generate all of the power requirements for the US. Some numbers based upon most efficient claimed CSP plant: (approx 2 to 3 times more efficient than PV but much more expensive) 370 MW Nominal generation requires 3500 acreas (largest, most efficient claimed US solar thermal plant being constructed) 350,000 mirrors (assuming they are clean) Generates power ~10 hours/day To cover peak US demand of 768,000 MW you would need 781 MILLION mirrors that only cover you 10 hours per day. The 110Mile x 110Mile plot is idle at night. With thermal storage you would need to more than double the area if you wanted to store during the day and generate at night, taking up 60% of the Mohave. You can double this area for utility scale PV which, although cheaper is ~ half the efficiency of CSP/acre, in which case you would need a larger Mohave. You also need to develop weather technology to keep all clouds out of the desert... Also, your Robots will need to clean 781 million mirrors per month (monthly cleaning cycle) in the heat and sand of the desert. Plus where will you get the water to clean them or power for your army of hundreds of thousands of robots? If you cannot clean 781 MILLION mirrors per month you will need more, less efficient dirty mirrors and more space You will also pay 4 times more for this electricity than you are paying now. Also, from a strategic defense standpoint, it would be very easy for an enemy to blast one large nuke off over the desert and shatter all of those mirrors. I am OK with distributed PV on rooftops but get the crap out of the desert and give the BILLIONS to homeowners to subsidize installations. Solar City has a much better business model. I admire your creativity and regurgitating green fluff but I think you are drinking your own bath water and they are WASTING OUR MONEY On Thu, May 31, 2012 at 3:55 PM, Jed Rothwell jedrothw...@gmail.comwrote: Chemical Engineer cheme...@gmail.com wrote: You mention projects that are advancing human civilization and many were great investments. Are you OK spending billions on green projects that have 1/100th or less the energy density/potential of existing fossil fuels . . . Which projects do you mean? I am not aware of anything like that. The energy density of uranium fission plants is not as good as existing fossil fuels, because uranium ore density is so low, but I still prefer uranium reactors to coal-fired plants. The power density of solar cells is low but as long as they are cheap it does not matter. (Energy density is meaningless in a solar cell or wind turbine; the energy will last for billions of years.) We are not running out of space on the roofs of houses, or in the deserts of the southwest. A solar array 100 miles to the side could generate all of energy in the U.S., and there are hundreds of miles of empty land in places like Arizona and North Africa. Are you OK filling up the deserts with solar panels full of dust?. Better than building more coal fired plants and filling people's lungs with dust. It is not problem keeping the panels clean with robots. It does not take much water or overhead. Wind now supplies 2% of electricity. It could be increased to 20% with today's distribution technology. That would displace half of coal fired electricity. In North America, it would be way cheaper than adding that much nuclear power (~100 reactors). I guess you would recommend a Billion Dollar DOE investment in Rossi's company at this point? maybe a GigaCAT? Of course not. Anyway, Rossi will take any investment money from anyone. I know several people with millions of dollars burning a hole in their pockets. They are pounding on his door. He will not take one dollar from them. He will not surrender any control over the product. - Jed -- Daniel Rocha - RJ danieldi...@gmail.com
Re: [Vo]:re the alternative history of LENR
Daniel,
Double check your math...i get 38 sq km per gigawatt during daylight with
clean mirrors
On Friday, June 1, 2012, Daniel Rocha wrote:
Well, at 40% efficiency, you need 1.6Km^2 for every gigawatt, So, 30X30
km2 will do it. Maintenance is hard but in terms of area, it is not
something spectacular.
Consider the reservoirs of the 2 most powerful hydroelectric dams:
Itaipu reservoir has 1350km^2 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Itaipu_Dam
Three Gorges Dam has has 1045km^2
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Gorges_Dam
And new technologies are being developed for peaceful purposes. Not in
stupid drones.
2012/6/1 Chemical Engineer cheme...@gmail.com
Jed,
Just a fact check. You don't know how many times I have heard that a
solar site 100 miles to the side in the Mohave could generate all of the
power requirements for the US.
Some numbers based upon most efficient claimed CSP plant: (approx 2 to 3
times more efficient than PV but much more expensive)
370 MW Nominal generation requires 3500 acreas (largest, most efficient
claimed US solar thermal plant being constructed)
350,000 mirrors (assuming they are clean)
Generates power ~10 hours/day
To cover peak US demand of 768,000 MW you would need 781 MILLION mirrors
that only cover you 10 hours per day. The 110Mile x 110Mile plot is idle
at night. With thermal storage you would need to more than double the area
if you wanted to store during the day and generate at night, taking up
60% of the Mohave.
You can double this area for utility scale PV which, although cheaper is ~
half the efficiency of CSP/acre, in which case you would need a larger
Mohave. You also need to develop weather technology to keep all clouds out
of the desert...
Also, your Robots will need to clean 781 million mirrors per month
(monthly cleaning cycle) in the heat and sand of the desert. Plus where
will you get the water to clean them or power for your army of hundreds of
thousands of robots? If you cannot clean 781 MILLION mirrors per month you
will need more, less efficient dirty mirrors and more space
You will also pay 4 times more for this electricity than you are paying
now.
Also, from a strategic defense standpoint, it would be very easy for an
enemy to blast one large nuke off over the desert and shatter all of those
mirrors.
I am OK with distributed PV on rooftops but get the crap out of the desert
and give the BILLIONS to homeowners to subsidize installations. Solar City
has a much better business model.
I admire your creativity and regurgitating green fluff but I think you are
drinking your own bath water and they are WASTING OUR MONEY
On Thu, May 31, 2012 at 3:55 PM, Jed Rothwell jedrothw...@gmail.comwrote:
Chemical Engineer cheme...@gmail.com wrote:
You mention projects that are advancing human civilization and many were
great investments. Are you OK spending billions on green projects that
have 1/100th or less the energy density/potential of existing fossil fuels
. . .
Which projects do you mean? I am not aware of anything like that.
The energy density of uranium fission plants is not as good as existing
fossil fuels, because uranium ore density is so low, but I still prefer
uranium reactors to coal-fired plants.
The power density of solar cells is low but as long as they are cheap it
does not matter. (Energy density is meaningless in a solar cell or wind
turbine; the energy will last for billions of years.) We are not running
out of space on the roofs of houses, or in the deserts of the southwest. A
solar array 100 miles to the side could generate all of energy in the U.S.,
and there are hundreds of miles of empty land in places like Arizona and
North Africa.
Are you OK filling up the deserts with solar panels full of dust?.
Better than building more coal fired plants and filling people's lungs
with dust. It is not problem keeping the panels clean with robots. It does
not take much water or overhead.
