Re: [Vo]:Stabilizing the E-Cat

2012-04-02 Thread Alain Sepeda 
no need of a total theory to control a complex system.
and even with a total theory about a mechanisme, the real system is often
very different, much complex and simple that the predicted system.

the engineer method is to learn the characteristic of the system, upfront
(eg: pulse response) and eventually continually (adaptative control).
the interest of the theory is to know the limit of what you have measured
(knowing that above a given limit it can diverge, saturate, oscillate,
dampen...).

if you try to control externally a structurally unstable system like an
auto-catalytic reaction, with irreversible saturation (like hot gaz+powder
LENR), the slow global control is a bad idea, since the external inertia of
the system is too much to allow quick enough feedback.
anyway you have various solution, that you should merge as needed.
one first method is to find a structural feed back at the local level. ther
is some in nuclear reactors, but seems non for LENR (no resonance).
the second one is thermal dissipation feedback, that cause heat transfer to
increase when temperature difference increase, so having a fluid at the
similar temperature of the target, with high conductivity(if teperature
difference is too high, cconductivity have to be lower else the cooling is
so strong that the reaction is stopped), will stabilise the temperature
naturally, up to a point where autocatalysis overcame the heat
conductivity. H2 seems to be a good cooling (dPproduced/dT>Rthermal). H2
seems to be a good conductivity fluid, and powder have a good transfer
caracteristic.

another solution is to play with the different thermal resistance for
different timescale, linked to thermal inertia.
at short term the inertia of the powder, or reactor is the dominant factor.
at longer term the external control can have an effect.
another factor is tha LENR seems to be multi-stage, so ther might be 2 or
more simultaneous decay/autocatalysis that happens at different timescale
(probably 300ns for LENR eruption, then few seconds minutes for radioactive
decay)
so if you send pulse to activate the reaction, you can estimate that the
reaction is between a grain and a heavy thermal mass at reactor
temperature, and mostly activate the initial "eruption".
when the pulse stop, the heat can be spread in the global reactor and the
cooling fluid. the radioactive decay is then the dominant factor, and can
be controlled with external slow feedback (like by cooling fluid speed
control, via the flux calorimeter of DGT))so the idea of Defkalion to use
pulse witdt/frequency control, is coherent with the idea to avoid reaction
divergence at short term, and allow slow control of heat/temperature so the
next pulse will happen in a stable environment.

measuring the heat production, will also allow to measure the efficiency of
the previous pulse, and compute the next one to be just enough efficient,
avoiding meltdown and shutdown.

all that make me convinced they have a good control, even if they have no
validated theory, but just a phenomenological model and few theoretical
assumptions

the Rossi apparatus, manual throttle, cool but uncontrolled fluid,
uncontrolled flow, in his older experiment seems not compatible with a good
control, except if he have an intrinsic stabilizing factor (that seems
false) like fission reactors.
It is logic that in those condition, whe COP and temperature are pushed, it
melt down.
by the way it is a bit amateur.

the push buttons stability claimed by rossi last visitor is much more
coherent.
however the fact that he says that the reactor take 1 hour to start, is a
bit strange, but maybe it is only the slow heating up to working point, dow
slowly to avoid unstability.
maybe DGT have found a quick method to heat the reactor (their secret first
phase heating) up to a controlled temperature, that avoid startup, but
accelerate heating.

good control of a LENr reactor seems to imply an adaptative controller, and
internal flow calorimetry (flow control, and temperature sensors) to
control the reaction efficiency.

all to say that controlling LENR for me seems classic engineer job.
much easier than controlling a supersonic fighter at transonic speed.
there are wagons of student trained to solve that kind of problems, and I
was in the same train as them 20years ago.


2012/4/2 David Roberson 

>  In my opinion it will be far easier to control the variations in
> performance and parameters which determine these variations once a proven
> theory of operation exists.  Until that time we will be stumbling along at
> less than ideal performance.
>
> Dave
>
>
>  -Original Message-
> From: Axil Axil 
> To: vortex-l 
> Sent: Sun, Apr 1, 2012 7:21 pm
> Subject: [Vo]:Stabilizing the E-Cat
>
>  Stabilizing the E-Cat
>
>  It is a common belief among knowledgeable cold fusion pundits that both
> Rossi and DGT face challenges in controlling the reactions in their
> reactors. One important reason for this is process variation.
>
>  Naturally occu

Re: [Vo]:The Fukushima disaster -- 34 meter tsunamis?

2012-04-02 Thread Alain Sepeda 
One of the characteristic of moder reactors like EPR (Areva) is that they
can self cool without external energy.
one thing missing were sand filters, that are installed in french
powerplant by the demand of a stubborn engineer that lobby for that
desperate mitigation system.
people were moaning about that being useless since no cas was probable, bu
thsi engineer asked to accept that worst can hemmeps, and that reducing the
catastrophe is a good idea, and it is cheap.
there would have been much less radioactive leaks if used (iodium, cesium)

Fukushima could be easily avoided, with few good decisions,  but one lesson
is that under cataclysmic stress (they lose all they family, were afraid ,
stressed) you make mistakes and lose many opprtunity,... no way to change
the fact that under awful stress people are not perfectly rational.
another things is that ther shoudl exist robust and flexible system. the
time to be able to bring sea water, as a backup solution is not
acceptable... it is dirty, but should be possible.
another is to accept that catastrophe happens in group (the famous
blackswan/dragon king), because of correlated causes.

there have bee design errors, that were identified and could have been
corrected.
there was bad risk assumption in the 70s (the geophysicians were convinced
earthquake could not be higher that 7 because of ferquent quake in sendai
zone, but recently they discovered that 25% of the displacement was not
dissipated at sendai and 9 quake ver probable... they did not believe in
tsunami in that zone, but recently archeologist found 300years old huge
tsunami ins the zone...
(source french version of Sci American)...
recent data were ignored, because of cost.

as usual an accumulation of many faults, errors, bad luck, ignorance,
delusion..
also like in chernobyl the privatization/performance-race seems to have
allowed/caused the bad behavior... (nb: in chernobyl the change of boss to
put a modern performance driven manager instead of careful old executive,
caused the pressure that cause the crash. in fukushima the private status
of TEPCO explain the unwillingness to address problems because of costs).

but in fukushima many things have been well done, avoiding death...
2012/4/2 Axil Axil 

> After a reactor shuts down, 15% of the rated capacity of the reactor is
> released as delayed heat due to the decay of short lived radioactive
> byproducts. This delayed heat must be dissipated into the environment to
> keep the structure of the reactor from damage.
>
>
>

Re: [Vo]:Stabilizing the E-Cat

2012-04-02 Thread Alain Sepeda 
just to note that Rossi just answered with the kind of control he use...

