"Tom Gardner" Mars@Tacks wrote in message
...
...
Imagine where the nuclear industry would be now if not for "them".
Fusion would undoubtedly be closer to reality. Gee, who doesn't
want almost free, clean energy? Who would lose their power base?

I half suspect the reason is to keep us dependent on tankers that can
be interrupted by first Soviet, now Chinese submarines. Did you notice
how the clamor of the anti-nuke movement collapsed around 1990 and has
picked up again only recently?

An alternate-energy subsistence economy would have inadequate reserves
for military actions.

Exploiting America's potential weaknesses:
http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/china/...ne/unresw1.htm

"p9sNrw4"

In article , says...

If the frackin' tree huggers and our gov't would
get out of the way of
nuclear energy, it would be more dependable and
a helluva lot less
polluting than coal fired plants are now.

things were starting to move, but then the event
in Japan shut it
down. We're not likely to see ANY new nuclear
plants for decades.


Why don't we hear more about thorium reactors?

Not much point to them. They aren't inherently safer than other fuel
cycles, they need a neutron source, they breed weapons-grade uranium,
just not much of a bargain.

On 6/26/2012 7:28 PM, Jim Wilkins wrote:
"Tom Gardner" Mars@Tacks wrote in message
...
...
Imagine where the nuclear industry would be now if not for "them".
Fusion would undoubtedly be closer to reality. Gee, who doesn't
want almost free, clean energy? Who would lose their power base?

I half suspect the reason is to keep us dependent on tankers that can
be interrupted by first Soviet, now Chinese submarines. Did you notice
how the clamor of the anti-nuke movement collapsed around 1990 and has
picked up again only recently?

An alternate-energy subsistence economy would have inadequate reserves
for military actions.

Exploiting America's potential weaknesses:
http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/china/...ne/unresw1.htm

"p9sNrw4"



I still can't believe the Japanese were so lax, it's not their style.

On Mon, 25 Jun 2012 21:47:05 -0700, PrecisionmachinisT wrote:

"Tim Wescott" wrote in message
...
On Mon, 25 Jun 2012 21:33:24 -0700, PrecisionmachinisT wrote:

"Ignoramus6950" wrote in message
...
I was thinking about electric cars today.

An internal combustion car, burns fuel inside cylinders and produces
energy according to Carnot cycle. Say, it makes 28% of energy from
the total BTU of fuel that it burns.

Compare it with an electric car. A coal electric power station
operates at efficiency of 33% (Wikipedia).

Then 10% of this is lost in power distribution.

More lost in stepping down line voltage to 220 volts.

Further, more is lost in a battery charger.

Then more is lost in the car battery.

Then more heat is lost in motor windings and power semiconductors.

This is probably by far less efficient than internal combustion an
distribution of gasoline!

And how is it going to reduce CO2 emissions, if more CO2 needs to be
burned as coal than would come from gasoline?



As far as cost per mile traveled, there can be no doubt that fully
electric automobiles are extremely economical to operate, and except
for energy that's lost due to heat and friction, they are 100%
efficient all the way from zero clear up to full rated output.

Nuh uh. Nothing is 100% efficient. If perpetual motion is pie-in-the-
sky, 100% efficiency is the pie plate.

Which is why I mentioned "heat and friction loss"...

--learn to read, pal.

Oh, well, pardon me.

Except for heat and friction loss, gasoline engines, and diesel engines,
and steam engines, and, well, everything -- is 100% efficient.

But in an electric car the motor is going to lose energy to heat and
friction, and the battery is going to lose energy to heat when it
charges, and then again when it discharges, and the speed controller is
going to lose energy to heat when it is running, and the inverter in the
charger is going to lose energy to heat when it runs, and the wires that
take the 'lectricity to your house are going to lose energy to heat and,
and --

Learn to think, pal.

--
My liberal friends think I'm a conservative kook.
My conservative friends think I'm a liberal kook.
Why am I not happy that they have found common ground?

Tim Wescott, Communications, Control, Circuits & Software
http://www.wescottdesign.com

On Tue, 26 Jun 2012 07:42:33 -0500, "Paul K. Dickman"
wrote:


"Ignoramus6950" wrote in message
m...
I was thinking about electric cars today.

An internal combustion car, burns fuel inside cylinders and produces
energy according to Carnot cycle. Say, it makes 28% of energy from the
total BTU of fuel that it burns.

Compare it with an electric car. A coal electric power station
operates at efficiency of 33% (Wikipedia).

Then 10% of this is lost in power distribution.

More lost in stepping down line voltage to 220 volts.

Further, more is lost in a battery charger.

Then more is lost in the car battery.

Then more heat is lost in motor windings and power semiconductors.

This is probably by far less efficient than internal combustion an
distribution of gasoline!

And how is it going to reduce CO2 emissions, if more CO2 needs to be
burned as coal than would come from gasoline?

i

You forgot to add for petroleum refining losses.
Gas manufacture runs around 85% efficiency. That puts your internal
combustion engine closer to 24% efficiency.
Paul K. Dickman

And ioncreases the relative efficiency of bunker fired plants.

On Mon, 25 Jun 2012 21:51:38 -0700, PrecisionmachinisT wrote:

"Tim Wescott" wrote in message
...

While I haven't seen power budgets, if an electric car manages to take
80% of the energy that came in on the charging plug and turns it into
forward motion, I'd be surprised.


http://avt.inel.gov/pdf/fsev/costs.pdf

Boy, for someone who abjures people to read, it's sure interesting that
you went and responded to a statement about the energy efficiency of a
system with a document that says nothing about the energy efficiency of
the system in question.

