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Researchers from the University of Florida have discovered certain bacteria on the ocean floor could neutralize massive quantities of industrial carbon dioxide.
Because carbon dioxide, the primary greenhouse gas emitted by human activity, is a key culprit in climate change, scientists from a variety of disciplines have been searching for ways to effectively capture and neutralize the gas.
The UF researchers discovered that an enzyme produced by the bacteria Thiomicrospira crunogena, can convert the harmful gas into a benign compound. The enzyme carbonic anhydrase can actually strip carbon dioxide from organisms, the researchers say.
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Could Deep-sea Bacteria Be the Latest Weapon Against Climate Change?
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It's raisins that make Post Raisin Bran so raisiny ...
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 26 2015, @06:36PM
Not true. Nuclear reactions release something like 3 orders of magnitude more energy than chemical reactions.
However, most of the green movement seems to be firmly against it. If you want to be pedantic, solar energy is in fact nuclear power (the reactor is just 150 Gm away).
(Score: 2) by TrumpetPower! on Monday October 26 2015, @08:26PM
Nuclear energy uses as fuel the most hazardous materials known to humanity, and its wastes are equally hazardous. Getting energy from those fuels requires some extremely sophisticated engineering with all sorts of redundant fail-safes that still aren't guaranteed to work. You will never, ever have a nuclear power generator in your home.
Solar panels are made from the same stuff as your smartphone that you carry in your pocket, only they're much less complicated. And they last forever and don't need any maintenance. The basic technology is trivial, once you know what you're doing; you could give some instructions to an Iron Age craftsman and he'd be able to make simple, "good enough" solar panels.
But all that would be meaningless if nuclear were significantly cheaper than solar...except that solar is already at price parity with nuclear, and solar prices are plummeting whilst nuclear prices are climbing.
Nuclear has a certain Buck Rogers "Gee, whiz!" factor going for it. But it loses -- and loses big time -- on economics, on safety, on arms proliferation, on scalability, on capital investment, on regulation, on NIMBY...on pretty much everything except for the ten-year-old boy cool-o-meter.
Cheers,
b&
All but God can prove this sentence true.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 26 2015, @09:18PM
...thorium
(Score: 2) by TrumpetPower! on Monday October 26 2015, @10:20PM
You will never have a thorium reactor in your garage next to your water heater. No commercially viable thorium reactor has ever been put into production, and I am unaware of any plans to sell thorium-generated power on any grid anywhere.
In stark contrast, I'm right now sitting in a very unremarkable suburban home with a bunch of panels on the roof. The system generates about half again as much power as I actually use -- enough to power the electric vehicle I hope to drive someday. And it's the best financial investment I've ever made, with a guaranteed no-risk payoff of about 10% annual returns...for the rest of my life. Even better, I'm at zero risk for energy inflation.
Again, sure...it doesn't have the Buck Rogers sex appeal that thorium has for ten-year-old boys. Then again, it's real and it's really here and it really works
b&
All but God can prove this sentence true.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 26 2015, @10:22PM
Original AC here:
I was thinking what the other AC was: thorium.
If your nuclear reactor design is producing waste that is dangerous to handle for hundreds or thousands of years; obviously you are leaving a lot of residual energy on the table.
As far as I can tell, the main problem with breeder reactors is the nuclear weapon proliferation concerns (which may not actually be grounded in reality).
BTW, I case you were not aware, molten salt reactors operate at atmospheric pressure (no pressure vessel required). Thermal runaway can be avoided in the event of a power failure with a "frost plug" that drains the reactor in the absence of active cooling.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by TrumpetPower! on Monday October 26 2015, @11:17PM
You're still missing all the big points.
Nobody's actually built the reactor you're proposing. Even if the wastes are edible, the fuel is some seriously nasty shit. You'll never have one in your home, and no industrial-scale nuclear plant is going to be able to get by without all sorts of insane amounts of overhead -- security to protect the fuel from terrorists, including ones flying planes into the structure, if nothing else.