- have you built a mathematical model of your reactor above 260°C?
> *- which control method are you using for your reactor? (PI/PID/MPC) *
> - what is the length of the control horizon of an industrial ecat?
> (seconds/mins/hours)
> 1- yes
>
2- *MPC
> *3- seconds
> 4- The E-Cats can’t explode because they are intrinsecally safe.
>
> Answered by Andrea Rossi
>
he use Model Predicting Control.
it is a classic, yet modern method, adapted to complex, and eventually non
linear systems.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model_predictive_control
I imagine that the parameters are adaptive, but who knows with Rossi.


no information about the kind of action (pulse or not)

Logically for defkalion it should be similar.
Me I would make a non-linear adaptive MPC, with few loops at different
time-scale, using different captors (flow calorimeter, core temp, maybe if
useful core optical?, impedance? noise? gamma/neutrons?  to catch LENR
reaction state itself), and an intrinsic loop (probably thermal as I
explain earlier)... but from DGT information it seems quite simple (just
core temp and calorimetry).

not rocket science

2012/4/2 Alain Sepeda 

> no need of a total theory to control a complex system.
> and even with a total theory about a mechanisme, the real system is often
> very different, much complex and simple that the predicted system.
>
...

[Vo]:Look ma no hands! @NASCAR

2012-04-02 Thread Michele Comitini 
Google car for NASCAR

http://www.nascar.com/video/none/none/120331/cup-mar-google/

mic

Re: [Vo]:Brillouin Energy making waves

2012-04-02 Thread James Bowery 
If you can figure out why money is going down this rat-hole:

http://costofwar.com/en/

at a rate of $14 million per hour, perhaps can start to understand the true
dimensions of the mystery.

On Sun, Apr 1, 2012 at 5:49 AM, Guenter Wildgruber wrote:

>
> this interview with Robert George and Robert E. Godes from Brillouin made
> me scratch my head:
>
> http://coldfusionnow.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/audio/2012-03-27-Robert-E-Godes.mp3
>
> the essentials.
>
> a) Godes/George basically state that they have their technology ready, has
> only to be taylored for commercial application
> b) their big reactors can be used to reactivate old coal-fired power-plants
> c) they need an estimated $6 million (upper limit) to commercialize their
> design.
>
> Note that in the technical advisory board of Brillouin sits
> ---
> Roger W. Fuller, Founder and the Senior Scientist Maxim Integrated Products
> ---
> and also
> ---
> Michael C.H. McKubre PhD., Director, Energy Research Center, Stanford
> Research Institute
> ---
>
> So these are people I basically have some trust in.
>
> Question:
> Why is it so hard, to collect a meager $6 million?
>
> Now Fuller, maybe is no Steve Jobs or Bill Gates, moneywise, but I
> estimate him in the mid-ten-millions, and he probably has some friends with
> some spare millions, and has first-hand knowledge.
>
> So why does he not invest in a sure-bet?
>
> Here we are again:
> The betting market, plus some insider-knowledge.
>
> On the other hand we have Rossi, who claims to have sound, but secret
> investors, definitely investing a multiple of what Brillouin asks for.
> DGT claims to be self-financed, up to now.
>
> At times I think, the financing issue is as big a riddle than LENR itself.
>
> So what do you guys think?
> Why has Brillouin such difficulties to collect 6 million?
>
> Maybe the vortex-crowd should put their money where their mouth is, and
> invest.
> (suppressing my Homerian laughter.)
>
> All the best
> as always
>

Re: [Vo]:Brillouin Energy making waves

2012-04-02 Thread Robert McKay 

On Mon, 2 Apr 2012 08:05:48 -0500, James Bowery wrote:


So what do you guys think?
Why has Brillouin such difficulties to collect 6 million?

Maybe the vortex-crowd should put their money where their mouth is,
and invest.
(suppressing my Homerian laughter.)


As long as LENR can't be patented there is no way for it to be really 
profitable. Three weeks after someone comes out with a working device 
the e-cat will be out of the bag and you'll have dealextreme.com selling 
disposable LENR devices for $10.00 inc delivery. While I'm sure a few 
million could be recouped by 'first mover' advantage, it's never going 
to provide the kind of killer profits that some might imagine. Great for 
humanity, but bad for business.


Rob

Re: [Vo]:Brillouin Energy making waves

2012-04-02 Thread Terry Blanton 
On Mon, Apr 2, 2012 at 9:05 AM, James Bowery  wrote:
> If you can figure out why money is going down this rat-hole:

"In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition
of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military
industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced
power exists and will persist.
"We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our
liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted.
Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper
meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with
our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may
prosper together."

-DDE, 1/17/1961

Re: [Vo]:Brillouin Energy making waves

2012-04-02 Thread James Bowery 
On Mon, Apr 2, 2012 at 8:19 AM, Robert McKay  wrote:

> As long as LENR can't be patented there is no way for it to be really
> profitable.
>

Not true.  Not all countries ban LENR patents.  Even one country would be
more than enough to make the return on investment mind-blowing.

Re: [Vo]:Brillouin Energy making waves

2012-04-02 Thread James Bowery 
On Mon, Apr 2, 2012 at 8:20 AM, Terry Blanton  wrote:

> On Mon, Apr 2, 2012 at 9:05 AM, James Bowery  wrote:
> > If you can figure out why money is going down this rat-hole:
>
> ...*Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry* can compel the proper
> meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with
> our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may
> prosper together."
>
> -DDE, 1/17/1961
>

Freedom of speech and the press is protected by the First Amendment.  So
speech subsequent to broadcast and prior to the Internet was dominated by a
government-granted monopoly on speech to the mass media.

So why is it that the mass media has, particularly in the last decade while
the Internet has just barely gotten to a level of significant influence on
public opinion, been so abjectly irresponsible?

Re: [Vo]:The Fukushima disaster

2012-04-02 Thread Bruno Santos 
I am not saying that Fukushima was not a big and horrible disaster, but
things must be seen in perspective.

There is no greater tragedy in human history as coal.

Fukushima is a footnote in history of disasters compared to coal. And yet,
people go making much more fuss about nuclear powerplants than they do
about coal.

Coal mining kills a lot of people. That is an issue even in developed
countries. Coal mining killed 48 people in USA in 2010 (
http://www.msha.gov/stats/charts/coalbystates.pdf). In least developed
countries, it's a horrific disaster. Many goods made with energy prompted
by coal-based powerplants are in our houses. China is powered by coal-based
powerplants. See details on this tragedy here :
http://www.clb.org.hk/en/node/17013.

And those figures do not consider what coal does to public health
considering air pollution. Many more die everyday from lung diseases as air
gets fulfilled with toxic gases expelled by coal-based plants.

Coal mining also destroys landscapes and pollute water, not to mention
greenhouse effects.