Unless I missed it, in which case you can correct me by pointing out
where that document says how many Joules* you get out of the car for
every 1kJ that you put in?

* People who know what the word "energy" means knows that it's measured
in Joules, in case your reading ability only extends to understanding
documents written by bureaucrats for "consumers"**

** i.e., sheeple.

--
My liberal friends think I'm a conservative kook.
My conservative friends think I'm a liberal kook.
Why am I not happy that they have found common ground?

Tim Wescott, Communications, Control, Circuits & Software
http://www.wescottdesign.com

"Tom Gardner" Mars@Tacks wrote in message
...
... I still can't believe the Japanese were so lax, it's not their
style.

At least not their foreign image.

WW2 ace Saburo Sakai commented bitterly in his memoirs about how much
more care the Americans put into maintain healty conditions for jungle
troops and the far greater effort we made to pick up downed pilots.
They claimed they couldn't risk their few seaplanes.

jsw

On Tue, 26 Jun 2012 12:36:20 -0700, PrecisionmachinisT wrote:

"J. Clarke" wrote in message
in.local...
In article ,
says...

"Tim Wescott" wrote in message
...

While I haven't seen power budgets, if an electric car manages to
take 80% of the energy that came in on the charging plug and turns
it into forward motion, I'd be surprised.


http://avt.inel.gov/pdf/fsev/costs.pdf

That's dollar cost and has little to do with the actual energy
consumed.

Pretty sure Iggy was primarily looking at the situation from an economic
standpoint, specifically, the out-of pocket cost per mile traveled.

And besides, you failed to come up with anything that would quantify a
diference in the total amount of energy that's actually consumed one way
or the other.

Correction -- _you_ failed to come up with a figure. The best you could
come up with was a multicolor graphic from a bureaucrat written for
people who don't understand what energy really is.

--
My liberal friends think I'm a conservative kook.
My conservative friends think I'm a liberal kook.
Why am I not happy that they have found common ground?

Tim Wescott, Communications, Control, Circuits & Software
http://www.wescottdesign.com

On Tue, 26 Jun 2012 12:25:46 -0400, "Jim Wilkins"
wrote:


"PrecisionmachinisT" wrote in message

And before anyone starts suggests that government ought to take
over, using taxpayer dollars, you need to realize that someone's
taxes would need to go up, and that government-control of energy
production is a textbook example of socialism.

The government has owned and controlled energy production since 1933:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tennessee_Valley_Authority

"The Kentucky Sierra Club called the [2008 Kingston] disaster the
"worst environmental disaster since Chernobyl"."
"The disaster continues to poison lakes and stream as well as
potentially the drinking water of millions."

Who knew?

Coal plants emit radioactive materials into the air and store many
more in the ash. With the exception of Fukushima, nuke plants don't.

Wait until we get the Keystone pipeline from Canada to Texas. It'll
be spilling oil into the main rivers (and maybe seeping into the
Oglalla Aquifer) in no time.

And with all the fracking going on nowadays, half the aquifers in the
USA stand to be affected. How many different seven-to-twenty syllable
toxic chemicals would you like in your water today?

--
Always bear in mind that your own resolution to
succeed is more important than any one thing.
-- Abraham Lincoln

On Tue, 26 Jun 2012 04:22:06 -0500, Karl Townsend
wrote:


If the frackin' tree huggers and our gov't would get out of the way of
nuclear energy, it would be more dependable and a helluva lot less
polluting than coal fired plants are now.

things were starting to move, but then the event in Japan shut it
down. We're not likely to see ANY new nuclear plants for decades.

Karl
Two words.

Candu
Won't

On Tue, 26 Jun 2012 05:52:17 -0400, "J. Clarke"
wrote:



Worrying about breathing is only an issue if you live in Los Angeles--
one of these days some terrorist with a nuke is going to put an end to
that problem. The major emission that anybody who doesn't live in Los
Angeles worries about is CO2 and fixed power plants don't emit any less
of that than mobile ones, it's part of the basic chemistry of
combustion.

Tell that to anyone living downwind of the Ohio Valley. The crud from
the coalfired stations, pumped out through high stacks, comes to earth
in inversions - smogging out areas like central Ontario every summer.

Larry Jaques wrote:

On Tue, 26 Jun 2012 12:25:46 -0400, "Jim Wilkins"
wrote:


"PrecisionmachinisT" wrote in message

And before anyone starts suggests that government ought to take
over, using taxpayer dollars, you need to realize that someone's
taxes would need to go up, and that government-control of energy
production is a textbook example of socialism.

The government has owned and controlled energy production since 1933:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tennessee_Valley_Authority

"The Kentucky Sierra Club called the [2008 Kingston] disaster the
"worst environmental disaster since Chernobyl"."
"The disaster continues to poison lakes and stream as well as
potentially the drinking water of millions."

Who knew?

Coal plants emit radioactive materials into the air and store many
more in the ash. With the exception of Fukushima, nuke plants don't.

Wait until we get the Keystone pipeline from Canada to Texas. It'll
be spilling oil into the main rivers (and maybe seeping into the
Oglalla Aquifer) in no time.

And with all the fracking going on nowadays, half the aquifers in the
USA stand to be affected.

How many different seven-to-twenty syllable
toxic chemicals would you like in your water today?

Any that my RO filter and it's carbon pre-filter will remove are fine.

