accelerate

[Mr Flibble]

We need to accelerate investment in new nuclear build and green hydrogen
technologies to counter climate change. Greenpeace are wrong to dismiss
nuclear on the account of radioactive waste: radioactive waste already
exists and creating more of it doesn't make the problem significantly
worse or have any bearing on solving that problem. Just my two cents.
#climatecrisis #ClimateEmergency

[Albert Arkwright]

On 17/12/2022 20:47, Mr Flibble wrote:
> We need to accelerate investment in new nuclear build and green hydrogen
> technologies to counter climate change.

There is a better alternative and the waste product degrades pretty
quickly. It's called Nuclear Fusion:

<https://youtu.be/d0OSLz9i5p8>

[Mr Flibble]

Nuclear fusion outside of the lab is still decades away, if we ignore the
Sun and thermonuclear weapons of course. :)

/Flibble

[Chris M. Thomasson]

Bob Lazar's hydrogen Corvette from years ago:

https://youtu.be/Ytg23mDd1a4

We need the metal hydride to store the hydrogen.

[Scott Lurndal]

Even if we were able to build enough fusion power plants (if they ever
become viable) to replace the current fossil based energy supplies,
(before fossil fuels run out, or there won't be enough energy to
build the replacement facilities[*]) there is a hard limit on the amount
that energy consumption can grow (at the current rate of growth
the waste heat alone from power production and use will heat the
planet surface to the boiling point of water within four centuries;
with habitability eliminated in two centuries - and that's ignoring
carbon dioxide emissions based warming completely).

https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2011/07/galactic-scale-energy/

[*] https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2011/10/the-energy-trap/

Here's an open-source textbook that goes into the physics of energy
production and consumption. Pretty bleak.

https://escholarship.org/uc/energy_ambitions

[Scott Lurndal]

From one of the comments on one of the lazar videos:

Pretty cool stuff. Using a lithium hydride for storage
is a huge improvement over pressurized/liquified hydrogen
for storage and transport.

The drawback is efficiency; it takes a lot more energy to
separate the hydrogen from oxygen in water than you get back
by burning the hydrogen. If you take the electricity used to
separate the hydrogen, and store it in a lithium ion battery
(for example) you can use an electric motor to run the car
directly with 80-90% efficiency, and you don't need a particle
accelerator to generate the hydride (particle accelerators use
a lot of electricity). The hydrogen powered vehicle only captures
about 30% of the electrical energy used to capture the hydrogen
and manufacture the hydride as fuel energy for the vehicle. The
same electricity used to generate 400 miles of hydrogen range
would give you 900 miles of battery range if you used it to simply
charge up a Tesla. The hydrogen-powered car does give you more
energy-dense fuel storage: the hydride tanks for 400 miles of fuel
weigh much less than a 400-mile range lithium-ion battery (a Model
S with a 100 kWH battery pack has a 403 mile range, for example). The
hydride vehicle is cool, and green, but all-electric battery-operated
vehicles are more than twice as efficient, which means they cost half
as much to run in kiloWatts per mile. Who killed the hydrogen car?
Economics, in the form of cheap lithium ion batteries and efficient
electric motors."
-Steven Gulie


Boeing and Airbus, realizing that their business models are at risk, given
worldwide goals on reduction of CO2 emissions (a bit more than 2% of CO2
emissions are for air passenger and freight traffic) have been investigating
several possible alternatives, including SAF (Sustainable Aviation Fuel, such
as that made from recycled fats or from agricultural waste feedstocks),
Hydrogen (Liquified or Pressurized H2 Gas either combustion or fuel cell),
Electric (Battery in the 1000 to 2000km range basket) or a recent suggestion
from WPI, a Magnesium Hydride slurry added to JET-A, the Mg binds to CO2
in the atmosphere and precipitates out as MgCO3 or MG(CO3)2; harmless
(and actually edible) capture of the Carbon from the atmosphere making
the flight carbon-negative. It does still rely on a non-renewable
resource, and the energy costs of creating the MH2 slurry may be prohibitive.