 As if it is not enough, coal ash is radioactive. As a matter of a fact, it
pollutes the environment with much more radiation than nuclear plants waste
does.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste




Em 1 de abril de 2012 19:10, Michele Comitini
escreveu:

> A terrible dam disaster: Vajont 1963.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Vajont_Dam&useformat=desktop
>
> mic
>  Il giorno 01/apr/2012 23:12, "Alan Fletcher"  ha scritto:
>
> > I believe dams are the safest and cheapest way to generate
>> > electricity. (Safety is measured in accidents per kilowatt-hour.)
>> > - Jed
>>
>> You might look at the Hydro Quebec James Bay project(s).
>>
>> Wiki is a start -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Bay_Project -- but
>> it's largely from a Quebecoi point of view.
>>
>> An ecological disaster -- covers an area the size of NY state, induced
>> earthquakes, completely disrupted (good? bad?) the native Cree/Inuit
>> population, extensive mercury contamination (alleged forced abortions).
>> 10,000 caribou drowned during one storm (or, alleged, a planned test
>> release).
>>
>> > While highly motivated, the Cree's opposition to the Great Whale River
>> Project was mainly ineffective until 1992 when the State of New York
>> withdrew from a multi-billion dollar power purchasing agreement due to
>> public outcry and a decrease in energy requirements.
>>
>> I was in Albany at the time, and peripherally involved with the "public
>> outcry".
>>
>>

Re: [Vo]:The Fukushima disaster

2012-04-02 Thread Bruno Santos 
I meant "there is no greater tragedy in human history, in pursuit of
energy, as coal".

Em 2 de abril de 2012 11:26, Bruno Santos  escreveu:

> I am not saying that Fukushima was not a big and horrible disaster, but
> things must be seen in perspective.
>
> There is no greater tragedy in human history as coal.
>
> Fukushima is a footnote in history of disasters compared to coal. And yet,
> people go making much more fuss about nuclear powerplants than they do
> about coal.
>
> Coal mining kills a lot of people. That is an issue even in developed
> countries. Coal mining killed 48 people in USA in 2010 (
> http://www.msha.gov/stats/charts/coalbystates.pdf). In least developed
> countries, it's a horrific disaster. Many goods made with energy prompted
> by coal-based powerplants are in our houses. China is powered by coal-based
> powerplants. See details on this tragedy here :
> http://www.clb.org.hk/en/node/17013.
>
> And those figures do not consider what coal does to public health
> considering air pollution. Many more die everyday from lung diseases as air
> gets fulfilled with toxic gases expelled by coal-based plants.
>
> Coal mining also destroys landscapes and pollute water, not to mention
> greenhouse effects.
>
>  As if it is not enough, coal ash is radioactive. As a matter of a fact,
> it pollutes the environment with much more radiation than nuclear plants
> waste does.
> http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste
>
>
>
>
> Em 1 de abril de 2012 19:10, Michele Comitini 
> escreveu:
>
> A terrible dam disaster: Vajont 1963.
>>
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Vajont_Dam&useformat=desktop
>>
>> mic
>>  Il giorno 01/apr/2012 23:12, "Alan Fletcher"  ha scritto:
>>
>> > I believe dams are the safest and cheapest way to generate
>>> > electricity. (Safety is measured in accidents per kilowatt-hour.)
>>> > - Jed
>>>
>>> You might look at the Hydro Quebec James Bay project(s).
>>>
>>> Wiki is a start -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Bay_Project --
>>> but it's largely from a Quebecoi point of view.
>>>
>>> An ecological disaster -- covers an area the size of NY state, induced
>>> earthquakes, completely disrupted (good? bad?) the native Cree/Inuit
>>> population, extensive mercury contamination (alleged forced abortions).
>>> 10,000 caribou drowned during one storm (or, alleged, a planned test
>>> release).
>>>
>>> > While highly motivated, the Cree's opposition to the Great Whale River
>>> Project was mainly ineffective until 1992 when the State of New York
>>> withdrew from a multi-billion dollar power purchasing agreement due to
>>> public outcry and a decrease in energy requirements.
>>>
>>> I was in Albany at the time, and peripherally involved with the "public
>>> outcry".
>>>
>>>
>

RE: [Vo]:The Fukushima disaster

2012-04-02 Thread Jones Beene 
From: Bruno Santos 

 As if it is not enough, coal ash is radioactive. As a
matter of a fact, it pollutes the environment with much more radiation than
nuclear plants waste does.  


http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=coal-ash-is-more-radioactiv
e-than-nuclear-waste 

Conclusion of the article - living near a coal plant 3 to 6 times riskier
than living near a nuclear plant, in terms of annual radiation dose.

Radiation from coal is found in the ash (which is disposed of) but also is
exhausted directly into air, where it does the most harm. Testing of
estimated fly ash radiation in individuals' bones near coal plants was
around 18 millirems a year. Doses for those the living near nuclear plants
was between three and six millirems for the same period. And if food was
grown in the area, radiation doses were 50 to 200 percent higher around the
coal plants than around nuclear plants.

Plus - natural gas - which touts itself as "clean" compared to coal - also
releases more radiation than nuclear plants. Depending on where the methane
comes from, radon and/or tritium is found in the gas and it goes directly
into the air (in your home with a gas fired stove). 

http://nucleargreen.blogspot.com/2011/02/radioactive-radon-in-home-natural-g
as.html

I can measure a significant radiation signal coming for the exhaust duct of
our gas-fired hot water heater when it turns on (this is in California)
although to be honest, it has gone down in recent years. 

The dose of radiation in natural gas depends on where the gas-well is
located - and the worst (most toxic methane) is said to be from "fracking"
sites...

Jones

<>

Re: [Vo]:Brillouin Energy making waves

2012-04-02 Thread Alain Sepeda 
like in computer science in the old time,
you can make much cash on an innovative domain without patent.

there is many things to innovate in LENR.
if there is no protection, you will be copied in in a few semesters, but
you can make cash.
then you innovate for next semester.

maybe is it the idea of defkalion.

you can also patent only the application, but you should only patent smart
ideas of application, not evident solution (like the idea to have a steam
car with LENR... but maybe a trick usage of steam, or tricks to cool
faster)...

no easy monopolistic seat...

in fact for big industry, with forced industrial transfer of technology
that china impose, it is already the same with few years timescale

2012/4/2 James Bowery 

> On Mon, Apr 2, 2012 at 8:20 AM, Terry Blanton  wrote:
>
>> On Mon, Apr 2, 2012 at 9:05 AM, James Bowery  wrote:
>> > If you can figure out why money is going down this rat-hole:
>>
>> ...*Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry* can compel the proper
>>
>> meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with
>> our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may
>> prosper together."
>>
>> -DDE, 1/17/1961
>>
>
> Freedom of speech and the press is protected by the First Amendment.  So
> speech subsequent to broadcast and prior to the Internet was dominated by a
> government-granted monopoly on speech to the mass media.
>
> So why is it that the mass media has, particularly in the last decade
> while the Internet has just barely gotten to a level of significant
> influence on public opinion, been so abjectly irresponsible?
>

Re: [Vo]:Question about Defkalion products page

2012-04-02 Thread Andre Blum 

This page from june 2011 already quotes the 6-30 COP and Xanthi factory.

http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/06/defkalion-green-technologies-new.html

Andre

On 03/30/2012 06:53 PM, Alain Sepeda wrote:

Hi,
someone cite me todays "products" page of defkalion, 


and we notice the COP 6 to 30...
Today I notice also the factory place in Xanthi, unemployment reference...