"Tim Wescott" wrote in message ...
On Mon, 25 Jun 2012 21:47:05 -0700, PrecisionmachinisT wrote:

"Tim Wescott" wrote in message
...
On Mon, 25 Jun 2012 21:33:24 -0700, PrecisionmachinisT wrote:

"Ignoramus6950" wrote in message
...
I was thinking about electric cars today.

An internal combustion car, burns fuel inside cylinders and produces
energy according to Carnot cycle. Say, it makes 28% of energy from
the total BTU of fuel that it burns.

Compare it with an electric car. A coal electric power station
operates at efficiency of 33% (Wikipedia).

Then 10% of this is lost in power distribution.

More lost in stepping down line voltage to 220 volts.

Further, more is lost in a battery charger.

Then more is lost in the car battery.

Then more heat is lost in motor windings and power semiconductors.

This is probably by far less efficient than internal combustion an
distribution of gasoline!

And how is it going to reduce CO2 emissions, if more CO2 needs to be
burned as coal than would come from gasoline?



As far as cost per mile traveled, there can be no doubt that fully
electric automobiles are extremely economical to operate, and except
for energy that's lost due to heat and friction, they are 100%
efficient all the way from zero clear up to full rated output.

Nuh uh. Nothing is 100% efficient. If perpetual motion is pie-in-the-
sky, 100% efficiency is the pie plate.

Which is why I mentioned "heat and friction loss"...

--learn to read, pal.

Oh, well, pardon me.

Except for heat and friction loss, gasoline engines, and diesel engines,
and steam engines, and, well, everything -- is 100% efficient.


Except, as I and others have already explained, heat loss with your garden variety internal combustion engine varies greatly depending upon how much power is actually being drawn from the shaft; a characteristic not shared with electric motors which are capable of providing full torque even at zero rpms.


But in an electric car the motor is going to lose energy to heat and
friction, and the battery is going to lose energy to heat when it
charges, and then again when it discharges,

A drop in the bucket, compared to the amount of waste heat that's going out your exhaust pipe and radiator.

and the speed controller is
going to lose energy to heat when it is running, and the inverter in the
charger is going to lose energy to heat when it runs, and the wires that
take the 'lectricity to your house are going to lose energy to heat and,
and --


Learn to think, pal.


Actually, it's a subject which I've already researched in depth.

Now, if YOU want something to "think" about, I'd suggest think about why it is that diesel-electric locomotives and marine vessels are able achieve greater fuel efficiency as compared to their mechanically driven counterparts.


--
My liberal friends think I'm a conservative kook.
My conservative friends think I'm a liberal kook.
Why am I not happy that they have found common ground?

Tim Wescott, Communications, Control, Circuits & Software
http://www.wescottdesign.com

"Tim Wescott" wrote in message ...
On Mon, 25 Jun 2012 21:51:38 -0700, PrecisionmachinisT wrote:

"Tim Wescott" wrote in message
...

While I haven't seen power budgets, if an electric car manages to take
80% of the energy that came in on the charging plug and turns it into
forward motion, I'd be surprised.


http://avt.inel.gov/pdf/fsev/costs.pdf

Boy, for someone who abjures people to read, it's sure interesting that
you went and responded to a statement about the energy efficiency of a
system with a document that says nothing about the energy efficiency of
the system in question.

Unless I missed it, in which case you can correct me by pointing out
where that document says how many Joules* you get out of the car for
every 1kJ that you put in?

* People who know what the word "energy" means knows that it's measured
in Joules, in case your reading ability only extends to understanding
documents written by bureaucrats for "consumers"**



If you want to compare Joules, be my guest--pretty sure everything you would need in order to be able do that is supplied in the above paper.

In article ,
says...

"Tim Wescott" wrote in message ...
On Mon, 25 Jun 2012 21:51:38 -0700, PrecisionmachinisT wrote:

"Tim Wescott" wrote in message
...

While I haven't seen power budgets, if an electric car manages to take
80% of the energy that came in on the charging plug and turns it into
forward motion, I'd be surprised.


http://avt.inel.gov/pdf/fsev/costs.pdf

Boy, for someone who abjures people to read, it's sure interesting that
you went and responded to a statement about the energy efficiency of a
system with a document that says nothing about the energy efficiency of
the system in question.

Unless I missed it, in which case you can correct me by pointing out
where that document says how many Joules* you get out of the car for
every 1kJ that you put in?

* People who know what the word "energy" means knows that it's measured
in Joules, in case your reading ability only extends to understanding
documents written by bureaucrats for "consumers"**



If you want to compare Joules, be my guest--pretty sure everything you would need in order to be able do that is supplied in the above paper.

If you think that stick to the precision machining and leave the
engineering to the engineers.

On 2012-06-26, PrecisionmachinisT wrote:

"J. Clarke" wrote in message in.local...
In article ,
says...

"Tim Wescott" wrote in message
...

While I haven't seen power budgets, if an electric car manages to take
80% of the energy that came in on the charging plug and turns it into
forward motion, I'd be surprised.


http://avt.inel.gov/pdf/fsev/costs.pdf

That's dollar cost and has little to do with the actual energy consumed.

Pretty sure Iggy was primarily looking at the situation from an economic standpoint, specifically, the out-of pocket cost per mile traveled.

No, from energy efficiency.

On 2012-06-26, Kristian Ukkonen wrote:
On 6/26/2012 6:08, Ignoramus6950 wrote:
I was thinking about electric cars today.

An internal combustion car, burns fuel inside cylinders and produces
energy according to Carnot cycle. Say, it makes 28% of energy from the
total BTU of fuel that it burns.