But millions and millions of people are already running their homes and businesses off of rooftop solar, and at a significant profit compared to utility-generated power.
You're proposing some exotic nonexistent fantasy as a solution when we've already got in widespread production something profitable and barely more technologically complicated or inherently dangerous than a window....
b&
All but God can prove this sentence true.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 27 2015, @12:08AM
One of the thorium videos I saw claimed that new coal-fired plants being built in china are designed to allow an easy thorium retrofit. Was not able to find a direct quote to that effect in a quick search.
I doubt molten-salt reactors will need any more security than existing coal-fired power-plants (which currently produce more nuclear waste that any thorium plant would (nuclear reaction vs chemical reaction again)).
(Score: 2) by TrumpetPower! on Tuesday October 27 2015, @01:14AM
Erm...you still don't get it.
Thorium is crazy vaporware. Solar is in widespread production.
How 'bout a software analogy?
Thorium is GNU HURD. Solar is Linux.
Or, I know -- everybody loves car analogies.
Thorium is a mythological hydrogen fool cell car that gets you 150 MPG and you fill up from your garden hose. Solar is the Nissan Leaf or BMW i3 or Chevy Volt or Mitsubishi i MiEV or Renault Zoe or Kia Soul EV or Fiat 500e (or many others) that you can drive home from the dealership today and plug in to any outlet to recharge as soon as you get home.
Does that help get the point across?
b&
All but God can prove this sentence true.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 27 2015, @03:01AM
Without molten salt reactors, hydrogen will probably be generated from fossil fuels for a very long time.
The main problem with electric vehicles is that you have to store the reaction products: which adds weight. While electric vehicles are now good enough for typical commutes, they will likely always be impractical for long road trips or taxi/delivery services running all day.
Molten salt reactors make it possible to close the carbon cycle with respect to diesel (I guess bio-diesel already counts, but food-to-fuel is problematic). Call it vapourware if you want, but I think it can already be argued that natural gas is now renewable (via landfill capture).
Note: I found the toyota AD about this [youtube.com] not credible because they really glossed over the difference in energy produced by chemical and nuclear reactions. We will never have nuclear powered cars since there is no way to shield the gamma rays and alpha particles without a lot of mass. Also notice in that video that Marty fills his pick-up with trash, yet they still needs to supplement the collected "bio-gas" (3:08) with fossil fuel from "the grid" (3:12).
In short, hydrogen-powered cars will be burning fossil fuels until such time as molten-salt reactors become a reality, At that point, you might as well just use diesel for the better energy density.
According to this video, you do not get (heavy) rare-earth minerals [youtube.com] without Thorium.
(Score: 2) by TrumpetPower! on Tuesday October 27 2015, @03:29AM
Teslas are already perfectly suited to long cross-country road trips, and would make awesome taxis.
Today.
Not some vague distant future, but today.
And the rest of your post...is vaporware that nobody is actually doing. In stark contrast to the solar panels I myself have on my very own rooftop.
Again, today.
If somebody figures out a way to make a profit from thorium, and do so in a way that's not pushing hazardous externalities onto the public, fantastic. But you know when people are doing that?
Not today.
b&
All but God can prove this sentence true.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 27 2015, @06:44AM
Industry won't touch thorium because of all the regulations around it being a nuclear per-cursor material (and is regulated under the nuclear non-proliferation treaty).
As for the Tesla, I think think that the 85kWh version may work as a taxi. Would require over-night charging (on a fast charger) (and no "insane mode"), but the driver needs to sleep sometime.
My second link speaks directly to the stuff you say is here today, and not some speculation. "Green" technologies are being built in China because that is the only country willing to mine thorium. As a result, they control the vast majority of the rare earth market.
(Score: 2) by Aiwendil on Friday October 30 2015, @11:28AM
The Indians (asia) did the math more than a decade ago - it is possible to use thorium in phwr/candu-reactors (the Indian AHWR is the optimization of this track).
Just pointing out that there are reactors in commercial use today that can utilize thorium (but it is easier to use uranium)