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2005-04-27 Home Front: Economy

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Posted by phil_b 2005-04-27 3:05:30 AM|| || Front Page|| [11 views since 2007-05-07] Top

#1 Whatever happened to fusion? The hot type. If we spent a tenth of what we wasted on HUD over the last 10 years we would have had the technology by now. One of my peeves. Sorry for venting.

Posted by BrerRabbit 2005-04-27 7:47:34 AM|| 2005-04-27 7:47:34 AM|| Front Page Top

#2 Hot fusion aint gonna work in my lifetime. In 30 years of research and billions of dollars spent they haven't got a net energy fusion reaction that lasted for more than a few milliseconds. Cold fusion is far more promising. You can build a set up in your garage thats a net energy producer for weeks.

Posted by phil_b 2005-04-27 7:58:02 AM|| 2005-04-27 7:58:02 AM|| Front Page Top

#3 that right, phil? Eeeevil oil companies are suppressing that tech, huh?

Posted by Frank G 2005-04-27 8:15:55 AM|| 2005-04-27 8:15:55 AM|| Front Page Top

#4 In the U.S., fusion research began at Princeton in 1951. I would love to know how many billions have been poured into the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory over the last 54 years. And they can't hold the genie in the bottle for even one second. Meanwhile, phil_b is advocating a run on the palladium market so that he can theoretically produce less energy in his garage in weeks than I can produce in my garage with a single "c" cell battery for one buck.

Posted by Tom 2005-04-27 8:33:44 AM|| 2005-04-27 8:33:44 AM|| Front Page Top

#5 I can produce in my garage with a single "c" cell battery for one buck. And I can produce more energy by burning down my garage. The issue is not how much energy is produced, its whether its a net energy producer or not. A battery is not a net energy producer, its a net energy consumer.

Its your right to be sceptical, but I have looked at the evidence and if repeatable observable results contradict theory then you have no choice but to reject the theory.

Why there should be such antipathy towards cold fusion is an interesting question and I don't claim to have a good answer, but its no more mysterious than much of the Kyoto psuedo-science. The simple fact is much of science is driven by irrational forces.

Posted by phil_b 2005-04-27 8:56:16 AM|| 2005-04-27 8:56:16 AM|| Front Page Top

#6 Bottom line: we need 3 things.

1) A LOT of nuclear power plants.

This solves the electricity issue. Freeing up oil for consumption elsewhere, ultimately reducing oil consumption. Use the newwer "Fail to safe" designs instad of the old high-pressure water "Fail to hot" designs. Put pebble-bed reactors out there. For remote communities, get deploy the in-place thermal reactors - the self-contained ones like they are putting in up in Alaska. Cuts down on the need for the grid.

2) New refineries.

We are so dependant upon forgein refineries that its causeing instability here any time Chavez or some other tinpot third world dictator gets exited or someone pops a bomb in one of thos countries. Yes gasolin can be shipped around, but shipping the crude is easier and better - that way we get ALL the products, and the US market can drive the portion of the fractiosn that are produced, instead of some bozo in Caracas deciding he want to make diesel for the Chinese instead of JP-4 for the US.

3) Hydrogen economy research and development for transportation.

Not just R&D, but practical deveopment. Start deploying the fuel distribution system to kickstart the hydrogen vehicles, at least in major metro areas.

All this works to get us at least self sufficient on oil, and energy independant for our core economy.

Posted by OldSpook 2005-04-27 8:59:19 AM|| 2005-04-27 8:59:19 AM|| Front Page Top

#7 Fusion, eh? I'd personally be quite content building a hundred 3rd generation fission plants.

Posted by Iblis 2005-04-27 8:59:45 AM|| 2005-04-27 8:59:45 AM|| Front Page Top

#8 OldSpook, a hydrogen economy depends on cheap abundant electricity because it requires somewhere between 2 and 4 times more energy inputs than burning gas in vehicles. Absent cheap electricity its just a recipe for massively increased energy imports.

Posted by phil_b 2005-04-27 9:09:25 AM|| 2005-04-27 9:09:25 AM|| Front Page Top

#9 phil b - I'd love cold fusion to work - call me a skeptic. Should it be a workable, reproduceable phenomenon, it would bust the world economy right open - cheap energy for all! Woohoo! The fact it's still in question says all

Posted by Frank G 2005-04-27 9:48:21 AM|| 2005-04-27 9:48:21 AM|| Front Page Top

#10 Old Spook -
One and Two get my vote on the spot.
Three is a bit more iffy.

Posted by 3dc 2005-04-27 9:50:13 AM|| 2005-04-27 9:50:13 AM|| Front Page Top

#11 Actually, if you think about it, if you had sufficient electricity to manufacture all that hydrogen, you would also have sufficient power to either a) run everything directly by electricity or b) use that power to create the needed hydrocarbons from raw materials. Note that making hydrogen, the original idea, and item b are a very poor use of energy because of the conversion losses involved.