Compare it with an electric car. A coal electric power station
operates at efficiency of 33% (Wikipedia).

Then 10% of this is lost in power distribution.

More lost in stepping down line voltage to 220 volts.

Further, more is lost in a battery charger.

Then more is lost in the car battery.

Then more heat is lost in motor windings and power semiconductors.

This is probably by far less efficient than internal combustion an
distribution of gasoline!

And how is it going to reduce CO2 emissions, if more CO2 needs to be
burned as coal than would come from gasoline?

That's simple. Just like any truly green electricity without CO2
emissions. Make the electricity with nuclear power.


However, in the cold or hot climate (most places, one of the big
problems with electric cars is AIR CONDITIONING, cooling or heating.
In a normal gasoline powered car, there is extra heat to use for
heating the car (here in winter at -20C). In the electric car, the
extra heat has to come from electricity in battery, and we are talking
about several kW.. Electric cars are cold cars in winter as the
battery just simply can't handle the heating.. Also, you have to use
power to cool it in summer, but that is less of a problem (less
delta-T). Perhaps better heat insulation will solve this.

The second big problem is that it costs 10000-20000 usd per 5 years
for battery replacement.. That makes a LOT for the USD/km cost..
Perhaps better battery technology will solve this.

The third big problem is TAXES. Nowadays here in Finland the gasoline
costs about 1.7 euro/litre (0.70euro/litre for gasoline and 1.00
euro/litre government tax). If the electric cars come popular, there
will definitely be a tax on "electric car electricity".. Perhaps put
a kWh counter in each electric car and then pay X.XX USD/kWh
electric car electricity tax.. Nothing will solve THIS.


Here the reasonable way to go at the moment is with CNG, compressed
natural gas. Conversion of old car is about 2500euro. Cost of CNG
driving is HALF the cost of gasoline driving, for fuel cost per km.
However, the big threat is that government will also put a heavy
tax on CNG (like on gasoline), so people are afraid to convert
their cars. It takes about 2 years payback time for the conversion.
Again, nothing will solve the TAX problem, especially poor
predictability on changes of taxes.

IMHO.

I am fascinated by the idea of using CNG to run my
vehicles. Especially the corporate trucks. If it
could costs twice less, that would make a huge difference.

Say, my dump truck, rarely leaves a 50 mile area.

i

On Tue, 26 Jun 2012 04:22:06 -0500, Karl Townsend
wrote:


If the frackin' tree huggers and our gov't would get out of the way of
nuclear energy, it would be more dependable and a helluva lot less
polluting than coal fired plants are now.

things were starting to move, but then the event in Japan shut it
down. We're not likely to see ANY new nuclear plants for decades.

And if the Japanese power company had built the plant 20 metres
higher above sea level the whole tragedy for the people would probably
not have happened.

On 2012-06-26, wrote:
On Mon, 25 Jun 2012 20:52:01 -0700, a friend
wrote:

On 6/25/2012 8:26 PM, wrote:
On Mon, 25 Jun 2012 22:08:16 -0500, Ignoramus6950
wrote:

I was thinking about electric cars today.

An internal combustion car, burns fuel inside cylinders and produces
energy according to Carnot cycle. Say, it makes 28% of energy from the
total BTU of fuel that it burns.

Compare it with an electric car. A coal electric power station
operates at efficiency of 33% (Wikipedia).

Then 10% of this is lost in power distribution.

More lost in stepping down line voltage to 220 volts.

Further, more is lost in a battery charger.

Then more is lost in the car battery.

Then more heat is lost in motor windings and power semiconductors.

This is probably by far less efficient than internal combustion an
distribution of gasoline!

And how is it going to reduce CO2 emissions, if more CO2 needs to be
burned as coal than would come from gasoline?

i
The only way it really "saves" anything is with hydro power, solar,
wind, or atomic. Possibly Natural gas.



the analysis above is flawed. First, if you use gasoline, energy is
lost in transporting it to the gas stations, pumping it, refining it,
etc. Second, energy efficiency is only part of the problem, the other
problem is emissions. even the cleanest car emits more pollutants per
unit of energy produced than a fixed plant. So, if you worry about
breathing, there is a second part of the story to consider.
Actually, todays cars burn cleaner than MOST coal fired power
plants.

And HYDROcarbons burn less carbon that pure carbons, a.k.a. coal.

That's because hydrocarbons also burn hydrogen.

So, what emits less carbon, a coal fires power station transmitting
power, used to charge batteries, or a hydrocarbon burning carm is not
obvious.

i

"J. Clarke" wrote in message
in.local...
In article ,
says...

"Tim Wescott" wrote in message
...
On Mon, 25 Jun 2012 21:51:38 -0700, PrecisionmachinisT wrote:

"Tim Wescott" wrote in message
...

While I haven't seen power budgets, if an electric car manages to
take
80% of the energy that came in on the charging plug and turns it into
forward motion, I'd be surprised.


http://avt.inel.gov/pdf/fsev/costs.pdf

Boy, for someone who abjures people to read, it's sure interesting that
you went and responded to a statement about the energy efficiency of a
system with a document that says nothing about the energy efficiency of
the system in question.

Unless I missed it, in which case you can correct me by pointing out
where that document says how many Joules* you get out of the car for
every 1kJ that you put in?

* People who know what the word "energy" means knows that it's measured
in Joules, in case your reading ability only extends to understanding
documents written by bureaucrats for "consumers"**



If you want to compare Joules, be my guest--pretty sure everything you
would need in order to be able do that is supplied in the above paper.

