"Jon Anderson" wrote in message
...

Then again, maybe we can start making our own oil if these guys turn out
to have something commercially viable:
http://www.changingworldtech.com/techfr.htm
I sure hope this one works out. Doesn't solve all problems, but answers
some of them.

Yeah, well, it sounds good.

Ed Huntress

https://www.sunelec.com/Clearance/So...modules.htmlOn
Sun, 29 Feb 2004 18:20:29 GMT, "Ed Huntress"
wrote:

What I was asking about is solar electricity generation. It still looks like
we're on a cloud about this one, in which the net effect is a loss of
energy, or a break-even at best, as well as very high costs.

I've seen a bunch of rationalizations of the energy thing. Ten years
is probably fair.

As for up-front cost, it's highly variable. Obviously conserved energy
is the cheapest of all. Do that first, then add solar, and the cost
isn't so bad. Worst case scenarios have the homeowner paying for grid
infrastructure as part of his home purchase price, and adding the
solar infrastructure on top. Then the current cost of grid power is
projected to stay the same for 30 years. What could go wrong with that
assumption? :-) Easiest way to reduce the payoff time to zero is to
start from scratch with off-grid property... if there's any in your
area, and if you're willing to live in the sticks. Most people can't
or won't live farther than a few miles from a Starbucks. Never mind
that vehicle purchase trends would appear to indicate that all the
Starbucks are soon to be moved to mountain tops. :-) Living without
electric scent dispensers, three dozen wall warts and 250W yard lights
is considered a hardship these days, which means that conservation is
also mostly out. So unless folks are offered a monster rebate, most
will say that they can't "afford" a system large enough to meet their
"basic needs". Not a surprise since extreme insulation,
high-performance glass, solar thermal, etc. aren't used as much as
they should be either even though they have relatively short payoff
times. It would seem that long-term thinking in general about energy
issues just isn't as fashionable as diet pizza or low-carb beer.
Hardly a problem tho', nukes in other peoples' backyards or
cold-fusion are sure to force energy prices down. :-)

But I haven't tried to keep up with this field for over a decade. If there's
something new, I'm interested.

Prices have come down, inverter technology is vastly improved, many
places have substantial rebates. The rest is still good old-fashioned
common sense though, no free lunch. People don't use the same payback
logic for solar that they do for sofas, candy bars, or liposuction. I
don't get that. I can tell you that taking a break from fabrication,
and spending it standing next to the solar array that makes the work
possible, is tremendously satisfying, and you'll hear that from most
anyone who has taken the plunge. Our own setup is now 8 years old. For
what we spent on the entire project, including a 2000 sq. ft. shop,
old tractors etc., we could have bought a pedestrian grid-connected
house in the rural suburbs with a two car garage and a new SUV to put
in it rather than PV. If we had, that SUV wouldn't have much of its
luster left by now. But the power system is as nice now as it was
then. If you want to read the gory details, they're here
www.citlink.net/~wmbjk

One other point about off-grid living - fewer (in our case no)
services. When there isn't a constant clammer to put in street lights
and sidewalks, property taxes can be lot lower. About $3k a year
difference between what we pay now, and what we were paying eight
years ago, when we were only ten minutes from town instead of 35.
Which means you could say that not only did the power system pay for
itself on day 1 by making the project possible and affordable, it's
already paid for itself a second time.

Wayne

In article , Gunner says...

Standards are not controls.

Umm, OK, agree. In the purest form, that is.

Accreditation is a form of control. If you
refuse to graduate students who can pass standardized testing, you
loose your accreditation. No parent will send their child to an
inferior school if they can help it, when there are others on hand. If
your school cannot meet the simple requirement of graduating students
able to pass the national standardized testing..then the funding
agency can say the vouchers are not to be used at that school.

But there will be other, non-academic reasons for a school
to lose its accreditation. Right, here's where you say
"No Way" but facts are facts, if you can't keep politics
from screwing up *local* school boards, what kind of chance
do you have from preventing it from happening on a federal
level??

I do however agree that all politics HAVE to be kept out of the design
of the Nationwide Standardized Academic testing Standard. It has to be
uniform, and apply to each and every normal school, be it private or
public.

So you're telling me that all school now basically have to
obey whatever the federal government instructs them to do,
or they lose their ability to operate. That sounds like
'bad gummint' on the loose here! There's simply no way
you can keep something like that from becoming politicized.
It's a nice dream, I admit, but it'll never happen.

The state's rights folks would fight this tooth and nail.

Jim

==================================================
please reply to:
JRR(zero) at yktvmv (dot) vnet (dot) ibm (dot) com
==================================================

On 29 Feb 2004 07:34:58 -0800, jim rozen wrote:
In article , Gary Coffman says...
Presently, in the US, there is no breeder activity (the two main
breeders in the US are currently shut down), and spent fuel rods
from commercial reactors are stored on site rather than being
recycled.

Why? There's no economic or technical incentive to do so,
and there's a *huge* political cost to be paid if one tries
to do so. This is hardly likely to change in the near
future.

That's Ok. The era of cheap oil isn't over yet. People are
still willing to trade blood for oil. But when the era of cheap
oil does end, and people are shivering in the dark, their
view of nuclear power may become more enlightened.
Or not. In the latter case, most of them will die.

Gary

On Sun, 29 Feb 2004 00:14:27 GMT, "Ed Huntress"
brought forth from the murky depths:

"Old Nick" wrote in message
What is the source for the claim that solar electricity has a 2-5 yr.
ROI,
Larry? The figures I've seen show a payback period of...never.

One of the mags I read oh, 2-1/2 years ago, maybe Mother Earth
News. They figured in gov't and local utility rebates, etc.
Homemade solar water heat had a ROI of less than a year. Of
course, that ROI is less in CA (PRK) due to the ex-Gubnuh's
deal with the power companies. Man did we get raped back then.
I'm proud to be an EX-Californian.

ROI varies greatly by the amount of solar hours in the area
and the cost of the electricity in the area. Zonies probably
make out better than Mainers.

http://www.solarbuzz.com/Consumer/Payback.htm
"Incentives by some Utilities are currently bringing the cost of
solar energy down to 10-12 cents per kilowatt hour - which can
imply a payback of 5 to 7 years."


There was one claim here, I can't remember by whom, that solar power
actually had a negative _energy_ valkue, in that it took more energy
to make a solar cell and the associated batteries etc than it
generated in its life.

I don't know what the present status is, but that was the case at least 15
years ago. Someone I talked to around that time who seemed to know what he
was talking about (he was an engineer for a company that did process work on
manufacturing of semiconductors) said that the life of PV cells had passed
the threshhold, and that some cells made at that time (early '90s) were
producing positive net lifetime energy. Gary C. probably knows more about
this.

Newer technologies have cut the cost by 3/4 in the past 7 years alone.
I don't know how much of that was energy related. And the cost has
dropped to 1/7th of what it was 30 years ago.


..-.
Life is short. Eat dessert first!
---
http://diversify.com Comprehensive Website Development

wrote in message
...
https://www.sunelec.com/Clearance/So...modules.htmlOn

Our own setup is now 8 years old. For
what we spent on the entire project, including a 2000 sq. ft. shop,
old tractors etc., we could have bought a pedestrian grid-connected
house in the rural suburbs with a two car garage and a new SUV to put
in it rather than PV. If we had, that SUV wouldn't have much of its
luster left by now. But the power system is as nice now as it was
then. If you want to read the gory details, they're here
www.citlink.net/~wmbjk

WOW! What an impressive project! That must be really satisfying, Wayne.