Wind now supplies 2% of electricity. It could be increased to 20% with
today's distribution technology. That would displace half of coal fired
electricity. In North America, it would be way cheaper than adding that
--
Daniel Rocha - RJ
danieldi...@gmail.com javascript:_e({}, 'cvml',
'danieldi...@gmail.com');
Re: [Vo]:re the alternative history of LENR
Chemical Engineer cheme...@gmail.com wrote: Some numbers based upon most efficient claimed CSP plant: (approx 2 to 3 times more efficient than PV but much more expensive) They are not much more expensive, and by the time you build one that is 100 miles to the side, they would be the cheapest source of electricity. It would not actually all be put in one place. 350,000 mirrors (assuming they are clean) Generates power ~10 hours/day The number of mirrors depends on how big they are. The trough mirrors in existing CSP plants are pretty big. To cover peak US demand of 768,000 MW you would need 781 MILLION mirrors that only cover you 10 hours per day. Those must be small mirrors, since you need 2 or 3 per person in the U.S. The trough mirrors generate much more than one person can consume. With thermal storage you would need to more than double the area if you wanted to store during the day and generate at night, taking up 60% of the Mohave. Not really. Demand at night is far lower than day. You also need to develop weather technology to keep all clouds out of the desert... Nonsense! When there are clouds or rain, demand falls in that part of the country. You would not actually put the entire facility in one place. Also, your Robots will need to clean 781 million mirrors per month (monthly cleaning cycle) in the heat and sand of the desert. So what? Use 100,000 robots. Do not be afraid of large numbers. Think of how many railroad cars it takes to haul the coal now used in electric power generation, or the number of long-haul trucks in use (a million or so, I think). Plus where will you get the water to clean them or power for your army of hundreds of thousands of robots? It does not take much water. With some techniques it takes none at all. The power is right there! It is a tiny fraction of the total output. Energy overhead -- including the power needed for robot maintenance -- is far lower than for other types of generators. If you cannot clean 781 MILLION mirrors per month you will need more, less efficient dirty mirrors and more space Why would you not be able to clean them? I do not understand this comment. Robots are highly reliable and this application is ideal for them. I do not know if they need to be cleaned once a month, but in any case, the amount of cleaning, the energy and equipment needed to clean is tiny compared to the overall energy output. - Jed
Re: [Vo]:re the alternative history of LENR
Solar irradiance is ~1kw/m^2. 1GW/km^2, then. It goes up to 1.3GW/km^2 if balloons at stratosphere are used. 2012/6/1 Chemical Engineer cheme...@gmail.com Daniel, Double check your math...i get 38 sq km per gigawatt during daylight with clean mirrors On Friday, June 1, 2012, Daniel Rocha wrote: Well, at 40% efficiency, you need 1.6Km^2 for every gigawatt, So, 30X30 km2 will do it. Maintenance is hard but in terms of area, it is not something spectacular. Consider the reservoirs of the 2 most powerful hydroelectric dams: Itaipu reservoir has 1350km^2 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Itaipu_Dam Three Gorges Dam has has 1045km^2 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Gorges_Dam And new technologies are being developed for peaceful purposes. Not in stupid drones. 2012/6/1 Chemical Engineer cheme...@gmail.com Jed, Just a fact check. You don't know how many times I have heard that a solar site 100 miles to the side in the Mohave could generate all of the power requirements for the US. Some numbers based upon most efficient claimed CSP plant: (approx 2 to 3 times more efficient than PV but much more expensive) 370 MW Nominal generation requires 3500 acreas (largest, most efficient claimed US solar thermal plant being constructed) 350,000 mirrors (assuming they are clean) Generates power ~10 hours/day To cover peak US demand of 768,000 MW you would need 781 MILLION mirrors that only cover you 10 hours per day. The 110Mile x 110Mile plot is idle at night. With thermal storage you would need to more than double the area if you wanted to store during the day and generate at night, taking up 60% of the Mohave. You can double this area for utility scale PV which, although cheaper is ~ half the efficiency of CSP/acre, in which case you would need a larger Mohave. You also need to develop weather technology to keep all clouds out of the desert... Also, your Robots will need to clean 781 million mirrors per month (monthly cleaning cycle) in the heat and sand of the desert. Plus where will you get the water to clean them or power for your army of hundreds of thousands of robots? If you cannot clean 781 MILLION mirrors per month you will need more, less efficient dirty mirrors and more space You will also pay 4 times more for this electricity than you are paying now. Also, from a strategic defense standpoint, it would be very easy for an enemy to blast one large nuke off over the desert and shatter all of those mirrors. I am OK with distributed PV on rooftops but get the crap out of the desert and give the BILLIONS to homeowners to subsidize installations. Solar City has a much better business model. I admire your creativity and regurgitating green fluff but I think you are drinking your own bath water and they are WASTING OUR MONEY On Thu, May 31, 2012 at 3:55 PM, Jed Rothwell jedrothw...@gmail.comwrote: Chemical Engineer cheme...@gmail.com wrote: You mention projects that are advancing human civilization and many were great investments. Are you OK spending billions on green projects that have 1/100th or less the energy density/potential of existing fossil fuels . . . Which projects do you mean? I am not aware of anything like that. The energy density of uranium fission plants is not as good as existing fossil fuels, because uranium ore density is so low, but I still prefer uranium reactors to coal-fired plants. The power density of solar cells is low but as long as they are cheap it does not matter. (Energy density is meaningless in a solar cell or wind turbine; the energy will last for billions of years.) We are not running out of space on the roofs of houses, or in the deserts of the southwest. A solar array 100 miles to the side could generate all of energy in the U.S., and there are hundreds of miles of empty land in places like Arizona and North Africa. Are you OK filling up the deserts with solar panels full of dust?. Better than building more coal fired plants and filling people's lungs with dust. It is not problem keeping the panels clean with robots. It does not take much water or overhead. Wind now supplies 2% of electricity. It could be increased to 20% with today's distribution technology. That would displace half of coal fired electricity. In North America, it would be way cheaper than adding that -- Daniel Rocha - RJ danieldi...@gmail.com -- Daniel Rocha - RJ danieldi...@gmail.com
Re: [Vo]:re the alternative history of LENR
Daniel, Your 40% overall efficiency only includes rankine cycle and leaves out Mirror losses Air dispersion of mirror flux Steam generator ambient radiation losses 10 hour only per day generation Transmission losses Overall number is much lower. On Friday, June 1, 2012, Daniel Rocha wrote: Solar irradiance is ~1kw/m^2. 1GW/km^2, then. It goes up to 1.3GW/km^2 if balloons at stratosphere are used. 2012/6/1 Chemical Engineer cheme...@gmail.com Daniel, Double check your math...i get 38 sq km per gigawatt during daylight with clean mirrors On Friday, June 1, 2012, Daniel Rocha wrote: Well, at 40% efficiency, you need 1.6Km^2 for every gigawatt, So, 30X30 km2 will do it. Maintenance is hard but in terms of area, it is not something spectacular. Consider the reservoirs of the 2 most powerful hydroelectric dams: Itaipu reservoir has 1350km^2 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Itaipu_Dam Three Gorges Dam has has 1045km^2 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Gorges_Dam And new technologies are being developed for peaceful purposes. Not in stupid drones. 2012/6/1 Chemical Engineer cheme...@gmail.com Jed, Just a fact check. You don't know how many times I have heard that a solar site 100 miles to the side in the Mohave could generate all of the power requirements for the US. Some numbers based upon most efficient claimed CSP plant: (approx 2 to 3 times more efficient than PV but much more expensive) 370 MW Nominal generation requires 3500 acreas (largest, most efficient claimed US solar thermal plant being constructed) 350,000 mirrors (assuming they are clean) Generates power ~10 hours/day To cover peak US demand of 768,000 MW you would need 781 MILLION mirrors that only cover you 10 hours per day. The 110Mile x 110Mile plot is idle at night. With thermal storage you would need to more than double the area if you wanted to store during the day and generate at night, taking up 60% of the Mohave. You can double this area for utility scale PV which, although cheaper is ~ half the efficiency of CSP/acre, in which case you would need a larger Mohave. You also need to develop weather technology to keep all clouds out of the desert... Also, your Robots will need to clean 781 million mirrors per month (monthly cleaning cycle) in the heat and sand of the desert. Plus where will you get the water to clean them or power for your army of hundreds of thousands of robots? If you cannot clean 781 MILLION mirrors per month you will need more, less efficient dirty mirrors and more space You will also pay 4 times more for this electricity than you are paying now. Also, from a strategic defense standpoint, it would be very easy for an enemy to blast one large nuke off over the desert and shatter all of those mirrors. I am OK with distributed PV on rooftops but get the crap out of the desert and give the BILLIONS to homeowners to subsidize installations. Solar City has a much better business model. I admire your creativity and regurgitating green fluff but I think you are drinking your own bath water and they are WASTING OUR MONEY On Thu, May 31, 2012 at 3:55 PM, Jed Rothwell jedrothw...@gmail.comwrote: Chemical Engineer cheme...@gmail.com wrote: You mention projects that are advancing human civilization and many were great investments. Are you OK spending billions on green projects that have 1/100th or less the energy density/potential of existing fossil fuels . . . Which projects do you mean? I am not aware of anything like that. The energy density of uranium fission plants is not as good as existing fossil fuels, because uranium ore density is so low, but I still prefer uranium reactors to coal-fired plants. The power density of solar cells is low but as long as they are cheap it does not matter. (Energy density is meaningless in a solar cell or wind turbine; the
