Republicans Are Determined To Stop Renewable Energy

Yes, well another poster who used exactly the same name you do, and several others as well, was one of Bush's biggest cheerleaders.

 

Your response does not make sense.

The GOP is never selfless. It does what big oil tells it to do, and always has.

It is telling that the only alternatives you mention are fossil fuels. Especially so since it is the de facto policy of the GOP to support our continued addiction to non renewables for as long as the corporations who control them continue to demand it.

Of course, the politicians you support are doing everything in their power to make sure that government plays no role in making any alternative technology either scalable or viable.

 

You can however run a truck off of biodiesel or hydrogen fuel cells or a battery for that matter.

Why are you strawmaning alternate energy?

 

Pop quiz, list three (3) differences between solar voltaic and solar thermal and you will be rewarded with some credibility.

 

The only way there could justifiably be a tax on this is if the owners received their panels completely free due to tax breaks, in which case, go for it. Otherwise, it's just a blatant revenue grab and/or protection for dirty energy without regard for longterm benefit of encouraging as many as possible to take on the expense of alternative energy production.

 

I spent 8 years working as a DAS Tech and Neutron Imaging Camera Specialist at a government lab nuclear accelerator.

I have done many fusion energy experiments.

I will tell you straight up, Hydrogen Fusion will only ever work on EARTH in the very worst and dirty design imaginable. Even if you could get it to work, no one in their right mind would want it due to the huge volume of activated radioactive waste produced! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutron_activation

D-D fusion might work 200 year from now. D-T fusion might be possible on a small, and unsafe level in 40 years.

He3 Fusion could be done tomorrow, if we got rid of Obama, and restarted the NASA moon missions that he canceled.

The problem is, the He3 reaction only takes 4% of the thermal ion conditions needed to initiate the H-H reaction. We can build first surface walls for the containment vessel with existing liquid sodium flow tech for the He3 temp, but the rest is beyond any foreseeable material science.

Someone has been snowing you if you've been told that H-H fusion is in any way practical.

Not even Bombs use H-H, and bombs are by far the easiest fusion thing to build.

200 miles into the sun, H-H is great, but I suspect no one would like to try to live in that gravity well.

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I was not aware that Obama "cancelled" any moon missions.

George W Bush made a big show if saying he wanted to go back to the moon, when they needed to capture a news cycle one week. But he never proposed a dime of funding for it, or his other fairy tale, the mars mission wasn't funded either.

 

Sure that is it. In fact, the GOP Governor and majority in our state house probably weren't the ones who really funded research projects in my area for all sorts of renewable energy, from creating fuel from switchgrass and other plant materials, unlocking algae power, or designing compact high efficiency homes. Nope. Had nothing to do with it whatsoever.

yes because if there is proof positive of what you say it is the lack of solar and wind energy fields in that deep red state of Texas.

 

Republicans are against wind and solar because they don't work outside of narrow niches. Their intermittent nature always betrays them.

 

I respect your experience and your opinion on hydrogen fusion for energy production, but can all this be wrong? http://fusionforenergy.europa.eu/understandingfusion/

While I was an undergrad, I worked closely with the staffs at the University of Texas Turbulent Tokamak in computer support and was unaware that anyone doubted that hydrogen fusion containment was possible on Earth. The temperatures required are indeed almost beyond everyday comprehension, and that in turn puts containment technologies at center stage.

The research effort goes on at my alma mater, and you will surely find this development interesting also: http://www.utexas.edu/news/2012/09/...ing-technology-change-face-of-nuclear-energy/

At any rate, rather than dispute what you're saying, I'd ask this of you instead. If hydrogen fusion is, in your opinion, simply not possible on Earth, then why would so many different R&D research efforts be funded to develop it for the purpose of energy production? Honestly, I've never heard anyone categorically rule it out before.

 

As I have posted before on threads like this, if the greenies want some fabulous new source of energy, let them pool their money and develop it. Maybe they can end up making billions. More power to them. BUT---dont expect taxpayer to foot stupid hair brained ideas. Can you say Solyndra?

 

Yes I can run my truck off bio fuel too, its still not a viable option. I can and have split water into hydrogen, that is also still not viable. Please the keyword is viable. We are looking for a viable replacement to oil. Biofuel is not viable. Yes you can run a truck on it, but you cant run a nation of trucks on it.
Im not strawmanning anything. Please people stop using that word incorrectly. Google it before use. Im seeing a pattern from the left on this the last couple of days.