Ed Huntress

On Sun, 29 Feb 2004 13:58:15 GMT, wrote:

On Sun, 29 Feb 2004 06:51:47 -0500, Gary Coffman
wrote:



Solar hot water is often economical for correctly sited buildings
(many are not) with room for sufficient storage capacity (demand
for hot water peaks in the early morning when the sun hasn't
been heating any water for better than 12 hours).

Our solar-heated water storage tank is about 80 gallons. Wouldn't be a
space issue even if it was twice as big.

Would you be interested in a 517 gallon solar hot water storage tank
rated at 210 degrees? Maybe trade for machine tools ? I should hold
onto it , but you never know cause storage of the storage tank comes
up about every month from the wife.

But solar electricity is not economical on household and larger
scales, ie where average demand is 15 kW or greater. Solar
electric costs about $5 a peak watt installed, but you can only
get about 4 hours of peak sun, even on a bright sunny day. So
you really need to spend in excess of $30 per average watt to
have sufficient capacity. That's $450,000 for the average
residence.

$450k? That's very misleading. You could build an entire "other than
average" house complete with a hybrid generation system for a lot less
than that. We live off-grid, and our total investment, including
property, home, appliances, and power system is about half that. Not
counting sweat equity of course. :-) Daily consumption varies a lot
depending on shop use etc., but probably averages about 12kWh per day.
System cost, including tracked PV, wind, welder/generator, and
everything else required for a modern off-grid home was about $25K for
Arizona. Decent homes near here complete with a solar system start at
$100k. Five acre parcels IIRC, about 40 minutes from town, but a
bargain for young couples, retirees, weekenders etc.

What kind of tracker(s) do you have? I've been trying to get into
that business , but the machining and capital learning curves are
slowing me down. I've got one investor to put up 10-15 grand , but I
could use a bit more. I figure a superior and cheaper tracker will
help others to test their own technologies on. They say you can get up
to 40% more from your PV's if tracked. I think it would be best to go
thermal to meet your heating and cooling demands which is a lot of the
energy costs living in the southern belt. If you built a passive solar
house , thermal heating/absorption cooling, PV's , generator, and the
grid you'd have it made. Its going to take time until it works all out
, but it can be done without a losing capital cost. Still that isn't a
wide spread answer , but at least its in the right direction to
develop the technology so that it can be.

The political stumbling block is the worst when dealing with back
feeding the grid. They sell the power to you for say 10 cents and buy
it from you at 1 cent , oooh that's a deal ! Sure there are concerns
about being phased correctly, but double redundant and expensive
safety measures to me just shows that they are not conducive to fixing
any energy problem. I can just imagine what would happen if you could
feed a lot into the grid during peak summer AC loads. They would stop
you at any cost while the news talks about brown outs and to turn your
AC up.

I have mixed feelings about the nuclear power plants. I would like to
know the true costs. They get gov't $ to build , operate, the power
co. gets the $, gov't steps in again to shut it down, clean it up ,
truck 2,500 truckloads to NV. each yr., and spends billions for Yucca
mountain. Do they calculate all those costs and I'm sure more into
the cents per KW for nuke energy? Then you have to trust the DOE that
the test site isn't leaking into ground water while at the same time
they want to pile up all this stuff in the same hole when no one knows
what kind of heat reaction its going to have to itself. Maybe they are
worried about someone blowing the waist up , but I would think storing
it out in the open desert and watching and guarding would be safer and
a lot cheaper. I'd also like to know their contingency plan for if
something does go wrong and no one can get near the hole to fix it.
Plus it will be up wind for most of the US if it got into a bad
situation. I've got a good cartoon somewhere about the Gov't saying
"trust us" on all their other bad deeds involving radiation.

In addition to that large up front cost, you have periodic battery
replacement costs over the life of the system (the sun isn't shining
during residential peak electricity usage times), and system life
is currently about 20 years (the solar cells degrade).

Grid connected systems don't need batteries at all. Good batteries can
live 20 years when required. PV warranties are 25 years.

No way you can amortize that out to a lower figure than just
buying power from your utility.

Most people can't. In an area with high grid costs and or rebates
tho'.... And don't forget that rates *might* go up. :-) Anyone
interested in the economics of solar would do well to search for posts
by Chris Torek in the energy groups. Regardless, PV payback is a hell
of a lot better than SUV payback, or plasma TV payback. :-)

Even running a diesel genset
works out cheaper (which is why that's the method of choice
at remote sites where grid power isn't available).

I've watched a number of people in our area go the diesel route. It is
cheaper to start with. After a couple of rebuilds and counting the
time for hauling fuel it doesn't come out so well. With rising fuel
costs and declining PV prices, home diesel systems are going to become
a rarity. One guy I know who went on and on about how solar would be
too expensive finally got tired of nursing his generator, sprung for
solar, and has relegated the gennie to backup duty. Running a gennie
overnight rather than using an inverter and batteries is not very
desirable, and neither is living with only part time power.

Solar water heating and solar electric also have to be able to
contend with extended sun outages in most climates. In other
words, clear sunny days are not the norm for weeks at a time
in many areas of the US. This means the systems have to be
even more oversized, and storage has to be huge to see you
through bad weather periods. That costs big $$$.

It's easier and cheaper to size the system for modest periods without
sun/wind, and use a generator as necessary to fill in. Few systems can
dispense with the backup generator altogether, so it's only a matter
of planning its use as a second or third source.

Wayne

On Sun, 29 Feb 2004 06:51:47 -0500, Gary Coffman
brought forth from the murky depths:

On Sat, 28 Feb 2004 04:31:51 GMT, Larry Jaques wrote:
Nearly all alternatives are efficient and viable in small
quantities.

It only appears that way because you're feeding parasitically
off the dominant oil economy.

Erm, whatever.


But solar electricity is not economical on household and larger
scales, ie where average demand is 15 kW or greater. Solar
electric costs about $5 a peak watt installed, but you can only
get about 4 hours of peak sun, even on a bright sunny day. So
you really need to spend in excess of $30 per average watt to
have sufficient capacity. That's $450,000 for the average
residence.

15kW households? Where do you live, a castle with daylight-lit
nighttime basketball, tennis, and golf course?

True, it works out better on smaller homes where people care
to take advantage of it. Your $30/W has to be a commercially
installed (with 3x markup) large site with no discounts or
utility subsidy.

But a simple 2-5kW setup on each new grid-connected home would
reduce the demand for our _imported_ fossil-fuel-based energy.
AFAIC, any step in that direction is good, period.

-large snip-


ljOops, most uranium is deadly enough right out of the ground.
gc Oops, it isn't.

Could you cite some URLs for that? (for all of your replied
topics here, please) I recall reading about DU last year and
recall that most of the figures showed DU rad levels below
natural uranium levels (0.05 to 0.7 of natural) and seem to
recall that they all held uranium as something less than safe.
I didn't save the links or I'd cite them for you.


Nuclear is clearly the best option. With breeding, it is virtually
limitless in supply (at least 100,000 years), and it has the fewest
external environmental impacts of any industrial scale power
production method we know how to build.

I'm looking forward to reading that copy of Simon's 'Ultimate
Resource" book. It should be in my library this coming week.
Perhaps he'll confirm your nuclear optimism.


