1) dirt cheap, hell it's a waste product of some industries
2) extremely abundant compared to uranium
3) not likely to cause a political shitstorm if you start building them in countries you might otherwise not want access to large amounts of uranium because
4) its technology can't be adapted for use toward weapons, not to mention
5) they're much easier to failsafe against nuclear meltdown and
6) they don't take up as much space because they don't need the same kind of containment building.
Eh, I sort of thing thorium is overhyped. It's more abundant, but we're not exactly running low on uranium right now anyway, and a modern nuclear plant just isn't going to melt down regardless of what fuel you use.
The one real advantage seems to be that it's less of a weapons proliferation risk. Wikipedia also mentions that it produces less waste, but waste storage is a political and not an engineering problem right now anyway, so I'm not sure how much that helps.
I do think nuclear is a big part of the solution to our energy problems, but I'd be perfectly happy to see more uranium fission plants built while we test thorium cycles--at least in stable parts of the world where we're not worried about weapons proliferation.
Electric cars is not a large scale option unless we get some new tech for batteries because there isnt enough litium to replace the current fleet of cars in the world.
Its a shame because electricity generation is not a problem (coal alone could do it).
Keep in mind that I'm not terribly well-informed on this subject, but I remember hearing that using electricity created by coal power plants to power electric cars would be more environmentally unfriendly than using coal for electricity and oil for cars.
This is more or less bullshit.
It is much easier to enforce and implement emissions scrubbing at a few hundred stationary coal power stations, then it is to try and do so for literally millions of private vehicles in various states of disrepair.
Eh, I sort of thing thorium is overhyped. It's more abundant, but we're not exactly running low on uranium right now anyway, and a modern nuclear plant just isn't going to melt down regardless of what fuel you use.
The one real advantage seems to be that it's less of a weapons proliferation risk. Wikipedia also mentions that it produces less waste, but waste storage is a political and not an engineering problem right now anyway, so I'm not sure how much that helps.
I do think nuclear is a big part of the solution to our energy problems, but I'd be perfectly happy to see more uranium fission plants built while we test thorium cycles--at least in stable parts of the world where we're not worried about weapons proliferation.
Isn't the whole issue with us not adopting nuclear a political problem, not an engineering one?
Eh, I sort of thing thorium is overhyped. It's more abundant, but we're not exactly running low on uranium right now anyway, and a modern nuclear plant just isn't going to melt down regardless of what fuel you use.
The one real advantage seems to be that it's less of a weapons proliferation risk. Wikipedia also mentions that it produces less waste, but waste storage is a political and not an engineering problem right now anyway, so I'm not sure how much that helps.
I do think nuclear is a big part of the solution to our energy problems, but I'd be perfectly happy to see more uranium fission plants built while we test thorium cycles--at least in stable parts of the world where we're not worried about weapons proliferation.
Yes, yes we are. We've been exceeding uranium extraction for something like a decade now, relying on old decommissioned missiles.
While it's true that there physically exists plenty of uranium, it needs to be found and extracted.
I believe the dip in prices is when we got a deal for a couple of hundred decommissioned Russian nukes. I mean this shouldn't be seen as a hard impediment to nuclear power, as the uranium is out there, but thorium is a damned fine option and in the long run will be significantly cheaper.
The problem with electric cars is that electric cars suck ass. All the cheap electricity in the world doesn't change that.
Honestly doing some reading on it I don't see why everyone is so gung ho on thorium. It's only real advantage is fewer long term waste isotopes, which while a BIG advantage, isn't really what keeps US nuke plants from being built. A rod you have to seal off for 1000 years or 10,000 year isn't really a big difference in decision making.
Seems like everything thorium is good for a uranium FBR does as well, since that's basically what a thorium reactor is. And since the uranium side is so much more matured technologically, using it seems a much easier/faster route.
Thorium is absurdly common and refining it into usable fuel is pretty simple and cheap. Uranium is neither. Thorium also does not pose a proliferation risk, and so the attendant oversight costs that requires can be cut. They're as safe as PBRs without the necessity for the weird fuel shape and the issues that causes. The overall plants themselves are far safer because you don't have to keep the thing under pressure and steam and all that attendant bullshit, it's not going to explode no matter what you try to do with it.
The biggest benefit, by far, is that they're way the hell cheaper to build and maintain.
In theory, no one has commercial scale Thorium reactors yet.
The problem with electric cars is that electric cars suck ass. All the cheap electricity in the world doesn't change that.
Honestly doing some reading on it I don't see why everyone is so gung ho on thorium. It's only real advantage is fewer long term waste isotopes, which while a BIG advantage, isn't really what keeps US nuke plants from being built. A rod you have to seal off for 1000 years or 10,000 year isn't really a big difference in decision making.
Seems like everything thorium is good for a uranium FBR does as well, since that's basically what a thorium reactor is. And since the uranium side is so much more matured technologically, using it seems a much easier/faster route.
Thorium is absurdly common and refining it into usable fuel is pretty simple and cheap. Uranium is neither. Thorium also does not pose a proliferation risk, and so the attendant oversight costs that requires can be cut. They're as safe as PBRs without the necessity for the weird fuel shape and the issues that causes. The overall plants themselves are far safer because you don't have to keep the thing under pressure and steam and all that attendant bullshit, it's not going to explode no matter what you try to do with it.
