mm wrote:
On 10 May 2006 07:08:35 -0700, wrote:


The problem is that most people think you can just get hydrogen from
water. You are correct that electrolysis is one of the ways it can be
generated. In that case, the hydrogen is best viewed as a transport
vehicle for the energy. The nuke is the real source of the energy, not

You meann nuclear power? The electricity generated at nuclear power
plants is no better at splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen than
is any other electricity.

Hydrogen doesn't have any other relationship with nuclear power
plants.



The point is the hydrogen is just an energy transport vehicle. So, if
not nuclear, then where do you propose to get the energy from? Import
more oil? Burn natural gas? Just use the oil or gas then and forget
the hydrogen. Hydroelectric? All the easy sites are done, and there
are serious environmental issues with any more sites. Nuclear is cost
effective and readily deployable. That's why it makes the most sense
as a source of energy to generate hydrogen.




(except that if cold fusion is ever developed, it will *use* hydrogen,
not generate it.)

the water. And the problem is most of the people running around
saying water is the answer, don't realize this. They think you just
get the hydrogen out of the water by some miracle process. And these
same people won't let anyone build a nuke in this country anyway.
Until that is solved, hydrogen is a myth.

It's no less of a problem then, except generation of electricy might
be cheaper, especially as the cost of oil goes up. We could also burn
coal to make eletricity to generate hydrogen.

Sure you could burn coal, but how realistic is that? You've got lots
of people running around saying that global warming is gonna kill us
all. You think building more fossil fuel plants, especially coal
fired ones that not only generate CO2 but other difficult to deal with
pollutants, is a reasonable approach?

So, again, where is the energy going to come from for this pie in the
sky hydrogen?



In fact, if you just built
the nukes, they could go a long way to helping even without getting to
the hydrogen for fuel stage.

mm wrote:
Someone in a country other than the USA has done a study of the
effects of 20% ethanol/80% gasoline on engines by running a weedwacker
and an outboard motor on such a mixture.

He reports:
"The study of ethanol's impact on engines found the 10 per cent blend
caused no substantial changes, except slight swelling and blistering
on the carburettor and an increase in carbon deposits on pistons.

But when the fuel contained 20 per cent ethanol, substantial problems
were encountered. The outboard engine stalled on occasions, exhaust
gas temperature increased by a significant margin and in some cases
there was extensive corrosion of engine parts."

Could someone list all the reasons this is not a good test.

But it is a good test. It is a good test of what happens to certain
weedwackers and outboard motors. That is all that it covers. If you want to
know what happens in an automotive engine, you have to test it in that
engine. There are a lot of differences.


(I suspect
you'll all think of some of the same things, so maybe look at previous
answers before answering.)

Any reasons it is a good test are also appreciated.

--
Joseph Meehan

Dia duit

wrote:

Yeah, right, nuclear is so damn expensive compared to other
alternatives. That must be why all the power companies in the US that
have one are desperatley trying to get their licenses extended so they
can keep them running. And why there are currently proposals to
finally build a few more. It's because power companies want to find
ways to generate power that aren't cost effective.

"Worldwide,the majority of current nuclear power plants are competitive
on a marginal generating cost basis in a deregulated market environment
because of low operating costs and the fact that many are already fully
depreciated. ...
"However,new nuclear power at generating costs between 3.9 and 8.0
c/kWh ...
"pebble bed modular reactor ... expected cost of power would be
approximately 2 c/kWh including the full fuel cycle and decommissioning
(Nicholls, 1998). These costs are far less than typical present nuclear
technologies and in part perhaps the result of engineering optimism.
Other assessments quote double this generating cost (WEA, 2000). ...
"In high-wind areas, wind power is competitive with other forms of
electricity generation at between 3 and 5 c/kWh. The global average
price is expected to drop to 2.7-3 c/kWh by around 2020 due to
economies of scale from mass production and improved turbine designs.
.... However, on poorer sites of around 5 m/s mean annual wind speed,
the generating costs would remain high at around 10-12 c/kWh ...
"Biomass fuels ... high-pressure, direct gasification combined-cycle
plant ... by 2020, with operating costs, including fuel supply,
declining from 3.98 to 3.12 c/kWh (EPRI/DOE, 1997). By way of
comparison, the higher current operating costs of 5.50 c/kWh for
traditional combustion boiler/steam turbine technology, (reflecting
poorer fuel conversion efficiency compared with gasification), were
predicted to lower to 3.87 c/kWh. ...
"The cost of PV [photovoltaics] ... is slowly falling due to
manufacturing scale-up and mass production techniques as more capacity
is installed. Generating costs are relatively high at 20-40 c/kWh.
However, PV is often deployed at the point of electricity use such as
buildings, and this can offset the high costs by giving a competitive
advantage over power transmitted long distances from central power
stations with high losses and distribution costs."
"Carbon emission and mitigation cost comparisons between fossil fuel,
nuclear and renewable energy resources for electricity generation";
Ralph E.H. Sims, Hans-Holger Rogner, Ken Gregory; Energy Policy 31
(2003) 1315-1326
http://www.iaea.org/OurWork/ST/NE/Pess/assets/Energy%20Policy%202003.pdf

Nuke, wind, or biomass, it's not going to be cheaper than 4 cents per
kwh. Note that this is just the generating cost; any difference is
going to be even less percentagewise when you tack on the distribution
and administrative costs, which is why you're not paying your electric
bill at 4 cents per kwh now.

As for your cost effective nuclear plants that the power companies are
lining up to produce:

"REAL LEVELIZED COST Cents/kWe-hr
Nuclear (LWR) 6.7
+ Reduce construction cost 25% 5.5
+ Reduce construction time 5 to 4 years 5.3
+ Further reduce O&M to 13 mills/kWe-hr 5.1
+ Reduce cost of capital to gas/coal 4.2
Pulverized Coal 4.2
CCGTa (low gas prices, $3.77/MCF) 3.8
CCGT (moderate gas prices, $4.42/MCF) 4.1
CCGT (high gas prices, $6.72/MCF) 5.6
"The actions will be effective in stimulating additional investments in
nuclear generating capacity only if the industry can live up to its own
expectations of being able to reduce considerably overnight capital
costs for new plants far below historical experience.
"We propose a production tax credit of up to $200 per kilowatt hour
(kWh) of the construction cost."
http://web.mit.edu/nuclearpower/pdf/nuclearpower-full.pdf
But what do John Deutch and Ernest Moniz and all those MIT wackos know
about engineering costs? You've informed us that we aren't subsidizing
nuclear plants at all, they pay for themselves the same way we pay for
garbage hauling and that ought to be good enough for them. The fact
that both Sims et al and Deutch et al refer to overoptimistic
unrealistic cost expectations by the industry shouldn't bother anyone.

