weather a simple solution?

[davee]

Perception is a wonderful thing , to fix all our current problems
,overuse of fossil fuel,cutting down to many trees ,
modifying nature itself which is also a natural event .
It is the same as Chernobil is Nature....
All hazardous elements were and are stored on or beneath its
surface.Naturally as ores and deposits eg Oil.
What did we do? Concentrate and localise .EG atomic bombs
energy is released over milennia naturally .We let it go in
250 microseconds.
The 'Solution ' rebalance Carbondioxide to Oxygen ratio
independently.nuclear reactor , Two Salt water reservoirs with
an interconnecting pipe,two or more large carbon rods DC electric
current.One reservoir will output oyxgen ,the
other Hydrogen ,we store hydrogen (fuel cells) and use Oyxgen
to rebalance.

[Sam Carana]

Yes, hydrogen technology (fuel cells) look very promising. There's already cars driving around using only fuel cells to power them. It's a fascinating and exciting development.

 

But are you suggesting that hydrogen be produced by means of a nuclear reactor? Wouldn't solar energy, wind energy, heat pumps and other 'alternative' methods be cleaner and less dangerous?

 

Sam 

 

[davee]

It was an illustration, yes small scale -solar panels regulators
batteries ,two salt reservoirs etc ,portable .Alot more would be
required spread globally.
attached to environ house , solar panels , wind and if your lucky
enough water turbine.
the combinations are endless just not cheap enough yet.

[Sam Carana]

Which alternative is the cheapest depends on how costs are calculated. There are many things that should be factored into a comparison of the cost of alternatives such as nuclear reactors, conventional power plants, windfarms, water turbine and solar power solutions. Costwise, we can think of the following:

 

1. Building the facility (including installation, construction, land acquisition, commissioning, etc).

 

2. Maintaining the facility, lifespand of the plant, fixing it in case of damage, rebuilding or updating it, decommissioning and dismantling old parts, etc.

 

3. Staff required to operate and maintain the facility, etc.

 

4. Some cost is now carried by government, but that doesn't mean it comes for free. Cost should be calculated and incorporated in each alternative to work out their total cost. We can think of costs like:

 

- Fuelling the facility with coal, petrol, nuclear rods, or whatever is required to make it run. This includes the cost of shipping coal, building ports, etc. In the case of uranium there is the acquisition cost as well as the need to political lobbying to ensure ongoping supply;

 

- Educational cost. In the case of uranium, specialized staff is required to enrich it at the plant. There's also an ongoing need for impact assessment, planning, dealing with emergencies, etc, all of which calls for the availability of specilized studies at universities;
 

- Distributing the power, typically through the electrical grid;

 

- Environmental costs include waste management, including cooling of facilities, measures needed to deal with operational pollution and rehabilitating of the site after dismantling. In the case of nuclear power plants it's hard to clean a site from radioactivity; and

 

- Security, which is increasingly recognized as important and costly, requiring ongoing vigilance, patrols and monitoring, etc. This also includes the cost of patrolling ships carrying oil, dealing with waste, such as how to safely store nuclear waste without terrorists getting their hands on it to make weapons, etc.

 

 

Typically, studies that make cost comparisons do not include the cost of all these items. To get a picture of the full cost, we'll have to work out the cost of, say, maintenance of the electrical grid. If every house or office could put enough solar panels on their roofs for their own electrical power requirements, then we wouldn't need no electrical grid at all. Calculating in the savings in such areas could make a huge difference for alternatives such as solar power.

 

Finally, we need not only comapre prices for today, but we need to predict price estimates for the future. To do so, we need to take into account technological trends, specifically the rapid price falls and efficiency gains in solar panels, batteries, computers and TV-sets. The latter two need ever less power, due to more efficient chips, use of LCD-screens instead of CRT-screens. Such trends make solar panels ever more attractive.

 

Sam

[davee]

So the idea then stackable cells ,each unit small solar and or wind
power an or water turbine ,exercycle dynamo? 500 ampere hour gel cell
batteries output DC.
hydrogen collected all cells would feed vacuum pump reservoir .The
Oxygen would be
released to atmosphere any extra energy would feed back to storage, and
converted
to AC could supply energy independent of the power companies.Hows that?

[Sam Carana]

We need to see a lot of different technologies at work, at small scale, to evaluate what works best. Many such technologies can be applied in the home setting, e.g. solar panels, catching rainwater in tanks, recycling water down in the backyard, etc. Some of the more exotic solutions are capturing the energy of lightning and storing this in flywheels. 

 

These are all alternatives to the current centralized solution of a single electrical grid, water supply, sewage and stormwater system. To encourage such alternatives, the current system could offer financial incentives. People who return more power into the electrical grid than they consume could get paid for that. Similarly, people could add to the water supply and get paid. People could take stormwater, etc. Eventually, we couyld all become both suppliers and consumers of a patchwork of competing systems.

 

At the same time, there are many technologies that we should continue to discuss in places like this, encouraging people to start with practical trials.  

 

You may have heard about "heat pumps". Rather than drilling pipes deep down into the earth to capture the heat down there, another such idea is to exploit temperature differences in the sea. The deeper you go down into the ocean, the colder it gets. At the lowest points, the temperature is near freezing point. Create a small floating island, from where you sink a pipe down for a few hundred metres. Then, pump up the cold water with a solar-powered pump and release the water all around back into the sea from a little tower of, say, two metres high. As the cold water falls down into the sea, the evaporation will act as an air-conditioner. Furthermore, condensation around the top of the pipe will drip down and can be captured in containers, to be sold as fresh water.

 

This harvesting of clean, potable water could go a long way to pay for such projects. Such projects appear to have the added beneficial effect of reducing warming of the atmosphere. But do they really reduce overall global warming? Don't they simply move energy from one place to another, with no change to the overall situation?

 

To reduce overall global warming, we need to either deflect some of the incoming sunlight away from earth or we need to store some of the energy, e.g. in trees.

 

One of the big questions is whether we can and should commercialize and rationalize the initiatives that add to or subtract from global warming. Should people get credits for planting trees in their gardens? Should people loose credits for, say, burning wood in an open fire? Should there be one giant tax system imposed on all activities on earth, or not? Personally, I don't think a Big Brother approach will work, but what are the alternatives?

 

Love to hear more thoughts on all this,

 

Sam