In 1900, 9 out of 10 Americans had to live on farms in order
to grow sufficient "organic" food to feed the nation (a nation

Oh, come on. In 1900, it took a week to get a load of veggies
from LA or MO to NY. Not all it made the trip intact. Losses
were just a bit higher in days before ubiquitous refrigeration.


with a much smaller population than at present). Today the
number off the farm is approaching 99 out of 100, but the
remainder does feed the nation, and a good chunk of the
rest of the world as well.

At what cost? Look at the rampant topsoil losses on the largest
farms. Look at the toxic or noxious runoffs. Look at a non-
ADM owned site for those stats. (I'm picking on ADM because
they're (one of?) the largest and advertise locally.)

Smaller farmers, complete with satellite growth monitoring of
their crops, can have much higher harvests without so many
of the pesticides and fertilizers.

If Green farming is so good, why don't we teach the 3rd world
how to use it and end it here. Without the perceived need, we
can stop the damage here, right? (I am against the concept that
we should be the world's policeman, grocer, and loan banker.)


On a more serious note, I'm a firm believer in stewardship.
We need to manage our resources in an intelligent way
for Man's benefit, now and in the future. I am not an
Earth Firster or one of their fellow travelers, who believe
that non-human ecosystems are automatically more
valuable than the human ones.

I'm with you on the first items and on the fence on the latter.


I think that eventually we'll need to turn the entire Earth
into an engineered environment. I believe we will be able
to do that successfully. And I think we have a moral
obligation to do it rather than let billions of humans perish.

Won't that be a joyous environment to live in?
/pessimism, for now

I'll keep a copy of your reply and review my stance on some of
it after more research.

..-.
Better Living Through Denial
---
http://www.diversify.com Wondrous Website Design

In article , Gary Coffman says...

That's Ok. The era of cheap oil isn't over yet. People are
still willing to trade blood for oil. But when the era of cheap
oil does end, and people are shivering in the dark, their
view of nuclear power may become more enlightened.
Or not. In the latter case, most of them will die.

It's really an economic thing. Right now it simply
does not pay to recycle fuel. Cheaper to make new, or
to burn oil. When that becomes too expensive, the
next least costly option begins to look more attractive.

Like, driving a civic instead of an exploder.

Jim

==================================================
please reply to:
JRR(zero) at yktvmv (dot) vnet (dot) ibm (dot) com
==================================================

On Sun, 29 Feb 2004 11:12:13 -0500, Gary Coffman
vaguely proposed a theory
.......and in reply I say!:

Hooh!

You replied! This scares me.

(a) You never reply to me G.......and fair enough too.

(b) you really study your ****! (and have probably assessed the value
of recycling it onboard) G

OK. So the cells are OK after 7 years. Do they _last_ this long....on
_average_ under "normal average" use? I doubt it.

And yes, as you say, take all the other stuff into account...

Our State govt is currently asking people to pay _more_ for "green
power". Nice thought......and realistic, I think.

There was one claim here, I can't remember by whom, that solar power
actually had a negative _energy_ valkue, in that it took more energy
to make a solar cell and the associated batteries etc than it
generated in its life.

Used to be true. Current generation cells achieve energy breakeven
in about 7 years. Throw in the batteries, regulators, inverters, etc
that make up the complete power system, though, and the claim might
still be right.

Gary

************************************************** ** sorry

..........no I'm not!
remove ns from my header address to reply via email

Spike....Spike? Hello?

On Sun, 29 Feb 2004 17:26:03 GMT, "Ed Huntress"
vaguely proposed a theory
.......and in reply I say!:


Haha! I guess he's not a believer. g

I guess we'd all like to believe it can work out. The closest thing I've
seen to economic efficiency is wind power, but even that is problematic, on
a day when you're feeling optimistic and have a few large blind spots.

The price of a commercially-built windmill makes the payfer time a bit
long there, too, espceially as I assume there will be maintenance.

I am actually not sure why the things costs so much!
************************************************** ** sorry

..........no I'm not!
remove ns from my header address to reply via email

Spike....Spike? Hello?

On Mon, 01 Mar 2004 10:53:22 +0800, Old Nick wrote:
OK. So the cells are OK after 7 years. Do they _last_ this long....on
_average_ under "normal average" use? I doubt it.

Barring things like hail storms, yes, they last longer than 7 years on average.
In fact, degradation of output doesn't get really serious until about 20 years
for single crystaline cells. Don't know if the cheaper polycrystaline last as long,
but they likely do. Amorphous cells don't last that long, but they are the cheapest
of all.

Gary

On Mon, 01 Mar 2004 01:09:38 GMT, Sunworshiper wrote:
I have mixed feelings about the nuclear power plants. I would like to
know the true costs. They get gov't $ to build , operate, the power
co. gets the $, gov't steps in again to shut it down, clean it up ,

No. Commercial plants do *not* get government money to build or
operate the plants. They have to be financed by private investment
and paid off out of the revenues generated by selling electricity.
(Obviously this doesn't apply to government owned utilities such
as TVA.)

The plant operators are charged a fee per kilowatt-hour generated
which goes into a government trust fund to cover the costs of plant
decommissioning and ultimate waste disposal.

(That fund theoretically contains a very large surplus which has
been paid in over the 47 years of commercial nuclear power in
the US, but like other such trust funds, ie Highway Trust Fund,
Social Security Trust Fund, etc, the government actually spent
the money for other unrelated things as quickly as it came in,
and the fund really just contains a big IOU the government
has written on the taxpayer.)

The commercial operators are currently buying nuclear fuel at
reduced prices from the government (primarily because the
government has a **** load of it left over from their military
nuclear programs that they want to get rid of), but fuel costs
for a nuclear power plant are a very trivial part of the total
costs of the plant.

(They're paying $5 a pound for MOX fuel. That's about half the
world market price. But considering that they only need a few
thousand pounds of fuel over the life of a 1,000 MW reactor,
you can see fuel costs are trivial.)

The commercial plant operators also benefit from the Price-
Anderson cap on liability (the plant operator is only liable out
of pocket for the first $200 million in off site damages per
incident, after that, a government sponsored, and nuclear
industry paid, insurance pool picks up the tab up to a
maximum of $9.6 billion).

Note that even for TMI, the $200 million deductable was
never reached, so the insurance pool has never been
tapped in the 47 years it has been in existence. Again
I'd note that this money has already been spent by the
government, and there's really just an IOU in the pool
that the government has written on the taxpayer.

The actual bussbar cost of electricity from a nuclear plant
depends primarily on how long the government holds up the
licensing process. For the last plants built in the US, that
was running about 12 years. What that means is that the
plant operator is incurring interest costs on the money
borrowed to build the reactor for 12 years before the plant
generates the first billable watt.

When the last US plant was built, that ran the cost of the
plant up between 4 and 5 times compared to the 3 years it
normally took in the 1960s to license a US plant (or to
license a plant in other countries such as Japan or France
today).

Still, even with that steep nuclear paranoia driven cost
penalty, bussbar costs for nuclear power are less than
those for coal fired plants, and somewhat higher than
for hydroelectric. In other words, between 2 and 6 cents
a kilowatt-hour.

Gary

On Mon, 01 Mar 2004 00:29:46 GMT, "Ed Huntress"
wrote:

wrote in message
.. .
https://www.sunelec.com/Clearance/So...modules.htmlOn

Our own setup is now 8 years old. For
what we spent on the entire project, including a 2000 sq. ft. shop,
old tractors etc., we could have bought a pedestrian grid-connected
house in the rural suburbs with a two car garage and a new SUV to put
in it rather than PV. If we had, that SUV wouldn't have much of its
luster left by now. But the power system is as nice now as it was
then. If you want to read the gory details, they're here
www.citlink.net/~wmbjk

WOW! What an impressive project! That must be really satisfying, Wayne.