The biggest benefit, by far, is that they're way the hell cheaper to build and maintain.
In theory, no one has commercial scale Thorium reactors yet.
Yeah, I was going to say. India is looking at them in a big way because they have a hell of a lot of thorium (and almost no local uranium), but they're the only country that has anything beyond a test reactor planned at the moment.
The topic of thorium reactors is very intresting but its not really relevant to the thread. Electricity generation is not a problem and thorium reactors are not going to be small enough to put into cars.
Unless...
You think thorium reactors could be made small and cheap enough for civilian ships? Now that could be a game changer at least for sea transport.
The problem between electricity and cars remain in the battery department however.
The topic of thorium reactors is very intresting but its not really relevant to the thread. Electricity generation is not a problem and thorium reactors are not going to be small enough to put into cars.
Unless...
You think thorium reactors could be made small and cheap enough for civilian ships? Now that could be a game changer at least for sea transport.
The problem between electricity and cars remain in the battery department however.
Depends on the reactor type you wish to use. If you want a thorium reactor small enough for ships and planes, you could use a Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor; an initial prototype proved that a molten salt reactor could be small enough to fit onto an airplane through the Aircraft Reactor Experiment.
The topic of thorium reactors is very intresting but its not really relevant to the thread. Electricity generation is not a problem and thorium reactors are not going to be small enough to put into cars.
Unless...
You think thorium reactors could be made small and cheap enough for civilian ships? Now that could be a game changer at least for sea transport.
The problem between electricity and cars remain in the battery department however.
Not familiar with ships, are they mostly steam-turbine driven, generators running electric motors, or direct drive shafts?
e:
I guess that really is more of a costing issue though. They put PWRs in submarines which are way more space sensitive, and you have to account for all the bunker space you no longer need. The problem is thorium would still be a hot fuel(remote handling only etc), so a leak is still a huge fucking deal.
The topic of thorium reactors is very intresting but its not really relevant to the thread. Electricity generation is not a problem and thorium reactors are not going to be small enough to put into cars.
Unless...
You think thorium reactors could be made small and cheap enough for civilian ships? Now that could be a game changer at least for sea transport.
The problem between electricity and cars remain in the battery department however.
Widespread use of LFTR plants for electricity generation would make charging electric cars (or running electric rail) absurdly cheap and emissions-free.
Eh, I sort of thing thorium is overhyped. It's more abundant, but we're not exactly running low on uranium right now anyway, and a modern nuclear plant just isn't going to melt down regardless of what fuel you use.
The one real advantage seems to be that it's less of a weapons proliferation risk. Wikipedia also mentions that it produces less waste, but waste storage is a political and not an engineering problem right now anyway, so I'm not sure how much that helps.
I do think nuclear is a big part of the solution to our energy problems, but I'd be perfectly happy to see more uranium fission plants built while we test thorium cycles--at least in stable parts of the world where we're not worried about weapons proliferation.
Yes, yes we are. We've been exceeding uranium extraction for something like a decade now, relying on old decommissioned missiles.
While it's true that there physically exists plenty of uranium, it needs to be found and extracted.
You can reprocess spent nuclear fuel into new nuclear fuel with a breeder reactor. Its not even all that hard, and the yield is high enough to keep us in business for a while. There's a proliferation issue that would need solved, but its an engineering issue (and, I believe, already solved for some designs).
As far as shrinking reactors down, you can probably get them down to a size that would fit into a semi, but you wouldn't be able to carry much cargo. Trains would work though. Simplest solution if you want to use reactors is just to use them in place of current power plants and run all your transportation stuff on batteries, everything else is just going to be a pain to build and use (to say nothing of what you do about the public). That has the nice benefit of being relatively straightforward once you can generate the power cheaply.
Of course, there's no way you're getting people to put up with a nuclear reactor near their city until the lights start going out in hospitals, so you're going to need to come up with a clever way to rename everything involved just to get traction.
The topic of thorium reactors is very intresting but its not really relevant to the thread. Electricity generation is not a problem and thorium reactors are not going to be small enough to put into cars.
Unless...
You think thorium reactors could be made small and cheap enough for civilian ships? Now that could be a game changer at least for sea transport.
The problem between electricity and cars remain in the battery department however.
Widespread use of LFTR plants for electricity generation would make charging electric cars (or running electric rail) absurdly cheap and emissions-free.
Pretty much. Sure you can't put it in a car but makes cars and trucks more fuel efficient isn't the only way cut down on oil consumption. Making non-fossil fuel powered modes of transportation more accessible is another way to lower the amount of oil that is consumed.
Apparently the fission products that LFTR produces are mostly P-238.
P-238 is used to construct atomic batteries for spacecraft. There is literally not one gram of it left on the planet.
That's cause it has a half life of 87 years, so it has to be made synthetically. It's not like we mined all of it, we just stopped making it. You can extract it from normal light water reactor fuel rods, we have just stopped doing so, probably cause the Russians were willing to sell it cheaper than we could make it here.
