Leaf Powered by Fossil Fuels Gets Equivalent of 28 MPG?

[Nekota]

Unlike many environmentalists I happen to agree with you on nuclear. We should be building nuclear plants as fast as we (safely) can to replace all coal plants.
Ray

.....

Nuclear creates waste that is toxic for hundreds if not thousands of years. We can't predict or protect against a release of this into the environment in say two thousand years. If we create huge stockpiles of this waste, we can create a toxic world in several thousand years. Do we care? We should, but honestly we probably don't as much as we should.

To think we can store nuclear waste indefinitely without a single release is childish, and quite frankly like King Canute trying to hold back the tide. Do you think man can defeat the force of entropy around the globe? Anything we build will crumble.

About 1.7 billion years ago, mother nature built a nuclear reactor in Gabon Africa. The nuclear wastes produced there have moved mere centimeters after nearly 2 billion years until man discovered these uranium deposits were depleted of U235. Sadly, while we have technical solutions for nuclear waste, we have no political solutions. I often feel the same barbs and hostile comments about my electric car, with it's toxic battery, a glorified golf cart, a very limited range, the collapse of the power grid and so on. I just hope the electric car fares better than nuclear power has.

 

[JPWhite]

The nuclear wastes produced there have moved mere centimeters after nearly 2 billion years until man discovered these uranium deposits were depleted of U235.

Couple of problems with this example. I don't doubt you are factual however it is IMHO atypical. Ever heard of plate tectonics, or reelfoot lake being created by an earthquake and causing the Mississippi to flow backwards?

Just recently in virginia the following reports from the nuclear plant

Last week's central Virginia earthquake caused 25 spent-fuel storage casks — each weighing 115 tons — to move on their concrete pad at Dominion Virginia Power's North Anna nuclear power plant.

and later

Like hockey pucks on a jostled tray, the 16-foot tall casks shifted from an inch to 4½ inches, utility company spokesman Rick Zuercher said.

"They just moved because of the vibration," Zuercher said. "They remained upright and fully intact."

4 1/2 inches in one day vs mere centimeters in millennia. Seems to be a discrepancy here.

Source: http://www2.timesdispatch.com/busin...-massive-nuclear-storage-casks-to-ar-1277791/

 

[planet4ever]

I just did some calculations based on numbers I consider to be reliable. Let's assume you drive your LEAF 150,000 miles in its lifetime, and that during that time you use 50,000 kWh of electricity.

If all of your electricity is generated by coal powered plants, that will have also produced:

• Nearly 300 pounds of sulfur dioxide (which causes acid rain)
• Nearly 300 pounds of nitrogen oxide (which causes smog & acid rain)
• More than 3,500 pounds of ash
• More than 5,500 pounds of sludge

Ash and sludge contain lead, mercury, arsenic, and other toxic materials.

Now let's say all your electricity is generated by nuclear power. You will have produced:

• about five and a half ounces of highly radioactive waste material

Of course I haven't even counted the more than 100,000 pounds of carbon dioxide, nor mentioned that radioactive emissions from a coal plant are greater than those from a nuclear plant.

Ray

 

[JPWhite]

I just did some calculations based on numbers I consider to be reliable. Let's assume you drive your LEAF 150,000 miles in its lifetime, and that during that time you use 50,000 kWh of electricity.

If all of your electricity is generated by coal powered plants, that will have also produced:

• Nearly 300 pounds of sulfur dioxide (which causes acid rain)
• Nearly 300 pounds of nitrogen oxide (which causes smog & acid rain)
• More than 3,500 pounds of ash
• More than 5,500 pounds of sludge

Ash and sludge contain lead, mercury, arsenic, and other toxic materials.

Now let's say all your electricity is generated by nuclear power. You will have produced:

• about five and a half ounces of highly radioactive waste material

Of course I haven't even counted the more than 100,000 pounds of carbon dioxide, nor mentioned that radioactive emissions from a coal plant are greater than those from a nuclear plant.

Ray

Consider the alternative that home owners install Solar panels, enough to power their homes and vehicles. Power stations primary role would then be in supplying industrial and commercial businesses and helping to even out the supply/demand to homes as solar is available or otherwise.

Extend that idea to converting on-grid solar systems to off-grid, maybe by using an old vehicle battery pack for power storage and delivery during sundown/cloudy periods and the impact of the vehicles (and homes) is err almost zero.

Then we don't have to worry about toxic coal emissions, toxic oil emissions, toxic nuclear waste , toxic gas emissions.