I've often get through this page not reading it, to find the specs...
does anybody remind if the following text is old, or have been 
modified recently ???



  Industrialization

The technology is currently in its final stages of becoming an 
industrialized and commercially viable prototype. This forms the basis 
for a broad range of products under the commercial name Hyperion. The 
current range of products _produces surplus energy from 6 to 30 times 
more heat than energy consumed during its operation_. Licensing of all 
Hyperion products is in progress.



  Manufacturing

With three factories located in Xanthi,_the region shall gain in 
employment_ but also become an international hub where global 
investors and partners will visit the factory for business and product 
viewings.



  Patent

Hyperion patents are pending. EU safety certificates are in the 
process of issuance by the relevant authorities. _Product tests will 
be similar to typical commercially available products with 
standardized procedures according to Performance; Stability; 
Functionality; and Safety. _


 *

Re: [Vo]:Question about Defkalion products page

2012-04-02 Thread Alain Sepeda 
thanks, that is the data I needed to answer.


2012/4/2 Andre Blum 

>  This page from june 2011 already quotes the 6-30 COP and Xanthi factory.
>
> http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/06/defkalion-green-technologies-new.html
>
> Andre
>
>
> On 03/30/2012 06:53 PM, Alain Sepeda wrote:
>
> Hi,
> someone cite me todays "products" page of 
> defkalion,
> and we notice the COP 6 to 30...
> Today I notice also the factory place in Xanthi, unemployment reference...
>
> I've often get through this page not reading it, to find the specs...
> does anybody remind if the following text is old, or have been modified
> recently ???
>
>  Industrialization
>
> The technology is currently in its final stages of becoming an
> industrialized and commercially viable prototype. This forms the basis for
> a broad range of products under the commercial name Hyperion. The current
> range of products *produces surplus energy from 6 to 30 times more heat
> than energy consumed during its operation*. Licensing of all Hyperion
> products is in progress.
>
>  Manufacturing
>
> With three factories located in Xanthi,* the region shall gain in
> employment* but also become an international hub where global investors
> and partners will visit the factory for business and product viewings.
>
>  Patent
> Hyperion patents are pending. EU safety certificates are in the process of
> issuance by the relevant authorities. *Product tests will be similar to
> typical commercially available products with standardized procedures
> according to Performance; Stability; Functionality; and Safety. *
>
>
>-
>
>

Re: [Vo]:"There is no tomorrow" Video

2012-04-02 Thread Robert Lynn 
Assuming no commercial LENR:

Frakking does buy us a lot of time, probably well over 100 years.
Trucks, Planes, Trains and Ships could all switch to natural gas for
fuel, and even cars will swap over if oil gets too expensive.  We can
also make liquid fuels out of natural gas (GTL), at current gas prices
(and likely future) it is profitable when oil is >$50/barrel
http://www.worldenergysource.com/articles/pdf/economides_WE_v8n1.pdf
.  Because frakking has dropped the price of natural gas so much even
as oil has stayed high it is likely GTL will ramp up very fast in the
next decade, there is now about 20 barrels per day global capacity
(0.25% of global demand).

I believe the fusion power corporation HIF presentation was done in
2010, and it does seem the technological problems to be solved are
simpler than ITER or NIF:
-low firing rates (0.5Hz) per chamber
-only 2 ion beams per chamber (from a single source) with no fragile
optics to protect and far lower accuracy requirements than laser ICF
-liquid lithium jets/waterfalls that intercept the neutrons and EM
impulse to prevent damage to the chamber walls and reduce neutron
activation issues that are a huge problem for tokomaks
-simple in-built tritium breeding from neutron capture in the lithium jets
-high efficiency and well understood technology linear accelerators
and beam conditioning (as adapted from other particle accelerators)

I really like that a single heavy ion accelerator can run 20 reaction
chambers, and that those reaction chambers can be swapped out,
experimented with and rapidly developed in competition with each other
without shutting down the whole plant.

But there are also many other smaller scale hot fusion concepts that
all have at least some chance of paying out economically/commercially
within the next 30 years (as opposed to ITER/DEMO and NIF that in my
opinion have none). It would be nice to see them all funded to the
$50-100 million level for a few years to see if one or more of them
looks promising enough to carry on with
1/ Field Reversed Configuration - eg Helion Energy, Tri Alpha
2/ Electrostatic Confinement - eg Polywell/EMC2
3/ Magnetised Target Fusion - eg General Fusion
4/ Levitated Dipole - eg MIT LDX
5/ Focus fusion - LPPX

In particular Helion and Tri-Alpha would be pretty awesome if they
worked out as they could also be adapted for efficient fusion
propulsion in space, and might also work in large aircraft, perhaps
Polywell and Focus Fusion also fit that criteria.

On 2 April 2012 03:35, David Roberson  wrote:
> Heavy ion fusion is an interesting technology but I suspect that it is not
> as simple to put on line as the speaker in the video suggests.  There
> appears to be many difficult engineering challenges to solve and they take
> time.  Does anyone know of an actual working system that has been
> constructed since the 2004(?) filming of this presentation?  Also, the
> natural gas available due to fracking far exceeds the quantity suggested by
> the speaker but I realize that he had no way of knowing that this resource
> would come into being.
>
> Dave
>
> -Original Message-
> From: Robert Lynn 
> To: vortex-l 
> Sent: Sun, Apr 1, 2012 8:08 am
> Subject: Re: [Vo]:"There is no tomorrow" Video
>
> Very well presented.  The first half should be looked at by all
> politicians responsible for implementing the long term plans required
> to maintain our standard of living.  But I disagree with the ultimate
> conclusions.  All the problems presented including mineral, and water
> shortages (possible exception of overfishing) are solvable with other
> energy sources.  Even ignoring LENR I am quite sure that we have
> access to all of the energy that humanity needs from alternative
> sources like solar, nuclear, wind at a price not far above today's
> very low prices.
>
> But even without viable LENR there is a technology available that
> could manufacture oil and electricity from inexhaustible sources for a
> price about half of current oil and electricity.  Not many people have
> heard of it but Heavy Ion Fusion would be a total solution:
> http://www.fusionpowercorporation.com/corporation
> 1 hour long presentation:
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2emKoMgZ03U
>
> In summary Heavy Ion Fusion uses a huge linear accelerator driver to
> fuse lead coated D-T targets, and is expected to cost about $20Billion
> for 100GW output (no sense in building smaller owing to ignition
> energy requirements).  That is many times cheaper than nuclear and
> avoiding all the problems of nuclear power.  HIF creates energy at
> high temp that can be used to create hydrogen in sulphur iodine cycle,
> that can then be combined with CO2 from the atmosphere to create
> hydrocarbons at about $50/barrel equivalent.  Waste heat from hydrogen
> production can then make electricity and waste heat from electricity
> production can then do huge-scale desalination.
>
> A few hundred of these plants dotted around the world would provide
> for al

Re: [Vo]:Stabilizing the E-Cat

2012-04-02 Thread David Roberson 

You have presented a pretty good discussion of the methods of control and it 
will be useful for all of us to give the techniques serious consideration.  My 
concern is not in controlling that which is currently available, but to derive 
the best possible system to control.  There are numerous variables which 
interact in different ways in such a system and the theoretical understanding 
of each of these variables and how it performs to make a total device is 
extremely important.