Never mind high level radioactive waste; in fact, the industry doesn't
even deal with the debris left over from mining the uranium. Add these
costs to your balance sheet:
The highest grade uranium ore contains less than 1% uranium, often less
than .2%. So huge amounts of ore are pulverized, leaving 99.9% of it as
tailings full of heavy metals and containing 85% of the original
radioactivity, which eventually ends up downstream or in ground water.
The largest such piles in the US and Canada contain up to 30 million
tons of solid material. In Saxony, Germany the Helmsdorf pile near
Zwickau contains 50 million tonnes, and in Thuringia the Culmitzsch
pile near Seelingstädt 86 million tonnes. Luckily, after about a
million years the radioactivity finally will have died out. The EPA
estimates the lifetime lung cancer risk from living near a pile of
uranium tailings as 2%, just from the radon it emits. (This is about
1/10 that of a heavy smoker, and more than a lifelong heavy smoker who
has quit for 10 years). This means that the uranium tailings deposits
already existing in the United States in 1983 will cause 500 lung
cancer deaths per century. Aside from gradual dispersal of tailings by
everything from leaching into groundwater to burrowing animals, every
now and then the dams they are held behind break; 1977, Grants, New
Mexico, USA: spill of 50,000 tons of sludge and several million liters
of contaminated water; 1979, Church Rock, New Mexico, USA: spill of
more than 1000 tons of sludge and about 400 million liters of
contaminated water; 1984, Key Lake, Saskatchewan, Canada: spill of more
than 100 million liters of contaminated liquids. And of course, in the
third world tailings have a tendency to just get dumped. At Bukhovo in
Bulgaria, the tailings were just dumped between 1947 and 1958,
eventually discovered to have contaminated 120 hectares of land which
was being used for agriculture. After some cleanup, they are still
being used for agriculture, even though creeal grains grown there now
contain radium up to 1077 Bq/kg. At Mounana in Gabon, more than 2
million tonnes of uranium mill tailings were dumped into a creek
between 1961 and 1975.

Goedjn wrote:
It's no less of a problem then, except generation of electricy might
be cheaper, especially as the cost of oil goes up. We could also burn
coal to make eletricity to generate hydrogen.


If you have the electricity to make hydrogen, what do you
need the hydrogen for?




Energy use is in several forms, not all of which can be met with wires
that carry electricity.

Petrochemicals (oil related, ethanol) are easily transportable, have
high energy density, and allow things like cars, truck, trains and
airplanes to run. A viable alternative MAY be hydrogen, if we can
figure out how to generate, store, and transport it safely and cost
effectively

Electricity can be generated using many source fuels, falling water,
coal, petrochemicals, nuclear to name the most popular. Electrical
generation of hydrogen is possible, but at what cost?????

wrote:
wrote:
The problem is that most people think you can just get hydrogen from
water. You are correct that electrolysis is one of the ways it can be
generated.
The nuke is the real source of the energy, not the water.
And these same people won't let anyone build a nuke in this country anyway.
Until that is solved, hydrogen is a myth. In fact, if you just built
the nukes, they could go a long way to helping even without getting to
the hydrogen for fuel stage.

Nuke is not the only source of energy for hydrogen separation, just the
cheapest for today's technology. Solar hydrogen, given proper
development, will be clean and cheaper. But it will never get the
chance if we take the fast route and jump to nukes.


No, nukes aren't the only source of energy for hydrogen. We could
continue to make it out of natural gas, where most of it comes from
today. But Dooh! What good is that, we could just burn the natural
gas! Or we could use oil, but same problem. Or hydroelectric plants,
but just about all the easy ones have been built and there are serious
environmental consequences to building more. (As in the usual pie in
the sky, free lunch environmentalists will object to all of them and
block it) That's why nuke is the most obvious source to generate the
hydrogen. It's here and cost effective.

In the sense that if the plant is already built, it's cheaper than
building a new wind farm or other such. Of course, if you need to build
a new nuke plant, forget it. See my last post for the MIT report
estimate of 50% greater cost per kwh if you have to pay for that. Of
course, if the government subsidizes construction, the cost becomes
cheaper. It's like magic money. Bushonomics.

As for solar, it's an option, but a long way from reality. Right now
you can install a system for your house for $60K. Only problem is,
it's an economic disaster, even at today's energy prices and no
credible experts have any way to dramatically reduce the cost.

Well, you're quite right about all that. But the ace up solar's sleeve
is that the conditions under which solar energy production peaks are
the precise same conditions where electrical demand peaks, due to air
conditioning, for obvious reasons. So, a relatively cost-ineffective
solar setup located at the point of demand, i.e. near the air
conditioning system, saves not just the cost of generating the
electricity, which would be a loser alone, but also the cost of
upgrading the delivery system, plus all the management and
administrative expenses thereof, which leverages its savings. The
bummer for the electrical industry is that you have to scale the system
to cover peak utilization, and the rest of the time you have this huge
investment sitting there basically idling. About as cost effective as
using a 750 hp car engine to putter around town. Any amount you can
shave off the peaks by local generation allows you to scale the system
closer to average utilization, which is much much more cost effective.
That was behind the push to plug-in electric cars a few years ago; the
electric companies saw a way to up utilization at night, when the
system was just sitting there wasting money. Of course, when you asked
them what if people wanted to charge up their cars at noon on a hot day
in August, they just looked at you like you had killed their baby.

Meanwhile, I don't know who else has this, but the electric company
came around last year to people's homes and offered people to install a
remote switch that shuts off their home central AC compressor by
central command for brief periods when demand is super high, to avoid
brownouts. It's done on a rolling basis through the neighborhoods for
like a half hour at a time, so the compressor can catch up when it's
back on again for minimal impact on comfort; plus they only do it
during working days and working hours. The total energy consumption
will be unchanged, but the peaks will be evened out slightly; but the
ability to avoid brownouts without having to invest in more
infrastructure is worth enough to them that they pay for installation
of this sytem and pay periodically for keeping it, even though in many,
maybe most of the homes they are paying it won't make any difference at
all because nobody's home during working hours. But obviously, the
total amount of difference it will make in shaving the peaks is enough
to cover the total cost of the program, since as you point out they
wouldn't do things that were losing propositions. And this is in the
Northeast, where AC use is pretty light compared to Arizona or Texas.
You can see where investing the same amount in local solar power to
handle the peak for each AC might be in the same neighborhood as far as
cost/benefit, even if it wouldn't be for overall generation.