 

[planet4ever]

Make no mistake, I am a major proponent of solar power. But I do see one slight problem with your proposal. If every single-family home in the United States got a 5 kW solar system on their roof, they could collectively generate upwards of 2.5 gigawatt hours/day -- averaged over the year. Probably not much more than half that in December and January. The slight problem is that our existing coal plants apparently produce about 5 gigawatt hours/day, rain or shine.

Ray

 

[JPWhite]

Make no mistake, I am a major proponent of solar power. But I do see one slight problem with your proposal. If every single-family home in the United States got a 5 kW solar system on their roof, they could collectively generate upwards of 2.5 gigawatt hours/day -- averaged over the year. Probably not much more than half that in December and January. The slight problem is that our existing coal plants apparently produce about 5 gigawatt hours/day, rain or shine.

Ray

I have to admit it won't happen overnight

Same as the conversion of gasoline powered vehicles to something cleaner such as electric. There's only just over 6,000 LEAF's in the US. But I believe all here see the potential. As energy densities increase in batteries so will the popularity of EV's

Here's a story from a local bank that 'exports' electric to the local utility company. Their payback on the solar install is 6.6 years. I have personally talked with the CFO at the bank, so it's not mis-reported or exaggerated in the press.

Here's the press article.

http://www.lightwavesolarelectric.com/news-a-events/monthly-news-letter/145-monthly-newsletter-.html

Only one bank among thousands, just like with LEAF's it's the start of something new. I'm sure technology improvements will also occur with solar yielding more energy per sq foot, making it increasing popular as well.

 

[Nekota]

The nuclear wastes produced there have moved mere centimeters after nearly 2 billion years until man discovered these uranium deposits were depleted of U235.

Couple of problems with this example. I don't doubt you are factual however it is IMHO atypical. Ever heard of plate tectonics, or reelfoot lake being created by an earthquake and causing the Mississippi to flow backwards?

Just recently in virginia the following reports from the nuclear plant

Last week's central Virginia earthquake caused 25 spent-fuel storage casks — each weighing 115 tons — to move on their concrete pad at Dominion Virginia Power's North Anna nuclear power plant.

and later

Like hockey pucks on a jostled tray, the 16-foot tall casks shifted from an inch to 4½ inches, utility company spokesman Rick Zuercher said.

"They just moved because of the vibration," Zuercher said. "They remained upright and fully intact."

4 1/2 inches in one day vs mere centimeters in millennia. Seems to be a discrepancy here.

Source: http://www2.timesdispatch.com/busin...-massive-nuclear-storage-casks-to-ar-1277791/

I am aware of Pangea and Gondwana to answer your plate question. The discrepancy you describe is comparing diffusion with earthqakes and illustrates the importance of placing waste in a geologically stable formation. But our political gridlock on nuclear waste cannot do anything since we listen to fear and don't bother to understand why.

 

[Stoaty]

Here's a story from a local bank that 'exports' electric to the local utility company. Their payback on the solar install is 6.6 years. I have personally talked with the CFO at the bank, so it's not mis-reported or exaggerated in the press.

I don't doubt the story, and I am strongly in favor of solar PV. However, when reading the article it appears that there is a veritable laundry list of rebates, tax incentives, sweet deals on selling power back to the utility, etc. Again, I am strongly in favor of those incentives to make solar a reality. With all of those subsidies, it isn't surprising that solar is such a good deal for the bank.

My sister's group of pediatricians moved to a new office a couple of years ago. She wanted to install solar on the roof, but couldn't get the loan for solar approved. It isn't always as easy as it was for this particular bank.

 

[tps]

[Consider the alternative that home owners install Solar panels, enough to power their homes and vehicles. Power stations primary role would then be in supplying industrial and commercial businesses and helping to even out the supply/demand to homes as solar is available or otherwise.

Extend that idea to converting on-grid solar systems to off-grid, maybe by using an old vehicle battery pack for power storage and delivery during sundown/cloudy periods and the impact of the vehicles (and homes) is err almost zero.

Then we don't have to worry about toxic coal emissions, toxic oil emissions, toxic nuclear waste , toxic gas emissions.

I've been actively studying off-grid community electric systems. The big problem that needs to be solved is the same problem as for electric cars: energy storage. Just as the battery in a BEV is very expensive at this point, the batteries of an off-grid community system are even more expensive, due to the amount of storage required. While the cost of grid-tie solar, which uses the electric utility as a "infinite" battery for free, has dropped to the point where it is viable, when you add the cost of the battery storage required for off-grid, it's still too expensive for most. Maybe increased research as BEVs become more popular will, in a few year, drop battery prices to the point where off-grid becomes economically attractive.