Ed Huntress

Thanks Ed. Very flattering coming from you. The satisfaction is hard
to put into words. Fortunately I don't have to do it very often....
most people just want to know what possessed us to even conceive of
the project. :-)

Wayne

On Mon, 01 Mar 2004 01:09:38 GMT, Sunworshiper
wrote:

Would you be interested in a 517 gallon solar hot water storage tank
rated at 210 degrees? . I should hold
onto it , but you never know cause storage of the storage tank comes
up about every month from the wife.

Sorry, no. Anyway I'm usually looking for the tools to flow *in*, not
out. ;-)

What kind of tracker(s) do you have? I've been trying to get into
that business , but the machining and capital learning curves are
slowing me down. I've got one investor to put up 10-15 grand , but I
could use a bit more. I figure a superior and cheaper tracker will
help others to test their own technologies on. They say you can get up
to 40% more from your PV's if tracked. I think it would be best to go
thermal to meet your heating and cooling demands which is a lot of the
energy costs living in the southern belt. If you built a passive solar
house , thermal heating/absorption cooling, PV's , generator, and the
grid you'd have it made. Its going to take time until it works all out
, but it can be done without a losing capital cost. Still that isn't a
wide spread answer , but at least its in the right direction to
develop the technology so that it can be.

We have three Wattsun trackers. They're electric. The first two are
single axis, the third is dual axis. It replaced a homemade mount that
I finally realized I might never finish. :-)

It would be tough to make a go of a new tracker biz at this point.
Most people didn't want the extra complexity of a tracker to begin
with, preferring to buy extra capacity instead. Now that module prices
have come down so much, tracker popularity is also likely to lessen.
It's a shame, because trackers not only pay but also lengthen the
charging day, which shortens battery discharge times. Now that Wattsun
makes a tracker that can hold 2000 Watts of modules, it makes for a
really tidy and low-labor installation. You can even program the
controller to stow the array horizontally overnight to lessen wind
resistance.

The political stumbling block is the worst when dealing with back
feeding the grid. They sell the power to you for say 10 cents and buy
it from you at 1 cent , oooh that's a deal ! Sure there are concerns
about being phased correctly, but double redundant and expensive
safety measures to me just shows that they are not conducive to fixing
any energy problem. I can just imagine what would happen if you could
feed a lot into the grid during peak summer AC loads. They would stop
you at any cost while the news talks about brown outs and to turn your
AC up.

Utilities must take the juice in most areas I believe. There are even
situations where you can buy it at off-peak rates, and sell it back at
peak rates. As I mentioned before, search for posts by Chris Torek in
the energy groups for details.

I have mixed feelings about the nuclear power plants. I would like to
know the true costs. They get gov't $ to build , operate, the power
co. gets the $, gov't steps in again to shut it down, clean it up ,
truck 2,500 truckloads to NV. each yr., and spends billions for Yucca
mountain. Do they calculate all those costs and I'm sure more into
the cents per KW for nuke energy? Then you have to trust the DOE that
the test site isn't leaking into ground water while at the same time
they want to pile up all this stuff in the same hole when no one knows
what kind of heat reaction its going to have to itself. Maybe they are
worried about someone blowing the waist up , but I would think storing
it out in the open desert and watching and guarding would be safer and
a lot cheaper. I'd also like to know their contingency plan for if
something does go wrong and no one can get near the hole to fix it.
Plus it will be up wind for most of the US if it got into a bad
situation. I've got a good cartoon somewhere about the Gov't saying
"trust us" on all their other bad deeds involving radiation.

I think the best solution for the waste is to leave it where it is.
There are good arguments that such is the safest solution. But more
importantly, it means that nuke users must live with their own trash.
If it's good enough for all the places they'd like to send it (which
is anybody else's backyard), then it's good enough to stay where it
was produced. If the only way they can convince the public to allow
the plants is to force Nevada (which doesn't have nukes and *really*
doesn't want the waste) to take the waste, then they shouldn't build
new plants.

Wayne

On Mon, 01 Mar 2004 10:53:22 +0800, Old Nick
wrote:


OK. So the cells are OK after 7 years. Do they _last_ this long....on
_average_ under "normal average" use? I doubt it.

Modern PV is guaranteed to produce some percentage of its rated output
for (generally) 25 years. That's a pretty good indication that PV is a
reliable and long-lived technology. Here's the fine print from one
manufacturer http://www.solarexpert.com/Shell/1-warranty_US.pdf

Our own setup is 8 years old and shows no obvious degradation. I've
got hammer handles that didn't live that long. So quit doubting! ;-)

Wayne

On Mon, 01 Mar 2004 04:39:54 -0500, Gary Coffman
wrote:

(That fund theoretically contains a very large surplus which has
been paid in over the 47 years of commercial nuclear power in
the US, but like other such trust funds, ie Highway Trust Fund,
Social Security Trust Fund, etc, the government actually spent
the money for other unrelated things as quickly as it came in,
and the fund really just contains a big IOU the government
has written on the taxpayer.)

On top of that, many argue that the fund will be way short. What are
the odds that nuke promoters came up with a low number and that the
taxpayers will fund the difference... naw! ;-)

The actual bussbar cost of electricity from a nuclear plant
depends primarily on how long the government holds up the
licensing process. For the last plants built in the US, that
was running about 12 years. What that means is that the
plant operator is incurring interest costs on the money
borrowed to build the reactor for 12 years before the plant
generates the first billable watt.

When the last US plant was built, that ran the cost of the
plant up between 4 and 5 times compared to the 3 years it
normally took in the 1960s to license a US plant (or to
license a plant in other countries such as Japan or France
today).

While promoters always claim that nuke regulation is out of control, I
think Davis-Besse proves that it isn't. They *claim* they've had a
wake up call, but my guess is they'll just push the snooze button
again.

Wayne

wrote in message
...

If you want to read the gory details, they're here
www.citlink.net/~wmbjk

WOW! What an impressive project! That must be really satisfying, Wayne.

Ed Huntress

Thanks Ed. Very flattering coming from you. The satisfaction is hard
to put into words. Fortunately I don't have to do it very often....
most people just want to know what possessed us to even conceive of
the project. :-)

Wayne


I'm not surprised they ask. It looks like a gutsy undertaking from the very
start.

From the looks of the shrubbery, you aren't near New Jersey g, but it's
something I'd like to see.

Ed Huntress

On Sun, 29 Feb 2004 09:07:58 GMT, Gunner
brought forth from the murky depths:

Every Catholic school Ive been around, took virtually comers.
Disiplinary problem kids got so many chances, then out they went.
Those kids would be unteachable in public school as well, so why let
them drag the rest of the students down with them.

"Amen" he said, non-religiously. New public schoolsare
accepting large donations of technology under the condition
that they allow advertising to take place on it. Does this
suck _absolutely_, or what?
http://lists.essential.org/pipermail...01/000070.html
and
http://www.google.com/search?q=ads+in+classrooms

And yes..Catholic schools provide on average, an excellent education
for about 50-75% of public school costs.

It also provides for those wild Catholic-school girls.
wink wink, nudge nudge, know what I mean?


..-.
Better Living Through Denial
---
http://www.diversify.com Wondrous Website Design

"Larry Jaques" wrote in message
...

And yes..Catholic schools provide on average, an excellent education
for about 50-75% of public school costs.

It also provides for those wild Catholic-school girls.
wink wink, nudge nudge, know what I mean?