"Rich256" wrote in message news:FPp8g.46137$Fs1.32238@bgtnsc05-

I am seeing many what appear to be knowledgeable people saying it is not
worth the effort.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/articl...NG1VDF6EM1.DTL

http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/...ostly.ssl.html

But that is argued by others:

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science...-sidebar_x.htm

http://journeytoforever.org/ethanol_energy.html

Or would effort be better spent trying to recover the shale oil in the west?

Shell says they have a method to extract it.

http://www.energybulletin.net/2680.html

Thanks for the references. Good reading.

Bob

"z" wrote in message

Ethanol production from corn barely breaks even on energy balance,
provided you squeeze every bit of energy out of the entire process.
Burn the waste stalks, roots, etc. and capture that heat; capture the
heat from distillation rather than let it waste; etc. etc. The reason
being that modern agricultural is so hugely dependent on ammonium
nitrate fertilizer, and ammonium nitrate fertilizer is made by
consuming huge amounts of energy. Without that, you couldn't get 10% of
the yield of corn you do now.

The organic farming enthusiasts might disagree with this statement.

Bob

z wrote:

More hysteria. My God, there is actually waste produced from mining
uranium? Why who would have thought that? I guess strip mining for
coal or planting half of Brazil with sugar cane are environmentally
correct and perfect alternatives though, right?

As for what the MIT professors say, who cares? You can listen to them
for their opinions on the economics of nuclear power. I prefer to
listen to companies that are ready to build NEW nukes in the USA right
now. That's right, NEW ones, not depreciated existing ones. These
companies have money on the line. Talk is cheap.


http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7921287/

"MSNBC staff and news service reports
Updated: 11:15 a.m. ET May 20, 2005
A nuclear power plant hasn't been built in the United States in two
decades, but that could change in the next few years after a consortium
announced locations in six states as possible sites for a nuclear
renaissance.

Nuclear power consortium NuStart Energy on Thursday named the sites
from which it will later pick two for which to apply for licenses to
build and operate nuclear power plants."



Of course the obstructionists will do everything then can to block it,
using junk science and hysteria. And at the same time they will
continue to tell us that hydrogen is an example of a good clean
alternative, when in fact, the truth is, it has to be produced from
some other energy source. But they never bother to tell anyone that,
as if it comes out of a magic outlet at the pump. What a crock!











wrote:

Yeah, right, nuclear is so damn expensive compared to other
alternatives. That must be why all the power companies in the US that
have one are desperatley trying to get their licenses extended so they
can keep them running. And why there are currently proposals to
finally build a few more. It's because power companies want to find
ways to generate power that aren't cost effective.

"Worldwide,the majority of current nuclear power plants are competitive
on a marginal generating cost basis in a deregulated market environment
because of low operating costs and the fact that many are already fully
depreciated. ...
"However,new nuclear power at generating costs between 3.9 and 8.0
c/kWh ...
"pebble bed modular reactor ... expected cost of power would be
approximately 2 c/kWh including the full fuel cycle and decommissioning
(Nicholls, 1998). These costs are far less than typical present nuclear
technologies and in part perhaps the result of engineering optimism.
Other assessments quote double this generating cost (WEA, 2000). ...
"In high-wind areas, wind power is competitive with other forms of
electricity generation at between 3 and 5 c/kWh. The global average
price is expected to drop to 2.7-3 c/kWh by around 2020 due to
economies of scale from mass production and improved turbine designs.
... However, on poorer sites of around 5 m/s mean annual wind speed,
the generating costs would remain high at around 10-12 c/kWh ...
"Biomass fuels ... high-pressure, direct gasification combined-cycle
plant ... by 2020, with operating costs, including fuel supply,
declining from 3.98 to 3.12 c/kWh (EPRI/DOE, 1997). By way of
comparison, the higher current operating costs of 5.50 c/kWh for
traditional combustion boiler/steam turbine technology, (reflecting
poorer fuel conversion efficiency compared with gasification), were
predicted to lower to 3.87 c/kWh. ...
"The cost of PV [photovoltaics] ... is slowly falling due to
manufacturing scale-up and mass production techniques as more capacity
is installed. Generating costs are relatively high at 20-40 c/kWh.
However, PV is often deployed at the point of electricity use such as
buildings, and this can offset the high costs by giving a competitive
advantage over power transmitted long distances from central power
stations with high losses and distribution costs."
"Carbon emission and mitigation cost comparisons between fossil fuel,
nuclear and renewable energy resources for electricity generation";
Ralph E.H. Sims, Hans-Holger Rogner, Ken Gregory; Energy Policy 31
(2003) 1315-1326
http://www.iaea.org/OurWork/ST/NE/Pess/assets/Energy%20Policy%202003.pdf

Nuke, wind, or biomass, it's not going to be cheaper than 4 cents per
kwh. Note that this is just the generating cost; any difference is
going to be even less percentagewise when you tack on the distribution
and administrative costs, which is why you're not paying your electric
bill at 4 cents per kwh now.

As for your cost effective nuclear plants that the power companies are
lining up to produce:

"REAL LEVELIZED COST Cents/kWe-hr
Nuclear (LWR) 6.7
+ Reduce construction cost 25% 5.5
+ Reduce construction time 5 to 4 years 5.3
+ Further reduce O&M to 13 mills/kWe-hr 5.1
+ Reduce cost of capital to gas/coal 4.2
Pulverized Coal 4.2
CCGTa (low gas prices, $3.77/MCF) 3.8
CCGT (moderate gas prices, $4.42/MCF) 4.1
CCGT (high gas prices, $6.72/MCF) 5.6
"The actions will be effective in stimulating additional investments in
nuclear generating capacity only if the industry can live up to its own
expectations of being able to reduce considerably overnight capital
costs for new plants far below historical experience.
"We propose a production tax credit of up to $200 per kilowatt hour
(kWh) of the construction cost."
http://web.mit.edu/nuclearpower/pdf/nuclearpower-full.pdf
But what do John Deutch and Ernest Moniz and all those MIT wackos know
about engineering costs? You've informed us that we aren't subsidizing
nuclear plants at all, they pay for themselves the same way we pay for
garbage hauling and that ought to be good enough for them. The fact
that both Sims et al and Deutch et al refer to overoptimistic
unrealistic cost expectations by the industry shouldn't bother anyone.