If you think that stick to the precision machining and leave the
engineering to the engineers.

Nope, all that is needed is there...

"Tim Wescott" wrote in message
...
On Tue, 26 Jun 2012 12:36:20 -0700, PrecisionmachinisT wrote:

"J. Clarke" wrote in message
in.local...
In article ,
says...

"Tim Wescott" wrote in message
...

While I haven't seen power budgets, if an electric car manages to
take 80% of the energy that came in on the charging plug and turns
it into forward motion, I'd be surprised.


http://avt.inel.gov/pdf/fsev/costs.pdf

That's dollar cost and has little to do with the actual energy
consumed.

Pretty sure Iggy was primarily looking at the situation from an economic
standpoint, specifically, the out-of pocket cost per mile traveled.

And besides, you failed to come up with anything that would quantify a
diference in the total amount of energy that's actually consumed one way
or the other.

Correction -- _you_ failed to come up with a figure. The best you could
come up with was a multicolor graphic from a bureaucrat written for
people who don't understand what energy really is.



Wrong.

Since both electricity and fossil fuel energy dissipation can be expressed
as BTU, it can easily be calculated that in the case of the 4 mile / kwh
vehicle, the total energy consumed when expressed as btu works out to be
about 853 btu per mile.

Now, we take a look at gasoline...which when burned produces appx 125,000
btu per gallon...and for the purpose of discussion, lets assume a car that
gets 30 mpg....what we end up with here is an energy consumption rate that
totals out at a whopping 4166 btu /mile.

In other words, with a gasoline powered car, most of the energy that gets
consumed, ends up going directly out the tailpipe...

"Stormin Mormon" wrote in message
.. .
If you're going to correct someone else, try to get your facts right.

http://www.differentsourcesofelectricity.com/

Sources of electricity
in the United States


You ****ing moron.

He said "on the planet" not "in the United States"...


"Robert Roland" wrote in message
...

No, it does not.

There are essentially two sources of electric power on the planet:
Hydroelectric and coal. There are others, but they are very small.

--
RoRo

"PrecisionmachinisT" wrote in
news:v6Sdnf5STJ1NO3fSnZ2dnUVZ_sidnZ2d@scnresearch. com:


"Stormin Mormon" wrote in message
.. .
If you're going to correct someone else, try to get your facts right.

http://www.differentsourcesofelectricity.com/

Sources of electricity
in the United States


You ****ing moron.

He said "on the planet" not "in the United States"...

Doesn't matter, he's still wrong.

"Robert Roland" wrote in message
...

There are essentially two sources of electric power on the planet:
Hydroelectric and coal. There are others, but they are very small.

13% isn't exactly "very small". That's the proportion of electricity, planet-wide, generated by
nuclear reactors.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_generation

In article ,
Ignoramus25088 wrote:

On 2012-06-26, wrote:
On Mon, 25 Jun 2012 20:52:01 -0700, a friend
wrote:

On 6/25/2012 8:26 PM, wrote:
On Mon, 25 Jun 2012 22:08:16 -0500, Ignoramus6950
wrote:

I was thinking about electric cars today.

An internal combustion car, burns fuel inside cylinders and produces
energy according to Carnot cycle. Say, it makes 28% of energy from the
total BTU of fuel that it burns.

Compare it with an electric car. A coal electric power station
operates at efficiency of 33% (Wikipedia).

Then 10% of this is lost in power distribution.

More lost in stepping down line voltage to 220 volts.

Further, more is lost in a battery charger.

Then more is lost in the car battery.

Then more heat is lost in motor windings and power semiconductors.

This is probably by far less efficient than internal combustion an
distribution of gasoline!

And how is it going to reduce CO2 emissions, if more CO2 needs to be
burned as coal than would come from gasoline?

i
The only way it really "saves" anything is with hydro power, solar,
wind, or atomic. Possibly Natural gas.



the analysis above is flawed. First, if you use gasoline, energy is
lost in transporting it to the gas stations, pumping it, refining it,
etc. Second, energy efficiency is only part of the problem, the other
problem is emissions. even the cleanest car emits more pollutants per
unit of energy produced than a fixed plant. So, if you worry about
breathing, there is a second part of the story to consider.
Actually, todays cars burn cleaner than MOST coal fired power
plants.

And HYDROcarbons burn less carbon that pure carbons, a.k.a. coal.

That's because hydrocarbons also burn hydrogen.

So, what emits less carbon, a coal fires power station transmitting
power, used to charge batteries, or a hydrocarbon burning carm is not
obvious.

In your analysis, you need to cover the full lifecycle cost, which
includes making the car in the first place. Cars only last on average
seven years, so making them is a major component of both cost and carbon
impact. Batteries in particular are expensive to make, don't have a
very large capacity compared to a gas tank, and don't last all that long.

As others have pointed out, gasoline engines in cars are maybe 20%
efficient, whereas coal fired power plants are more like 40%, coalpile
to bussbar, but transmission and battery inefficiency eat much of that
advantage up. Batteries are not all that efficient at storing energy.

The basic advantage of a hybrid is that the battery handles the pulse
loads, like accelerating into traffic, so the gas engine can be sized
for cruise, and so can be smaller (about one half) and operates nearer
to its optimum rpm and load.