Really if you are looking at non fossil generation in a large scale, the best horse to back is something like S-PRISM, or really any of the Gen IV nuke techs. Thorium is no where near mature enough as a technology.
Apparently the fission products that LFTR produces are mostly P-238.
P-238 is used to construct atomic batteries for spacecraft. There is literally not one gram of it left on the planet.
LFTR is naturally resistant to weapons proliferation: Yea, it produces plutonium (very little) as a byproduct, but it's Pu-238, which is considered a contaminate because of the spontaneous neutron emissions which screws around with the fission and timing.
Also, currently, regulations prohibit the consumption of more than 10% of current solid nuclear fuel, so 90% of it is classed waste (for enrichment concerns). You could take all of this "waste" that we have accumulated, and then feed it to the LFTR, which would fuel us for a couple thousand years, also means there's less waste (actual) around and what waste is created (cesium-137 and strontium-90), in about 300 years or so you could dig it back up and it would be less radioactive than the uranium we're currently trying to dispose of (which has a half-life of several hundred thousand years).
Seriously, LFTR is awesome and it's a shame we went solid instead of liquid, which would be easier to manage. Also, incidents like Fukushima and three-mile island and chernobyl just aren't possible with the way LFTR works. I don't see it as the only thing we should be doing to get us off oil, but part of the solution.
Well yeah, but a big part of the reason we built the first nuke plants was proliferation. We wanted plutonium for bombs.
That and making a LFTR has a bevy metallurgical concerns. Really high temps like that are still a bitch to deal with today, let alone 60 years ago when this shit was on the drawing board. All that salt , and the various nuclear products really can fuck things.
And then you need to re-process the salt, and store all the salt by-products. Which in many ways are a lot harder to deal with than spent fuel rods, since they are liquid/gas. Leak some fuel pool water and its a big deal, leak some cesium-hexafloride, or uranium-hexafloride(a gas), and you are done.
So many processes and such would need to be developed, that the timeline for thorium reactors, let alone LFTR is way beyond the Peak Oil, You Are Fucked Here * point. If we had kept on it the last 40 years, we'd be there, but so much of the tech behind this is pure drawing board.
I wonder if Arizona's crazy right-wing government would be willing to sell most of the state's land to a solar thermal company. It would pit their hatred of green energy against their love of privatization.
Though now that I think of it, maybe all of Arizona should just be for solar power generation. New Mexico and Nevada, too. The states are literally desert; the only reason people grow crops there and live in any sizable numbers is the unsustainable pumping of groundwater.
It's actually a pretty smart idea. There's no reason to grow crops there, much better to harvest energy there and move it with a smart grid to somewhere else. Arizona is an excellent place for nuclear power too.
Actually, there is a very good reason to grow crops there; you can grow them in the winter. It's the same reason California irrigates the crap out of Imperial Valley.
In another thread, I mentioned the obscene amount of diesel burned by semi-trucks (80-200 gallons per day depending on if it is a solo or team truck) and asked for alternatives. I am still curious what kind of solutions there may be.
Rail is the kneejerk response to that question, but it would mean an end to overnight shipping and might have some impact on our ability to distribute food. After talking with some of the drivers more familiar with the intermodal yards than I, I have found out that a trailer can spend a week waiting at the yards, rather than the two days thought it did. There are also other problems, like much more complicated dispatching, a lack of sufficient infrastructure (both in terms of rails and intermodal facilities) and the fact that "last mile" can still mean several hundred miles on a truck going from the intermodal facility to the destination (especially in rural areas).
CNG is out of the question because the energy density is far too low. A long haul truck carries 200 gallons of diesel. CNG has 1/4 the energy density of diesel fuel, requires a heavily reinforced (i.e. much heavier) tank and would take a very long time to refuel the truck. That doesn't even get into the issues of what happens when a 10 ton tractor (possibly attached to a 30 ton trailer) with a pair of exposed 3,000 psi tanks hits something, rolls over or catches fire (one of the most overlooked advantages to diesel fuel is that outside of a combustion chamber, it isn't likely to do much but burn).
There are some experiments going on with LNG tanks, but the expense of both the fuel and the vehicles has limited the numbers. LNG only requires 60%-70% more volume to an equivalent amount of diesel and, but since it has to be stored at -260 degrees, you need cryogenic fuel tanks. The fuel is at standard pressure, not flammable in the tank and lighter than air when it vaporizes, but I don't know what would happen if a collision were to rupture the tank or in the event of a truck fire (truck brakes have this charming ability to ignite from their own friction heat if overused). If the safety issues can be resolved, this may be our best option with current technology, but the added costs mean that it will take longer for economic pressure to bring it about.
Let not any one pacify his conscience by the delusion that he can do no harm if he takes no part, and forms no opinion.
The topic of thorium reactors is very intresting but its not really relevant to the thread. Electricity generation is not a problem and thorium reactors are not going to be small enough to put into cars.
Unless...
You think thorium reactors could be made small and cheap enough for civilian ships? Now that could be a game changer at least for sea transport.
The problem between electricity and cars remain in the battery department however.