Never mind high level radioactive waste; in fact, the industry doesn't
even deal with the debris left over from mining the uranium. Add these
costs to your balance sheet:
The highest grade uranium ore contains less than 1% uranium, often less
than .2%. So huge amounts of ore are pulverized, leaving 99.9% of it as
tailings full of heavy metals and containing 85% of the original
radioactivity, which eventually ends up downstream or in ground water.
The largest such piles in the US and Canada contain up to 30 million
tons of solid material. In Saxony, Germany the Helmsdorf pile near
Zwickau contains 50 million tonnes, and in Thuringia the Culmitzsch
pile near Seelingstädt 86 million tonnes. Luckily, after about a
million years the radioactivity finally will have died out. The EPA
estimates the lifetime lung cancer risk from living near a pile of
uranium tailings as 2%, just from the radon it emits. (This is about
1/10 that of a heavy smoker, and more than a lifelong heavy smoker who
has quit for 10 years). This means that the uranium tailings deposits
already existing in the United States in 1983 will cause 500 lung
cancer deaths per century. Aside from gradual dispersal of tailings by
everything from leaching into groundwater to burrowing animals, every
now and then the dams they are held behind break; 1977, Grants, New
Mexico, USA: spill of 50,000 tons of sludge and several million liters
of contaminated water; 1979, Church Rock, New Mexico, USA: spill of
more than 1000 tons of sludge and about 400 million liters of
contaminated water; 1984, Key Lake, Saskatchewan, Canada: spill of more
than 100 million liters of contaminated liquids. And of course, in the
third world tailings have a tendency to just get dumped. At Bukhovo in
Bulgaria, the tailings were just dumped between 1947 and 1958,
eventually discovered to have contaminated 120 hectares of land which
was being used for agriculture. After some cleanup, they are still
being used for agriculture, even though creeal grains grown there now
contain radium up to 1077 Bq/kg. At Mounana in Gabon, more than 2
million tonnes of uranium mill tailings were dumped into a creek
between 1961 and 1975.

Talk to someone who's invested in a fuel ethanol plant. Ask them what kind
of profits the plant is generating. Even if you tax the fuel ethanol the
same as you tax gasoline, it can be produced at a considerably lower cost
than gasoline can be produced and marketed from $50 crude, let alone $70
crude.

Brazil will have a hard time making inroads into the fuel ethanol markets in
the interior parts of the U.S. because of transportation costs. They can
have an impact near the costal areas. Most of the fuel ethanol in the U.S.
is produced in the Midwest, the corn belt. The further you have to
transport from the Midwest, the less competitive it becomes. California,
for example, imports a lot of fuel ethanol at relatively high cost,
primarily because of the environmental benefits of mixing it with gasoline
and the fact that they don't have the right crops to produce it themselves.

The oil companies do not favor fuel ethanol (or any other bio-fuel, for that
matter). I wonder why, although I suspect I already know the answer. The
oil industry has been consolidating for a number of years. They've managed
to reduce the number of refineries to the point that they just have enough
refinery capacity to meet current demand (note what happened to gasoline
prices when Katrina took refinery capacity off line). Any large scale fuel
ethanol production will upset their delicate balance and bring more
competition to the oil industry. Obviously, not something they want to see,
considering the amounts of profits they are enjoying under the current
conditions.

For now, corn is the most feasible material to use for fuel ethanol
production in this country. And, by the way, the corn is not lost as an
animal feed just because it's been used to produce fuel ethanol. The
primary byproduct of a fuel ethanol plant is a dried distillers grain, which
is a high protein animal feed. A lot of work is being done to develop
processes to economically produce fuel ethanol from biomass/cellulose, i.e.,
sawdust and such. If that happens (and it will eventually), watch what fuel
ethanol does. Coal fired fuel ethanol plants that meet all environmental
requirements are being built today. If crude prices stay above $35 dollars
a barrel, the fuel ethanol plants will do fine. We need to let the
marketplace decide if fuel ethanol is feasible.

Harry


"Richard J Kinch" wrote in message
.. .
Rich256 writes:

I would still like to see a valid study showing that ethanol is a valid
alternative to gasoline.

Ethanol is physically inferior and more costly than gasoline. The support
for it is political, and not just the farmers.

Some believe that we are better off making something ourselves than
importing something better and cheaper. This is why you hear all the
rhetoric about "dependency of foreign oil". By that logic, we are better
off burning domestic candles than importing sunlight:

http://bastiat.org/en/petition.html

HarryS wrote:
Talk to someone who's invested in a fuel ethanol plant. Ask them what kind
of profits the plant is generating. Even if you tax the fuel ethanol the
same as you tax gasoline, it can be produced at a considerably lower cost
than gasoline can be produced and marketed from $50 crude, let alone $70
crude.

Brazil will have a hard time making inroads into the fuel ethanol markets in
the interior parts of the U.S. because of transportation costs. They can
have an impact near the costal areas. Most of the fuel ethanol in the U.S.
is produced in the Midwest, the corn belt. The further you have to
transport from the Midwest, the less competitive it becomes. California,
for example, imports a lot of fuel ethanol at relatively high cost,
primarily because of the environmental benefits of mixing it with gasoline
and the fact that they don't have the right crops to produce it themselves.

The oil companies do not favor fuel ethanol (or any other bio-fuel, for that
matter). I wonder why, although I suspect I already know the answer. The
oil industry has been consolidating for a number of years. They've managed
to reduce the number of refineries to the point that they just have enough
refinery capacity to meet current demand (note what happened to gasoline
prices when Katrina took refinery capacity off line). Any large scale fuel
ethanol production will upset their delicate balance and bring more
competition to the oil industry. Obviously, not something they want to see,
considering the amounts of profits they are enjoying under the current
conditions.

For now, corn is the most feasible material to use for fuel ethanol
production in this country. And, by the way, the corn is not lost as an
animal feed just because it's been used to produce fuel ethanol. The
primary byproduct of a fuel ethanol plant is a dried distillers grain, which
is a high protein animal feed. A lot of work is being done to develop
processes to economically produce fuel ethanol from biomass/cellulose, i.e.,
sawdust and such. If that happens (and it will eventually), watch what fuel
ethanol does. Coal fired fuel ethanol plants that meet all environmental
requirements are being built today. If crude prices stay above $35 dollars
a barrel, the fuel ethanol plants will do fine. We need to let the
marketplace decide if fuel ethanol is feasible.

Harry


Agree. However, I would like to see a current valid study that shows
that ethanol can be produced for those low prices. So many that I see
are quite old and it seems to me that most are just reporters making
guesses. Since ethanol must be shipped by rail it presently becomes
very expensive in many parts of the country.


http://zfacts.com/p/60.html

On 10-May-2006, Rich256 wrote:

I am seeing many what appear to be knowledgeable people saying it is not
worth the effort.

These "experts" are dumb enough to think you should produce a fuel from an expensive crop.
Don't be lead by the most short-sighted nay-sayers.

But that is argued by others:

These experts, OTOH, realize that there's a better way to do things. I've been following this
approach for a while, but figure there may be problems with the US accepting it, since many
of the patents and such are not American - NIH syndrome could kick in. I was surprised
to hear Bush advocate for it recently.