Re: [Vo]:re the alternative history of LENR
Liberal Journalist wannabes seem to abound in vertex. Experienced adults know that governments lie. Bureaucrats and politicians alike must keep their jobs as priority one. Thank you for your observations, Chemical Engineer. Remember Communist Russia and its creation of a land of happy, plenty, joyful and free democracy. Quickly http://egooutpeters.blogspot.com/2012/05/answering-to-ruby-carats-what-if.html (AnonymousMay 31, 2012 7:51 AM Oops, why not work more on the references rather than trying to complete your efforts toward making money as a cold Fusion Consultant and/or author? See: Ruggero Maria Santilli for one.)? -Original Message- From: Chemical Engineer lt;cheme...@gmail.comgt; To: vortex-l lt;vortex-l@eskimo.comgt; Sent: Fri, Jun 1, 2012 12:48 pm Subject: Re: [Vo]:re the alternative history of LENR Jed, Just a fact check. ?You don't know how many times I have heard that a solar site 100 miles to the side in the Mohave could generate all of the power requirements for the US. Some numbers based upon most efficient claimed CSP plant: (approx 2 to 3 times more efficient than PV but much more expensive) 370 MW Nominal generation requires 3500 acreas (largest, most efficient claimed US solar thermal plant being constructed) 350,000 mirrors (assuming they are clean) Generates power ~10 hours/day To cover peak US demand of 768,000 MW you would need 781 MILLION mirrors that only cover you 10 hours per day. ?The 110Mile x 110Mile plot is idle at night. ?With thermal storage you would need to more than double the area if you wanted to store during the day and generate at night, taking up gt; 60% of the Mohave. You can double this area for utility scale PV which, although cheaper is ~ half the efficiency of CSP/acre, in which case you would need a larger Mohave. ?You also need to develop weather technology to keep all clouds out of the desert... Also, your Robots will need to clean 781 million mirrors per month (monthly cleaning cycle) in the heat and sand of the desert. ?Plus where will you get the water to clean them or power for your army of hundreds of thousands of robots? ?If you cannot clean 781 MILLION mirrors per month you will need more, less efficient dirty mirrors and more space You will also pay 4 times more for this electricity than you are paying now. Also, from a strategic defense standpoint, it would be very easy for an enemy to blast one large nuke off over the desert and shatter all of those mirrors. I am OK with distributed PV on rooftops but get the crap out of the desert and give the BILLIONS to homeowners to subsidize installations. ?Solar City has a much better business model. I admire your creativity and regurgitating green fluff but I think you are drinking your own bath water and they are WASTING OUR MONEY On Thu, May 31, 2012 at 3:55 PM, Jed Rothwell lt;jedrothw...@gmail.comgt; wrote: Chemical Engineer lt;cheme...@gmail.comgt; wrote: ? You mention projects that are advancing human civilization and many were great investments. ?Are you OK spending billions on green projects that have 1/100th or less the energy density/potential of existing fossil fuels . . . Which projects do you mean? I am not aware of anything like that. The energy density of uranium fission plants is not as good as existing fossil fuels, because uranium ore density is so low, but I still prefer uranium reactors to coal-fired plants. The power density of solar cells is low but as long as they are cheap it does not matter. (Energy density is meaningless in a solar cell or wind turbine; the energy will last for billions of years.)?We are not running out of space on the roofs of houses, or in the deserts of the southwest. A solar array 100 miles to the side could generate all of energy in the U.S., and there are hundreds of miles of empty land in places like Arizona and North Africa. ? Are you OK filling up the deserts with solar panels full of dust?. Better than building more coal fired plants and filling people's lungs with dust. It is not problem keeping the panels clean with robots. It does not take much water or overhead. Wind now supplies 2% of electricity. It could be increased to 20% with today's distribution technology. That?would displace half of coal fired electricity. In North America, it would be way cheaper than adding that much nuclear power (~100 reactors). ? ?I guess you would recommend a Billion Dollar DOE investment in Rossi's company at this point? maybe a GigaCAT? Of course not. Anyway, Rossi will take any investment money from anyone. I know several people with millions of dollars burning a hole in their pockets. They are pounding on his door.?He will not take one dollar from them. He will not surrender any control over the product. - Jed
Re: [Vo]:re the alternative history of LENR
I wrote: Also, your Robots will need to clean 781 million mirrors per month (monthly cleaning cycle) in the heat and sand of the desert. So what? Use 100,000 robots. That would be 11 mirrors per robot per hour. That seems like a reasonable task even for a slow moving robot. Maybe you need 200,000 robots. So what? I don't suppose they would be much bigger or more powerful than a Roomba. Again, large numbers are nothing to be afraid of. Think of how many hard disks are presently running in Google's servers worldwide: ~1.8 million. 40 petaflops processor capacity. https://plus.google.com/114250946512808775436/posts/gTFgij36o6u The other day on NHK's Today's Close-up (クローズアップ現代) they talked big-data and worldwide present storage and computatio nal capacity. They said there are roughly as many bytes of data now stores as there are grains of sand on all of the beaches of the world. They are doing remarkable things with big-data flows, such as mapping traffic from GPS enabled transponders to reduce traffic accidents and traffic jams. - Jed
Re: [Vo]:re the alternative history of LENR
These are photovoltaic cells. And night consumption is lower. Even at 20%, the total area is still small. 2012/6/1 Chemical Engineer cheme...@gmail.com Daniel, Your 40% overall efficiency only includes rankine cycle and leaves out Mirror losses Air dispersion of mirror flux Steam generator ambient radiation losses 10 hour only per day generation Transmission losses Overall number is much lower. On Friday, June 1, 2012, Daniel Rocha wrote: Solar irradiance is ~1kw/m^2. 1GW/km^2, then. It goes up to 1.3GW/km^2 if balloons at stratosphere are used. 2012/6/1 Chemical Engineer cheme...@gmail.com Daniel, Double check your math...i get 38 sq km per gigawatt during daylight with clean mirrors On Friday, June 1, 2012, Daniel Rocha wrote: Well, at 40% efficiency, you need 1.6Km^2 for every gigawatt, So, 30X30 km2 will do it. Maintenance is hard but in terms of area, it is not something spectacular. Consider the reservoirs of the 2 most powerful hydroelectric dams: Itaipu reservoir has 1350km^2 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Itaipu_Dam Three Gorges Dam has has 1045km^2 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Gorges_Dam And new technologies are being developed for peaceful purposes. Not in stupid drones. 2012/6/1 Chemical Engineer cheme...@gmail.com Jed, Just a fact check. You don't know how many times I have heard that a solar site 100 miles to the side in the Mohave could generate all of the power requirements for the US. Some numbers based upon most efficient claimed CSP plant: (approx 2 to 3 times more efficient than PV but much more expensive) 370 MW Nominal generation requires 3500 acreas (largest, most efficient claimed US solar thermal plant being constructed) 350,000 mirrors (assuming they are clean) Generates power ~10 hours/day To cover peak US demand of 768,000 MW you would need 781 MILLION mirrors that only cover you 10 hours per day. The 110Mile x 110Mile plot is idle at night. With thermal storage you would need to more than double the area if you wanted to store during the day and generate at night, taking up 60% of the Mohave. You can double this area for utility scale PV which, although cheaper is ~ half the efficiency of CSP/acre, in which case you would need a larger Mohave. You also need to develop weather technology to keep all clouds out of the desert... Also, your Robots will need to clean 781 million mirrors per month (monthly cleaning cycle) in the heat and sand of the desert. Plus where will you get the water to clean them or power for your army of hundreds of thousands of robots? If you cannot clean 781 MILLION mirrors per month you will need more, less efficient dirty mirrors and more space You will also pay 4 times more for this electricity than you are paying now. Also, from a strategic defense standpoint, it would be very easy for an enemy to blast one large nuke off over the desert and shatter all of those mirrors. I am OK with distributed PV on rooftops but get the crap out of the desert and give the BILLIONS to homeowners to subsidize installations. Solar City has a much better business model. I admire your creativity and regurgitating green fluff but I think you are drinking your own bath water and they are WASTING OUR MONEY On Thu, May 31, 2012 at 3:55 PM, Jed Rothwell jedrothw...@gmail.comwrote: Chemical Engineer cheme...@gmail.com wrote: You mention projects that are advancing human civilization and many were great investments. Are you OK spending billions on green projects that have 1/100th or less the energy density/potential of existing fossil fuels . . . Which projects do you mean? I am not aware of anything like that. The energy density of uranium fission plants is not as good as existing fossil fuels, because uranium ore density is so low, but I still prefer uranium reactors to coal-fired plants. The power density of solar cells is low but as long as they are cheap it does not matter. (Energy density is meaningless in a solar cell or wind turbine; the -- Daniel Rocha - RJ danieldi...@gmail.com