Joe Gwinn

"Doug Miller" wrote in message
. ..
"PrecisionmachinisT" wrote in
news:v6Sdnf5STJ1NO3fSnZ2dnUVZ_sidnZ2d@scnresearch. com:


"Stormin Mormon" wrote in message
.. .
If you're going to correct someone else, try to get your facts right.

http://www.differentsourcesofelectricity.com/

Sources of electricity
in the United States


You ****ing moron.

He said "on the planet" not "in the United States"...

Doesn't matter, he's still wrong.

"Robert Roland" wrote in message
...

There are essentially two sources of electric power on the planet:
Hydroelectric and coal. There are others, but they are very small.

13% isn't exactly "very small"

That's a matter of opinion.

That's the proportion of electricity, planet-wide, generated by
nuclear reactors.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_generation

On 6/26/2012 9:30 PM, Larry Jaques wrote:
On Tue, 26 Jun 2012 12:25:46 -0400, "Jim Wilkins"
wrote:


"PrecisionmachinisT" wrote in message

And before anyone starts suggests that government ought to take
over, using taxpayer dollars, you need to realize that someone's
taxes would need to go up, and that government-control of energy
production is a textbook example of socialism.

The government has owned and controlled energy production since 1933:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tennessee_Valley_Authority

"The Kentucky Sierra Club called the [2008 Kingston] disaster the
"worst environmental disaster since Chernobyl"."
"The disaster continues to poison lakes and stream as well as
potentially the drinking water of millions."

Who knew?

Coal plants emit radioactive materials into the air and store many
more in the ash. With the exception of Fukushima, nuke plants don't.

Wait until we get the Keystone pipeline from Canada to Texas. It'll
be spilling oil into the main rivers (and maybe seeping into the
Oglalla Aquifer) in no time.

And with all the fracking going on nowadays, half the aquifers in the
USA stand to be affected. How many different seven-to-twenty syllable
toxic chemicals would you like in your water today?

--
Always bear in mind that your own resolution to
succeed is more important than any one thing.
-- Abraham Lincoln


Eventually, fusion power will be the best solution until some new energy
source comes along, maybe antimatter. I wonder how the leftists will
take THAT! (If leftists still exist)

"Jon Elson" wrote in message ...
whoyakidding wrote:


I'm considering buying a Chevy Volt.
OK, will you mostly be doing short drives and then recharging from
the line? If so, the cost to operate it looks really good! If you
will be going more than 28 miles or so on a typical day's driving
before recharging, then it starts to look really bad, and many
cars on the road will actually do BETTER! It appears the Volt gets
about 26 MPG on gasoline.

Take a look at the Honda Civic Hybrid. I get over 50 MPG in mixed
city/hwy driving. I just did an 1100 mile round trip to a conference,
with 600+ Lbs of junk in the car (plus me) and going 70 MPH on the highway
in beastly heat, I got 46 MPG. If I ran a bit slower with less weight,
I'd get 49 or so. The HCH is a LOT cheaper than the Volt.

Jon

Jon

I'm curious as to how much range ( if any ) it has if run clear out of gas

whoyakidding wrote:


I'm considering buying a Chevy Volt.
OK, will you mostly be doing short drives and then recharging from
the line? If so, the cost to operate it looks really good! If you
will be going more than 28 miles or so on a typical day's driving
before recharging, then it starts to look really bad, and many
cars on the road will actually do BETTER! It appears the Volt gets
about 26 MPG on gasoline.

Take a look at the Honda Civic Hybrid. I get over 50 MPG in mixed
city/hwy driving. I just did an 1100 mile round trip to a conference,
with 600+ Lbs of junk in the car (plus me) and going 70 MPH on the highway
in beastly heat, I got 46 MPG. If I ran a bit slower with less weight,
I'd get 49 or so. The HCH is a LOT cheaper than the Volt.

Jon

Phil Kangas wrote:


Why don't we hear more about thorium reactors?
Any time you get involved in commercial, billion $ development
projects, businesses get REAL hesitant to do ANYTHING different
than what has already been done. There are a HOST of better, PROVEN
designs out there, mostly gas cooled variations, than the standard
US pressurized water reactor, but nobody is even talking about
such in the US.

Jon

wrote:


And if the Japanese power company had built the plant 20 metres
higher above sea level the whole tragedy for the people would probably
not have happened.
Yup, this was a train wreck that anybody even remotely familiar with
the technology (and Japan, where they invented the word tsunami) had
40 YEARS to see coming! But, TEPCO wanted to finish out the life of the #1
plant without spending anything more on it.

It is totally amazing that nothing was done, even though they had
meetings on the risks and what could be done to mitigate them.

Jon

On 2012-06-27, Joseph Gwinn wrote:
In article ,
Ignoramus25088 wrote:

On 2012-06-26, wrote:
On Mon, 25 Jun 2012 20:52:01 -0700, a friend
wrote:

On 6/25/2012 8:26 PM, wrote:
On Mon, 25 Jun 2012 22:08:16 -0500, Ignoramus6950
wrote:

I was thinking about electric cars today.

An internal combustion car, burns fuel inside cylinders and produces
energy according to Carnot cycle. Say, it makes 28% of energy from the
total BTU of fuel that it burns.

Compare it with an electric car. A coal electric power station
operates at efficiency of 33% (Wikipedia).

Then 10% of this is lost in power distribution.

More lost in stepping down line voltage to 220 volts.

Further, more is lost in a battery charger.

Then more is lost in the car battery.

Then more heat is lost in motor windings and power semiconductors.

This is probably by far less efficient than internal combustion an
distribution of gasoline!