BTW - ethanol will provide more oxygen to the gas mix and will result in a cleaner, more
efficient fuel that plain gas. However, if you get above a certain limit (10%? I forget) the extra
ethanol burns a tad less energetically.

If you want to burn ethanol in an internal cumbustion engine, you should ideally make a few
changes. Volkswagen, for example, sells a conversion kit for their gas engines to convert to
very high ethanol fuels. I'm not sure exactly what the changes are (valve timing? injector
widgets? air/fuel mix?). You can't blindly take an engine optimized for gas and run it on
pure ethanol and expect it to work perfectly.

Take an Atkinson cycle engine optimized for ethanol, add hybrid technology and give up
on the ridiculously huge vehicles chosen by your penis envy and the dependence on
foreign energy can be reduced considerably.

Forget hydrogen - it's a scam.

Mike

On 10-May-2006, Robert Gammon wrote:

Goedjn wrote:
If you have the electricity to make hydrogen, what do you
need the hydrogen for?

A viable alternative MAY be hydrogen, if we can
figure out how to generate, store, and transport it safely and cost
effectively

Batteries can store and transport electrical energy safely and have been doing that
for a long time. We are now seeing advanced battery technology - e.g. lithium that
can be recharged in a few minutes - and the technology can be improved further.

So - why do we need hydrogen? Batteries can return a huge percentage of the energy
you put into them.. PEM fuel cells _might_ hit 50% efficiency sometime in the next
decade.

We don't need hydrogen. The hydrogen economy is a scam.

Mike

On 10-May-2006, wrote:

Solar hydrogen, given proper development, will be clean and cheaper.

Before you get all hot and bothered about the use of solar hydrogen, or any
other solar energy source (including ethanol), consider how many acres of
land you need to use to capture the amount of energy currently being used
(and mostly wasted) with petroleum. Solar is limited by how much land we are
willing to convert to energy production. Realistically, none of these technologies
to reduce oil dependency will work unless people stop wasting so much energy.
You don't need a 6000lb truck to take the kids to soccer practice.

Mike

i find alot of chainsaws and weedwackers wont restart when hot
because the ethenol/gas boils and wont pump... let em cool and they
start and run fine. lucas

http://www.minibite.com/america/malone.htm

wrote:
On Wed, 10 May 2006 13:53:53 GMT, Rich256 wrote:

Sure we do. There has been research for 50 years on using it for
vehicles. Nuclear plants to make Hydrogen from water. It may well be
the fuel of the future.
You would be a lot better using that nuke plant to simply supply
electricity. It is a more efficient way to distribute the energy.

But it is not a portable fuel that can be used in vehicles. I had
great hopes they might get fusion to work but after 50 years and still
not breaking even it will not happen in my lifetime. I can't see
ethanol supplying adequate portable fuel for the world. And we still
burn diesel to heat our houses!!

Oil is not going to suddenly disappear. It will continue to get less
plentiful and harder to extract - More expensive. As it does the
alternate fuels will become more attractive.

wrote:
On Wed, 10 May 2006 20:49:23 GMT, Rich256 wrote:

However, I would like to see a current valid study that shows
that ethanol can be produced for those low prices
Ethanol is 200 proiof vodka How cheap could it be? I certainly don't
expect the taxes to be much less.

Great point!! The road tax is a lot less than liquor tax. And imagine
all the bootleggers driving down the road, perfectly legal with a tank
full of liquor. Only when they dump it and drink it can they get in
trouble.

writes:

On Wed, 10 May 2006 21:44:21 GMT, Mys Terry
wrote:

We have a population problem.
Reduce the world population by 50% and there will be plenty of everything to go
around. The world population has more than doubled in tha past 50 years. Time to
completely reverse that trend, and NOW.
How will you fund the "Ponzi" social programs that are based on
exporential worker growth? (Social Security in the US or the policy in
most of western Europe)
It is going to take a lot of new tax paying workers to make our
government's promises come true.

The short term lack of workers will lead to a long term solution
to many problems.

The idea that we can just keep growing without limit is the real
Ponzi scheme.

Rich256 wrote:

mm wrote:

Someone in a country other than the USA has done a study of the
effects of 20% ethanol/80% gasoline on engines by running a weedwacker
and an outboard motor on such a mixture....
Why do you ask? Isn't 10% is the mixture used in the U.S. except for
vehicles designed to use the 85%?

I would still like to see a valid study showing that ethanol is a valid
alternative to gasoline. There are knowledgeable individuals that state
that it takes more energy to produce it than we get out.

It seems most estimates come in the range of it taking 3/4 to 1.25
(sometimes up to 3)gallons of gas or diesel to produce a gallon of
ethanol, & the most favorable studies show it a wash AT BEST.

THEN you have to figure in the lower energy of ethanol on top of that...
a 28 mpg(on gas - highway) Taurus(Taurus FFV - the ones with the little
green leaf front fender badges) becomes something like 20 mpg on E85(15%
gas, 85% ethanol).

It's been a while since I've done it, but you can do a web search for
"E85 Taurus" to get some of the empirical data from these tests.

Rob

I wonder if the OP (mm) expected all this when he asked his question :-)

Harry

"mm" wrote in message
...
Someone in a country other than the USA has done a study of the
effects of 20% ethanol/80% gasoline on engines by running a weedwacker
and an outboard motor on such a mixture.

He reports:
"The study of ethanol's impact on engines found the 10 per cent blend
caused no substantial changes, except slight swelling and blistering
on the carburettor and an increase in carbon deposits on pistons.

But when the fuel contained 20 per cent ethanol, substantial problems
were encountered. The outboard engine stalled on occasions, exhaust
gas temperature increased by a significant margin and in some cases
there was extensive corrosion of engine parts."

Could someone list all the reasons this is not a good test. (I suspect
you'll all think of some of the same things, so maybe look at previous
answers before answering.)

Any reasons it is a good test are also appreciated.

HarryS writes:

Even if you tax the fuel ethanol the
same as you tax gasoline, it can be produced at a considerably lower
cost than gasoline can be produced and marketed from $50 crude, let
alone $70 crude.

Bunk.

Photosynthesis is inherently weak and wasteful.

Ethanol is a technically inferior fuel.

The justification is more or less, "we may lose money on every gallon, but
we'll make it up on volume".

mm wrote:
Someone in a country other than the USA has done a study of the
effects of 20% ethanol/80% gasoline on engines by running a weedwacker
and an outboard motor on such a mixture.

He reports:
"The study of ethanol's impact on engines found the 10 per cent blend
caused no substantial changes, except slight swelling and blistering
on the carburettor and an increase in carbon deposits on pistons.