Re: [Vo]:re the alternative history of LENR
ny@aol.com wrote: Liberal Journalist wannabes seem to abound in vertex. Experienced adults know that governments lie. So do corporations, universities, physicists, bankers and stockbrokers. So do farmers, housewives, doctors, bakers, and candlestick makers. It is the human condition. It is not clear whether governments tend to lie more or less than other institutions. However, it is clear that for the past 300 years, most big-ticket high technology has been invented either by governments or with government help. There may be a better way to invent things, but I do not know of one, and neither do you. Industry and investors simply have no incentive and no ability to build things like the GPS system, or the highway system, or the first computers, or to research cold fusion for that matter. The latest example of that is the Human Genome, by the way. That may turn out to be very useful. The government spent hundreds of millions getting the first genomes. Nowadays you can get one done for $1000. The pace of progress is even faster than it was when the government was building the first big computers during the cold war, from 1945 to 1965. - Jed
Re: [Vo]:re the alternative history of LENR
Shouldn't the costs be going down Jed? http://www.renewablesbiz.com/article/12/05/pge-says-it-will-meet-california-s-renewable-energy-goalsutm_medium=eNLutm_campaign=RB_DAILY2utm_term=Original-Member As an engineer i have to deal with reality which focuses my creativity toward worthwile endevours. If LENR goes forward I would dismantle every utility scale solar plant (after the fission nukes and coal). I would use natural gas as a bridge Sorry I keep forgetting i can use unlimited ungrounded creativity and make stuff up. Robots for everybody! On Friday, June 1, 2012, Jed Rothwell wrote: I wrote: Also, your Robots will need to clean 781 million mirrors per month (monthly cleaning cycle) in the heat and sand of the desert. So what? Use 100,000 robots. That would be 11 mirrors per robot per hour. That seems like a reasonable task even for a slow moving robot. Maybe you need 200,000 robots. So what? I don't suppose they would be much bigger or more powerful than a Roomba. Again, large numbers are nothing to be afraid of. Think of how many hard disks are presently running in Google's servers worldwide: ~1.8 million. 40 petaflops processor capacity. https://plus.google.com/114250946512808775436/posts/gTFgij36o6u The other day on NHK's Today's Close-up (クローズアップ現代) they talked big-data and worldwide present storage and computatio nal capacity. They said there are roughly as many bytes of data now stores as there are grains of sand on all of the beaches of the world. They are doing remarkable things with big-data flows, such as mapping traffic from GPS enabled transponders to reduce traffic accidents and traffic jams. - Jed
Re: [Vo]:re the alternative history of LENR
Liberalism is supporting government? Shouldn't it be the opposite? I mean, liberalism is a typical conservative stance, for example, the more conservative the republican, the more liberal it is. Liberal as meaning interference of the government with the economy. The most liberal of the republican nowadays are Ron Paul supporters, after him comes neo cons and Reagan fans... Republicans are liberals and Democrats are slightly less so, as far as I can perceive. There are minor issues (I mean, money management is the biggest issue for these parties) regarding abortion, minorities rights. But these stances fluctuates much more within each party. 2012/6/1 ny@aol.com Liberal Journalist wannabes seem to abound in vertex. Experienced adults know that governments lie. Bureaucrats and politicians alike must keep their jobs as priority one. Thank you for your observations, Chemical Engineer. Remember Communist Russia and its creation of a land of happy, plenty, joyful and free democracy. Quickly http://egooutpeters.blogspot.com/2012/05/answering-to-ruby-carats-what-if.html (AnonymousMay 31, 2012 7:51 AM Oops, why not work more on the references rather than trying to complete your efforts toward making money as a cold Fusion Consultant and/or author? See: Ruggero Maria Santilli for one.) -Original Message- From: Chemical Engineer cheme...@gmail.com To: vortex-l vortex-l@eskimo.com Sent: Fri, Jun 1, 2012 12:48 pm Subject: Re: [Vo]:re the alternative history of LENR Jed, Just a fact check. You don't know how many times I have heard that a solar site 100 miles to the side in the Mohave could generate all of the power requirements for the US. Some numbers based upon most efficient claimed CSP plant: (approx 2 to 3 times more efficient than PV but much more expensive) 370 MW Nominal generation requires 3500 acreas (largest, most efficient claimed US solar thermal plant being constructed) 350,000 mirrors (assuming they are clean) Generates power ~10 hours/day To cover peak US demand of 768,000 MW you would need 781 MILLION mirrors that only cover you 10 hours per day. The 110Mile x 110Mile plot is idle at night. With thermal storage you would need to more than double the area if you wanted to store during the day and generate at night, taking up 60% of the Mohave. You can double this area for utility scale PV which, although cheaper is ~ half the efficiency of CSP/acre, in which case you would need a larger Mohave. You also need to develop weather technology to keep all clouds out of the desert... Also, your Robots will need to clean 781 million mirrors per month (monthly cleaning cycle) in the heat and sand of the desert. Plus where will you get the water to clean them or power for your army of hundreds of thousands of robots? If you cannot clean 781 MILLION mirrors per month you will need more, less efficient dirty mirrors and more space You will also pay 4 times more for this electricity than you are paying now. Also, from a strategic defense standpoint, it would be very easy for an enemy to blast one large nuke off over the desert and shatter all of those mirrors. I am OK with distributed PV on rooftops but get the crap out of the desert and give the BILLIONS to homeowners to subsidize installations. Solar City has a much better business model. I admire your creativity and regurgitating green fluff but I think you are drinking your own bath water and they are WASTING OUR MONEY On Thu, May 31, 2012 at 3:55 PM, Jed Rothwell jedrothw...@gmail.comwrote: Chemical Engineer cheme...@gmail.com wrote: You mention projects that are advancing human civilization and many were great investments. Are you OK spending billions on green projects that have 1/100th or less the energy density/potential of existing fossil fuels . . . Which projects do you mean? I am not aware of anything like that. The energy density of uranium fission plants is not as good as existing fossil fuels, because uranium ore density is so low, but I still prefer uranium reactors to coal-fired plants. The power density of solar cells is low but as long as they are cheap it does not matter. (Energy density is meaningless in a solar cell or wind turbine; the energy will last for billions of years.) We are not running out of space on the roofs of houses, or in the deserts of the southwest. A solar array 100 miles to the side could generate all of energy in the U.S., and there are hundreds of miles of empty land in places like Arizona and North Africa. Are you OK filling up the deserts with solar panels full of dust?. Better than building more coal fired plants and filling people's lungs with dust. It is not problem keeping the panels clean with robots. It does not take much water or overhead. Wind now supplies 2% of electricity. It could be increased to 20% with today's distribution technology. That would displace
Re: [Vo]:re the alternative history of LENR
As Chemical Engineer said: (and they are WASTING OUR MONEY) Very Quickly -Original Message- From: Jed Rothwell lt;jedrothw...@gmail.comgt; To: vortex-l lt;vortex-l@eskimo.comgt; Sent: Fri, Jun 1, 2012 1:43 pm Subject: Re: [Vo]:re the alternative history of LENR lt;ny@aol.comgt; wrote: Liberal Journalist wannabes seem to abound in vortex. Experienced adults know that governments lie. So do corporations, universities, physicists, bankers and stockbrokers. So do farmers, housewives, doctors, bakers, and candlestick makers. It is the human condition.