Depends on the reactor type you wish to use. If you want a thorium reactor small enough for ships and planes, you could use a Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor; an initial prototype proved that a molten salt reactor could be small enough to fit onto an airplane through the Aircraft Reactor Experiment.
The idea of nuclear-driven transportation happening is probably highly unlikely due to the catastrophic effects if something should go wrong. A car crash would cause the highways to close down for long times to sanitize the radiation, not to mention an air plane crash.
When I was a kid I wondered why we just didn't hurl all our waste into the sun until someone told me that it would be quite messy when the first shuttle crash would explode trash all over the country
The topic of thorium reactors is very intresting but its not really relevant to the thread. Electricity generation is not a problem and thorium reactors are not going to be small enough to put into cars.
Unless...
You think thorium reactors could be made small and cheap enough for civilian ships? Now that could be a game changer at least for sea transport.
The problem between electricity and cars remain in the battery department however.
Depends on the reactor type you wish to use. If you want a thorium reactor small enough for ships and planes, you could use a Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor; an initial prototype proved that a molten salt reactor could be small enough to fit onto an airplane through the Aircraft Reactor Experiment.
The idea of nuclear-driven transportation happening is probably highly unlikely due to the catastrophic effects if something should go wrong. A car crash would cause the highways to close down for long times to sanitize the radiation, not to mention an air plane crash.
When I was a kid I wondered why we just didn't hurl all our waste into the sun until someone told me that it would be quite messy when the first shuttle crash would explode trash all over the country
Also our current technology for getting stuff into orbit isn't exactly awesome at cargo carrying. Even the biggest rockets can carry, what, a couple of tonnes? A mid sized city alone would be sending up hundreds of trash rockets a year.
Haha, Brazil has like almost all drinkable water in the world, we're the new OPEC in a single country baby!! If you guys send me moneys now, I can start issueing some future water coupons for cheap, what do you think?
Well rail wouldn't be a 100% fix since you still need to take your goods from the rail line and transport them to the location where they will be sold from or the shipping company to ensures it arrives at someone doorsteps. It would certainly be a means cut down on fuel consumption because plenty of stuff has to be shipped long distance to begin with and rail would be a better option.
As I understand it, we could upgrade the truck fleet to more fuel efficient models if there was the political will to do so. Such models have already been designed and I believe put into production outside of the US. The problem is we have special interest groups and a shitty enabling political party that has prevented all efforts to modernize the truck fleet in that regard.
It's still going to be awhile before we can completely drop fossil fuel use and particular oil consumption. It's better to start branching off into alternatives and fuel efficient tech now, while things are relatively cheap instead of later when we start hitting peaks for certain fossil fuels.
Haha, Brazil has like almost all drinkable water in the world, we're the new OPEC in a single country baby!! If you guys send me moneys now, I can start issueing some future water coupons for cheap, what do you think?
No deal, We're looking pretty good on that front in Scotland.
And then you need to re-process the salt, and store all the salt by-products. Which in many ways are a lot harder to deal with than spent fuel rods, since they are liquid/gas. Leak some fuel pool water and its a big deal, leak some cesium-hexafloride, or uranium-hexafloride(a gas), and you are done.
Uranium hexafloride gets cracked as part of the normal fuel cycle. It doesn't need to be disposed of.
The stuff doesn't stay liquid once you allow it to cool, reprocessing mostly involves either shoving the shit in a centrifuge and spinning junk out or chemically separating it (which is a hell of a lot easier to do with liquids than solids anyway,) and the amount of stuff that really needs to be stored as waste rather than being useful byproducts (such as the afforementioned Pu-238) is so small that it's almost not worth talking about.
So many processes and such would need to be developed, that the timeline for thorium reactors, let alone LFTR is way beyond the Peak Oil, You Are Fucked Here * point. If we had kept on it the last 40 years, we'd be there, but so much of the tech behind this is pure drawing board.
I mean, they built a (small scale) one at Oak Ridge and ran it for like five years in the seventies. I'm fairly certain that all domestic commercial nuclear power plants are PWRs based on designs from around that time. Nuke plants aren't getting built now anyway, we may as well do the research.
The topic of thorium reactors is very intresting but its not really relevant to the thread. Electricity generation is not a problem and thorium reactors are not going to be small enough to put into cars.
Unless...
You think thorium reactors could be made small and cheap enough for civilian ships? Now that could be a game changer at least for sea transport.
The problem between electricity and cars remain in the battery department however.
Depends on the reactor type you wish to use. If you want a thorium reactor small enough for ships and planes, you could use a Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor; an initial prototype proved that a molten salt reactor could be small enough to fit onto an airplane through the Aircraft Reactor Experiment.
The idea of nuclear-driven transportation happening is probably highly unlikely due to the catastrophic effects if something should go wrong. A car crash would cause the highways to close down for long times to sanitize the radiation, not to mention an air plane crash.
When I was a kid I wondered why we just didn't hurl all our waste into the sun until someone told me that it would be quite messy when the first shuttle crash would explode trash all over the country
Back in the 50s, Freeman Dyson headed a project to make nuclear powered spaceships. Thrust was generated by detonating a nuclear device beneath the ship, which was originally intended to launch from the ground (i.e. every launch would consist of multiple atmospheric detonations).