Metalworking content: Look for wear and corrosion on the pin that holds the
kilt-skirt closed. If it shows signs of heavy handling, you're home.

Ed Huntress

I went to Eric.org instead of eric.gov. Eric.org is has lot of
interesting stuff too so I thought maybe you had meant another site
and instead gave the address of another site that you look use.

Dan



"Ed Huntress" wrote in message ...
"Dan Caster" wrote in message
m...
I went to ERIC and did not find anything about class size and
education.

It took me less than five seconds to find the first one: ERIC Digest 136,
April 2000, "Capitalizing On Small Class Size." The descriptors you want to
look for are "Class Size" and "Teacher Student Ratio."

I will go off and do some more reading. But the quotes you provided
seem to agree with what I have been saying. Class size counts, but
there is a lot that can be improved in the education system without
changing class size ( and requiring more teachers and more
administrators ).

To me the Federal Government should be providing research on how the
education system can best be improved. And encouraging a free market
place of ideas where the better methods can win out is part of that
process. So vouchers allow parents to move their kids from schools
that are not working to schools that do work. And that means the
better methods will win out. The current system does not provide
that.

Dan



"Ed Huntress" wrote in message news:6wq0c.481

What you find in ERIC is summaries, a few papers, and extensive
bibliographies. They're a clearing house, not a think-tank, so you have to
use their bibliographies and links to see most of the actual writing. I've
included a bibliography from the article above at the end of this post.

The battle is not about the benefits of class size, but about the relative
cost benefits of reducing class size versus alternatives. Here's a
concluding remark from the ECS. They have a whole site developed to
class-size arguments and issues,
http://www.ecs.org/html/issue.asp?issueid=24:

"Clearly, reducing class size is a significant means of improving student
achievement but high academic standards, a challenging curriculum, safe and
orderly classrooms, and qualified teachers are no less significant in the
arsenal of solid, research-proven reforms. When smaller class size is
pursued in conjunction with such reforms, the combined impact on student
achievement is far greater than any strategy by itself."


Ed Huntress

"Dan Caster" wrote in message
m...
I will go off and do some more reading. But the quotes you provided
seem to agree with what I have been saying. Class size counts, but
there is a lot that can be improved in the education system without
changing class size ( and requiring more teachers and more
administrators ).

Well, yeah, there are a lot of issues. You had said that there were no
studies supporting the idea that reduced class size improves student
performance. That's all I was objecting to.

In fact, reducing class size is an expensive proposition. By itself,
compared to other, individual things that might be done, it's probably not
at the top of the list of smart things to do. But it's a proven winner
overall. That seems about as firm as anything gets in this field, based on
experience and studies of the experience.


To me the Federal Government should be providing research on how the
education system can best be improved.

They do, Dan. Much of that research you'll find on ERIC is funded by the
feds. There is quite a lot known about what works, some of which can't be
implemented because of costs or inertia, both political and bureaucratic.

And encouraging a free market
place of ideas where the better methods can win out is part of that
process. So vouchers allow parents to move their kids from schools
that are not working to schools that do work. And that means the
better methods will win out. The current system does not provide
that.

I don't disagree with that as a general principle. There ought to be some
good ways to improve education by somehow employing the engine of
competition.

Like most things political, though, the argument is polarized into
unreasonable and extreme positions in which there is more smoke than light.
There are so many caveats, and so many irregularities to the pure version of
either position, that anyone who takes a polarized stance on it is forced to
defend absurd and unreasonable points, if he's incapable of conceding that
it's a mixed picture that only contains statistical tendencies, rather than
absolutes.

Ed Huntress

In article ,
says...

I think the best solution for the waste is to leave it where it is.
There are good arguments that such is the safest solution. But more
importantly, it means that nuke users must live with their own trash.
If it's good enough for all the places they'd like to send it (which
is anybody else's backyard), then it's good enough to stay where it
was produced. If the only way they can convince the public to allow
the plants is to force Nevada (which doesn't have nukes and *really*
doesn't want the waste) to take the waste, then they shouldn't build
new plants.

This *sounds* good but in reality every plant has a built-in
waste disposal site - the decommissioned plant itself. So
the waste issue won't stop utilities from building more plants.

Basically they just sell the decomissioned plant to the
government for a dollar, and walk away - at the instant the
plant no longer makes them money.

Jim

==================================================
please reply to:
JRR(zero) at yktvmv (dot) vnet (dot) ibm (dot) com
==================================================

In article ,
says...

... If you want to read the gory details, they're here
www.citlink.net/~wmbjk

Wow. Prickly pears, big cats, road runners.

The link to the developer said nothern arizona, but
the scenery looks very similar to a region around a
town called Portal that I used to visit on occasion.
Near the Chirichaua Mountains.

I especially liked the comments about road graders,
bulldozers, and cranky neighbors!

Jim

==================================================
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JRR(zero) at yktvmv (dot) vnet (dot) ibm (dot) com
==================================================

In article , Ed Huntress
says...

Like most things political, though, the argument is polarized into
unreasonable and extreme positions in which there is more smoke than light.
There are so many caveats, and so many irregularities to the pure version of
either position, that anyone who takes a polarized stance on it is forced to
defend absurd and unreasonable points, if he's incapable of conceding that
it's a mixed picture that only contains statistical tendencies, rather than
absolutes.

Ed would you please crosspost this to all the other OT
political 'gunner' threads so that the full benefit could
be obtained by all?

g

Jim

==================================================
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==================================================

On Mon, 01 Mar 2004 03:07:04 -0500, Gary Coffman
vaguely proposed a theory
.......and in reply I say!:

OK. Thanks.

Hailstorms. That would be an interesting insurance fight.

On Mon, 01 Mar 2004 10:53:22 +0800, Old Nick wrote:
OK. So the cells are OK after 7 years. Do they _last_ this long....on
_average_ under "normal average" use? I doubt it.

Barring things like hail storms, yes, they last longer than 7 years on average.
In fact, degradation of output doesn't get really serious until about 20 years
for single crystaline cells. Don't know if the cheaper polycrystaline last as long,
but they likely do. Amorphous cells don't last that long, but they are the cheapest
of all.

Gary

************************************************** ** sorry

..........no I'm not!
remove ns from my header address to reply via email

Spike....Spike? Hello?

There is a correlary to Murphy's Law that says: "It always costs less to
educate smart kids than dumb kids."

Mike Eberlein (I think this was a direct quote of that great Russian inventor
of the telephone, Alexandre Grahamovich Belluski. Could be wrong, tho.)

jim rozen wrote:

In article , Fitch R. Williams
says...

(Dan Caster) wrote:

I do not agree that you need to reduce the average class size. I do
agree that some class sizes need to be reduced, but some can be
enlarged. As far as I know there has been no studies that prove that
smaller class sizes improve learning.

What planet have you been on? One of the few "sure things" in education
is that reducing class size improves the transfer of information to the
students. It is one of the big advantages of private schools.

In general I tend to agree with you Fitch, and will certainly
agree with that proposition in general - but the reason I bought
up the class size thing (because I was sure the anti-public
schooling folks would say this) was my personal experience
with my daughter's primary schooling in a local private
(catholic) school. In spite of large class sizes (typically
35-ish) and the lack of any aids in the classrooms at all,
it seemed to me that the teachers were doing an outstanding
job of getting the material across to the kids.

Now of course (mind reader that I am) I will suspect that
your next comment will be "but just think of what they
*could* have done with half the number of students!"