A good understanding of the effect of powder size would be advantageous.  The 
processing of its surface features in the best possible manner might make a 
huge difference in the overall performance.  Could a thin coating over a 
portion of the surface area by an active material that dissociates hydrogen 
molecules be important to the reaction?  What about the ratio of other 
materials in the final mix of core powder?

Does the magnitude and direction of an external magnetic field enhance or 
reduce the reaction as some have suggested?  I wonder if a DC current flowing 
through the powder from end to end or from center to outside edge would help?

Could another gas mixed with the hydrogen modify the reaction in a desired 
direction?

My point is that there are many unknowns at this time and I suspect that they 
interact in unusual ways.  A good theory of the actual process taking place 
could help immensely in determining the idea device design and until that is 
achieved we might be close enough for a useful product, but a long way from the 
ideal design.  Serendipity plays a major role in scientific progress, but the 
ideal situation is for that to be enhanced by the follow on theory.  At the 
present time I am following the work of Rossi and DGT who seem to be 
approaching the reaction from two different directions.  Is it possible that 
there are two vary different processes taking place or are they each enhancing 
the variables in a separate manner?

Dave



-Original Message-
From: Alain Sepeda 
To: vortex-l 
Sent: Mon, Apr 2, 2012 4:14 am
Subject: Re: [Vo]:Stabilizing the E-Cat


no need of a total theory to control a complex system.
and even with a total theory about a mechanisme, the real system is often very 
different, much complex and simple that the predicted system.

the engineer method is to learn the characteristic of the system, upfront (eg: 
pulse response) and eventually continually (adaptative control).
the interest of the theory is to know the limit of what you have measured 
(knowing that above a given limit it can diverge, saturate, oscillate, 
dampen...).

if you try to control externally a structurally unstable system like an 
auto-catalytic reaction, with irreversible saturation (like hot gaz+powder 
LENR), the slow global control is a bad idea, since the external inertia of the 
system is too much to allow quick enough feedback.
anyway you have various solution, that you should merge as needed.
one first method is to find a structural feed back at the local level. ther is 
some in nuclear reactors, but seems non for LENR (no resonance).
the second one is thermal dissipation feedback, that cause heat transfer to 
increase when temperature difference increase, so having a fluid at the similar 
temperature of the target, with high conductivity(if teperature difference is 
too high, cconductivity have to be lower else the cooling is so strong that the 
reaction is stopped), will stabilise the temperature naturally, up to a point 
where autocatalysis overcame the heat conductivity. H2 seems to be a good 
cooling (dPproduced/dT>Rthermal). H2 seems to be a good conductivity fluid, and 
powder have a good transfer caracteristic.

another solution is to play with the different thermal resistance for different 
timescale, linked to thermal inertia.
at short term the inertia of the powder, or reactor is the dominant factor.
at longer term the external control can have an effect.
another factor is tha LENR seems to be multi-stage, so ther might be 2 or more 
simultaneous decay/autocatalysis that happens at different timescale (probably 
300ns for LENR eruption, then few seconds minutes for radioactive decay)
so if you send pulse to activate the reaction, you can estimate that the 
reaction is between a grain and a heavy thermal mass at reactor temperature, 
and mostly activate the initial "eruption".
when the pulse stop, the heat can be spread in the global reactor and the 
cooling fluid. the radioactive decay is then the dominant factor, and can be 
controlled with external slow feedback (like by cooling fluid speed control, 
via the flux calorimeter of DGT))so the idea of Defkalion to use pulse 
witdt/frequency control, is coherent with the idea to avoid reaction divergence 
at short term, and allow slow control of heat/temperature so the next pulse 
will happen in a stable environment.

measuring the heat production, will also allow to measure the efficiency of the 
previous pulse, and compute the next

Re: [Vo]:Advanced Theory of Energy/Being

2012-04-02 Thread LORENHEYER 
The best way I can think of to get a prototype of the one system that will 
enable star travel a few hundred years or so, would be to draw-up a proposal 
and/or contract with NASA. > About 10yrs ago, NASA had developed a motor or 
rotor that could maintain a rate of 60,000 Rpm's (1,000 Rps's), and that 
data would be detrimental. 
   Not too long ago, NASA had 
also been considering and/or was in the early stages of developing a 
Spaceplane that would take-off like a plane, and then reach orbit. >  I think 
it's 
development was stopped or discontinued due to an insoluble aerodynamic 
issue, because they couldn't accurately conduct any test at the required Mach 
22 
(?) inordewr to attain orbit.

   At any rate, this whole complete 'other' system 
that I'd like to propose, is all-but ideal  for propelling that wannabe 
Spaceplane, because it could attain orbit at only Mach 1 or 2. > Upon reaching 
space at this speed, you would then initiate a proper RTO, and if so desired, 
generate a rather unhealthy G force (you know, for humans), which will 
enable you to reach orbital-speed in only a matter of a few seconds.
 

   Now, I fully realize that a Spaceplane that uses this 'other' 
system will require some highly developed form of HENR system, thus some very 
special sensitive attention to detail must be considered upon it's TOD (time 
of departure). > IOW's, you don't want to plan your TOD in a tornado or 
hurricane (obviously), but should any trouble arise in your immediate path 
ahead, this system/craft has the maneuvering capabilities that could enable you 
to rather easily avoid it.

Re: [Vo]:Question about Defkalion products page

2012-04-02 Thread David Roberson 

I have been hit over the head on more than one occasion when thinking about COP 
and have come to some interesting observations.

The most important factor is the Carnot efficiency of the potential heat engine 
that can be driven by the heat output of the LENR device.  The Carnot 
efficiency is defined as 1 - Tc/Th where the Tc is the sink temperature and Th 
is the output temperature of the device.  The temperatures must be absolute 
such as Kelvin.  This potential heat engine can then drive an electric 
generator at know good efficiency which would then be able to drive the device 
electrical input requirements.

Lets take an example of a heat generation process that puts out 300 C heat and 
then connect this to a heat engine that sinks the heat into 25 C.  The Carnot 
efficiency would be 1 - (25 + 273)/(300 + 273) = .48.  The most work energy 
that we could achieve from this heat engine is .48 times the available energy 
of the heat generator.  A real life example of a nuclear power plant is 
calculated in wikipedia at  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_engine where the 
actual efficiency is .30.  Not too bad, but clearly imperfect.