As for the mess that a nuclear powered car accident might make, I recall a few years back when a Harrier crashed about a quarter mile from my house in Yuma. They had to seal off the immediate area until they could account for every single round of depleted uranium ammunition loaded on the plane.
Knuckle Dragger on
Let not any one pacify his conscience by the delusion that he can do no harm if he takes no part, and forms no opinion.
Nuclear power isn't beneficial to transportation because you can stick a nuclear reactor in a vehicle, lol. Nuclear power is beneficial to transportation because coal can be liquefied and so can natural gas, both of which are competitors to nuclear in the electricity generation business This isn't even counting electric cars and the added impact on the grid their widespread adoption would have.
That's why electricity generation is a big part of this puzzle, because as long as our other potential sources of liquid fuels are being used for electricity we can't also use them to run cars and trucks.
Well rail wouldn't be a 100% fix since you still need to take your goods from the rail line and transport them to the location where they will be sold from or the shipping company to ensures it arrives at someone doorsteps. It would certainly be a means cut down on fuel consumption because plenty of stuff has to be shipped long distance to begin with and rail would be a better option.
As I understand it, we could upgrade the truck fleet to more fuel efficient models if there was the political will to do so. Such models have already been designed and I believe put into production outside of the US. The problem is we have special interest groups and a shitty enabling political party that has prevented all efforts to modernize the truck fleet in that regard.
It's still going to be awhile before we can completely drop fossil fuel use and particular oil consumption. It's better to start branching off into alternatives and fuel efficient tech now, while things are relatively cheap instead of later when we start hitting peaks for certain fossil fuels.
That was what I meant by 'last mile' delivery. Rail needs population density to be feasible. It's one of the reasons Eastern Australia has such good rail coverage, while Western Australia relies on road trains. It also means transporting the freight spoke-hub, where trucks are running the spokes. Lower population density means support for fewer hubs and, consequently, longer spokes.
Upgrading the truck fleets is a matter of economic incentive, not political will. Fuel is the #1 cost for truck transport (last month, my truck burned $13,000 worth of diesel), and the companies have been actively taking measures to reduce consumption. That is why you don't see nearly as many long nose and cab-over tractors these days; the major carriers are only buying aerodyne models these days (and they are getting lighter every year). Most solo drivers also have APUs (small diesel generators that can power the AC without running the main engine). When I started driving, our fleet was governed at 65 MPH. It is now 62 for most of the fleet, and we receive bonuses for (relatively) high fuel mileage.
Let not any one pacify his conscience by the delusion that he can do no harm if he takes no part, and forms no opinion.
I believe there was an attempt to increase the government standard for fuel consumption for the truck fleet that didn't go anywhere. You argue that it's a financial issue, well if there was a political will to address the problem from both parties, then there would have been an effort to subsidize the purchase of more fuel efficient trucks to speed up the rate that less fuel efficient vehicles are removed from the fleet. I would think in this economic climate that would make plenty of sense in the political sphere. Not only are you reducing pollution and oil consumption, but by doing so you're probably cutting the prices of all good in the process (since transportation cost is factored into the cost of goods). It might not create any jobs but over the course of a year, that could result in some significant savings for the average family.
Nuclear power isn't beneficial to transportation because you can stick a nuclear reactor in a vehicle, lol. Nuclear power is beneficial to transportation because coal can be liquefied and so can natural gas, both of which are competitors to nuclear in the electricity generation business This isn't even counting electric cars and the added impact on the grid their widespread adoption would have.
That's why electricity generation is a big part of this puzzle, because as long as our other potential sources of liquid fuels are being used for electricity we can't also use them to run cars and trucks.
Not only that, but nuclear power opens up the options for fuels that are not necessarily efficient to produce, but are easily transported and have less environmental impact.
I believe there was an attempt to increase the government standard for fuel consumption for the truck fleet that didn't go anywhere. You argue that it's a financial issue, well if there was a political will to address the problem from both parties, then there would have been an effort to subsidize the purchase of more fuel efficient trucks to speed up the rate that less fuel efficient vehicles are removed from the fleet. I would think in this economic climate that would make plenty of sense in the political sphere. Not only are you reducing pollution and oil consumption, but by doing so you're probably cutting the prices of all good in the process (since transportation cost is factored into the cost of goods). It might not create any jobs but over the course of a year, that could result in some significant savings for the average family.
Right now, the average age of the 2-3 million class 8 trucks on the road is about 7 years. For the big fleets, it is far less; Walmart is around 3 years, my employer is around 2. Exactly how long do you think a truck should be on the road before requiring replacement?
Let not any one pacify his conscience by the delusion that he can do no harm if he takes no part, and forms no opinion.
A potential partial solution for the truck problem could be Siemen's eHighway:
[snip]
Only problem with this is, why not just use a train?
I think the idea is that it's cheaper to put up an electric grid on already existing roads than to expand and build more rail. Those trucks are also designed to be able to run for a few hours on batteries so they can go into city centers, deliver whatever and then get back up on the highway and recharge. Trains always require you to load everything up on trucks for the last bit anyway.