Because my story is anecdotal only, I would have to smile
and agree. But honestly, totalling up what the operating
budget for that school was (based on the per kid cost)
and then dividing by the number of teachers to get the
rough pay for each one, I was pretty flabbergasted that
they could run a school on that little money. But they
did.

Which gets me back to the point that the reason they
*could* do that is because the kids are cherry-picked.
If you had to admit the way a public school does, the
entire thing would have the wheels come off in short
order I bet. This implys that if you try to generalize
that education system to the entire population, ie.
close the public schools and voucher all the kids, then
the total per-kid cost will have to wind up being much,
much higher than one would think. My strong suspicion
is it will assymptote to nearly the present cost of
a public school education in whatever area is being
looked at.

Jim

==================================================
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==================================================

As one married to a high school teacher and who attended public and
private schools when growing up, I wanted to comment on a variety of
points (not just the quoted posting)

First, I disagree with the premise that public schools will shut down
if vouchers are put in place. I get so sick of hearing extremist
arguments like that. Fact is, there are good public schools, there are
bad public schools. There are good private schools, there are bad
private schools.

When my brothers and I went to private schools, we hated it. We were
generally surrounded by snotty rich kids. I found those kids far worse
in many cases than those I encountered in public school. They were
worse because they were spoiled brats and they were clever enough to
trick the teachers into thinking they were angels while they harassed
others without mercy when the teachers weren't looking.

And the teaching? Better than public schools? I don't think so. My
wife has also indicated this (she went to private Catholic school and
public schools as a youth and considered teaching at private schools
as an adult). Private schools in our affluent neck of the woods don't
have the funding to attract quality teachers. Nor do their teachers
need the same level of qualification.

Given what I now know, both from personal and anecdotal experience, I
would be highly resistant to send my child to a private school,
regardless of the financial incentives. I might move, however, if I
lived in an area with inferior public schools.

Note - I am not saying that ALL private schools are inferior. I am
saying that in my personal experience, I have not experienced the
superior private schooling that people talk about.

So why do private school students often beat the averages? As others
have noted - when you cherry-pick, you are pre-selecting the group and
this skews the stats. I would bet a significant amount of money that
if you swapped the student populations between a private school and a
public school, and had the students go through another several years
of schooling, that suddenly the stats would show that the public
school students did better than those from private schools. It's the
starting population, not the teaching ability. But this is all a
guess.

What is wrong then with public schools? Now that I know many public
school teachers, ranging from inner city to affluent suburbs and
everything in-between, I hear many of the same comments - teachers are
"highly discouraged" from giving poor grades to students. Why? It's
not because the school wants to boost their stats or anything else
sinister like that, it's the damned parents. Whenever a teacher tries
to fail a student, parents come in and scream bloody murder and
threaten lawsuits. Or they go complain to the school board and get the
teacher blacklisted. So teachers are afraid of giving bad grades.
That's one BIG problem with schools, public and private. Ignorant,
selfish parents.

What else? Schools have their hands tied by the unions. It is
virtually impossible, short of a teacher committing a felony, to fire
a teacher. Once they have tenure, they can get away with just about
anything. That's a BIG problem.

Are vouchers a perfect solution? No. Are they going to ruin the public
education system? Not likely. There are no simple answers to these
incredibly deep social issue. We're talking about an incredibly
complex system. Not just the school system but our very social system.
Our popular media. Our culture. Our parenting skills. Our schools. Our
businesses. Everything has an impact on the education we're giving our
children.

snip snip
In general I tend to agree with you Fitch, and will certainly
agree with that proposition in general - but the reason I bought
up the class size thing (because I was sure the anti-public
schooling folks would say this) was my personal experience
with my daughter's primary schooling in a local private
(catholic) school. In spite of large class sizes (typically
35-ish) and the lack of any aids in the classrooms at all,
it seemed to me that the teachers were doing an outstanding
job of getting the material across to the kids.
snip
Which gets me back to the point that the reason they
*could* do that is because the kids are cherry-picked.
If you had to admit the way a public school does, the
entire thing would have the wheels come off in short
order I bet. This implys that if you try to generalize
that education system to the entire population, ie.
close the public schools and voucher all the kids, then
the total per-kid cost will have to wind up being much,
much higher than one would think. My strong suspicion
is it will assymptote to nearly the present cost of
a public school education in whatever area is being
looked at.

Jim

==================================================
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JRR(zero) at yktvmv (dot) vnet (dot) ibm (dot) com
==================================================

wrote in message
...
On Sun, 29 Feb 2004 01:46:25 -0500, "John Keeney"
wrote:

That's all nice, but the real question to be answered is:
"What's the cost per peek watt for your cells/modules?"

As low as $2 a Watt.
https://www.sunelec.com/Clearance/So...r_modules.html

Well, that sucks as compared to the 4-9 cents per kilowatt hour I
pay monthly. At 5 cents your looking at better than 27 years ROI
if the controllers & storage came for free (and no money cost).
And that's for close out stock.
What I was wondering was if the cells Martin was talking about
comes close to this price per watt.

On Sat, 28 Feb 2004 04:31:51 GMT, Larry Jaques
vaguely proposed a theory
.......and in reply I say!:


Nearly all alternatives are efficient and viable in small
quantities. But solar electricity/hot water should be part
of all new homes (+5% cost, 2-5 yr ROI, cheaper than building

I'd love to see _that_, Larry.

I use bottled gas for hot water. Far more expensive than
"town" gas (natural). We also cook with it and I occasionally borrow a
bit for welding, heating and bending (metal content). The water heater
cost about Aud$500. It costs us about $250/year (?) to run all the
gas.

Solar hot water systems would save about 50-75%, claimed. So say
$140/year. I see a ten year payoff time at least. Our Govt currently
offers a huge rebate ($600) on Solar HWSs. This _still_ leaves them at
$1500-2000 IIRC. And that's with bottled gas.
************************************************** ** sorry

..........no I'm not!
remove ns from my header address to reply via email

Spike....Spike? Hello?

In article , T.Inoue says...

;;;. Private schools in our affluent neck of the woods don't
have the funding to attract quality teachers. Nor do their teachers
need the same level of qualification.

That's certainly true. What amazes me is that the school my
kid went to could attract as good a caliber of staff, given
what I surmise they must have been paying.

It may be that the teachers there also recognize that they
will have somewhat more autonomy to grade and discipline,
and don't like working in a union shop.

So why do private school students often beat the averages? As others
have noted - when you cherry-pick, you are pre-selecting the group and
this skews the stats. I would bet a significant amount of money that
if you swapped the student populations between a private school and a
public school, and had the students go through another several years
of schooling, that suddenly the stats would show that the public
school students did better than those from private schools. It's the
starting population, not the teaching ability. But this is all a
guess.

I think that's a pretty good guess. Thanks for the thoughtful
post.

Jim

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==================================================

On Tue, 02 Mar 2004 08:40:54 +0800, Old Nick
wrote:

On Mon, 01 Mar 2004 03:07:04 -0500, Gary Coffman
vaguely proposed a theory
......and in reply I say!:

OK. Thanks.

Hailstorms. That would be an interesting insurance fight.

They're rated to take some serious hail. Ours have taken 1/2". All our
stuff is covered by insurance without any increase in premiums.
Probably because of the low risk.

Wayne

Well I have done some reading on eric.ed.gov and while I found studies
that supports class size as improving performance, I also found ones
that said there was no clear evidence that reducing class size
improved learning. This is especially true if one does not look at
studies that are only of the first two or three grades. I sometimes
do not communicate as well as I need to, but I hope I didn't say there
were no studies that supported class size reduction as improving
learning. I meant to say that there was no conclusive evidence etc.
If there were conclusive evidence there would not be so many studies.