Re: [Vo]:re the alternative history of LENR
I think it would be a nice police to invest 2trillion dollars in building these technologies within 10 years or so. It would avoid spending much more in wars or foreign policies later. 2012/6/1 ny@aol.com As Chemical Engineer said: (and they are WASTING OUR MONEY) Very Quickly -Original Message- From: Jed Rothwell jedrothw...@gmail.com To: vortex-l vortex-l@eskimo.com Sent: Fri, Jun 1, 2012 1:43 pm Subject: Re: [Vo]:re the alternative history of LENR ny@aol.com wrote: Liberal Journalist wannabes seem to abound in vortex. Experienced adults know that governments lie. So do corporations, universities, physicists, bankers and stockbrokers. So do farmers, housewives, doctors, bakers, and candlestick makers. It is the human condition. -- Daniel Rocha - RJ danieldi...@gmail.com
[Vo]:Vortex idle looping
waiting for Godot. Or is it projections? Or what? Solaris/Vortex: Troubled psychologist(s) sent to investigate the crew of an isolated research station (Rossi et al) orbiting a bizarre planet. (LENR). Not that I do'nt like that of sorts. Anyway. Guenther
Re: [Vo]:re the alternative history of LENR
Chemical Engineer cheme...@gmail.com wrote: Shouldn't the costs be going down Jed? http://www.renewablesbiz.com/article/12/05/pge-says-it-will-meet-california-s-renewable-energy-goalsutm_medium=eNLutm_campaign=RB_DAILY2utm_term=Original-Member As an engineer i have to deal with reality which focuses my creativity . . . As an engineer you should know that by the time you manufacture 780 million mirrors, the cost per unit will fall. Please stop playing the fool. As I am sure you know -- as ANYONE knows -- solar and wind electricity are more expensive than coal today. If that were not so, the power companies would be abandoning coal as quickly as they could phase out the old plants. However, when you factor in externalities such as the ~20,000 people killed per year from coal smoke, and the cost of global warming, coal is a lot more expensive. And if you build ~50 gigawatts of CSP plants the cost will fall by a large factor. There is nothing inherently expensive about reflectors. Sorry I keep forgetting i can use unlimited ungrounded creativity and make stuff up. Robots for everybody! If you do not think we will soon have robots for everyone, you are not an engineer. Looking around in 1980, did you have any doubt that we would soon all have computers. What on earth will prevent us from having robots?!? Why do you think it would be a problem to equip a major CSP installation with robots to clean the reflectors? Do you think people are going to use Windex and paper towels in the 21st century? - Jed
Re: [Vo]:re the alternative history of LENR
Jed, Concentrated Solar thermal has been around for 40 years and the costs still suck. They are assembling 350,000 mirrors/heliostats at the job site. How effective do you think that is? How much more time do they need to be competitive? 50 years, 500 years, 5000 years? I am glad I don't live in California, they are getting boned by the greenie weenies complements of Arnold Obama. I'll get my robot(s) when they add value and are cost effective and I won't look for a government subsidy or handout. I suggest you buy one now! On Fri, Jun 1, 2012 at 3:05 PM, Jed Rothwell jedrothw...@gmail.com wrote: Chemical Engineer cheme...@gmail.com wrote: Shouldn't the costs be going down Jed? http://www.renewablesbiz.com/article/12/05/pge-says-it-will-meet-california-s-renewable-energy-goalsutm_medium=eNLutm_campaign=RB_DAILY2utm_term=Original-Member As an engineer i have to deal with reality which focuses my creativity . . . As an engineer you should know that by the time you manufacture 780 million mirrors, the cost per unit will fall. Please stop playing the fool. As I am sure you know -- as ANYONE knows -- solar and wind electricity are more expensive than coal today. If that were not so, the power companies would be abandoning coal as quickly as they could phase out the old plants. However, when you factor in externalities such as the ~20,000 people killed per year from coal smoke, and the cost of global warming, coal is a lot more expensive. And if you build ~50 gigawatts of CSP plants the cost will fall by a large factor. There is nothing inherently expensive about reflectors. Sorry I keep forgetting i can use unlimited ungrounded creativity and make stuff up. Robots for everybody! If you do not think we will soon have robots for everyone, you are not an engineer. Looking around in 1980, did you have any doubt that we would soon all have computers. What on earth will prevent us from having robots?!? Why do you think it would be a problem to equip a major CSP installation with robots to clean the reflectors? Do you think people are going to use Windex and paper towels in the 21st century? - Jed
Re: [Vo]:re the alternative history of LENR
At 01:29 PM 6/1/2012, Chemical Engineer wrote: Daniel, Your 40% overall efficiency only includes rankine cycle and leaves out Mirror losses Air dispersion of mirror flux Steam generator ambient radiation losses 10 hour only per day generation Transmission losses Overall number is much lower. Sure, Daniel's analysis was brief and certainly incomplete. On the other hand, what is obvious here is argument from conclusions. That is, one has a set conclusion in mind, so arguments are picked one after another to support the conclusion, and contrary arguments are ignored. When an original argument is refuted, the fact is not noted, and the proponent of the conclusion has in mind that there are so many arguments supporting my position, not all of them can be wrong. The refuted argument is simply replaced with a new one, and the human mind is powerfully able to invent these, it is a side-effect of our necessary ability to discern meaning (i.e., to predict the future with some success, to recognize patterns.) If it were not so common, we'd have to consider this deranged. Imagine this procedure applied to every dispute in one's life, including arguments with family, spouses, employers, etc. I'm right as a premise is fatal to real communication, fatal to relationships, deep learning, flexibility, science, and the possibility of growth beyond a very limited concept of self. It's not that one is wrong. It is that the stand is attached, and attachment blinds. There was an example of this recently, a writer here proposing that Darwinian Evolution, whatever that is, was preposterous, because complex living structures must have been designed, they could not have arisen by chance. I pointed out some flaws in this argument, and the writer proceeded to assume that I was a believer in DE, fanatically attached to it, and thus an enemy of the concept of divine creation. When I pointed out that he couldn't see what was in front of his face, but was inventing an imagined Abd, much less discern the subtleties of how life arose, he considered the discussion hopeless. It probably was, but I'd treated his writing seriously enough to address the main issue he'd raised, whereas another writer here simply told him to go (eff) himself. I'm afraid that our creationist friend was unable to understand simple human interactions, much less the origin of life. We are all subject to the error, though, when we forget the distinction between what we actually know and what we imagine, project, theorize, or believe, when we come to think that the ideas we repeat to ourselves and others are truth and then treat anything appearing to differ from them as false -- or worse.
Re: [Vo]:re the alternative history of LENR
Chemical Engineer cheme...@gmail.com wrote: Concentrated Solar thermal has been around for 40 years and the costs still suck. Wind turbines were around for 1000 years but until the 1990s their costs were much too high. It is not the length of time that counts; it is the total RD and scale of manufacturing. The LUZ CSP plants in California would have been far cheaper per watt if LUZ had been allowed to build them on the large scale they originally proposed. The power company deliberately scaled them down to a size that anyone could see would make them uneconomical. This drove LUZ out of business, predictably. They are assembling 350,000 mirrors/heliostats at the job site. How effective do you think that is? If the technique can be improved, it will be, by the time time they install millions of mirrors. Just allow competition and wait for capitalism to work its magic. How much more time do they need to be competitive? 50 years, 500 years, 5000 years? It makes no sense to measure this in years! You have to measure capacity. My guess is that 10 GW of capacity would suffice, although I would not know. I think ~10 GW actual (not nameplate) was enough to bring wind power down to the cost of coal, factoring in externalties. Asking how long it would take is unfair. This resembles the skeptical attacks on cold fusion; i.e., it has been 23 years so why don't we have practical reactors? Measured in RD dollars and manpower, it has been about 2 months, compared to plasma fusion or clean coal research. It has been maybe 1 day compared to the cost of wars fought for oil. - Jed
Re: [Vo]:re the alternative history of LENR
Jed, On Fri, Jun 1, 2012 at 3:45 PM, Jed Rothwell jedrothw...@gmail.com wrote: Chemical Engineer cheme...@gmail.com wrote: Concentrated Solar thermal has been around for 40 years and the costs still suck. Wind turbines were around for 1000 years but until the 1990s their costs were much too high. It is not the length of time that counts; it is the total RD and scale of manufacturing. It is not just the scale of manufacturing, not every product or system can be made economical by just scaling The LUZ CSP plants in California would have been far cheaper per watt if LUZ had been allowed to build them on the large scale they originally proposed. The power company deliberately scaled them down to a size that anyone could see would make them uneconomical. This drove LUZ out of business, predictably. History has a funny way of repeating itself They are assembling 350,000 mirrors/heliostats at the job site. How effective do you think that is? If the technique can be improved, it will be, by the time time they install millions of mirrors. Just allow competition and wait for capitalism to work its magic. How much more time do they need to be competitive? 50 years, 500 years, 5000 years? It makes no sense to measure this in years! You have to measure capacity. My guess is that 10 GW of capacity would suffice, although I would not know. I think ~10 GW actual (not nameplate) was enough to bring wind power down to the cost of coal, factoring in externalties. Right. Reminds me of the story where two guys went to Canada and bought Christams trees for $5/tree and drove to New York City and sold them for $5/tree. On the way back one said to the other that they did not make much money on that deal and the other said next time they should get a bigger truck! Asking how long it would take is unfair. This resembles the skeptical attacks on cold fusion; i.e., it has been 23 years so why don't we have practical reactors? Measured in RD dollars and manpower, it has been about 2 months, compared to plasma fusion or clean coal research. It has been maybe 1 day compared to the cost of wars fought for oil. - Jed Time does not wait, new technologies are being developed all the time. Results are what count, at least in business/capitalism - unless you have lots of government subsidies and loan guarantees.