I do find it somewhat ironic though that this is an initiative from two German companies since they recently decided to abandon nuclear power totally (ohnoes fukushima happened, what if there's a tsunami here in Schwartzwald ). I think they'll be having some trouble making enough juice for a fleet of electric trucks.
Electric cars is not a large scale option unless we get some new tech for batteries because there isnt enough litium to replace the current fleet of cars in the world.
Its a shame because electricity generation is not a problem (coal alone could do it).
Keep in mind that I'm not terribly well-informed on this subject, but I remember hearing that using electricity created by coal power plants to power electric cars would be more environmentally unfriendly than using coal for electricity and oil for cars.
This is more or less bullshit.
It is much easier to enforce and implement emissions scrubbing at a few hundred stationary coal power stations, then it is to try and do so for literally millions of private vehicles in various states of disrepair.
I've heard of the efficiency argument, though I don't know if it's true. The idea being that the carbon footprint of burning coal in a power plant is still smaller than burning gas for cars.
Eh, I sort of thing thorium is overhyped. It's more abundant, but we're not exactly running low on uranium right now anyway, and a modern nuclear plant just isn't going to melt down regardless of what fuel you use.
The one real advantage seems to be that it's less of a weapons proliferation risk. Wikipedia also mentions that it produces less waste, but waste storage is a political and not an engineering problem right now anyway, so I'm not sure how much that helps.
I do think nuclear is a big part of the solution to our energy problems, but I'd be perfectly happy to see more uranium fission plants built while we test thorium cycles--at least in stable parts of the world where we're not worried about weapons proliferation.
Yes, yes we are. We've been exceeding uranium extraction for something like a decade now, relying on old decommissioned missiles.
While it's true that there physically exists plenty of uranium, it needs to be found and extracted.
I believe the dip in prices is when we got a deal for a couple of hundred decommissioned Russian nukes. I mean this shouldn't be seen as a hard impediment to nuclear power, as the uranium is out there, but thorium is a damned fine option and in the long run will be significantly cheaper.
Okayyyy, but how much of that is simply us not wanting to extract uranium in the first place?
I think the idea is that it's cheaper to put up an electric grid on already existing roads than to expand and build more rail. Those trucks are also designed to be able to run for a few hours on batteries so they can go into city centers, deliver whatever and then get back up on the highway and recharge. Trains always require you to load everything up on trucks for the last bit anyway.
I do find it somewhat ironic though that this is an initiative from two German companies since they recently decided to abandon nuclear power totally (ohnoes fukushima happened, what if there's a tsunami here in Schwartzwald ). I think they'll be having some trouble making enough juice for a fleet of electric trucks.
The whole grid would need to be upgraded, as it doesn't function all that well for even the load that we currently have. This is a common complaint you'll see levied against the push for electric vehicles.
Posts
1) dirt cheap, hell it's a waste product of some industries
2) extremely abundant compared to uranium
3) not likely to cause a political shitstorm if you start building them in countries you might otherwise not want access to large amounts of uranium because
4) its technology can't be adapted for use toward weapons, not to mention
5) they're much easier to failsafe against nuclear meltdown and
6) they don't take up as much space because they don't need the same kind of containment building.
The one real advantage seems to be that it's less of a weapons proliferation risk. Wikipedia also mentions that it produces less waste, but waste storage is a political and not an engineering problem right now anyway, so I'm not sure how much that helps.
I do think nuclear is a big part of the solution to our energy problems, but I'd be perfectly happy to see more uranium fission plants built while we test thorium cycles--at least in stable parts of the world where we're not worried about weapons proliferation.
This is more or less bullshit.
It is much easier to enforce and implement emissions scrubbing at a few hundred stationary coal power stations, then it is to try and do so for literally millions of private vehicles in various states of disrepair.
Yes, yes we are. We've been exceeding uranium extraction for something like a decade now, relying on old decommissioned missiles.
While it's true that there physically exists plenty of uranium, it needs to be found and extracted.
I believe the dip in prices is when we got a deal for a couple of hundred decommissioned Russian nukes. I mean this shouldn't be seen as a hard impediment to nuclear power, as the uranium is out there, but thorium is a damned fine option and in the long run will be significantly cheaper.
In theory, no one has commercial scale Thorium reactors yet.
I made a game, it has penguins in it. It's pay what you like on Gumroad.
Currently Ebaying Nothing at all but I might do in the future.
Yeah, I was going to say. India is looking at them in a big way because they have a hell of a lot of thorium (and almost no local uranium), but they're the only country that has anything beyond a test reactor planned at the moment.
Unless...
You think thorium reactors could be made small and cheap enough for civilian ships? Now that could be a game changer at least for sea transport.
The problem between electricity and cars remain in the battery department however.
Depends on the reactor type you wish to use. If you want a thorium reactor small enough for ships and planes, you could use a Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor; an initial prototype proved that a molten salt reactor could be small enough to fit onto an airplane through the Aircraft Reactor Experiment.
Not familiar with ships, are they mostly steam-turbine driven, generators running electric motors, or direct drive shafts?
e:
I guess that really is more of a costing issue though. They put PWRs in submarines which are way more space sensitive, and you have to account for all the bunker space you no longer need. The problem is thorium would still be a hot fuel(remote handling only etc), so a leak is still a huge fucking deal.