But when the fuel contained 20 per cent ethanol, substantial problems
were encountered. The outboard engine stalled on occasions, exhaust
gas temperature increased by a significant margin and in some cases
there was extensive corrosion of engine parts."

Could someone list all the reasons this is not a good test. (I suspect
you'll all think of some of the same things, so maybe look at previous
answers before answering.)

Any reasons it is a good test are also appreciated.
Hi,
I don't know about small engines but in Brazil they sell dual fuel
vehicles which can run on either fuel blend. Brazil is self-suffcient
on fuel producing lots of ethanol. U.S. could do it too. and why not?.

wrote in
:

On Wed, 10 May 2006 21:04:44 GMT, "Michael Daly"
wrote:

Batteries can store and transport electrical energy safely and have
been doing that for a long time. We are now seeing advanced battery
technology - e.g. lithium that can be recharged in a few minutes - and
the technology can be improved further.

So - why do we need hydrogen? Batteries can return a huge percentage
of the energy you put into them.. PEM fuel cells _might_ hit 50%
efficiency sometime in the next decade.

We don't need hydrogen. The hydrogen economy is a scam.


Wise words. I am rethinking electric cars. If you don't drive that
far it is a viable option. The problem is we are only moving the
"gasoline" problem to the electrical grid. Same ****, different smoke
stack.


Well,use nuclear power to generate the electricity.
It's clean,efficient,and safe,and the fissionables can probably come from
indigenous sources.We already have Yucca Mtn to store the wastes.

--
Jim Yanik
jyanik
at
kua.net

On 10-May-2006, wrote:

Same ****, different smoke stack.

Exactly right, whether battery or hydrogen. If you work out how much electricity is
equired to replace gas, you see that the amount of power to be produced is enormous.
We're not talking about one or two more nukes - we're talking about more than doubling
existing electrical capacity!

Mike

Richard J Kinch wrote in
:

HarryS writes:

Even if you tax the fuel ethanol the
same as you tax gasoline, it can be produced at a considerably lower
cost than gasoline can be produced and marketed from $50 crude, let
alone $70 crude.

Bunk.

Photosynthesis is inherently weak and wasteful.

Ethanol is a technically inferior fuel.

The justification is more or less, "we may lose money on every gallon,
but we'll make it up on volume".


And if we'd drill in ANWR and the Gulf for oil,and process oil-shale,it
would not be $50 a bbl.
OPEC would have to lower their price because of supply and demand
changes,and we would not be paying adversaries(hostiles) large sums of
money.

--
Jim Yanik
jyanik
at
kua.net

On 10-May-2006, wrote:

How will you fund the "Ponzi" social programs that are based on
exporential worker growth? (Social Security in the US or the policy in
most of western Europe)

There's a lot of industrial and business "growth" that is based on the same
rising population scam. Many businesses can't make money in a
zero-population-growth environment. The only reason that your house is
worth more when you retire than when you bought it is because of population
growth. Just look at the value of real estate "investments" in towns that are
loosing people to other regions of a country.

Mike

On 10-May-2006, Mys Terry wrote:

Lets cut to the chase. There are just too many people. We don't have an energy
problem, a hunger problem, or a war problem. We have a population problem.
Reduce the world population by 50% and there will be plenty of everything to go
around.

That would just defer the problem. Instead of energy resources disappearing in, say,
a century, it will disappear in two centuries. The problem of waste still remains.

Westerners in general, and Americans and Canadians in particular, have to learn
to live within their means - and that means significant cuts in per capita energy
consumption.

Mike

On 11-May-2006, Richard J Kinch wrote:

Photosynthesis is inherently weak and wasteful.

And yet it produced a heck of a lot of oil.

Mike

On 11-May-2006, Tony Hwang wrote:

Brazil is self-suffcient
on fuel producing lots of ethanol. U.S. could do it too. and why not?.

A lot of people are mentioning Brazil as if it was some kind of ideal example.
That is certainly not the case. They did not convert to ethanol for environmental
reasons - they did it to control their balance of payments and trade deficits. It
wasn't necessarily cheaper and a lot of Brazilian drivers hated the ethanol fueled
cars. It took a while before the were able to get cars that ran well on ethanol.
Now that the technology has settled down, Brazilian drivers still resent the ethanol
fuels (sort of like North American drivers that are still cranky about pollution control
equipment on their cars - there's no problem with it, just a perception based on the
relatively poor performance of the first pollution controlled cars in the '70s.)

Brazil's ethanol industry is based on sugar cane, which is not a good source. It
was relatively plentiful and they couldn't get as much money exporting sugar as
converting it to fuel. The US, for examples, blocked sugar imports with trade
restrictions and a propped-up US price to support US sugar businesses - like
sugar beet.

Ethanol has to be based on a marginal crop that can grow without intense
farming techniques. Otherwise, it will cost more energy to make than to use.

Mike

According to Robert Gammon :
Larry Bud wrote:
mrsgator88 wrote:

wrote in message
oups.com...

Its odd that you don't hear anything about research on using water,
Which contains the ingrediants for combustion, Hydogen and Oxygen. Is
it because its so plentiful that the fat Cats couldn't milk the public?
Politics is dirty stinking dirty.

There are other issues with Hydrogen. Remember the Zeppelin?

Uh, I don't think anyone is advocating filling up a volume with 7
million cubic feet of hydrogen.

Some are!!! Liquid Hydrogen filling stations OR High pressure hydrogen
gaseous state filling stations.

And that's more dangerous than BBQ tank refilling stations?

In some ways propane is more dangerous, because it's heavier than
air, and flows along the ground almost like water seeking low points.

There have been a number of propane rail car accidents where the propane
flowed downhill for quite a distance before it encountered something
that ignited it. That wouldn't happen with hydrogen.
--
Chris Lewis, Una confibula non set est
It's not just anyone who gets a Starship Cruiser class named after them.

According to :

Rich256 wrote:
wrote:
Its odd that you don't hear anything about research on using water,
Which contains the ingrediants for combustion, Hydogen and Oxygen. Is
it because its so plentiful that the fat Cats couldn't milk the public?
Politics is dirty stinking dirty.

Sure we do. There has been research for 50 years on using it for
vehicles. Nuclear plants to make Hydrogen from water. It may well be
the fuel of the future.

http://peswiki.com/energy/Directory:Hydrogen_from_Water

http://www.nrel.gov/hydrogen/

The problem is that most people think you can just get hydrogen from
water. You are correct that electrolysis is one of the ways it can be
generated. In that case, the hydrogen is best viewed as a transport
vehicle for the energy.

Even better. Think of as a battery, being charged by a something.

There are more energy efficient ways of producing hydrogen than
electrolysis, but most have their own problems.

