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After a week of limited coverage of "unimaginable levels" of radiation inside the remains of collapsed Unit 2 at Fukushima[...], Nuclear-News.net reported February 11 that radiation levels are actually significantly higher than "unimaginable".
Continuous, intense radiation at 530 sieverts an hour (4 sieverts is a lethal level), was widely reported in early February 2017--as if this were a new phenomenon. It's not. Three reactors at Fukushima melted down during the earthquake-tsunami disaster on March 3, 2011, and the meltdowns never stopped. Radiation levels have been out of control ever since. As Fairewinds Energy Education noted in an email February 10:
Although this robotic measurement just occurred, this high radiation reading was anticipated and has existed inside the damaged Unit 2 atomic reactor since the disaster began nearly 6 years ago.... As Fairewinds has said for 6 years, there are no easy solutions because groundwater is in direct contact with the nuclear corium (melted fuel) at Fukushima Daiichi.
What's new (and not very new, at that) is the official acknowledgment of the highest radiation levels yet measured there, by a factor of seven (the previously measured high was 73 sieverts an hour in 2012). The highest radiation level measured at Chernobyl was 300 sieverts an hour.
[...] This coverage relates only to Unit 2's melted reactor core. There is no reliable news of the condition of the melted reactor cores in two other units.
[...] Whatever is actually going on at Fukushima is not good, and has horrifying possibilities. It is little comfort to have the perpetrator of the catastrophe, TEPCO, in charge of fixing it, especially when the Japanese government is more an enabler of cover-up and denial than any kind of seeker of truth or protector of its people.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by bradley13 on Wednesday February 22 2017, @06:51AM
...use a combination of photopanels and energy storage...
Riiiight. You don't understand how much energy we use. There was an article a while back that ran some numbers. One example I remember: Suppose just the USA wanted to run purely off of solar, which means storing enough energy to provide electricity overnight: There is not enough lead in all the known resources in the world to provide enough lead-acid batteries. Don't like lead-acid, fine, you'll have even more problems with batteries reliant on rare earths. Pump water into hydroelectric dams - but no one will let you flood hundreds, maybe thousands of valleys.
Solar is a great supplement during the day, when energy usage is naturally higher. People who pump their excess into the grid, and draw at night? That's great for them, but it only works because there are so few of them. They are basically using the grid for "storage", which is to say that non-solar solutions have to spin up to cover the difference.
The total energy consumption of the world averages something on the order of 2-3 terawatts, increasing steadily as standards of living improve. If electric cars really hit, electricity needs will rise even faster. There is no "green" solution to store that level of power, not even close.
Fukushima is a bit of a mess, yes. Old design, insufficient backup systems, on the coast of a tsunami-prone country - gee, let's not do that again. These horrifying radiation levels? They are inside the containment vessel. That's why there is a containment vessel, after all, to contain problems. Radiation outside the reactor is down to negligible levels - Japan has already cleared people to return to large parts of the evacuated area.
While not ideal, nuclear is as green as it gets for providing terawatt-scale base load.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday February 22 2017, @07:45AM
I couldn't care less even if I'd want to. With the battery installed (and paid for), my home will contribute less to the energy required by this world
Let me help your imagination, you seem to be in a deficit of it (otherwise I can't explain why you are limiting the energy storage solutions available)
Other chemistries and/or storage solutions are possible (e.g. flow battery [wikipedia.org], some with an order of magnitude higher power than lithium batteries [wikipedia.org])
Just build some close to Las Vegas, won't you?
Should I continue?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 4, Interesting) by bradley13 on Wednesday February 22 2017, @09:53AM
Sure, fine, let's take just one of your examples where you have some specific numbers: "A 100-megawatt turbine would need a tank of about 9.1 metres (30 ft) tall and 24 metres (79 ft) in diameter to drive it for four hours by this design."
Then think terawatt scale, because the world runs on terawatts of energy. You need to store energy for 12 hours overnight. So you need 30,000 of those tanks and 30,000 of those generators per terawatt. Among other minor difficulties, that means drumming up 1/10 of a cubic kilometer of sodium nitrate, which is approximately the total estimate of easily accessible world reserves.
That's the problem: scale. All of your solutions are fine for small scale stuff. When you are talking about storing terawatt-hours, no currently known solution scales to that level.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday February 22 2017, @02:40PM
Huh, you think small scale and replicated locality (at limit, each backyard has one) is not good enough, mmm?
Ok, tell you what, let's go full scale. My turn now to fool around.