 

[Nekota]

Make no mistake, I am a major proponent of solar power. But I do see one slight problem with your proposal. If every single-family home in the United States got a 5 kW solar system on their roof, they could collectively generate upwards of 2.5 gigawatt hours/day -- averaged over the year. Probably not much more than half that in December and January. The slight problem is that our existing coal plants apparently produce about 5 gigawatt hours/day, rain or shine.

Ray

I have to admit it won't happen overnight

Same as the conversion of gasoline powered vehicles to something cleaner such as electric. There's only just over 6,000 LEAF's in the US. But I believe all here see the potential. As energy densities increase in batteries so will the popularity of EV's

Here's a story from a local bank that 'exports' electric to the local utility company. Their payback on the solar install is 6.6 years. I have personally talked with the CFO at the bank, so it's not mis-reported or exaggerated in the press.

Here's the press article.

http://www.lightwavesolarelectric.com/news-a-events/monthly-news-letter/145-monthly-newsletter-.html

Only one bank among thousands, just like with LEAF's it's the start of something new. I'm sure technology improvements will also occur with solar yielding more energy per sq foot, making it increasing popular as well.

I am very saddened by the closure of Solyndra and as a result have a number of friends that are looking for a paycheck. This facility has 1 MW of it's own product on it's roof and with a significant amount of financial backing using a non silicon technology.
I will be following the Solyndra story and hope to see this facility active soon - it's chapter 11 not 7.

These solar pv payback calculations seem to be based on inflated electrical rates of 2x. If industry and manufacturing have to pay 2x for their energy then I fear there will only be banks left and no one to buy their electricity at 2x let alone borrow money.

 

[smkettner]

If gasoline is so good why do we not have gasoline powered air conditioning or separate gasoline generators at each house.
I would much sooner have a natual gas genertor at home compared to gasoline.

 

[TomT]

Actually, in the large commercial market, natural gas powered A/C systems do exist. And one of the reasons why you don't see a lot of natural gas powered home generators is that in an emergency, such as an earthquake, you are likely to lose that natural gas source for quite some time. Thus gas or diesel.

If gasoline is so good why do we not have gasoline powered air conditioning or separate gasoline generators at each house.
I would much sooner have a natual gas genertor at home compared to gasoline.

 

[Herm]

propane powered emergency generators are popular in S. Florida.. fuel will last forever in standby, unlike diesel or gasoline.

 

[Nekota]

I just did some calculations based on numbers I consider to be reliable. Let's assume you drive your LEAF 150,000 miles in its lifetime, and that during that time you use 50,000 kWh of electricity.

If all of your electricity is generated by coal powered plants, that will have also produced:

• Nearly 300 pounds of sulfur dioxide (which causes acid rain)
• Nearly 300 pounds of nitrogen oxide (which causes smog & acid rain)
• More than 3,500 pounds of ash
• More than 5,500 pounds of sludge

Ash and sludge contain lead, mercury, arsenic, and other toxic materials.

Now let's say all your electricity is generated by nuclear power. You will have produced:

• about five and a half ounces of highly radioactive waste material

Of course I haven't even counted the more than 100,000 pounds of carbon dioxide, nor mentioned that radioactive emissions from a coal plant are greater than those from a nuclear plant.

Ray

...snip...
Consider the alternative that home owners install Solar panels, enough to power their homes and vehicles. Power stations primary role would then be in supplying industrial and commercial businesses and helping to even out the supply/demand to homes as solar is available or otherwise.
...snip...

So the industrial and commercial businesses have to pay 2x to ?x for their electricity to make distributed PV work? As a home user, I am able to shift my energy use patterns to take advantage of time of day prices and lower my average cost from 18 cents to 14 cents per KWhr while businesses probably cannot. Another role of the power station is to maintain frequency and as the power grid becomes less centralized the frequency maintenance will need some attention. All of the PV inverters I have studied have no provision for frequency control other than locking to the grid and if it cannot lock it goes offline. I believe solar PV and solar thermal have their role to participate in our energy mix. But the 'either this but not that' (either or) simplification is a path I hope we don't pursue.

Our dependence on electricity is mind boggling. When discussing family history with those that remember the time before electricity they point out how electricity really changed how they lived. I think PV can provide daytime peak power at some percentage but I charge my LEAF when there is no sun shine so the electrons I burn don't come a PV panel. The power situation in California has greatly improved with lots of surplus power (10GW) available every day. The solar contribution to this from CAISO is currently showing 0.035 GW but it's partly cloudy and still early in the day.

 

[Nekota]

Actually, in the large commercial market, natural gas powered A/C systems do exist. And one of the reasons why you don't see a lot of natural gas powered home generators is that in an emergency, such as an earthquake, you are likely to lose that natural gas source for quite some time. Thus gas or diesel.