And how is it going to reduce CO2 emissions, if more CO2 needs to be
burned as coal than would come from gasoline?

i
The only way it really "saves" anything is with hydro power, solar,
wind, or atomic. Possibly Natural gas.



the analysis above is flawed. First, if you use gasoline, energy is
lost in transporting it to the gas stations, pumping it, refining it,
etc. Second, energy efficiency is only part of the problem, the other
problem is emissions. even the cleanest car emits more pollutants per
unit of energy produced than a fixed plant. So, if you worry about
breathing, there is a second part of the story to consider.
Actually, todays cars burn cleaner than MOST coal fired power
plants.

And HYDROcarbons burn less carbon that pure carbons, a.k.a. coal.

That's because hydrocarbons also burn hydrogen.

So, what emits less carbon, a coal fires power station transmitting
power, used to charge batteries, or a hydrocarbon burning carm is not
obvious.

In your analysis, you need to cover the full lifecycle cost, which
includes making the car in the first place. Cars only last on average
seven years, so making them is a major component of both cost and carbon
impact. Batteries in particular are expensive to make, don't have a
very large capacity compared to a gas tank, and don't last all that long.

As others have pointed out, gasoline engines in cars are maybe 20%
efficient, whereas coal fired power plants are more like 40%, coalpile
to bussbar, but transmission and battery inefficiency eat much of that
advantage up. Batteries are not all that efficient at storing energy.

The basic advantage of a hybrid is that the battery handles the pulse
loads, like accelerating into traffic, so the gas engine can be sized
for cruise, and so can be smaller (about one half) and operates nearer
to its optimum rpm and load.

Joe Gwinn

I am a big believer in hybrids, as a matter of fact.

I am now seriously thinking about getting a small car, because I drive
around a lot in my surplus business, and I hate to pay for the gas
guzzling pickup truck when it is not necessary. A hybrid is definitely
a very prominent possibility for me.

i

On Wed, 27 Jun 2012 14:24:26 -0500, Jon Elson
wrote:

whoyakidding wrote:


I'm considering buying a Chevy Volt.
OK, will you mostly be doing short drives and then recharging from
the line?

Plenty of shorter drives and charging at least partly from solar
panels I'll install.

If so, the cost to operate it looks really good! If you
will be going more than 28 miles or so on a typical day's driving
before recharging, then it starts to look really bad, and many
cars on the road will actually do BETTER! It appears the Volt gets
about 26 MPG on gasoline.

CR got 37 combined if I remember right. I'm reading expect 35 and
sometimes get 40 on trips. Example:
http://gm-volt.com/forum/showthread....rst-Long-Drive Don't
forget that some fuel only reports won't include recharge while
driving.
http://www.plugincars.com/chevy-volt...es-107176.html
http://gm-volt.com/forum/showthread....Normal-D-vs.-L I
saw a report of high 20s that once adjusted for recharge equaled high
30s.

Take a look at the Honda Civic Hybrid. I get over 50 MPG in mixed
city/hwy driving. I just did an 1100 mile round trip to a conference,
with 600+ Lbs of junk in the car (plus me) and going 70 MPH on the highway
in beastly heat, I got 46 MPG. If I ran a bit slower with less weight,
I'd get 49 or so. The HCH is a LOT cheaper than the Volt.

The Volt outweighs the Civic by about 30% but is quicker. Apples and
oranges. Anyway a large part of my theory here is that I don't want to
merely do what's cheapest for me.

On 2012-06-27, Jon Elson wrote:
Tom Gardner wrote:


Eventually, fusion power will be the best solution until some new energy
source comes along, maybe antimatter. I wonder how the leftists will
take THAT! (If leftists still exist)
Fusion turns out to be a LOT harder than anybody thought.
Physicists have been saying it is 10 years away for 50+ years, now.
Tokamak looked promising until you understand the surface area to
volume relationship, then it becomes obvious you can't have a thread
of plasma many meters long at 10 megaKelvins, all the heat leaks away.

The only hope is a VERY compact plasma, and that is a hard state to
maintain. And, the implosion devices are most likely to self destruct
due to the massive thermal cycling. Not immediately, but it seems like
they would end up requiring huge amounts of maintenance.

One more thing about Fusion.

When we think about the Sun (powered by fusion), and how brightly it
shines, we conjure that fusion of the hot plasma of the sun produces
very intense energy per ton of weight.

This is actually NOT true.

Per ton of weight, Sun's core produces about as much power, as you
would get from a ton of compost in your backyard compost pile. Yes,
sure, the compost pile is warm and the energy is produced, but the
power density is miniscule -- no one can economically extract
electrical power from warm rotting compost.

i

Tom Gardner wrote:


Eventually, fusion power will be the best solution until some new energy
source comes along, maybe antimatter. I wonder how the leftists will
take THAT! (If leftists still exist)
Fusion turns out to be a LOT harder than anybody thought.
Physicists have been saying it is 10 years away for 50+ years, now.
Tokamak looked promising until you understand the surface area to
volume relationship, then it becomes obvious you can't have a thread
of plasma many meters long at 10 megaKelvins, all the heat leaks away.

The only hope is a VERY compact plasma, and that is a hard state to
maintain. And, the implosion devices are most likely to self destruct
due to the massive thermal cycling. Not immediately, but it seems like
they would end up requiring huge amounts of maintenance.

Jon

On Wed, 27 Jun 2012 11:23:29 -0400, Joseph Gwinn
wrote:


In your analysis, you need to cover the full lifecycle cost, which
includes making the car in the first place. Cars only last on average
seven years, so making them is a major component of both cost and carbon
impact. Batteries in particular are expensive to make, don't have a
very large capacity compared to a gas tank, and don't last all that long.