Now lets consider that we have a heat pump instead of the nuclear generator 
presented with the input source of water at 25 C and its output at 300 C as 
before.  The COP for an ideal device in this case would be  Th/(Th-Tc).  If we 
use the numbers as before we get (300 + 273) / (300 - 25) = 2.08.  This sounds 
like a pretty small number but it is the ideal calculated value and any real 
life device would do worse.   It is interesting to notice that the product of 
the COP and Carnot efficiency is exactly 1 for an ideal device and you can 
derive one equation from the other by an inversion.

My understanding of the situation is that this is an expression of the "there 
is no free lunch" thermodynamic law.  In other words, in an ideal world we 
could use a heat pump to take coolant at 25 C and then output it at 300 C with 
a COP of exactly 2.08.  This heated coolant could then be fed to an ideal 
Carnot engine that outputs its exhaust heat into the original 25 C sink.  The 
ideal heat engine would then do exactly all of the work required by the heat 
pump to raise the temperature of the sink coolant.  This cycle results in 
exactly zero extra energy output to utilize.

Anyone can take the above mathematical model and apply it to the system of 
their choice to see if that system can generate enough power to drive itself 
and have left over power for other applications.  I just want to point out that 
COP of an LENR process is not the final word.  One must look at the complete 
system including the input and output temperature of the coolant before the 
device operation is well defined.

Dave   

-Original Message-
From: Andre Blum 
To: vortex-l 
Sent: Mon, Apr 2, 2012 11:26 am
Subject: Re: [Vo]:Question about Defkalion products page


This page from june 2011 already quotes the 6-30 COP and Xanthi factory.

http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/06/defkalion-green-technologies-new.html

Andre

On 03/30/2012 06:53 PM, Alain Sepeda wrote: 
Hi,
someone cite me todays "products" page of defkalion,
and we notice the COP 6 to 30...
Today I notice also the factory place in Xanthi, unemployment reference...

I've often get through this page not reading it, to find the specs...
does anybody remind if the following text is old, or have been modified 
recently ???


Industrialization
The technology is currently in its final stages of becoming an industrialized 
and commercially viable prototype. This forms the basis for a broad range of 
products under the commercial name Hyperion. The current range of products 
produces surplus energy from 6 to 30 times more heat than energy consumed 
during its operation. Licensing of all Hyperion products is in progress. 


Manufacturing
With three factories located in Xanthi, the region shall gain in employment but 
also become an international hub where global investors and partners will visit 
the factory for business and product viewings. 


Patent
Hyperion patents are pending. EU safety certificates are in the process of 
issuance by the relevant authorities. Product tests will be similar to typical 
commercially available products with standardized procedures according to 
Performance; Stability; Functionality; and Safety.

Re: [Vo]:The Fukushima disaster -- 34 meter tsunamis?

2012-04-02 Thread Jed Rothwell 

Alain Sepeda wrote:

One of the characteristic of moder reactors like EPR (Areva) is that 
they can self cool without external energy.


Sure. There are several designs that use passive cooling. The pebble bed 
reactor is another example. But none have been commercialized yet. The 
designs are radically different from present-day reactors.


- Jed

Re: [Vo]:Advanced Theory of Energy/Being

2012-04-02 Thread Guenter Wildgruber 





 Von: "lorenhe...@aol.com" 
An: vortex-l@eskimo.com 
Gesendet: 19:25 Montag, 2.April 2012
Betreff: Re: [Vo]:Advanced Theory of Energy/Being
 
>The best way I can think of to get a prototype of the one system that will 
enable star travel a few hundred years or so...

Now, Loren, you are funny, and probably calm down a bit over the years.
I do'nt know what you imagine, but I'm sure you know about the Fermi-Paradox, 
which correctly thought out in a realistic manner, (no fancy wormhole-travel or 
faster-than-light travel).
I did the thinking myself a couple of years ago, but am not the only one.
The conclusions are harsh.

There is an interesting guy with nick 'goatguy', who is a hardboned thinker 
about the possible.

He laid out his thoughts about the fermi-paradox and the possibility of  
interstellar space-travel here:
http://nextbigfuture.com/2012/03/mass-effect-3-and-goat-guy-provide.html#more

Main conclusions:
a) searching for singals from intelligent civilizations -SETI etc- is a 
pointless exercise.
b) interstellar space-travel at near light-speed is nearly impossible 
he says it like this.
...– and most important – is my hypothesis that inter-stellar space travel 
isn’t statistically possible at high speed. With the almost uncountable 
gazillions of chunks of Oort and Kuiper Cloud objects ranging down to 
foot-ball sized hunks of junk, and the very high likelihood of a lumpy 
continuum of similar stellar nursery “leftovers” sluicing about between 
the star systems indefinitely, the likelihood of having a critical part 
of a large interstellar space-craft hitting a hunk of junk seems very 
high.
...

This is fine, realistic thinking.
Possibly the universe we live in,  still has some surprises for us, and the end 
of science is not near yet.
But this is pure speculation.
I personally do not engage in that any more. Only for educational purposes.
A more fruitful activity eg would be to ponder about modal logic and Spencer 
Browns 'laws of form'.

anyway.
G.

Re: [Vo]:Question about Defkalion products page

2012-04-02 Thread Guenter Wildgruber 





 Von: David Roberson 
An: vortex-l@eskimo.com 
Gesendet: 20:17 Montag, 2.April 2012
Betreff: Re: [Vo]:Question about Defkalion products page
 

>The most important factor is the Carnot efficiency of the potential heat 
>engine that can be driven by the heat output of the LENR device.  
Dave, ofcourse you are right in a sense.

It depends what you want to do.
Convert heat to electricity, mechanical energy or whatever.

Carnot mainly applies to the thermal-mechanical energy-transformation.
Whether this applies to thermal-electrical, for instance, I do not know.
Conventional power-plants working with turbines and such obviously do.
Thermal->mechanical->electrical.
Mechanical-electrical has an efficiency of say 95%, so Carnot dominates the 
whole system.

If your goal is, to desalinate water, or warm your home, then 150degC is 
sufficient.

Remember, that eg in France a lot of households have this:
nuclear heat-> 
high-temperature-steam->thermal-mechanical->mechanical-electricity->power-transmission->electric
 heater-> heat.

how absurd is this?

best regards 
G.

Re: [Vo]:The Fukushima disaster

2012-04-02 Thread Jed Rothwell 
No one disputes that coal fired plants kill far more people than nuclear
power, even taking into account casualties from uranium mining pollution.

Anyone who believes that global warming is real will certainly agree that
nuclear power is safer even factoring the Chernobyl and Fukushima
accidents. I think alternative energy such as wind and solar would be more
cost-effective and much safer. Unfortunately Japan does not have
significant wind resources, and not much potential solar power either.