Much of the improved leaning could be explained by the Western Wiring
Room experiment where light level was varied to find the optimum light
level for wiring telephone panels.

I do believe that class size is important in primary school and
becomes less important by the fifth grade. But generally primary
school have the same number of students in each grade and the same
teacher teaches all the subjects.

In high school each class is also pretty much the same size, but
students have different teachers for each subject.

In college the class sizes vary all over the place. And some classes
have lectures with several hundred students and then sections with
about fifteen to twenty students discussing the lecture.

I think that in high school lots of classes could be taught with all
student at a lecture and then sections with class participation.
Think how much a chemistry instructor would benefit if he or she did
not have to repeat the same lecture and demonstration four times in
order to teach four classes. As it is the teacher get bored going
over the same material.

But high school are pretty much built with all the class rooms the
same size, instead of with a mix of large lecture rooms and section
rooms.


Dan




"Ed Huntress" wrote in message news:8aL0c.20091

Well, yeah, there are a lot of issues. You had said that there were no
studies supporting the idea that reduced class size improves student
performance. That's all I was objecting to.



To me the Federal Government should be providing research on how the
education system can best be improved.

They do, Dan. Much of that research you'll find on ERIC is funded by the
feds. There is quite a lot known about what works, some of which can't be
implemented because of costs or inertia, both political and bureaucratic.


..

Ed Huntress

I feel that in public schools this could be the same thing. Teachers
are not always good at every subject. In the early grades the students
generally spend most of the day with one teacher. Maybe this just
comes out clearer in the home where the children are with their
teacher all the time. In regards to Standardized tests, I believe they
should not be the only way to measure success, but in regards to home
school, how would we know for sure the student's are learning other
than visiting the home or testing?

jim rozen wrote in message ...
In article , pyotr filipivich
says...

... Seems that Home Schooled kids do well in every j\subject
but one, which varies from family to family. (Meaning, the home schooled child
is most likely weak in the subject their parents are weak in: math, history,
cybernetics, etc.)

For me that would have been Gym! :^)

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==================================================

On Mon, 01 Mar 2004 14:08:33 GMT, wrote:

On Mon, 01 Mar 2004 01:09:38 GMT, Sunworshiper
wrote:

Would you be interested in a 517 gallon solar hot water storage tank
rated at 210 degrees? . I should hold
onto it , but you never know cause storage of the storage tank comes
up about every month from the wife.

Sorry, no. Anyway I'm usually looking for the tools to flow *in*, not
out. ;-)

Your no fun , I feel the same way with tools. Its kinda a tool...

What kind of tracker(s) do you have? I've been trying to get into
that business , but the machining and capital learning curves are
slowing me down. I've got one investor to put up 10-15 grand , but I
could use a bit more. I figure a superior and cheaper tracker will
help others to test their own technologies on. They say you can get up
to 40% more from your PV's if tracked. I think it would be best to go
thermal to meet your heating and cooling demands which is a lot of the
energy costs living in the southern belt. If you built a passive solar
house , thermal heating/absorption cooling, PV's , generator, and the
grid you'd have it made. Its going to take time until it works all out
, but it can be done without a losing capital cost. Still that isn't a
wide spread answer , but at least its in the right direction to
develop the technology so that it can be.

We have three Wattsun trackers. They're electric. The first two are
single axis, the third is dual axis. It replaced a homemade mount that
I finally realized I might never finish. :-)

It would be tough to make a go of a new tracker biz at this point.
Most people didn't want the extra complexity of a tracker to begin
with, preferring to buy extra capacity instead. Now that module prices
have come down so much, tracker popularity is also likely to lessen.
It's a shame, because trackers not only pay but also lengthen the
charging day, which shortens battery discharge times. Now that Wattsun
makes a tracker that can hold 2000 Watts of modules, it makes for a
really tidy and low-labor installation. You can even program the
controller to stow the array horizontally overnight to lessen wind
resistance.

I'm going to do it anyhow. Does anyone know how I could find out how
many dual axis trackers are sold in the world? Why is it that you
don't think "people" want the complexity of them? I'm sure I'm bias ,
but if you don't track your not serious. Got any thoughts on not
liking one tracker to hold all your PV's? I've never talked to an
owner before. I have a feeling I'll make more from the robotic
mechanical spin offs.

The political stumbling block is the worst when dealing with back
feeding the grid. They sell the power to you for say 10 cents and buy
it from you at 1 cent , oooh that's a deal ! Sure there are concerns
about being phased correctly, but double redundant and expensive
safety measures to me just shows that they are not conducive to fixing
any energy problem. I can just imagine what would happen if you could
feed a lot into the grid during peak summer AC loads. They would stop
you at any cost while the news talks about brown outs and to turn your
AC up.

Utilities must take the juice in most areas I believe. There are even
situations where you can buy it at off-peak rates, and sell it back at
peak rates. As I mentioned before, search for posts by Chris Torek in
the energy groups for details.

Not here , the power Co. knows who I am. ) Thanks for repeating it
, the name doesn't ring a bell , I'll check to see what he has to say.

I have mixed feelings about the nuclear power plants. I would like to
know the true costs. They get gov't $ to build , operate, the power
co. gets the $, gov't steps in again to shut it down, clean it up ,
truck 2,500 truckloads to NV. each yr., and spends billions for Yucca
mountain. Do they calculate all those costs and I'm sure more into
the cents per KW for nuke energy? Then you have to trust the DOE that
the test site isn't leaking into ground water while at the same time
they want to pile up all this stuff in the same hole when no one knows
what kind of heat reaction its going to have to itself. Maybe they are
worried about someone blowing the waist up , but I would think storing
it out in the open desert and watching and guarding would be safer and
a lot cheaper. I'd also like to know their contingency plan for if
something does go wrong and no one can get near the hole to fix it.
Plus it will be up wind for most of the US if it got into a bad
situation. I've got a good cartoon somewhere about the Gov't saying
"trust us" on all their other bad deeds involving radiation.

I think the best solution for the waste is to leave it where it is.
There are good arguments that such is the safest solution. But more
importantly, it means that nuke users must live with their own trash.
If it's good enough for all the places they'd like to send it (which
is anybody else's backyard), then it's good enough to stay where it
was produced. If the only way they can convince the public to allow
the plants is to force Nevada (which doesn't have nukes and *really*
doesn't want the waste) to take the waste, then they shouldn't build
new plants.

The new stuff is coming from a underground silo by houses and next to
a resivor. We may not have nuke power plants , but we have a moon
scape of craters and underground caves made by them. I can see why
they want it here , I just have a problem of sticking it in a hole
that most likely won't be accessible to fix a problem.

I read a lot of your site , what did(do) you do for a living? I'm
right with ya except buying a broken bull dozer and fixing it , that
sounds very ambitious to me. I can just hear it. "Honey , I'm going to
buy a broken tank , I know how to fix it , its just a transmission
rebuild , no problem."

Also , how did you figure out how much power was needed to raise and
lower your tower? That's a good idea that I've never thought about ,
sure would help fixing things as long as the wind generator wasn't too
heavy. I still don't understand how they put up construction cranes
even though its been talked about many times on the group.