Re: [Vo]:re the alternative history of LENR
Chemical Engineer cheme...@gmail.com wrote: Wind turbines were around for 1000 years but until the 1990s their costs were much too high. It is not the length of time that counts; it is the total RD and scale of manufacturing. It is not just the scale of manufacturing, not every product or system can be made economical by just scaling This one surely can! What is it about mirrors that makes you think they cannot be made cheaper with mass production!? Seriously, do you have any reason at all to think that this particular technology is not likely to get cheaper with mass production? It seems like the ideal candidate to me. The materials are abundant and inherently cheap. The structures are simple, modular and repetitive. Granted, there are products not amenable to reduced costs with mass production. Anything made from rare materials, such as gold or palladium, will likely grow more expensive when production is increased by a factor of a thousand. But mirrors are the perfect candidate for robotic mass production, installation and maintenance. - Jed
RE: [Vo]:re the alternative history of LENR
One can justify Govt’s responsibility to use PUBLIC, TAXPAYER funds for pure RD, and I’d go as far as some applied RD, but that’s about it. And the results of all that research should be FREELY available to any taxpayer (unless it’s so sensitive that it’s been declared a national security issue). If an entrepreneur is able to raise money and take the govt’s research and make a product or service, I’d even be in favor of the govt getting a small % royalty for a few years to at least help offset the cost to the taxpayer. Govt, because of the corruption which is inevitable with humans, and which is rampant in this country and the world, will never do the right thing when it comes to the sort of large subsidies and loan programs that we’ve seen of late… Below is a link to the report by the House Oversight Cmte on the DOE’s Loan Guarantee program, and how corruption has resulted in nothing but failures… why? Because despite numerous red-flags about the hi-risk of the companies, the govt loaned the money anyway because of political favors… http://oversight.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/FINAL-DOE-Loan-Guarantees-Report.pdf And this is not a partisan issue… politicians on both sides of the aisle are corrupt and only interested in reelection and riding the govt gravy-train as long as the citizen taxpayers are stupid enough to reelect them. -Mark From: Eric Walker [mailto:eric.wal...@gmail.com] Sent: Friday, June 01, 2012 12:17 AM To: vortex-l@eskimo.com Subject: Re: [Vo]:re the alternative history of LENR On Thu, May 31, 2012 at 7:59 PM, Chemical Engineer cheme...@gmail.com wrote: This example, at its most simple message shows how corporations sometimes see new technologies in the opposite light even though the world might benefit. Agreed. Corporations sometimes see things in terms starkly different from what is understood to be in the common good. The tobacco companies in the US saw fit to advertise to adolescents a generation ago until the consequences of doing so (heavy penalties, lawsuits, etc.) outweighed the financial benefits. The logic of such advertising was impeccable -- if you get people hooked on cigarettes at a young enough age they will become lifelong consumers. But that logic was purely mercenary, blind to some basic things that the majority of people feel to be important and valuable; in this case, protecting the young from the predatory behavior of corporations. There are other examples of how the perceived interests of corporations differ significantly from the interests of society as a whole. These examples are helpful in understanding what underlies their behavior, in providing a cautionary tale of what one might be up against if remedial action of some kind is needed, and in offering insight into possible ways to encourage corporations to better align their behavior with the interests of the larger society. I don't think such examples are to be construed as reasons to avoid regulation or market interventions. The main challenge with interventions is that they often lead to unintended consequences. But being wary of unintended consequences is different from being concerned that companies will perceive things differently from ordinary people. My point here is that we should not be worried that corporations won't like the restrictions and inducements we decide to put in place, but we should be concerned about unintended economic consequences. Many of the big oil companies dabble in renewable energy because they do not feel threatened by it. kW/Mw scale LENR if/when it is proven may get ignored by big energy much like Kodak did with digital cameras. I suspect the energy companies will feel very threatened at some point. The lawyers will step out of the woodworks, and then if you want to develop or sell LENR devices you'll need to make a huge financial investment to satisfy certification requirements; even then, there will be onerous restrictions on selling to the mass market. It might take a generation or two to disentangle the technology from the webwork put up by vested interests. This will not have been a necessary outcome; it will have been the result of our particular willingness to coddle financial interests at this time in history. Eric
[Vo]:re the alternative history of LENR
Jed, Absolutely, flat mirrors have been used for thousands of years and full length flat mirrors have been used for 400 years. Mirrors are already mass produced, just go to any Home Depot. Google spent money two years ago reseaching heliostats/solar thermal and dropped it. They have not made any new investments since in solar thermal. If you look closely at heliostat technology you will see it is a flat mirror, two stepper motors, a linear actuator, worm gear and a steel post. All those items are already mass produced. You can download the solar tracking software for free from NREL. i have built one myself. The big secret to the technology is THERE IS NO SECRET. They are clunky, subject to high wind shear storm damage and hard to aim at longer distances. They also need expensive boilers and turbines which have been around for 100 years and miles and miles of underground control cable. Also, think of a utility scale boiler ramping up/down 500 times a year due to solar cycles. it is kinda like running the space shuttle through daily reentries... I am an engineer and unfortunately I have to think of these things. For now, just place cheap distributed PV on rooftops until something better comes along. Liquid metal battery electrical storage is on its way to even out the cycles.. I will glady trade you 350,000 heliostats for a (working) 1 kW LENR reactor (with recipe) and i will put you out of business in just a few years. Half of our government billions are going into the fat cats pockets. They are spending more on Washington Lobbyists than RD. Oh well, maybe your herd of star wars desert mirror washing roombas from irobot from can save the day. On Friday, June 1, 2012, Jed Rothwell wrote: Chemical Engineer cheme...@gmail.com wrote: Wind turbines were around for 1000 years but until the 1990s their costs were much too high. It is not the length of time that counts; it is the total RD and scale of manufacturing. It is not just the scale of manufacturing, not every product or system can be made economical by just scaling This one surely can! What is it about mirrors that makes you think they cannot be made cheaper with mass production!? Seriously, do you have any reason at all to think that this particular technology is not likely to get cheaper with mass production? It seems like the ideal candidate to me. The materials are abundant and inherently cheap. The structures are simple, modular and repetitive. Granted, there are products not amenable to reduced costs with mass production. Anything made from rare materials, such as gold or palladium, will likely grow more expensive when production is increased by a factor of a thousand. But mirrors are the perfect candidate for robotic mass production, installation and maintenance. - Jed
RE: [Vo]:re the alternative history of LENR
Remarkably well stated. Thank you. Warm Regards, Reliable MarkI-ZeroPoint Fri, 01 Jun 2012 15:16:38 -0700 One can justify Govts responsibility to use PUBLIC, TAXPAYER funds for pure RD, and Id go as far as some applied RD, but thats about it. And the results of all that research should be FREELY available to any taxpayer (unless its so sensitive that its been declared a national security issue). If an entrepreneur is able to raise money and take the govts research and make a product or service, Id even be in favor of the govt getting a small % royalty for a few years to at least help offset the cost to the taxpayer. Govt, because of the corruption which is inevitable with humans, and which is rampant in this country and the world, will never do the right thing when it comes to the sort of large subsidies and loan programs that weve seen of late Below is a link to the report by the House Oversight Cmte on the DOEs Loan Guarantee program, and how corruption has resulted in nothing but failures why? Because despite numerous red-flags about the hi-risk of the companies, the govt loaned the money anyway because of political favors http://oversight.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/FINAL-DOE-Loan-Guarantees-Report.pdf And this is not a partisan issue politicians on both sides of the aisle are corrupt and only interested in reelection and riding the govt gravy-train as long as the citizen taxpayers are stupid enough to reelect them. -Mark From: Eric Walker [mailto:eric.wal...@gmail.com] Sent: Friday, June 01, 2012 12:17 AM To: vortex-l@eskimo.com Subject: Re: [Vo]:re the alternative history of LENR On Thu, May 31, 2012 at 7:59 PM, Chemical Engineer cheme...@gmail.com wrote: This example, at its most simple message shows how corporations sometimes see new technologies in the opposite light even though the world might benefit. Agreed. Corporations sometimes see things in terms starkly different from what is understood to be in the common good. The tobacco companies in the US saw fit to advertise to adolescents a generation ago until the consequences of doing so (heavy penalties, lawsuits, etc.) outweighed the financial benefits. The logic of such advertising was impeccable -- if you get people hooked on cigarettes at a young enough age they will become lifelong consumers. But that logic was purely mercenary, blind to some basic things that the majority of people feel to be important and valuable; in this case, protecting the young from the predatory behavior of corporations. There are other examples of how the perceived interests of corporations differ significantly from the interests of society as a whole. These examples are helpful in understanding what underlies their behavior, in providing a cautionary tale of what one might be up against if remedial action of some kind is needed, and in offering insight into possible ways to encourage corporations to better align their behavior with the interests of the larger society. I don't think such examples are to be construed as reasons to avoid regulation or market interventions. The main challenge with interventions is that they often lead to unintended consequences. But being wary of unintended consequences is different from being concerned that companies will perceive things differently from ordinary people. My point here is that we should not be worried that corporations won't like the restrictions and inducements we decide to put in place, but we should be concerned about unintended economic consequences. Many of the big oil companies dabble in renewable energy because they do not feel threatened by it. kW/Mw scale LENR if/when it is proven may get ignored by big energy much like Kodak did with digital cameras. I suspect the energy companies will feel very threatened at some point. The lawyers will step out of the woodworks, and then if you want to develop or sell LENR devices you'll need to make a huge financial investment to satisfy certification requirements; even then, there will be onerous restrictions on selling to the mass market. It might take a generation or two to disentangle the technology from the webwork put up by vested interests. This will not have been a necessary outcome; it will have been the result of our particular willingness to coddle financial interests at this time in history.