 

Ok, so you've asked quite a few questions here, and NONE of them have accurate, layman, answers.

I am NOT a degree PhD. Physicist, though I have spent many many hours talking with dozens of them on this subject.

The community of Physicists is very divided on this subject, and a radical new approach breakthrough could change everything, and we are basing projections on assumptions which might go out the window. I.e. Penicillin equivalent for Fusion.

I would note that finding the Penicillin of Fusion might end of the human race. Any approach that would allow power production could be even more effectively used to make bombs.

You're web page has the basics right, but gets into the idealism of the reaction, not the dirty, awkward, frustrating, annoying, tricky, contrary, ornery, pragmatic details of the practice.

The most important of which is the fact that fusion energy, while it doesn't create radio active waste from the resulting combination of atoms of the fuel, it does produce huge amounts of radio active wastes, and depending on the approach, as much as 100X more, and far more dangerous flavors than conventional heavy metal fission reactors.

This comes about because of a thing called activation, which basically means that fusion events release high energy particles, or em rays, and some of these will interact with any material up close to the event, i.e. the containment vessel and anything used to couple energy into the fuel, such as lasers, lenses, magnetic coils, sensors, cameras, detectors, vacuum pumps, shields, armor plates, valves, concrete, roof beams, ceiling tiles, power wiring...

All of this slowly becomes more and more radio active the longer the plant operates.

Yes, Activation does occur in Heavy Metal Fission plants, but the temperatures are much lower, and the number of rays/particles per second per steradian is much lower. And the energy of the rays and particles is typically lower as well, though not always. It is a very statistical game.

And the nature of all fusion designs is that they all require allot more high tech junk up close to the nuclear energy release event.

Note also that even your web site shows the even taking place between Deuterium and Tritium, not Hydrogen.

My main complaint at your comment on this thread was that you said Hydrogen Fusion. Well, that may have just been layman jargon. But in the Physics Community, this is practically heresy.

I stated that H-H or Hydrogen Hydrogen fusion cannot be done here on earth and went on to talk briefly about D-D or Deuterium - Deuterium reactions and systems, and then D-T, and He3 etc.

You have to understand that the physics is such that the TYPE of elements in the fuel are EVERYTHING in this game. The conditions to reach break even sustainable reactions are very widely varied by the type of fuel. He3-He3 is reasonable for our current Technology, None of the other fuel mixes are or are likely to be so in our lifetimes.

Also, there is considerable debate on the general method. The main camps are Inertial Confinement or Magnetic Confinement, with some minor offshoot radicals questing for cold and electrostatic.

Within each camp, there are people who advocate Pulse, and others who think Continuous is achievable, and a growing but heretical group who believe that a Hybrid Pulse triggered spherical burst with long chamber burning fuse approach might work ( Hybrid is the group to which I ascribe! )

You never would have guessed that Kurmugeon would be would be a radical Heretic!

In answer to your final question, the reason that the H-H reaction is out, is that the temperatures involved would destroy any currently conceivable containment vessel. But, if you just switch to the D-D reaction, and base off of the H-H threshold, the temp drops to just 64%. The D-T is just 43%. The He3-He3 is just 4%.

Anyway, I could go on for hours and hours, but this probably isn't the proper thread.

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How exactly is biofuel not viable?

You can generate biofuels such as ethanol from non-food plants like switchgrass that grow without needing large amounts of water in areas that aren't used for growing food crops. Also switchgrass has a yield to weight ratio comparable to sugar cane.

 

Because it isn't feasible for the entire country, its citizens and subsequent infrastructure to switch. We cant even keep our bridges painted you think you can switch the nation over to biofuels? That's ridiculous. Also straight ethanol requires rigid changes to your car (more money...never going to happen) and is not as fuel efficient as gas. If it were viable someone would have already capitalized on it. Its not a viable primary source, its a secondary source and always will be. I can also run a car on compressed air that doesn't mean the nation can switch to it.

 

Oklahoma only has about 9 democrats in their state senate

 

On Monday, S.B. 1456 passed the state House 83-5 after no debate.
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/04/16/3427392/oklahoma-fee-solar-wind/

There were no votes against in the Senate.
http://openstates.org/ok/bills/2013-2014/SB1456/


I was a bit off though, since 4 democrats are listed as "Other" in the Roll Call
http://openstates.org/ok/votes/OKV00010662/

 

Your representatives in DC routinely vote against alternative energy, and some of them riducule alternatives equally routinely.