Wayne

"Dan Caster" wrote in message
m...
Well I have done some reading on eric.ed.gov and while I found studies
that supports class size as improving performance, I also found ones
that said there was no clear evidence that reducing class size
improved learning. This is especially true if one does not look at
studies that are only of the first two or three grades. I sometimes
do not communicate as well as I need to, but I hope I didn't say there
were no studies that supported class size reduction as improving
learning. I meant to say that there was no conclusive evidence etc.
If there were conclusive evidence there would not be so many studies.

Much of the improved leaning could be explained by the Western Wiring
Room experiment where light level was varied to find the optimum light
level for wiring telephone panels.

I do believe that class size is important in primary school and
becomes less important by the fifth grade. But generally primary
school have the same number of students in each grade and the same
teacher teaches all the subjects.

In high school each class is also pretty much the same size, but
students have different teachers for each subject.

In college the class sizes vary all over the place. And some classes
have lectures with several hundred students and then sections with
about fifteen to twenty students discussing the lecture.

I think that in high school lots of classes could be taught with all
student at a lecture and then sections with class participation.
Think how much a chemistry instructor would benefit if he or she did
not have to repeat the same lecture and demonstration four times in
order to teach four classes. As it is the teacher get bored going
over the same material.

But high school are pretty much built with all the class rooms the
same size, instead of with a mix of large lecture rooms and section
rooms.


Dan




"Ed Huntress" wrote in message news:8aL0c.20091

Well, yeah, there are a lot of issues. You had said that there were no
studies supporting the idea that reduced class size improves student
performance. That's all I was objecting to.



To me the Federal Government should be providing research on how the
education system can best be improved.

They do, Dan. Much of that research you'll find on ERIC is funded by the
feds. There is quite a lot known about what works, some of which can't
be
implemented because of costs or inertia, both political and
bureaucratic.


.

Ed Huntress

I hope without making a bigger deal of this, my experience is that lectures
are nothing but books-on-tape. If it can be delivered in a big lecture,
there is no excuse for delivering it in a classroom at all. If it requires
some visual aids, it could be done better on videotape. That isn't teaching.
That's presenting.

Which relates to the issue that we haven't discussed here, that a teacher
can get a student to perform closer to his or her ability by closer contact.
Any student will benefit from a teacher who can assess what a student is
learning as he goes, and by adjusting the teaching to suit the student's
learning. You can get away with larger classes when you don't expect much of
students, which, of course, is a big part of our problem.

Finally, I don't think you're making a fair evaluation of the data on
teaching and class size. Among people who are involved with the subject and
who have taken the time to really study the studies, there is no visible
disagreement. If you hold everything constant -- including low expectations
and a uniform method of presentation regardless of the class size --
probably you can show (probably someone *has* shown) that there is no
difference in student performance. But every good teacher knows he or she is
limited in how much they can teach by the amount of feedback, and the amount
of individual tailoring, they can do with each student. In fact, the issue
is a no-brainer to educators. The studies are things they regard as
political window-dressing for a fact that's established deeply in the
history of education, as well as by current events.

Ed Huntress

On Mon, 01 Mar 2004 15:07:19 GMT, "Ed Huntress"
wrote:

wrote
Thanks Ed. Very flattering coming from you. The satisfaction is hard
to put into words. Fortunately I don't have to do it very often....
most people just want to know what possessed us to even conceive of
the project. :-)


I'm not surprised they ask. It looks like a gutsy undertaking from the very
start.

It snuck up on us. We had a bunch of wants, but couldn't afford most
of them. When real estate agents suggested property that was "only" 3
miles from power, we had to say "too far". But once we discovered we
could handle off-grid living, a whole bunch of possibilities became
affordable. Now 3 miles was too *close*. Hell, 10 miles was too close,
some developer might actually put in the wires. Main objective was to
move in next to the best neighbors. After a lifetime of exhaustive
review, I've decided that snakes are the preferred species. :-)

From the looks of the shrubbery, you aren't near New Jersey g, but it's
something I'd like to see.

Northern AZ, not too far below Grand Canyon West. About 4500' ASL at
the house. Can't have outdoor cats here unless we wanted to replace
them regularly. Only occasionally have to wonder whether something
might eat the dogs. Definitely not NJ. Aren't you afraid to live so
close to the Sopranos? ;-)

Wayne

On 1 Mar 2004 10:59:23 -0800, jim rozen
wrote:

In article ,
says...

... If you want to read the gory details, they're here
www.citlink.net/~wmbjk

Wow. Prickly pears, big cats, road runners.

The link to the developer said nothern arizona, but
the scenery looks very similar to a region around a
town called Portal that I used to visit on occasion.
Near the Chirichaua Mountains.

I especially liked the comments about road graders,
bulldozers, and cranky neighbors!

The area is generally called the Music Mountains, but our place is
actually on the slope of the Grand Wash Cliffs. If we hike up to one
corner of our backyard (which takes about 2 hours of puffing and
grunting), a few miles off we can see Milkweed Canyon, which
intersects Grand Canyon. Closest city is Kingman, home to such high
culture as Wal Mart and the Flying J truck stop. Big-citification has
set in, word has it that Home Depot hurray! will be operational by
year's end. Ballet and opera can't be far behind. :-)

Wayne

On Tue, 02 Mar 2004 18:07:23 GMT, Sunworshiper
wrote:

I'm going to do it anyhow. Does anyone know how I could find out how
many dual axis trackers are sold in the world? Why is it that you
don't think "people" want the complexity of them?

I doubt there's any way to figure out how many there are. We live in
an area with hundreds, perhaps thousands of off-gridders, and I talk
to every one I come across. I also follow several energy related
newsgroups. My take on trackers is that probably less than 10% of
installations use them. Some make a fair argument that they're not
worth the extra cost. The other thing is that PV has zero complexity,
while trackers add some potential for failure. Have you checked out
this site yet? http://www.redrok.com/main.htm

I'm sure I'm bias ,
but if you don't track your not serious. Got any thoughts on not
liking one tracker to hold all your PV's? I've never talked to an
owner before. I have a feeling I'll make more from the robotic
mechanical spin offs.

We started off with 1200 Watts of PV, which was a bit too much for a
single installation of the trackers available at the time. Later we
added another 800 Watts on a third tracker. If I had it to do over,
there'd be a single array now that trackers that size are available.

I read a lot of your site , what did(do) you do for a living?

I started at various mechanic/fabricator type jobs. Motorcycle
mechanic for a time, eventually had a small manufacturing biz, finally
graduated to profiting from real estate inflation by selling our own
homes. I think that part might be over though now that we live here.
Unless the price of rocks and cactus takes off. :-)

I'm
right with ya except buying a broken bull dozer and fixing it , that
sounds very ambitious to me. I can just hear it. "Honey , I'm going to
buy a broken tank , I know how to fix it , its just a transmission
rebuild , no problem."

Here's what you should do - tell your wife that you're going to build
an aircraft in your garage. Copies of Sport Aviation and Trade-a-plane
would make good props. As she's packing her suitcase, tell her that
you'll settle for a dozer restoration instead. ;-)

Also , how did you figure out how much power was needed to raise and
lower your tower?

I made a small model and performed complex calculations, most of which
I knew were probably wrong. Then I realized that I had a left-over
cube-shaped tank that would probably be close enough for the
counterweight if filled with concrete. Once I tried it, I only had to
move the cable attach point about 8 feet sigh from where it was
planned to be. I should shrink the counterweight quite a bit, but
since the tower has only ever been down a couple times, refining the
setup is way down on my list of priorities. The main winch was plenty
oversized, plus it was what HF had on sale for $300.

Wayne