Putting aside the long term perspective, nuclear power is uniquely
disastrous from an economic and business point of view. No other source of
energy could conceivably cause so much damage in a single accident, or cost
even a small fraction as much money. As I said, this accident bankrupted
the world's largest power company and effectively destroyed the houses,
towns, bridges and livelihood of  90,000 to 150,000 people in 5,000 square
miles of land.

(It turns out 90,000 people were ordered out by the government but 60,000
others left on their own after they and their local governments detected
radiation far above natural background. TEPCO and the government say they
will not pay compensation to these 60,000 people, even though no one
disputes their land now has lethal levels of radioactivity.)

If TEPCO had known this might happen I seriously doubt they would've built
any nuclear power reactors. No corporate executive would risk the
destruction of the entire company in a single accident. It reminds me of
Churchill's description of  World War I Adm. Jellicoe as "the only man on
either side who could lose the war in an afternoon."

People say that no one was killed. I expect many of the young workers will
prematurely die of cancer in the next 20 or 30 years. But assuming for the
sake of argument that no one was killed the situation is still
unprecedented. Consider this:

The U.S. commercial airline fleet consists of 7185 airplanes. That includes
"3,739 mainline passenger aircraft (over 90 seats) . . . 879 mainline cargo
aircraft (including those operated by FedEx and UPS) and 2,567 regional
aircraft jets/turboprops." I believe the average replacement cost of the
big mainline ones is around $150 million per aircraft.

http://atwonline.com/aircraft-engines-components/news/faa-us-commercial-aircraft-fleet-shrank-2011-0312

http://www.boeing.com/commercial/prices/

Okay imagine that in the middle of one night, when these airplanes are
parked with no one aboard, all 4,615 of the big passenger and freight
airplanes suffer fuel leaks and are destroyed by fire. No one is hurt, but
the entire fleet is destroyed. The replacement cost of the equipment would
be ~$692 billion, which is roughly how much the Fukushima disaster will
cost. Do you think that Boeing, Airbus or any airline would survive this?
Do you think any insurance company would? I don't.

As it happens, this incident did not destroy the Japanese insurance
industry. That is because no nuclear power plant in the world is covered by
private insurance. When nuclear power was invented, the insurance companies
took a close look and decided it was too risky and they would never cover
it. From the very beginning of nuclear power this risk has been assumed by
national governments only. So the Japanese government and TEPCO customers
are on the hook for this. Obviously, no power company can pay for an
accident that costs ten times their entire annual revenue!

TEPCO's earnings are here:

http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/corpinfo/ir/tool/annual/pdf/2011/ar201101-e.pdf

5065 billion yen = $62 billion

Jones Beene and others have correctly pointed out that coal-fired plants
generally spew far more radioactive material into the environment than
nuclear power plants do. This is common knowledge. No one disputes it.
However, the Fukushima plant probably put out more radioactive materials
than all coal fired plants in history have, and I am sure the Chernobyl
reactor did. Here is one description of the radioactive material at a
location 40 km from the Fukushima reactors, a year after the accident, long
after short lived isotopes were gone:

"Outside the Iitate community hall, the radiation dosimeter carried by one
of my travelling
companions to measure external radiation reads 13.26 microsieverts per hour
-- a level
around one hundred times natural background radiation. When he holds his
dosimeter over
the drainage culvert in front of the hall, it stops working altogether --
the radiation level has
gone off the scale. One of the things that you quickly learn in a place
like Iitate is that levels
of radiation can vary enormously within a relatively small area. Iitate has
the misfortune to
lie in a spot where the winds from the coast meet the mountains, and
quickly became a
radiation hotspot due to precipitation. Its inhabitants are among the
150,000 people who
evacuated from the area affected by the nuclear accident, and have no idea
when they will
be able to return home."

http://www.greenp

Re: [Vo]:The Fukushima disaster

2012-04-02 Thread Jed Rothwell 
I wrote:


> The replacement cost of the equipment would be ~$692 billion, which is
> roughly how much the Fukushima disaster will cost.
>

As Greenpeace pointed out, by coincidence this is roughly the cost of the
2008 TARP bailout. Note however, that nearly all of the TARP money was
returned the U.S. government by the corporations and banks. Most of them
paid high interest rates on the loans, so they were anxious to return the
money. I think most of the money came back within two years.

As of last year all but $19 billion of the TARP money was returned to Uncle
Sam. The remaining $19 billion will probably not be returned because the
companies went bankrupt. That's not good, but you cannot compare it to a
$650 billion dead loss. That is, to money spent cleaning up tens of
millions of tons of contaminated soil, building a giant sarcophagus for a
nuclear power plant, and compensating people for the loss of their houses
and livelihoods. Such activities contribute nothing to long-term prosperity
or happiness. It is like hiring hundreds of thousands of people to spend 20
years digging holes in the ground every morning, and filling them in every
afternoon for no purpose.

- Jed

Re: [Vo]:The Fukushima disaster -- 34 meter tsunamis?

2012-04-02 Thread Axil Axil 
FYI:

The EPR is equipped with what Areva refers to as a “core catcher.” If the
fuel cladding and reactor vessel systems and associated piping become
molten, these first two safety mechanisms the molten core will fall into a
core catcher which holds the molten material and has the ability to cool
it. This, in turn, protects the third barrier, containment.

On Mon, Apr 2, 2012 at 2:53 PM, Jed Rothwell  wrote:

> Alain Sepeda wrote:
>
>  One of the characteristic of moder reactors like EPR (Areva) is that they
>> can self cool without external energy.
>>
>
> Sure. There are several designs that use passive cooling. The pebble bed
> reactor is another example. But none have been commercialized yet. The
> designs are radically different from present-day reactors.
>
> - Jed
>
>

Re: [Vo]:The Fukushima disaster

2012-04-02 Thread Axil Axil 
*Putting aside the long term perspective, nuclear power is uniquely
disastrous from an economic and business point of view. No other source of
energy could conceivably cause so much damage in a single accident, or cost
even a small fraction as much money. As I said, this accident bankrupted
the world's largest power company and effectively destroyed the houses,
towns, bridges and livelihood of  90,000 to 150,000 people in 5,000 square
miles of land.*



You can’t dismiss the long term perspective. What happens in the future is
important.



Your value system is completely opposite to what it should be on this
issue; let me explain.



In economic theory, *moral hazard* is a tendency to take undue risks
because the costs are not borne by the party taking the risk. The term
defines a situation where the behavior of one party may change to the
detriment of another after a transaction has taken place.





Without moral hazard, there is no way for a party to be motivated to change
his behavior, improve his design, or pay for any damage caused.





Paying for damage caused is a great economic principle.





Without moral hazard, somebody else pays for your damage. You take your
profits to the bank and will increase your damage causing behavior to make
more profit.







Lack of moral hazard caused the global financial meltdown and that
financial system has not yet been fixed.





Lack of moral hazard is causing global warming since someone else will pay
to move the cities up into the hills, not the producers of fossil fuels.







Restoring the concept and practice of moral hazard will save this world,
without it we are screwed so whatever you do or say, don’t put it down.






