Well, it is a Monday. It almost makes sense. Good morning, everyone.
lucius septimius
6/21/2021 5:23:41 AM
2
Just saw something about California telling people not to charge their electric cars because of power shortages.
Good to know they've thought all this through.
vxbush
6/21/2021 5:44:17 AM
3
In #2 lucius septimius said: Just saw something about California telling people not to charge their electric cars because of power shortages.
Good to know they've thought all this through.
I'll repeat the obvious: in order to move all cars to electricity, we need four times the amount of electrical power as we can create right now, and that's not even considering the current brownouts that happen in California and (now) Texas.
buzzsawmonkey
6/21/2021 6:55:15 AM
4
Reply to lucius septimius in 2:
In various travel writings I've read by Evelyn Waugh and John Dos Passos, they tell of coming across some remote outpost in the jungles of Brazil or the Arabian desert, and finding someone there with a Model T Ford that actually is in running condition; it may be running on arak or kerosene, but it's functioning. And, of course, Roy Alan Chapman's tales of paleontological expeditions in the Gobi Desert were mostly done in fleets of Model Ts.
No charging stations anywhere nearby. If the wokie dreams of banning the internal combustion engine are ever realized, it will not merely be the mobility of the population centers that is destroyed.
vxbush
6/21/2021 8:00:57 AM
5
You know, sometimes you just have to love Amazon reviews. Ran across this one today.
Occasional Reader
6/21/2021 8:13:11 AM
6
Reply to lucius septimius in 2:
I will be due for a new car and maybe a year to a year and a half, and I’ll admit that sometimes I’m a little Tesla-curious; but stories like that give me pause.
lucius septimius
6/21/2021 8:14:15 AM
7
In #4 buzzsawmonkey said: Roy Alan Chapman's tales of paleontological expeditions in the Gobi Desert
He was one of my heroes when I was a little kid.
JCM
6/21/2021 8:26:12 AM
8
Reply to lucius septimius in 2:
Saw some science blogger.
If CA wants to be all electric cars by 2035.
They will need to add 1GW of generation capacity every 3 weeks, to meet the demand.
Occasional Reader
6/21/2021 8:37:27 AM
9
Reply to JCM in 8:
Repeat after me, the magic spell: “Wind and solar.”
There. Done! Next issue?
JCM
6/21/2021 8:53:02 AM
10
Reply to Occasional Reader in 9:
I dunno, CA keeps repeating that spell and gets black outs.....
My they forget the eye of newt and spleen of bat.
Kosh's Shadow
6/21/2021 9:05:59 AM
11
Reply to JCM in 8:Reply to Occasional Reader in 9:
1 MW solar plant takes about 4 acres
1 GW, 4000 acres
California land area about 105,000,000 acres
Use 4000 acres of land every 3 weeks, or 70,000 acres/year. Enviros would go nuts
At least CA has the land area////
JCM
6/21/2021 9:16:40 AM
12
Reply to Kosh's Shadow in 11:
They, the left keeps coming up with ideas.
But they never, ever do even a rudimentary first pass engineer feasibility analysis.
One of favorites, was Musk's Hyperloop. Some engineer wag look at what Musk claimed for passenger throughput. A showed a devastating analysis with Musks own car size and frequency of trips he was several orders of magnitude shy of his claimed throughput. They ask some simple questions about emergency procedures when you have a sealed car in a sealed tube.
JCM
6/21/2021 9:37:49 AM
13
Fossil fuel industry mocks 'virtue-signalling' North Face
In #7 lucius septimius said: He was one of my heroes when I was a little kid.
I first learned of the LaBrea Tar Pits from a chapter in one of his books---"Going into the Past," I think it was---in a chapter called "The Fate of the Shovel-Jawed Mastodon."
Funny the things that stay with you.
vxbush
6/21/2021 11:12:13 AM
16
In #14 JCM said: Mass-produced floating nuclear reactors use super-safe molten salt fuel
Just reading the first part of that web page made me think they just copied the content of a sales brochure.
buzzsawmonkey
6/21/2021 11:17:28 AM
17
In #16 vxbush said: Just reading the first part of that web page made me think they just copied the content of a sales brochure.
Take it all with a grain of fluoride salts.
vxbush
6/21/2021 11:26:36 AM
18
In #17 buzzsawmonkey said: Take it all with a grain of fluoride salts.
Not knowing much about nuclear reactors, I wouldn't trust anything anyone wrote about one.
JCM
6/21/2021 11:43:42 AM
19
Reply to vxbush in 18:
Salt reactors are likely the future.
They "fail safe"
In a tradition reactor the nuclear fuel is critical, and has to be moderated to contain the reaction. Loss of moderation results in meltdown. High simplified but close enough.
In a sodium reactor the fuel is non-critical, and must be induced to criticality. Any loss of coolant, stop or change in the factors, the reaction stops.
It's the physics of the step up, it's not mechanism, or processes that make it fail to a safe state, it's the physics.
Kosh's Shadow
6/21/2021 12:03:32 PM
20
Reply to JCM in 19:
Actually, in a reactor, the moderator slows down neutrons to increase the probability a nucleus will absorb one and split, releasing around 2 more fast neutrons plus energy.
Two kinds of moderators - hydrogen, generally in the form of water, and carbon, in the form of graphite.
In water moderated reactors, the water acts as both coolant and moderator. Loss of coolant also reduces the reaction rate by leaving only fast neutrons. Also, water is a less efficient moderator as it warms, (called a negative temperature coefficient) so if a water moderated reactor heats up, it produces less energy. This is brought to perfection in submarine reactors, which are designed so that the reaction rate matches the power being used, purely by the laws of physics.
Graphite is a better moderator when it heats up, so if coolant is lost in a graphite moderated reactor, the moderator stays in place and the reaction speeds up. Chernobyl, style.
Reactors have been demonstrated with a fast negative temperature coefficient, so they cool quickly when coolant is lost. This, I believe, is done with small fuel elements which can cool quickly. Lose coolant, and the temperature never gets high enough to melt anything.
Liquid salts are HOT and can be dangerous. There is a reason they aren't used; the engineering is more difficult, and requires exotic materials to keep from melting.
Kosh's Shadow
6/20/2021 7:03:37 PM
vxbush
6/21/2021 5:17:51 AM