What is the AVERAGE age of the north american automotive fleet?? As of
June, 2012, the average age of an automobile is 11 years

As others have pointed out, gasoline engines in cars are maybe 20%
efficient, whereas coal fired power plants are more like 40%, coalpile
to bussbar, but transmission and battery inefficiency eat much of that
advantage up. Batteries are not all that efficient at storing energy.

The basic advantage of a hybrid is that the battery handles the pulse
loads, like accelerating into traffic, so the gas engine can be sized
for cruise, and so can be smaller (about one half) and operates nearer
to its optimum rpm and load.

Joe Gwinn

On Wed, 27 Jun 2012 14:31:00 -0500, Jon Elson
wrote:

wrote:


And if the Japanese power company had built the plant 20 metres
higher above sea level the whole tragedy for the people would probably
not have happened.
Yup, this was a train wreck that anybody even remotely familiar with
the technology (and Japan, where they invented the word tsunami) had
40 YEARS to see coming! But, TEPCO wanted to finish out the life of the #1
plant without spending anything more on it.

It is totally amazing that nothing was done, even though they had
meetings on the risks and what could be done to mitigate them.

Jon
And the cooling water pumps run off the grid? instead of off the
reactor. And the backup generator was in the basement, where it
flooded even before the reactor gave any trouble. Pretty poor design,
when it comes to failsafe. But it was Japanese engineering, so of
course nothing would ever go wrong.
Now I've got nothing against Japanese products, but the japanese
industrial culture is not responsive to outside suggestion - I worked
for 10 years as service manager for a large Japanese industrial
concern.

On 2012-06-28, wrote:
On Wed, 27 Jun 2012 14:31:00 -0500, Jon Elson
wrote:

wrote:


And if the Japanese power company had built the plant 20 metres
higher above sea level the whole tragedy for the people would probably
not have happened.
Yup, this was a train wreck that anybody even remotely familiar with
the technology (and Japan, where they invented the word tsunami) had
40 YEARS to see coming! But, TEPCO wanted to finish out the life of the #1
plant without spending anything more on it.

It is totally amazing that nothing was done, even though they had
meetings on the risks and what could be done to mitigate them.

Jon
And the cooling water pumps run off the grid? instead of off the
reactor. And the backup generator was in the basement, where it
flooded even before the reactor gave any trouble. Pretty poor design,
when it comes to failsafe. But it was Japanese engineering, so of
course nothing would ever go wrong.

The reactor is American, I would call it American engineering.

Now I've got nothing against Japanese products, but the japanese
industrial culture is not responsive to outside suggestion - I worked
for 10 years as service manager for a large Japanese industrial
concern.

In article , Mars@Tacks
says...

On 6/26/2012 9:30 PM, Larry Jaques wrote:
On Tue, 26 Jun 2012 12:25:46 -0400, "Jim Wilkins"
wrote:


"PrecisionmachinisT" wrote in message

And before anyone starts suggests that government ought to take
over, using taxpayer dollars, you need to realize that someone's
taxes would need to go up, and that government-control of energy
production is a textbook example of socialism.

The government has owned and controlled energy production since 1933:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tennessee_Valley_Authority

"The Kentucky Sierra Club called the [2008 Kingston] disaster the
"worst environmental disaster since Chernobyl"."
"The disaster continues to poison lakes and stream as well as
potentially the drinking water of millions."

Who knew?

Coal plants emit radioactive materials into the air and store many
more in the ash. With the exception of Fukushima, nuke plants don't.

Wait until we get the Keystone pipeline from Canada to Texas. It'll
be spilling oil into the main rivers (and maybe seeping into the
Oglalla Aquifer) in no time.

And with all the fracking going on nowadays, half the aquifers in the
USA stand to be affected. How many different seven-to-twenty syllable
toxic chemicals would you like in your water today?

--
Always bear in mind that your own resolution to
succeed is more important than any one thing.
-- Abraham Lincoln


Eventually, fusion power will be the best solution until some new energy
source comes along, maybe antimatter. I wonder how the leftists will
take THAT! (If leftists still exist)

Antimatter's not going to be an energy source. It may be a dandy
storage method, but it's not going to be a source unless a large
naturally occurring nearby supply of antimatter is discovered.

In article ,
says...

Tom Gardner wrote:


Eventually, fusion power will be the best solution until some new energy
source comes along, maybe antimatter. I wonder how the leftists will
take THAT! (If leftists still exist)
Fusion turns out to be a LOT harder than anybody thought.
Physicists have been saying it is 10 years away for 50+ years, now.
Tokamak looked promising until you understand the surface area to
volume relationship, then it becomes obvious you can't have a thread
of plasma many meters long at 10 megaKelvins, all the heat leaks away.

It's been a long time since any responsible physicist said it was 10
years away. They're talking 2033 at the earliest for a working reactor.

And the heat only leaks away if you're not putting it in faster than it
leaks.

The only hope is a VERY compact plasma, and that is a hard state to
maintain.

Or putting a lot of heat into it.

And, the implosion devices are most likely to self destruct
due to the massive thermal cycling. Not immediately, but it seems like
they would end up requiring huge amounts of maintenance.

Why would there be "massive thermal cycling"?

wrote in message
...
..
What is the AVERAGE age of the north american automotive fleet?? As
of
June, 2012, the average age of an automobile is 11 years


I went out and reassured my cars that they are all above average.

jsw