Widespread use of LFTR plants for electricity generation would make charging electric cars (or running electric rail) absurdly cheap and emissions-free.
As far as shrinking reactors down, you can probably get them down to a size that would fit into a semi, but you wouldn't be able to carry much cargo. Trains would work though. Simplest solution if you want to use reactors is just to use them in place of current power plants and run all your transportation stuff on batteries, everything else is just going to be a pain to build and use (to say nothing of what you do about the public). That has the nice benefit of being relatively straightforward once you can generate the power cheaply.
Of course, there's no way you're getting people to put up with a nuclear reactor near their city until the lights start going out in hospitals, so you're going to need to come up with a clever way to rename everything involved just to get traction.
Pretty much. Sure you can't put it in a car but makes cars and trucks more fuel efficient isn't the only way cut down on oil consumption. Making non-fossil fuel powered modes of transportation more accessible is another way to lower the amount of oil that is consumed.
battletag: Millin#1360
Nice chart to figure out how honest a news source is.
Apparently the fission products that LFTR produces are mostly P-238.
P-238 is used to construct atomic batteries for spacecraft. There is literally not one gram of it left on the planet.
That's cause it has a half life of 87 years, so it has to be made synthetically. It's not like we mined all of it, we just stopped making it. You can extract it from normal light water reactor fuel rods, we have just stopped doing so, probably cause the Russians were willing to sell it cheaper than we could make it here.
Really if you are looking at non fossil generation in a large scale, the best horse to back is something like S-PRISM, or really any of the Gen IV nuke techs. Thorium is no where near mature enough as a technology.
LFTR is naturally resistant to weapons proliferation: Yea, it produces plutonium (very little) as a byproduct, but it's Pu-238, which is considered a contaminate because of the spontaneous neutron emissions which screws around with the fission and timing.
Also, currently, regulations prohibit the consumption of more than 10% of current solid nuclear fuel, so 90% of it is classed waste (for enrichment concerns). You could take all of this "waste" that we have accumulated, and then feed it to the LFTR, which would fuel us for a couple thousand years, also means there's less waste (actual) around and what waste is created (cesium-137 and strontium-90), in about 300 years or so you could dig it back up and it would be less radioactive than the uranium we're currently trying to dispose of (which has a half-life of several hundred thousand years).
Seriously, LFTR is awesome and it's a shame we went solid instead of liquid, which would be easier to manage. Also, incidents like Fukushima and three-mile island and chernobyl just aren't possible with the way LFTR works. I don't see it as the only thing we should be doing to get us off oil, but part of the solution.
That and making a LFTR has a bevy metallurgical concerns. Really high temps like that are still a bitch to deal with today, let alone 60 years ago when this shit was on the drawing board. All that salt , and the various nuclear products really can fuck things.
And then you need to re-process the salt, and store all the salt by-products. Which in many ways are a lot harder to deal with than spent fuel rods, since they are liquid/gas. Leak some fuel pool water and its a big deal, leak some cesium-hexafloride, or uranium-hexafloride(a gas), and you are done.
So many processes and such would need to be developed, that the timeline for thorium reactors, let alone LFTR is way beyond the Peak Oil, You Are Fucked Here * point. If we had kept on it the last 40 years, we'd be there, but so much of the tech behind this is pure drawing board.
Actually, there is a very good reason to grow crops there; you can grow them in the winter. It's the same reason California irrigates the crap out of Imperial Valley.
In another thread, I mentioned the obscene amount of diesel burned by semi-trucks (80-200 gallons per day depending on if it is a solo or team truck) and asked for alternatives. I am still curious what kind of solutions there may be.
Rail is the kneejerk response to that question, but it would mean an end to overnight shipping and might have some impact on our ability to distribute food. After talking with some of the drivers more familiar with the intermodal yards than I, I have found out that a trailer can spend a week waiting at the yards, rather than the two days thought it did. There are also other problems, like much more complicated dispatching, a lack of sufficient infrastructure (both in terms of rails and intermodal facilities) and the fact that "last mile" can still mean several hundred miles on a truck going from the intermodal facility to the destination (especially in rural areas).
CNG is out of the question because the energy density is far too low. A long haul truck carries 200 gallons of diesel. CNG has 1/4 the energy density of diesel fuel, requires a heavily reinforced (i.e. much heavier) tank and would take a very long time to refuel the truck. That doesn't even get into the issues of what happens when a 10 ton tractor (possibly attached to a 30 ton trailer) with a pair of exposed 3,000 psi tanks hits something, rolls over or catches fire (one of the most overlooked advantages to diesel fuel is that outside of a combustion chamber, it isn't likely to do much but burn).
There are some experiments going on with LNG tanks, but the expense of both the fuel and the vehicles has limited the numbers. LNG only requires 60%-70% more volume to an equivalent amount of diesel and, but since it has to be stored at -260 degrees, you need cryogenic fuel tanks. The fuel is at standard pressure, not flammable in the tank and lighter than air when it vaporizes, but I don't know what would happen if a collision were to rupture the tank or in the event of a truck fire (truck brakes have this charming ability to ignite from their own friction heat if overused). If the safety issues can be resolved, this may be our best option with current technology, but the added costs mean that it will take longer for economic pressure to bring it about.