[Lynn McGuire]

Hot tubs for everyone !

Lynn

[Lynn McGuire]

On 12/18/2022 11:17 AM, Scott Lurndal wrote:

You know, at some point we are going to build a partial Dyson sphere
around the Sun to capture its energy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyson_sphere

I still have thoughts about igniting Jupiter but I doubt that we can do it.

Lynn

[Keith Thompson]

Mr Flibble <fli...@reddwarf.jmc.corp> writes:
> We need to accelerate investment in new nuclear build and green hydrogen

[SNIP]

This is comp.lang.c++.

--
Keith Thompson (The_Other_Keith) Keith.S.T...@gmail.com
Working, but not speaking, for XCOM Labs
void Void(void) { Void(); } /* The recursive call of the void */

[Scott Lurndal]

Have you bothered to calculate the amount of energy required
to build a dyson sphere (or even a dyson ring)? If you have that
much energy, you don't need to build the sphere in the first place.

[Michael S]

On Monday, December 19, 2022 at 2:55:25 AM UTC+2, Keith Thompson wrote:
> Mr Flibble <fli...@reddwarf.jmc.corp> writes:
> > We need to accelerate investment in new nuclear build and green hydrogen
> [SNIP]
>
> This is comp.lang.c++.
>

C++ => increase consumption of carbon

[Michael S]

On Monday, December 19, 2022 at 5:25:53 PM UTC+2, Scott Lurndal wrote:

> Lynn McGuire <lynnmc...@gmail.com> writes:
> >
> >You know, at some point we are going to build a partial Dyson sphere
> >around the Sun to capture its energy.
> Have you bothered to calculate the amount of energy required
> to build a dyson sphere (or even a dyson ring)? If you have that
> much energy, you don't need to build the sphere in the first place.

Incrementally rather than at once

[Scott Lurndal]

Run the math. What is the diameter of the orbit? What are the material
requirements? Even a ringworld would take more energy than it would
produce just to build and put in orbit. How far out does it need to be
to ensure that the energy density at any point is habitable?

[Paavo Helde]

You cannot argue such things by relying on the current level of
techonology. Hundred years ago it was pretty expensive to store one bit
of information electrically (an electromechanical relay was a complex
device), today it's something like 0.00000002 cents per bit. Moreover,
if someone told them about terabytes of memory, they would have laughed
and said there is not enough copper to make so many relays, and anyway
the mechanical failure rate would have been such that the system would
break down immediately after starting operation, so mission impossible.
And this is just 100 years.

For building something you don't need energy, you just need to place the
atoms in the correct position. When 3D printing has advanced enough, you
can build whatever, including a clone of yourself, by placing atoms in
correct location in space.

At next step, you would place protons and neutrons in correct place in
space, creating any needed atoms. For saving cost, maybe putting
neutrons first, then decaying half of them into proton+electron pairs?
The price of gold could become something like 0.00000002 cents per ton.
I say, you are just lacking imagination ;-)

[Scott Lurndal]

Paavo Helde <ees...@osa.pri.ee> writes:
>19.12.2022 18:46 Scott Lurndal kirjutas:
>> Michael S <already...@yahoo.com> writes:
>>> On Monday, December 19, 2022 at 5:25:53 PM UTC+2, Scott Lurndal wrote:
>>>> Lynn McGuire <lynnmc...@gmail.com> writes:
>>>>>
>>>>> You know, at some point we are going to build a partial Dyson sphere
>>>>> around the Sun to capture its energy.
>>>> Have you bothered to calculate the amount of energy required
>>>> to build a dyson sphere (or even a dyson ring)? If you have that
>>>> much energy, you don't need to build the sphere in the first place.
>>>
>>> Incrementally rather than at once
>>
>> Run the math. What is the diameter of the orbit? What are the material
>> requirements? Even a ringworld would take more energy than it would
>> produce just to build and put in orbit. How far out does it need to be
>> to ensure that the energy density at any point is habitable?
>
>You cannot argue such things by relying on the current level of
>techonology.