If gasoline is so good why do we not have gasoline powered air conditioning or separate gasoline generators at each house.
I would much sooner have a natual gas genertor at home compared to gasoline.

There is a microturbine company - Capstone - that makes such systems from 30KW to 200KW. If co-generation can be used on site they make 60% energy efficiency possible. But for standalone AC power, they range in efficiency from 23% to 30% .

 

[TomT]

They are hugely expensive though and thus not really practical for a home system. Gas, diesel and propane remain the best sources for that market. BTW, The building in which I often work has two 1500 KW diesel generators for our backup.

There is a microturbine company - Capstone - that makes such systems from 30KW to 200KW. If co-generation can be used on site they make 60% energy efficiency possible. But for standalone AC power, they range in efficiency from 23% to 30% .

 

[electricfuture]

For you non-believers that nuclear waste can't be neutralized read the following 12 year old research article - and there are others including a small unit about the size of a garage that uses lasers that came out last year. Yeah – this is not fiction. http://www.innovativetech.us/FutureProd-rw.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Concerning "natural gas" or propane (further processing), I worked in design/construction of very large scale gas plants. One took "associated gas" from the oil and processes it. The other took high pressure gas directly from the well and processed it. The key words here are "processed it". The gas contains many contaminates - sulfur being one of the worst. In fact when you specify a gas turbine you have to tell them what your gas quality is and they design the burn rates and “buckets" accordingly. So, a lot of energy is expended processing the gas to get it clean enough for use. Then it is compressed into spherical tanks, liquefied (LPG) piped onto ships, transported in our local case to Mexico, off loaded, expanded to "natural gas" and shipped across the boarder by a SEMPRA/SDG&E pipeline (they avoid import duties through the "free trade agreement" by off loading in Mexico rather than San Diego, not to mention environmental constraints at the off loading facility).

In the end you are still burning a non-renewable greenhouse gas producing fuel. And then there are the environmental problems. Remember the gas line that blew up in San Francisco last year killing several families? Last week the courts decided that it was PG&E fault and they apologized for over a 40 year proven record of not checking installation welds, corrosion, proper pressure testing, etc, to the dead people. So although no one has been killed from a commercial nuclear plant many have been killed in gas plants and gas pipeline accidents. And don't forget that propane has to be trucked to your local distribution point.

AFTER the PG&E court decision SDG&E announced a major program to check all of their gas pipelines as they found they had followed the same careless procedures as PG&E. They have just been lucky so far that gas explosions have not yet been in a high density residential area.

I totally agree with the house PV solution for sunny San Diego as this would take care of most of our needs. The problem is that the subsidies available to homeowners are not available to renters - which comprise half of the house occupants in SD. Also, licensed contractors will not put them on tile roofs (many in S.D.) as they cannot warranty the installation. Lastly another post showed the paltry payback rate from SDG&E for providing your excess power to the grid during peak times (like 10% of what they charge).

 

[JPWhite]

The discrepancy you describe is comparing diffusion with earthqakes and illustrates the importance of placing waste in a geologically stable formation.

What this illustrates is despite our current knowledge of nuclear waste storage and the geographical stability of our globe, nuclear waste was indeed stored in a location that resulted in it shifting 4 1/2 inches during one earthquake event. Ooops, we made an error, who'd would have known?. Earthquakes are 'rare' in Virginia based on our human timescale, but once every hundred years or so isn't rare at all considered on a larger timescale.

We as a species are simply not as smart as we like to think we are, we simply aren't qualified as a race to mess with nuclear material, there is too much we don't know.

 

[Stoaty]

For you non-believers that nuclear waste can't be neutralized read the following 12 year old research article - and there are others including a small unit about the size of a garage that uses lasers that came out last year. Yeah – this is not fiction. http://www.innovativetech.us/FutureProd-rw.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

That is a "research article"??? Ever heard of "cold fusion"? Just about as believable.

 

[tps]

What this illustrates is despite our current knowledge of nuclear waste storage and the geographical stability of our globe, nuclear waste was indeed stored in a location that resulted in it shifting 4 1/2 inches during one earthquake event. Ooops, we made an error, who'd would have known.

There was no error. This is a temporary storage location, no one believes that this is the place for storing radioactive waste on a long-term basis. Political pressures have been and are currently preventing us from using our best knowledge of how to deal with the the radioactive waste problem. If anything, this illustrates that the issues surrounding technology often become so hopelessly twisted in the popular media that many people have a difficult time understanding not only the problems ascociated with that technology, but with understanding what is a problem and what is not a problem. Take, for example, electric vehicles! (Which moves us back in the direction of the original topic of this thread.)