Re: [Vo]:re the alternative history of LENR
Mark,
Thanks, Forgot to mention earlier these additional companies going/gone
belly up
Beacon power
Abound solar
Solopower
Nobody died that i know of but lots of money was robbed from government
coffers and you can't blame it all on the Chinese.
On Friday, June 1, 2012, MarkI-ZeroPoint wrote:
One can justify Govt’s responsibility to use PUBLIC, TAXPAYER funds for *
pure* RD, and I’d go as far as some *applied* RD, but that’s about it.
And the results of all that research should be FREELY available to any
taxpayer (unless it’s so sensitive that it’s been declared a national
security issue). If an entrepreneur is able to raise money and take the
govt’s research and make a product or service, I’d even be in favor of the
govt getting a small % royalty for a few years to at least help offset the
cost to the taxpayer.
** **
Govt, because of the corruption which is inevitable with humans, and which
is rampant in this country and the world, will never do the right thing
when it comes to the sort of large subsidies and loan programs that we’ve
seen of late… Below is a link to the report by the House Oversight Cmte on
the DOE’s Loan Guarantee program, and how corruption has resulted in
nothing but failures… why? Because despite numerous red-flags about the
hi-risk of the companies, the govt loaned the money anyway because of
political favors…
** **
http://oversight.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/FINAL-DOE-Loan-Guarantees-Report.pdf
** **
And this is not a partisan issue… politicians on both sides of the aisle
are corrupt and only interested in reelection and riding the govt
gravy-train as long as the citizen taxpayers are stupid enough to reelect
them.
** **
-Mark
** **
*From:* Eric Walker [mailto:eric.wal...@gmail.com javascript:_e({},
'cvml', 'eric.wal...@gmail.com');]
*Sent:* Friday, June 01, 2012 12:17 AM
*To:* vortex-l@eskimo.com javascript:_e({}, 'cvml',
'vortex-l@eskimo.com');
*Subject:* Re: [Vo]:re the alternative history of LENR
** **
On Thu, May 31, 2012 at 7:59 PM, Chemical Engineer
cheme...@gmail.comjavascript:_e({}, 'cvml', 'cheme...@gmail.com');
wrote:
** **
This example, at its most simple message shows how corporations sometimes
see new technologies in the opposite light even though the world might
benefit.
** **
Agreed. Corporations sometimes see things in terms starkly different from
what is understood to be in the common good. The tobacco companies in the
US saw fit to advertise to adolescents a generation ago until the
consequences of doing so (heavy penalties, lawsuits, etc.) outweighed the
financial benefits. The logic of such advertising was impeccable -- if you
get people hooked on cigarettes at a young enough age they will become
lifelong consumers. But that logic was purely mercenary, blind to some
basic things that the majority of people feel to be important and valuable;
in this case, protecting the young from the predatory behavior of
corporations.
** **
There are other examples of how the perceived interests of corporations
differ significantly from the interests of society as a whole. These
examples are helpful in understanding what underlies their behavior, in
providing a cautionary tale of what one might be up against if remedial
action of some kind is needed, and in offering insight into possible ways
to encourage corporations to better align their behavior with the interests
of the larger society. I don't think such examples are to be construed as
reasons to avoid regulation or market interventions. The main challenge
with interventions is that they often lead to unintended consequences. But
being wary of unintended consequences is different from being concerned
that companies will perceive things differently from ordinary people.
** **
My point here is that we should not be worried that corporations won't
like the restrictions and inducements we decide to put in place, but we
should be concerned about unintended economic consequences.
** **
Many of the big oil companies dabble in renewable energy because they do
not feel threatened by it. kW/Mw scale LENR if/when it is proven may get
ignored by big energy much like Kodak did with digital cameras.
** **
I suspect the energy companies will feel very threatened at some point.
The lawyers will step out of the woodworks, and then if you want to
develop or sell LENR devices you'll need to make a huge financial
investment to satisfy certification requirements; even then, there will be
onerous restrictions on selling to the mass market. It might take a
generation or two to disentangle the technology from the webwork put up by
vested interests. This will not have been a necessary outcome; it will
have been the result of our particular willingness to coddle financial
interests at this time in history.
** **
Eric
** **
Re: [Vo]:re the alternative history of LENR
Mark,
Thanks, Forgot to mention earlier these additional companies going/gone
belly up
Beacon power
Abound solar
Solopower
Nobody died that i know of but lots of money was robbed from government
coffers and you can't blame it all on the Chinese.
On Friday, June 1, 2012, MarkI-ZeroPoint wrote:
One can justify Govt’s responsibility to use PUBLIC, TAXPAYER funds for *
pure* RD, and I’d go as far as some *applied* RD, but that’s about it.
And the results of all that research should be FREELY available to any
taxpayer (unless it’s so sensitive that it’s been declared a national
security issue). If an entrepreneur is able to raise money and take the
govt’s research and make a product or service, I’d even be in favor of the
govt getting a small % royalty for a few years to at least help offset the
cost to the taxpayer.
** **
Govt, because of the corruption which is inevitable with humans, and which
is rampant in this country and the world, will never do the right thing
when it comes to the sort of large subsidies and loan programs that we’ve
seen of late… Below is a link to the report by the House Oversight Cmte on
the DOE’s Loan Guarantee program, and how corruption has resulted in
nothing but failures… why? Because despite numerous red-flags about the
hi-risk of the companies, the govt loaned the money anyway because of
political favors…
** **
http://oversight.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/FINAL-DOE-Loan-Guarantees-Report.pdf
** **
And this is not a partisan issue… politicians on both sides of the aisle
are corrupt and only interested in reelection and riding the govt
gravy-train as long as the citizen taxpayers are stupid enough to reelect
them.
** **
-Mark
** **
*From:* Eric Walker [mailto:eric.wal...@gmail.com javascript:_e({},
'cvml', 'eric.wal...@gmail.com');]
*Sent:* Friday, June 01, 2012 12:17 AM
*To:* vortex-l@eskimo.com javascript:_e({}, 'cvml',
'vortex-l@eskimo.com');
*Subject:* Re: [Vo]:re the alternative history of LENR
** **
On Thu, May 31, 2012 at 7:59 PM, Chemical Engineer
cheme...@gmail.comjavascript:_e({}, 'cvml', 'cheme...@gmail.com');
wrote:
** **
This example, at its most simple message shows how corporations sometimes
see new technologies in the opposite light even though the world might
benefit.
** **
Agreed. Corporations sometimes see things in terms starkly different from
what is understood to be in the common good. The tobacco companies in the
US saw fit to advertise to adolescents a generation ago until the
consequences of doing so (heavy penalties, lawsuits, etc.) outweighed the
financial benefits. The logic of such advertising was impeccable -- if you
get people hooked on cigarettes at a young enough age they will become
lifelong consumers. But that logic was purely mercenary, blind to some
basic things that the majority of people feel to be important and valuable;
in this case, protecting the young from the predatory behavior of
corporations.