Or you could use all that power to create hydrogen from methane, mostly what we do today. Here again item b is also a viable option. Again item b looses out. So does hydrogen. More efficient to just use the methane or electricity directly.

My point is, no matter how you cut it, hydrogen as a fuel on a mass scale will never cut it. It is just a feel good thing with no significant future.

Posted by Michael 2005-04-27 10:19:33 AM|| 2005-04-27 10:19:33 AM|| Front Page Top

#12 BTW, when I said much of science is driven by irrational forces, I didn't mean science is irrational. What I meant was what gets funded is substantially a political decision and has little to do with the scientific merits.

Posted by phil_b 2005-04-27 10:25:50 AM|| 2005-04-27 10:25:50 AM|| Front Page Top

#13 And besides, ain't nothing going to happen anyway. Democratic energy policy is aimed at blocking any Republican proposals (and this year specifically making President Bush look bad in any way, shape or form) and Republican energy policy is essentially to stop the Democratics from doing anything in the off chance that thay can come up with any meaningful proposals as a party.

Posted by Michael 2005-04-27 10:28:57 AM|| 2005-04-27 10:28:57 AM|| Front Page Top

#14 Cold fusion is far more promising. You can build a set up in your garage thats a net energy producer for weeks.

Citation, please.

Posted by Robert Crawford 2005-04-27 10:31:36 AM|| [http://www.kloognome.com/] 2005-04-27 10:31:36 AM|| Front Page Top

#15 Door #1 and #2. Especially nukes.

More nukes, faster approvals, a lower risk threshold via risk insurance: this should have been done twenty years ago. We're only making up for lost time now. Accelerate it to the max.

Posted by thibaud (aka lex) 2005-04-27 10:35:03 AM|| 2005-04-27 10:35:03 AM|| Front Page Top

#16 Um phil_b, maybe you should have a look at the DOE report on cold fusion. Something's happening, but the apparatus isn't exactly something you'd assemble in your garage, and the excess energy they find seems to be a small fraction on top of the energy they put into the system.

Posted by James 2005-04-27 12:30:39 PM|| [http://www.idontknowbut.blogspot.com] 2005-04-27 12:30:39 PM|| Front Page Top

#17 But methane is stinky!
/end whine.

Actually, that is one energy source that could be obtained from garbage dumps and the hind ends of cows, if someone would work out an effective way to do so. Surely there is an engineer with some free time to play... ;-)

Posted by trailing wife 2005-04-27 12:59:40 PM|| 2005-04-27 12:59:40 PM|| Front Page Top

#18 A LPG terminal for Nantucket? hahahahahahaha!

Posted by john 2005-04-27 2:52:43 PM|| 2005-04-27 2:52:43 PM|| Front Page Top

#19 James, I think that URL has gone stale.

This one (DOE report on cold fusion) seems to work.

My opinion? Nukes all the way - pebble bed and other failsafe designs initially, but then there's the possibility of much smaller systems being deployed, such as portable systems! Phil_b is spot on as regards fusion - unlikely to happen in the near future. In the longer-term, I wouldn't be surprised to see zero-point energy (ZPE, warning - equations!) systems being developed and deployed.

Posted by Tony (UK) 2005-04-27 4:14:03 PM|| 2005-04-27 4:14:03 PM|| Front Page Top

#20 Tony, the ZPE concept is onto something, but in my humble opinion, the theoretical footing is wrong.

I don't have time at the moment explain why, but the moment someone introduces normalization constant, I am vewwy, vewwy suspicious (that applies to current cosmology as well, as it sins plenty in this regard)...
and what may be the basis for certain effect that some experiments point to... cuz at the moment I haven't yet digested the data and see where they may lead. One of these days when I'll have time to ponder, I'll tell ya.

Posted by Sobiesky 2005-04-27 6:04:29 PM|| 2005-04-27 6:04:29 PM|| Front Page Top

#21 RC, here is a link to a cold fusion experiment performed by high school students using materials costing $500. You can also buy more sophisticated kits. If you are interested I'll find the link.

BTW, I make no claim that this stuff will ever be commercially viable, but we should be doing the R&D to find out.

Posted by phil_b 2005-04-27 6:14:50 PM|| 2005-04-27 6:14:50 PM|| Front Page Top

#22 TW:
Pure methane is odorless. It's just that in natural production, it's mixed with other compounds (usually H2S).

Posted by Jackal 2005-04-27 6:17:05 PM|| [http://home.earthlink.net/~sleepyjackal/index.html] 2005-04-27 6:17:05 PM|| Front Page Top

#23 Thanks, Jackel. Oh, btw, what you explained for me the other day (slow production of those cute little precision bombs, as I recall) was what, when I worked (O, so briefly!) in Product Development for a civilian company, we called the Manufacturing Start-up Mode. Key was not to do anything to tax the people or the machinery until all the bugs were worked out of the system. Sound right?