Back in the old days, it was done by reacting iron with sulphuric
acid. Which'd be economically and environmentally unpleasant in the
volumes we'd need. [I have a book from the 1900s that outlines exactly
how to make your own man-rated airship including how to make the
hydrogen too. By today's standards, really scary stuff.]

In the beginning of this century, naval ships carried tons of calcium hydride
that they could convert to hydrogen (for observation blimps/balloons) simply
by adding water.

But you have to produce the calcium hydride. It wouldn't be cheap.
--
Chris Lewis, Una confibula non set est
It's not just anyone who gets a Starship Cruiser class named after them.

According to mm :
Someone in a country other than the USA has done a study of the
effects of 20% ethanol/80% gasoline on engines by running a weedwacker
and an outboard motor on such a mixture.

He reports:
"The study of ethanol's impact on engines found the 10 per cent blend
caused no substantial changes, except slight swelling and blistering
on the carburettor and an increase in carbon deposits on pistons.

But when the fuel contained 20 per cent ethanol, substantial problems
were encountered. The outboard engine stalled on occasions, exhaust
gas temperature increased by a significant margin and in some cases
there was extensive corrosion of engine parts."

Could someone list all the reasons this is not a good test. (I suspect
you'll all think of some of the same things, so maybe look at previous
answers before answering.)

Any reasons it is a good test are also appreciated.

Not having seen the report, I'd remark/ask questions on the following:

1) Comparing what are probably two-stroke with oil mixed in is not
a fair comparison with a 4 stroke car engine.

2) Where did he get his ethanol from? How much water did it have? This
is more likely to be the cause of blistering/corrosion than anything else.

3) Did he retune the engines properly for the different mixes? Increased
heating is more suggestive of bad tuning - ethanol should be cooler.

4) Comparing engines that have virtually _no_ consideration of ethanol
fuels in their design to engines that do isn't a reasonable test.

5) "Swelling of the carburettor?" A metal carb swelled? I don't think
so. Suggestive of plastic (especially nylon) carb parts. Nylon swells when
wet with water or alcohol. Engines designed for ethanol should not have
nylon in its fuel system.

Ethanol works just fine in engines provided that the engine designer has
taken a few things into account. For example, one of the things that
used to happen is clogged carbs after a car switched from gas to a
ethanol blend. You see, if there's water present, the ethanol will
pick it up. If the car had a paper fuel filter, the water would cause it
to disintegrate, and the paper sludge could plug things up.

If you had picked up gas from a tank that just switched to an ethanol
blend, there can be an enormous amount of water in it (I'm told that
these tanks can sometimes have several inches or more of water in the
bottom. Which is only a problem with straight-gas if the gas level
is very low and/or recently disturbed. Ethanol will simply suck
it all up.

They don't make fuel filters that way anymore.
--
Chris Lewis, Una confibula non set est
It's not just anyone who gets a Starship Cruiser class named after them.

Michael Daly wrote:
On 11-May-2006, Tony Hwang wrote:

Brazil is self-suffcient
on fuel producing lots of ethanol. U.S. could do it too. and why not?.

A lot of people are mentioning Brazil as if it was some kind of ideal example.
That is certainly not the case. They did not convert to ethanol for environmental
reasons - they did it to control their balance of payments and trade deficits. It
wasn't necessarily cheaper and a lot of Brazilian drivers hated the ethanol fueled
cars. It took a while before the were able to get cars that ran well on ethanol.
Now that the technology has settled down, Brazilian drivers still resent the ethanol
fuels (sort of like North American drivers that are still cranky about pollution control
equipment on their cars - there's no problem with it, just a perception based on the
relatively poor performance of the first pollution controlled cars in the '70s.)

Brazil's ethanol industry is based on sugar cane, which is not a good source. It
was relatively plentiful and they couldn't get as much money exporting sugar as
converting it to fuel. The US, for examples, blocked sugar imports with trade
restrictions and a propped-up US price to support US sugar businesses - like
sugar beet.

Ethanol has to be based on a marginal crop that can grow without intense
farming techniques. Otherwise, it will cost more energy to make than to use.

Mike


All good points Mike. This is another example of how only a part of
the story gets told and how people go off half cocked. Another key
point to the Brazil story is they didn't just use Ethanol to become
energy independent. Last week there was a picture of the President of
Brazil on an offshore oil well, turning the valve on, bringing it
online.

Yet, if you talk about drilling off shore in most areas of the US, the
environmental extremists all come running around telling you it
shouldn't be done. Then they point to the wonders of Brazil as an
example of how to achieve energy independence, hoping nobody will
notice the truth.

The reality is we should be pursuing multiple solutions. Opening up
more areas to drilling *(ANWAR, offshore, etc), building nukes, ethanol
provided it's cost effective, wind, more research on solar, more
conservation, etc. But anytime you try to do almost any one of these,
some nuts show up to **** and moan and stop it.

Mys Terry wrote:

Well,use nuclear power to generate the electricity.
It's clean,efficient,and safe,and the fissionables can probably come from
indigenous sources.We already have Yucca Mtn to store the wastes.

Then why aren't we using it? The Federal Government promised to take care of the
remains of the Yankee Nuke Plant when it was decommissioned. When the time came,
they simply came in and said, "Okay, we're responsible now", and left everything
sitting exactly where it was onsite. They did not move one drum 5 feet from
where it was sitting, much less transport anything to Yucca Mountain.


Terry & Skipper, Clearlake Texas


We aren't using Yucca because anti-nuclear obstructionists have done
everything they can to stop it or slow it down. It would have been
done 10 years ago, if not for that. Some anti-nuke person wrote a
letter to the local paper along the lines of the above, blaming the
federal govt for not having a safe disposal, why they are the ones
responsible for all the delays.

On Wed, 10 May 2006 17:04:59 GMT, Robert Gammon
wrote:

mm wrote:
On 10 May 2006 04:15:39 -0700, wrote:



The real question with ethanol is whether it's cost effective. I agree
with Rich, all I ever hear on the news is more political rant, rather
than true facts. For example, 60 mins did a story about a town in Iowa


I wouldn't trust anything 60 Minutes said unless I also heard it from
a reliable source. It's a trash show afaic and it frightens me that
so many people who could make money elsewhere are willing to work for
it. Details omitted unless someone asks.



Well to each of us, we have varying opinions on 60 Minutes.

Folks over 50 place a GREAT deal of trust in most things that are shown

I'm 59, substantially over 50.

mm

on 60 Minutes as they have shown themselves to be EXTREMELY reliable in
what they say over the decades that they have been on TV. No, they are
not infallible, and they do have bias that shows from time to time in
their reporting. However, among news folk, they represent very nearly
the BEST available.