** **
There are other examples of how the perceived interests of corporations
differ significantly from the interests of society as a whole. These
examples are helpful in understanding what underlies their behavior, in
providing a cautionary tale of what one might be up against if remedial
action of some kind is needed, and in offering insight into possible ways
to encourage corporations to better align their behavior with the interests
of the larger society. I don't think such examples are to be construed as
reasons to avoid regulation or market interventions. The main challenge
with interventions is that they often lead to unintended consequences. But
being wary of unintended consequences is different from being concerned
that companies will perceive things differently from ordinary people.
** **
My point here is that we should not be worried that corporations won't
like the restrictions and inducements we decide to put in place, but we
should be concerned about unintended economic consequences.
** **
Many of the big oil companies dabble in renewable energy because they do
not feel threatened by it. kW/Mw scale LENR if/when it is proven may get
ignored by big energy much like Kodak did with digital cameras.
** **
I suspect the energy companies will feel very threatened at some point.
The lawyers will step out of the woodworks, and then if you want to
develop or sell LENR devices you'll need to make a huge financial
investment to satisfy certification requirements; even then, there will be
onerous restrictions on selling to the mass market. It might take a
generation or two to disentangle the technology from the webwork put up by
vested interests. This will not have been a necessary outcome; it will
have been the result of our particular willingness to coddle financial
interests at this time in history.
** **
Eric
** **
Re: [Vo]:re the alternative history of LENR
MarkI-ZeroPoint zeropo...@charter.net wrote: One can justify Govt’s responsibility to use PUBLIC, TAXPAYER funds for * pure* RD, and I’d go as far as some *applied* RD, but that’s about it. And the results of all that research should be FREELY available to any taxpayer . . . I agree. Several members of Congress have recently proposed legislation that will ensure this. Govt, because of the corruption which is inevitable with humans, and which is rampant in this country and the world, will never do the right thing when it comes to the sort of large subsidies and loan programs that we’ve seen of late… History proves you are wrong. Consider: There is no evidence that the government today is any more corrupt than it ever was. On the contrary, during and just after the Civil War it may have been even more corrupt. Yet this was one of the greatest era of Federal investment in infrastructure, universities and public improvements in our history. Most people agree that the railroads, land grant colleges, National Institute of Sciences and so on were splendid accomplishments. Despite the corruption, government did a good job. The same is true of the post-WWII era. Other institutions that do RD, such as universities and corporations, are also deeply corrupt. Other institutions that fund research, such as Wall Street and the Chinese government, have reputations even worse than the U.S. government's. It is not as if some pure, disinterested set of institutions is waiting in the wings, prepared to take over the functions that the government has performed for 300 years. Naturally, there is competition among corporations, which puts a damper on corruption, whereas there is only one Federal government. But no one has suggested that the government should do *all* RD from start to finish. It should only do that which is so long-term or so large that only the government can do it, such as launching the GPS system. It is reasonable to argue that the government should not be picking winners in a technology such as solar PV. On the other hand, China and all other countries are subsidizing PV manufacturers. I do not think it is a good idea for the U.S. to become an economic colony of China, incapable of manufacturing any core technology for ourselves. It is difficult to know how we can avoid that without the government playing an active role to counteract the Chinese government. One thing we can sure of is that they will not play our rules. It is not an easy question. Arguments on both sides have merit. I go not think there are clear answers. - Jed
[Vo]:Time bombs and the need to decentralize energy
Vo, A pair of little reported Time Bombs threaten to end billions of human lives. The first is the Fuel Ponds at Fukushima. A highly probable, near-term, powerful earthquake can release enough radioactivity to endanger most of our lives in the Northern hemisphere. The second is a little recognized, but surprisingly very possible, solar storm emission that can bring down power grids for months. Nuclear plants would become meltdown candidates. That could end human life almost everywhere on the planet. Both might be stopped by a massive government initiative that can stimulate major involvement of private capital. This would be the economic equivalent of fighting a life threatening war. It can reboot the economy and generate large numbers of jobs. Solar roofs have become much more important than any grid dependent technology. LENR is one of the most promising Black Swans that might make a contribution. See www.aesopinstitute.org for a few details - and possible paths to prevent the worst from happening. Mark Mark Goldes Co-founder, Chava Energy CEO, Aesop Institute 301A North Main Street Sebastopol, CA 95472 www.chavaenergy.com www.aesopinstitute.org 707 861-9070 707 497-3551 fax
Re: [Vo]:Time bombs and the need to decentralize energy
I share your concerns, Mark And, according to studies I've read, hardening the grid would not really cost that much - certainly just a small fraction of what's spent to protect against imaginary dangers. I am not sure, but I believe a meteor or comet strike (Tunguska scale) could also cause an EMP large enough to cause a cascading failure. Looking at the state of politics, there is no reason for optimism. Lou Pagnucco Mark Goldes wrote: Vo, A pair of little reported Time Bombs threaten to end billions of human lives. The first is the Fuel Ponds at Fukushima. A highly probable, near-term, powerful earthquake can release enough radioactivity to endanger most of our lives in the Northern hemisphere. The second is a little recognized, but surprisingly very possible, solar storm emission that can bring down power grids for months. Nuclear plants would become meltdown candidates. That could end human life almost everywhere on the planet. Both might be stopped by a massive government initiative that can stimulate major involvement of private capital. This would be the economic equivalent of fighting a life threatening war. It can reboot the economy and generate large numbers of jobs. Solar roofs have become much more important than any grid dependent technology. LENR is one of the most promising Black Swans that might make a contribution. See www.aesopinstitute.org for a few details - and possible paths to prevent the worst from happening. Mark Mark Goldes Co-founder, Chava Energy CEO, Aesop Institute 301A North Main Street Sebastopol, CA 95472 www.chavaenergy.com www.aesopinstitute.org 707 861-9070 707 497-3551 fax
Re: [Vo]:re the alternative history of LENR
On Fri, Jun 1, 2012 at 4:52 PM, Jed Rothwell jedrothw...@gmail.com wrote: I do not think it is a good idea for the U.S. to become an economic colony of China, incapable of manufacturing any core technology for ourselves. It is difficult to know how we can avoid that without the government playing an active role to counteract the Chinese government. One thing we can sure of is that they will not play our rules. It is not an easy question. Arguments on both sides have merit. I go not think there are clear answers. Exactly. We should be up front in admitting to ourselves and others that we are all in new territory. There are no pat answers. Singapore did not become an economic powerhouse overnight through economic liberalization. It had an authoritarian government that directed money to various sectors during one big, extended social engineering experiment, and during this time it used trade protection and subsidies and so on without hesitation. I've been to Singapore. It's a clean, prosperous, pleasant country. And I've been to China as well and have no ill will towards it. If one is concerned about economic competition, think of China as Singapore writ large. They do not care about our scruples about the free market and trade liberalization and human rights and so on. They will plow ahead, sometimes efficiently, sometimes less so. What they have, which we're still struggling to figure out, is a government that can learn lessons, plan for the long-term and move forward. Most western democracies are more decentralized than that, and the US is a limiting case -- it's completely fragmented, and its elected representatives are in a big cat fight. In such a context, one imagines that the lessons have to be learned by society itself. Let's hope that people are up to the challenge and are able to adopt a humble attitude towards it all. Eric
Re: [Vo]:re the alternative history of LENR
On Fri, Jun 1, 2012 at 11:54 AM, Daniel Rocha danieldi...@gmail.com wrote: Liberalism is supporting government? Shouldn't it be the opposite? I mean, liberalism is a typical conservative stance, for example, the more conservative the republican, the more liberal it is. Liberal as meaning interference of the government with the economy. The most liberal of the republican nowadays are Ron Paul supporters, after him comes neo cons and Reagan fans... We've been using the term liberal in a way that is specific to the US political context. The meaning of the word has changed over time. It used to mean free markets, minimal regulation, and in economics it still does. But now, in general American usage, it means something closer to social democracy without the socialism (or with it, some would argue!). Even in the US, there is no clear-cut definition for conservative or liberal. People who call themselves liberal and conservative have a wide range of beliefs, often overlapping. In the US these two camps fight one another tooth and nail for political supremacy. Things have gotten worse over the last several decades, and now effective decision making has largely ground to a halt in preference to political posturing and a perpetual election cycle. Eric