I'm not relying on any current technology. There is no current
technology capable of producing the energy or materials necessary
to create a dyson sphere or a ring.

However, it is an interesting exercise to attempt to compute
exactly how much material and energy would be required to build
such a construct.

For example, a MIT study recently looked at the idea of a sunshade
to help ameliorate planetary warming. The upshot was
that the shade needed to span millions of square kilometers and
would cost multiple tens of trillions of dollars to build and
emplace in (relatively) stable earth-sun L1 orbit.

> Hundred years ago it was pretty expensive to store one bit
>of information electrically (an electromechanical relay was a complex
>device), today it's something like 0.00000002 cents per bit. Moreover,
>if someone told them about terabytes of memory, they would have laughed
>and said there is not enough copper to make so many relays, and anyway
>the mechanical failure rate would have been such that the system would
>break down immediately after starting operation, so mission impossible.
>And this is just 100 years.

The growth in energy consumption for the past 150 years has averaged
2.8% per annum. That's an exponential growth curve[*] which is not viable
over the long term (even if we had an infinite supply of clean energy),
simply because energy == heat. Waste heat. At the 2.8% rate, in
less than four centuries, the surface temperature of the earth would
be at the boiling point of water just from waste heat alone.

This is simple physics, albeit
argumentum ad absurdum, since we'll run out of economically extractable
stored solar energy (gas, oil, coal) within the next generation, if not
sooner.

[*] Soi disant "hockey stick".

To build a fleet of nuclear reactors to replace the stored solar
energy (said store built up over hundreds of million years) would require
some 30,000 reactors to be built (assuming that energy growth stops)
given the current 20TW world-wide electricity consumption plus 50%
to account for electricity to replace transportation fuels and
fuels used to make steel, concrete, aluminum and fertilizer and
assuming that growth in energy consumption levels out.

Most of the world economies are predicated on growth. The more the
better. For the economy to grow, energy consumption by the economy
will grow. To a certain extent, improved efficiencies will offset
the growth in consumption, to a degree, but even that has an upper
limit imposed by thermodynamics. This too can't last forever.

>
>For building something you don't need energy, you just need to place the
>atoms in the correct position.

How do you move those atoms around without energy?

>When 3D printing has advanced enough, you
>can build whatever, including a clone of yourself, by placing atoms in
>correct location in space.

Where do you get those atoms, and how do you place them without using
energy to move them?

>
>At next step, you would place protons and neutrons in correct place in
>space, creating any needed atoms. For saving cost, maybe putting
>neutrons first, then decaying half of them into proton+electron pairs?
>The price of gold could become something like 0.00000002 cents per ton.
>I say, you are just lacking imagination ;-)

No, just grounded in reality, sadly.

[Paavo Helde]

19.12.2022 22:53 Scott Lurndal kirjutas:

> Paavo Helde <ees...@osa.pri.ee> writes:

>> For building something you don't need energy, you just need to place the
>> atoms in the correct position.
>
> How do you move those atoms around without energy?

We know since Newton that moving does not require energy. It's
acceleration what does.

If a particle is at time=t1 stationary in some frame in some spot 1, and
in a later time=t2 stationary relative the same frame in some other spot
2, it will have the same potential and kinetic energy and there is no
fundamental reason to claim that some energy has to be spent when moving
it from spot 1 to spot 2. In our everyday experience some energy is
almost always lost on thermal interactions, but if we manage to move the
atom in a state of quantum coherence (like in superconductivity or
super-viscosity), no energy would be lost.

That would be the ideal. In reality most probably some energy would be
needed, but we have no idea how much, and second, one cannot exactly say
that the place where one might construct the Dyson sphere is lacking in
energy - rather the opposite. That's why one would want to construct it
there in the first place.