Posted by trailing wife 2005-04-27 6:33:59 PM|| 2005-04-27 6:33:59 PM|| Front Page Top

#24 H2S is acidic when dissolved in water and would cause corrosion problems inside the gas pipes. H2S is actually removed from natural gas; before removal the natural gas is called "sour gas". The deliberately-added-for-safety stink is from mercaptans.
http://www.oxy.com/OXYCHEM/Products/odorants/mercaptans.htm

Posted by Tom 2005-04-27 8:04:55 PM|| 2005-04-27 8:04:55 PM|| Front Page Top

#25 Tax petroleum. Let engineers and the market do the rest. Anything else the government does will only delay discovery of the correct solution 99 times out of 100.

Posted by Mrs. Davis 2005-04-27 9:11:34 PM|| 2005-04-27 9:11:34 PM|| Front Page Top

#26 Mrs D, I agree with you on taxing petroleum, but in addition the government can subsidize consumption and they should be subsidizing consumption of electricty from nuclear at least as much as they subsidize electricty from solar, wind, etc., with additional generous breaks for those who live near the plants. Then listen to the clamour for more nuclear power stations in my backyard please.

Posted by phil_b 2005-04-27 9:24:16 PM|| 2005-04-27 9:24:16 PM|| Front Page Top

#27 Mrs. Davis, petroleum is already taxed. Pretty sure throwing taxes at things isn't the best way either.

Posted by Sobiesky 2005-04-27 9:28:12 PM|| 2005-04-27 9:28:12 PM|| Front Page Top

#28 OK, puzzled. It is taxed in canuckistan and I presume that it is taxed in US, I believe, s'correct me if I am wrong.

Posted by Sobiesky 2005-04-27 9:30:24 PM|| 2005-04-27 9:30:24 PM|| Front Page Top

#29 TW:
Well, sort of. In our case, there was the current production run still being done, plus the depot/rework units back from the field. We cut over the various test sets (this was final production; all the PCBs, structural components, and such were made in another building) from production to the new run one at a time. We weren't allowed to slow down production (they were bringing money in, while we were still pouring money out). So, we had two of the first stage test sets while they had eight. Of course, this being a government contract, many components were very, very old (25 MHz RISC CPUs, IEEE-488 disk drives), and a switch or something would fail so we'd only have one test set until someone could dig through the museums to find a replacement part. (They've all been upgraded to modern stuff last year. Whew.)

But the real problem is just in getting the thing to work right, every time. For the prototypes, EDMs, PODs, and PTUs, we would crunch the compensation data, load them into the unit, then do verifies all over the place, then print out predictions of performance (that was My job), then the Chief Engineer of the whole program would personally view the "pizza plots" (so-called because they were 3D color plots that actually looked like pizzas, down to bubbles in the crust) and say "OK, that's good." or "We need to improve this here" and we'd replace a component or hand-patch (in hex) the comps. Rinse and repeat. You obviously can't work that way in production.

Another problem is the suppliers. We got a very important component from another company and had an incoming inspection pass rate of about 5%. That's OK when you're hand-building a few for evaluation, but you can't run a factory that way. Imagine trying to build cars and having to order 20 times as many engines as you need to have enough ones that work correctly. Oh, and the failures were these little subtle things that couldn't be automated. You had an Engineer sitting on the bench for half a day per unit.

Oh, and then you have to train the technicians. We are fortunate in that we are in a Right To Work state (though we do have a union, it's not mandatory) and that the clearance process means that we can keep the workers we have, since it takes too long to get new ones, and they are very experienced, careful, and smart. Still, this was a radical departure in technology from the previous version, and had many new techniques they had to learn. One time, they reversed the connections. Think of any kind of feedback system (autopilot, homing missile, heck, even an air-conditioning system) in which the sensor is reversed. You now have positive feedback. Plus, the test sequences were very different from the old version, and sometimes people wouldn't do all the test, so the comp files would have default values. Or they would do the tests but no rebuild the comp files in the right order. Or...

I have lots of stories, and in 2021, will be able to tell them.

Posted by Jackal 2005-04-27 10:09:38 PM|| [http://home.earthlink.net/~sleepyjackal/index.html] 2005-04-27 10:09:38 PM|| Front Page Top

#30 Pure methane is odorless.

Not true. My "contribution" stinks to high heaven, all the time... :D

BTW, I saw the beginning of a news piece on the tube about the Prez' proposal and I switched the channel immediately. I absolutely cringe at the thought of hearing him say "nucular".... :P

Posted by Bomb-a-rama 2005-04-27 11:59:49 PM|| 2005-04-27 11:59:49 PM|| Front Page Top

23:59 Bomb-a-rama
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