On Fri, Apr 4, 2014 at 4:42 PM, Chris de Morsella <cdemorse...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Shall we do the math now . Yes lets. > > 150GW * 8670 (hours/year) > Actually 24 times 365 is 8760 not 8670; and if you want to get technical a year is a little more than 365 days so it's really 8766 hours, but never mind. > Typically nuclear power plants operate at 80% capacity so 1 GW * 8670 (hours in a year) * 80% = Annual expected output = 6936 GW hours / year OK, Gigawatt is a unit of power and Gigawatt-hour is a unit of energy, and so the plant produces .8 Gigawatts of power and .8 Gigawatt-hours of energy every hour or 7008 (not 6936) Gigawatt-hours of energy every year. * 20% (capacity factor) = 260TW of annual electric output. This yields: > 0.0017. A number that is 2,000 times larger than the number you erroneously > produced. > What the hell? You're confusing the difference between power and energy, they are not the same thing and if you insist on multiplying the capacity of your solar cells by a factor of 8670 (or even a 8760 ) then I can multiply what's needed to run human technology by that same 8670 factor and the percentages would remain the same. The Watt is a unit of power and the watt-hour is a unit of energy. So if a 1.5* 10^11 watt solar instillation runs at 20% capacity as you say then on average it produces 3 *10^10 watts of power and in one hour it produces 3 *10^10 watt hours of energy. But the POWER required to operate human technology on this planet is the equivalent of 1.5*10^17 watts, and to operate it for one hour you'd need 1.5*10^17 watt-hours of ENERGY and to operate it for one year you'd need 8760 times as much energy. Therefore I was incorrect when I said photovoltaics provides .0001% of what is needed to run the world, the true figure is less than that because I didn't take into account the 20% capacity figure that you mentioned; so photovoltaics actually provide .00002% of the power needed to run human technology, or to put it another way, photovoltaics provide .00002% of the energy needed to run things for one hour, or 00002% of the energy needed to run things for one day, or .00002% of the energy needed to run things for one second, or .... When you think about it this very low figure really shouldn't be a big surprise because I would guess that of all the large machines you have ever seen in your life (with your own eyes and not on YouTube) photovoltaic powered ones comprise about .00002% of them. >> let's stop all this idiotic talk about recoverable Thorium reserves. >> > > > Only if you stop the idiotic talk of counting the Thorium in your garden > dirt as being part of some hypothetical future Thorium reserve. > As I've said several times nobody is going to bother with the Thorium in your garden dirt until ores of much much greater Thorium concentration have run out, and at current energy consumption that won't happen for over a billion years. And when dealing with technology a billion years in advance of ours it would be ridiculous to say what sort of ore is recoverable and what sort is not. >>> and in order to bring it [LFTR} into existence would require a large >>> scale concerted multi-decadal effort. >>> >> >> >> A keen grasp of the obvious. A changeover of the way human >> civilization is powered from fossil fuel to ANYTHING elsewould require a >> large scale concerted multi-decade effort. >> > > > Brilliant deduction Sherlock > I believe the expression you were looking for is "No Shit Sherlock". John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