On 10 May 2006 11:00:09 -0700, wrote:


mm wrote:
On 10 May 2006 07:08:35 -0700, wrote:


The problem is that most people think you can just get hydrogen from
water. You are correct that electrolysis is one of the ways it can be
generated. In that case, the hydrogen is best viewed as a transport
vehicle for the energy. The nuke is the real source of the energy, not

You meann nuclear power? The electricity generated at nuclear power
plants is no better at splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen than
is any other electricity.

Hydrogen doesn't have any other relationship with nuclear power
plants.



The point is the hydrogen is just an energy transport vehicle. So, if
not nuclear, then where do you propose to get the energy from? Import

For all the risks and costs of nuclear, it might be necessary if we're
going to keep using electricity at the rate we do. According to
Jeopardy, 20% of US electricity is made with nuclear now. (even though
no new plants have opened in decades. There are 3 within 90 or 120
minutes of Baltimore.)

My objection was to your tying hydrogen closely to nuclear. It has no
special relationship to nuclear.

(not counting hydrogen bombs and the possible possibilty of cold
fusion (that is, a hydrogen bomb that's not a bomb and generates heat
more slowly and at a lower temperature than a bomb.)

If you mean that you want to use nuclear and hydrogen is one way to
store the energy, I have no objection, but it didn't sound that way in
hte post that I answered

More below.

more oil? Burn natural gas? Just use the oil or gas then and forget
the hydrogen. Hydroelectric? All the easy sites are done, and there
are serious environmental issues with any more sites. Nuclear is cost
effective and readily deployable. That's why it makes the most sense
as a source of energy to generate hydrogen.




(except that if cold fusion is ever developed, it will *use* hydrogen,
not generate it.)

the water. And the problem is most of the people running around
saying water is the answer, don't realize this. They think you just
get the hydrogen out of the water by some miracle process. And these
same people won't let anyone build a nuke in this country anyway.
Until that is solved, hydrogen is a myth.

It's no less of a problem then, except generation of electricy might
be cheaper, especially as the cost of oil goes up. We could also burn
coal to make eletricity to generate hydrogen.

Sure you could burn coal, but how realistic is that? You've got lots
of people running around saying that global warming is gonna kill us
all. You think building more fossil fuel plants, especially coal
fired ones that not only generate CO2 but other difficult to deal with
pollutants, is a reasonable approach?

There are problems with every fuel. I'm not pushing coal (even though
it is plentiful and not radioactive), only saying it is as related to
hydrogen as is nuclear.

There is also coal slurry, which iirc solves some of the problems of
coal, but has difficulties of its own. I don't remember the details.

There is also low sulfur versus high sulfer coal. I thought
low-sulfur was pretty good, but I don't recall details.

So, again, where is the energy going to come from for this pie in the
sky hydrogen?

Nor am I pushing hydrogen. It too has problems, mostly iiuc that you
can only put so much of it in a pressure tank on a car.



In fact, if you just built
the nukes, they could go a long way to helping even without getting to
the hydrogen for fuel stage.

On Wed, 10 May 2006 13:28:25 -0400, Goedjn wrote:



It's no less of a problem then, except generation of electricy might
be cheaper, especially as the cost of oil goes up. We could also burn
coal to make eletricity to generate hydrogen.

If you have the electricity to make hydrogen, what do you
need the hydrogen for?

I'm not pushing hydrogen. But the other guy brought it up. My point
was that there is no special relationship between hydrogen and nuclear
versus hydrogen and other ways of making electricity.

AIUI, fuel cells are practically essential for spacecraft, because the
byproducts are electricity and pure water. Solar cells are an
alternative, but it seems they don't use them everywhere if I recall
the pictures.

And in the city they are at least potentially useful because they
don't make noise and they don't pollute (the pollution is made at the
power plant, where perhaps it can be controlled better than at
individual gas or ethanol engines. I expect sure ethanol makes some
sort of pollution, no?)

And they are lighter than lead-acid batteries, or any rechargeable
batteries I think.

"Michael Daly" writes:

On 10-May-2006, Mys Terry wrote:

Lets cut to the chase. There are just too many people. We don't have an energy
problem, a hunger problem, or a war problem. We have a population problem.
Reduce the world population by 50% and there will be plenty of everything to go
around.

That would just defer the problem. Instead of energy resources disappearing in, say,
a century, it will disappear in two centuries. The problem of waste still remains.

Not really. With a declining population,
alternative solutions have a chance of meeting demand.
With a growing population, no matter what solutions are tried,
sooner or later, we run out of resources.

Westerners in general, and Americans and Canadians in particular, have to learn
to live within their means - and that means significant cuts in per capita energy
consumption.

Cut all you want. With more and more people, in the long run, something breaks.

writes:

Mys Terry wrote:

Well,use nuclear power to generate the electricity.
It's clean,efficient,and safe,and the fissionables can probably come from
indigenous sources.We already have Yucca Mtn to store the wastes.

Then why aren't we using it? The Federal Government promised to take care of the
remains of the Yankee Nuke Plant when it was decommissioned. When the time came,
they simply came in and said, "Okay, we're responsible now", and left everything
sitting exactly where it was onsite. They did not move one drum 5 feet from
where it was sitting, much less transport anything to Yucca Mountain.


Terry & Skipper, Clearlake Texas


We aren't using Yucca because anti-nuclear obstructionists have done
everything they can to stop it or slow it down. It would have been
done 10 years ago, if not for that. Some anti-nuke person wrote a
letter to the local paper along the lines of the above, blaming the
federal govt for not having a safe disposal, why they are the ones
responsible for all the delays.

If you remember the Bush / Kerry presidential debates,
it was Bush that made political hay out of saying he would not
authorize the use of Yucca mountain.

Is he the anti-nuclear obstructionist you are thinking of?

"Jim Yanik" wrote in message
...

And if we'd drill in ANWR and the Gulf for oil,and process oil-shale,it
would not be $50 a bbl.
OPEC would have to lower their price because of supply and demand
changes,and we would not be paying adversaries(hostiles) large sums of
money.

Yes, ANWR. Can't believe it to soooo long for THIS to come up. Yeah, and
if pigs had wings they could fly.

S

"Chris Lewis" wrote in message
...

And that's more dangerous than BBQ tank refilling stations?

In some ways propane is more dangerous, because it's heavier than
air, and flows along the ground almost like water seeking low points.

There have been a number of propane rail car accidents where the propane
flowed downhill for quite a distance before it encountered something
that ignited it. That wouldn't happen with hydrogen.

Well, I was thinking about the hydrogen car being in a collision with a
semi. She'd be blowed up REAL good. With proprane, I only thought "how
much can happen between the hardware store and my house". Propane car rail
accidents never occurred to me.

S