I'll take another example in my list, Chlorella [wikipedia.org] - requires shallow warm seawater, CO2, sunlight and trace minerals. Photosynthetic conversion rate for Chlorella at 8% efficiency, 70% conversion to lipids.
You know what? I'll put the photosynthetic conversion rate to 2%, to amount for the extra energy one would need to operate the entire complex (water pumping, filtration, etc). I hope you'll agree 75% of operational costs and 25% net would be a good enough start hypothesis.
So, the solar energy stored by chlorella-derived biodiesel is 1.4% (2% of 70%) of the incoming solar flux, OK with you as an approximation?
Now, every sq.meter of Earth receives approx 1kW solar energy at normal incidence. Over the course of a day, let's estimate 1sqm of Sahara desert will capture 3kWh (will capture much more, but let's be generous). So every sqm cultivated with Chlorella (in covered ponds or transparent pipes) will result in a 1.4%*3kWh=42Wh worth of biofuel.
Now, Sahara desert has a surface of 9.4e6 sq km=9.4e12 sqm. If you'd use its entire surface, you'll get roughly 0.4e+15 Wh worth of Chlorella biofuel/day = 1.4e+18 J/day.
Given that the energy consumption of the entire world in 2013 is estimated to 3.89e+20 J [wikipedia.org] I'd say Sahara can work for 300days per year to produce all the energy the entire worlds needs, than take the rest of 65 days as a holiday and relax wherever she likes - perhaps paying a visit to her friend, the Nevada desert, to have some good time at the blackjack table. 65 day/year is a vacation many of us would love to have, isn't it?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Wednesday February 22 2017, @07:56PM
Somebody has a math problem. You state the energy consumption (in 2013) was 3.89e+20J and your proposal only generates 1.3e+18J Look again at the exponents and clarify, you obviously didn't mean that so something was botched as you transferred the math from the calculator to the input box.
Now spitball the cost to cover the ENTIRE Sahara with collectors and be sure to factor in the disapproval of the current inhabitants... people who already have some violent tendencies... BEFORE some elite Westerners come rolling to displace them from their ancestral homelands. But iron legions of the damned to brutally suppress the locals aren't cheap.
Now comes the hard part. Try to guess what the effect of totally changing such a large area of the Earth will have on the local climate. A lot of people live fairly near to the Sahara, shifting wind and rain patterns will have a cost, they will certainly sue to be made whole.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday February 22 2017, @09:47PM
And my proposal generates 1.3e+18J /day and the energy consumed in an entire year is 3.89e+20J.
The last I checked, the year has in excess of 300 days.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Thursday February 23 2017, @04:38AM
Ok, I missed the shift in units. Knew you had actually worked some numbers there.
After pondering a few hours though, I find it amazing how people fret about some CO2 emissions that are inside the recorded geological variation and then many of the same folks will calmly discuss paving the entire Sahara like it was a viable idea without consequences. And all that plastic tubing? You aren't going to like being reminded of where that stuff comes from. Hint: there is a lot of it under that sand.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday February 23 2017, @05:15AM
Heh, did I tell you I'm a selfish bastard? I think I did.
My mindset: if you have enough energy, many other things are simple (or simpler anyway). If you can get that energy without having to depend on someone all the time, it is only you to be responsible on the success/failure of whatever you are trying to achieve. The fact that this independence also imply a degree of sustainability (because otherwise you'd be dependent on something which may be gone when you expect this the least) is secondary.
Hah! Don't you believe for a second that I was doing anything but fooling around - such a thing would have more engineering, technological and organisational problems that the hyperloop. Take it as intellectual masturbation to show that theoretically, one would have enough "waste surface" and resources on this Earth to sustain "solar energy capture" by using Chlorella alone. I did not suggest this is the way to go, otherwise why would I have listed other ways of energy storage?
If you have and can control enough energy, you don't need it: you'll synthesize hydrocarbons out of thin air (with CO2) and water.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 23 2017, @04:22PM
He's a shrill shill this jmorri man, a shrill shill indeed!
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday February 22 2017, @10:03PM
Somebody missed "My turn now to fool around.".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by Nobuddy on Thursday February 23 2017, @05:35PM
we already have 30,000 of these and more. Our water supply relies heavily on water towers. re-purpose them as energy storage during low water use times- at night.
(Score: 2) by WalksOnDirt on Wednesday February 22 2017, @02:31PM
I've never heard of a battery using rare earths. I'm sure it is possible but I don't see why anyone would want large quantities of them.