- John Stuart Mill
The idea of nuclear-driven transportation happening is probably highly unlikely due to the catastrophic effects if something should go wrong. A car crash would cause the highways to close down for long times to sanitize the radiation, not to mention an air plane crash.
When I was a kid I wondered why we just didn't hurl all our waste into the sun until someone told me that it would be quite messy when the first shuttle crash would explode trash all over the country
Also our current technology for getting stuff into orbit isn't exactly awesome at cargo carrying. Even the biggest rockets can carry, what, a couple of tonnes? A mid sized city alone would be sending up hundreds of trash rockets a year.
Oh I wasn't bashing you, when I was a kid I thought the same thing.
*disgruntled English muttering*
Well rail wouldn't be a 100% fix since you still need to take your goods from the rail line and transport them to the location where they will be sold from or the shipping company to ensures it arrives at someone doorsteps. It would certainly be a means cut down on fuel consumption because plenty of stuff has to be shipped long distance to begin with and rail would be a better option.
As I understand it, we could upgrade the truck fleet to more fuel efficient models if there was the political will to do so. Such models have already been designed and I believe put into production outside of the US. The problem is we have special interest groups and a shitty enabling political party that has prevented all efforts to modernize the truck fleet in that regard.
It's still going to be awhile before we can completely drop fossil fuel use and particular oil consumption. It's better to start branching off into alternatives and fuel efficient tech now, while things are relatively cheap instead of later when we start hitting peaks for certain fossil fuels.
battletag: Millin#1360
Nice chart to figure out how honest a news source is.
No deal, We're looking pretty good on that front in Scotland.
The stuff doesn't stay liquid once you allow it to cool, reprocessing mostly involves either shoving the shit in a centrifuge and spinning junk out or chemically separating it (which is a hell of a lot easier to do with liquids than solids anyway,) and the amount of stuff that really needs to be stored as waste rather than being useful byproducts (such as the afforementioned Pu-238) is so small that it's almost not worth talking about.
I mean, they built a (small scale) one at Oak Ridge and ran it for like five years in the seventies. I'm fairly certain that all domestic commercial nuclear power plants are PWRs based on designs from around that time. Nuke plants aren't getting built now anyway, we may as well do the research.
Back in the 50s, Freeman Dyson headed a project to make nuclear powered spaceships. Thrust was generated by detonating a nuclear device beneath the ship, which was originally intended to launch from the ground (i.e. every launch would consist of multiple atmospheric detonations).
As for the mess that a nuclear powered car accident might make, I recall a few years back when a Harrier crashed about a quarter mile from my house in Yuma. They had to seal off the immediate area until they could account for every single round of depleted uranium ammunition loaded on the plane.
- John Stuart Mill
That's why electricity generation is a big part of this puzzle, because as long as our other potential sources of liquid fuels are being used for electricity we can't also use them to run cars and trucks.
That was what I meant by 'last mile' delivery. Rail needs population density to be feasible. It's one of the reasons Eastern Australia has such good rail coverage, while Western Australia relies on road trains. It also means transporting the freight spoke-hub, where trucks are running the spokes. Lower population density means support for fewer hubs and, consequently, longer spokes.
Upgrading the truck fleets is a matter of economic incentive, not political will. Fuel is the #1 cost for truck transport (last month, my truck burned $13,000 worth of diesel), and the companies have been actively taking measures to reduce consumption. That is why you don't see nearly as many long nose and cab-over tractors these days; the major carriers are only buying aerodyne models these days (and they are getting lighter every year). Most solo drivers also have APUs (small diesel generators that can power the AC without running the main engine). When I started driving, our fleet was governed at 65 MPH. It is now 62 for most of the fleet, and we receive bonuses for (relatively) high fuel mileage.
- John Stuart Mill
battletag: Millin#1360
Nice chart to figure out how honest a news source is.
Not only that, but nuclear power opens up the options for fuels that are not necessarily efficient to produce, but are easily transported and have less environmental impact.
Right now, the average age of the 2-3 million class 8 trucks on the road is about 7 years. For the big fleets, it is far less; Walmart is around 3 years, my employer is around 2. Exactly how long do you think a truck should be on the road before requiring replacement?
- John Stuart Mill
And yet we keep losing it.
Repeatedly.
Only problem with this is, why not just use a train?
I think the idea is that it's cheaper to put up an electric grid on already existing roads than to expand and build more rail. Those trucks are also designed to be able to run for a few hours on batteries so they can go into city centers, deliver whatever and then get back up on the highway and recharge. Trains always require you to load everything up on trucks for the last bit anyway.
I do find it somewhat ironic though that this is an initiative from two German companies since they recently decided to abandon nuclear power totally (ohnoes fukushima happened, what if there's a tsunami here in Schwartzwald
I've heard of the efficiency argument, though I don't know if it's true. The idea being that the carbon footprint of burning coal in a power plant is still smaller than burning gas for cars.
Okayyyy, but how much of that is simply us not wanting to extract uranium in the first place?