Algae? You invested $250,000. Break out the champagne!

 

One of my favorite old cartoons was from The New Yorker a million years ago about "cold fusion in a sock". I can't find it anywhere now, and that's a shame. The mag's delightfully snotty, phlegmatic sense of humor has never quite been duplicated. Ah, well. Hey, I don't have any kind of Ph.D. at all... just a Bach. of Science w/honors. Never even went to grad school. Too busy getting my career(s) going, like we all did back in the 70's, instead of waiting for the government to give us something. I'm pretty sure you know exactly what I mean, and remember it, too.

Right! Well, you've certainly given me much to consider, for I tell you very truly that from the time I took some of those science courses back at UT until last night, when I read your post, I'd never heard anyone challenge the feasibility and eventual employment of hydrogen fusion reaction for energy production. I'll be digging into your links and exploring your claims carefully, because unless we have "hydrogen fusion" to look forward to, or something very much like it, the human species is in one hell of a lot of trouble!

The only interim solution I know of that makes any sense is another we studied back at UT, in which ocean water was pumped up into buoys with wind-driven electrolysis engines, where the hydrogen was separated from the oxygen and pumped to onshore storage tanks. The hydrogen was then simply transported via existing gas pipelines and burned as a fuel, much as we do natural gas now. It would be a limitless fuel, yes, but evidently we can't even manage to do something as simple as that.... Hydrogen wouldn't be as efficient, but I do love that word, "limitless", in the sense that the oceans are limitless.

What sort of solution do you think we should be pursuing, Kurmugeon, if not hydrogen fusion? And, do you think something like this experiment planned in France is possible: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2014/03/03/140303fa_fact_khatchadourian?currentPage=all . ?

One afterthought about nuclear weapons... as far back as 1969, Esquire Magazine caught hell from everybody for publishing detailed instructions for the assembly of an atomic bomb in a container the size of a footlocker. In 2005, I read instructions on the internet for the assembly of a "dirty bomb" the size of a basketball that could paralyze a medium-sized city for three weeks. Nuclear weapons are ubiquitous, and the only amazing thing about them, then, is that they haven't been used dozens of times since 1945. The thought of a hydrogen fusion weapon doesn't worry me any more than any other kind, I guess, if only because both Hiroshima and Nagasaki were both already "over with" years before I was born... you and I, we grew up with nuclear weapons....

 

As you "move forward" in life keep in mind most people in your age group will never have a pension or be able to retire. Inflation caused by deficit spending will eat up your retirements savings - that is if you even try to save for a retirement. You will work until you drop or you are let go because you are too old. I am over 60. I get up at 10AM every day and make difficult decisions such as do I go golfing today or take my boat out for a little fishing? It is not baby boomers who have held you back. It is the liberalism of your generation that has held you back - the extent to which this is true you will more fully understand when you are over 60.

 

Ethanol takes more energy to distill than you getting from burning it which should have made ethanol a non-starter from the get-go. Switchgrass has good potential for heating homes if burned in pellet stoves. Hemp would be even better.

 

those retirements benefits, weekends off during your working years, and social security that you're living off of are all liberal policies - give them up if you are willing to walk the walk.

 

What you call benefits gained from liberal policies is actually negotiated compensation. In the corporate world (which you no doubt despise) compensation for executive positions (be it pay, leave, retirement, stock options, or whatever) is negotiated at the individual level. This requires one to have something of value to negotiate with. I didn't find the corporate world to be very liberal. In many executive positions you have quarterly revenue targets. If you don't make your targets you are fired. Like most liberals, you propose that I give up benefits that were earned which is not going to happen. What I am trying to tell you (and you don't get) is that you probably will never have the opportunity to earn the benefits I have because of liberalism and liberal policies. After you (liberals) give away the store you will be lucky to be eating dog food when you are old. As for me, I just had a nice meal at an expensive restaurant.

 

When you are talking about low yield crops like corn, that is 100% true. When you talk about high yield crops like sugar cane and switchgrass, it is not true.

 

Taxcutter says:
Switchgrass and hemp have the same problem as corn - they require arable land and fresh water.

Biofuels only work if you use non-arable land and water not fit for normal agriculture. Sea water on desert land. Only candidate: salt-water algae.