On Mon, Apr 2, 2012 at 4:02 PM, Jed Rothwell  wrote:

> No one disputes that coal fired plants kill far more people than nuclear
> power, even taking into account casualties from uranium mining pollution.
>
> Anyone who believes that global warming is real will certainly agree that
> nuclear power is safer even factoring the Chernobyl and Fukushima
> accidents. I think alternative energy such as wind and solar would be more
> cost-effective and much safer. Unfortunately Japan does not have
> significant wind resources, and not much potential solar power either.
>
> Putting aside the long term perspective, nuclear power is uniquely
> disastrous from an economic and business point of view. No other source of
> energy could conceivably cause so much damage in a single accident, or cost
> even a small fraction as much money. As I said, this accident bankrupted
> the world's largest power company and effectively destroyed the houses,
> towns, bridges and livelihood of  90,000 to 150,000 people in 5,000 square
> miles of land.
>
> (It turns out 90,000 people were ordered out by the government but 60,000
> others left on their own after they and their local governments detected
> radiation far above natural background. TEPCO and the government say they
> will not pay compensation to these 60,000 people, even though no one
> disputes their land now has lethal levels of radioactivity.)
>
> If TEPCO had known this might happen I seriously doubt they would've built
> any nuclear power reactors. No corporate executive would risk the
> destruction of the entire company in a single accident. It reminds me of
> Churchill's description of  World War I Adm. Jellicoe as "the only man on
> either side who could lose the war in an afternoon."
>
> People say that no one was killed. I expect many of the young workers will
> prematurely die of cancer in the next 20 or 30 years. But assuming for the
> sake of argument that no one was killed the situation is still
> unprecedented. Consider this:
>
> The U.S. commercial airline fleet consists of 7185 airplanes. That
> includes "3,739 mainline passenger aircraft (over 90 seats) . . . 879
> mainline cargo aircraft (including those operated by FedEx and UPS) and
> 2,567 regional aircraft jets/turboprops." I believe the average replacement
> cost of the big mainline ones is around $150 million per aircraft.
>
>
> http://atwonline.com/aircraft-engines-components/news/faa-us-commercial-aircraft-fleet-shrank-2011-0312
>
> http://www.boeing.com/commercial/prices/
>
> Okay imagine that in the middle of one night, when these airplanes are
> parked with no one aboard, all 4,615 of the big passenger and freight
> airplanes suffer fuel leaks and are destroyed by fire. No one is hurt, but
> the entire fleet is destroyed. The replacement cost of the equipment would
> be ~$692 billion, which is roughly how much the Fukushima disaster will
> cost. Do you think that Boeing, Airbus or any airline would survive this?
> Do you think any insurance company would? I don't.
>
> As it happens, this incident did not destroy the Japanese insurance
> industry. That is because no nuclear power plant in the world is covered by
> private insurance. When nuclear power was invented, the insurance companies
> took a close look and decided it

Re: [Vo]:The Fukushima disaster

2012-04-02 Thread Guenter Wildgruber 
Von:Jed Rothwell

An: vortex-l@eskimo.com 
Gesendet: 22:02 Montag, 2.April 2012
Betreff: Re: [Vo]:The Fukushima disaster
 
>No one disputes that coal fired plants kill far more people than
nuclear power, even taking into account casualties from uranium mining
pollution.
 
>Putting aside the long term perspective, nuclear power is uniquely
disastrous from an economic and business point of view. No other source of
energy could conceivably cause so much damage in a single accident,

Agree.
Your assessment is sane.

What seems to be difficult to understand to some, is distinguishing different
risk-categories.

a) coal-fired plants probably emit more radioactivity than any orderly working
nuclear power-plant over decades.
Because this has an intrinsic upper limit, as a function of time, society can
decide and switch it off.
b) on the other hand, you have a nuclear plant, which occasionally explodes or
is otherwise severely damaged, and kills the neighbouring people.

Now how to decide?
Assume, both probabilities are equal in the long term, (which is purely
hypothetical, because noone knows) .
Which option would you choose?
Surprise: It depends where you live!

And this has other surprising consequences, eg, that the probability-space in
the time-domain is transformed into a probability-space in the space-domain.
And the results are VERY different.

G.

Re: [Vo]:The Fukushima disaster

2012-04-02 Thread Robert Lynn 
It will be horrendously expensive, but I would like to think that as smart
as the Japanese are, they will come up with some creative solutions to
mitigate the cost - and maybe ultimately it won't be as expensive as
currently imagined.   My parents told me that when they visited Nagasaki
and Hiroshima 25 years ago that apart from the monuments they couldn't even
tell where the bombs had been.

Interestingly the population of Japan peaked in 2008 and is now falling by
about 7 per year.  This is accelerating, so it won't be as hard to find
places for the displaced people.

Returning the land to productive agriculture use may not be economic but
with the addition of a bit of appropriate covering to shield off the worst
of the contamination for a few hundred years, there are any number of
non-agricultural industrial (manufacturing, chemical processing,
refineries), military (bases, test ranges, spaceports), transport
(airports, ports, roads, trains), recreational (parks, golf courses, race
tracks) and even power generating (more reactors?) purposes that the
exclusion zone could be useful for. It might also be fine for hydroponics
and animal feed-lots that don't use anything from the ground (assuming
water supplied from elsewhere), and maybe even forestry would be an option.

On 2 April 2012 21:24, Jed Rothwell  wrote:

> I wrote:
>
>
>> The replacement cost of the equipment would be ~$692 billion, which is
>> roughly how much the Fukushima disaster will cost.
>>
>
> As Greenpeace pointed out, by coincidence this is roughly the cost of the
> 2008 TARP bailout. Note however, that nearly all of the TARP money was
> returned the U.S. government by the corporations and banks. Most of them
> paid high interest rates on the loans, so they were anxious to return the
> money. I think most of the money came back within two years.
>
> As of last year all but $19 billion of the TARP money was returned to
> Uncle Sam. The remaining $19 billion will probably not be returned because
> the companies went bankrupt. That's not good, but you cannot compare it to
> a $650 billion dead loss. That is, to money spent cleaning up tens of
> millions of tons of contaminated soil, building a giant sarcophagus for a
> nuclear power plant, and compensating people for the loss of their houses
> and livelihoods. Such activities contribute nothing to long-term prosperity
> or happiness. It is like hiring hundreds of thousands of people to spend 20
> years digging holes in the ground every morning, and filling them in every
> afternoon for no purpose.
>
> - Jed
>
>

Re: [Vo]:The Fukushima disaster

2012-04-02 Thread Robert Lynn 
Maybe the best long term answer for nuclear is to put reactors in large
barges or on platforms 10's-100's of miles off-shore.  While they would be
more vulnerable to the elements they would not threaten any land.

Re: [Vo]:The Fukushima disaster

2012-04-02 Thread Jed Rothwell 
Axil Axil  wrote:

*Putting aside the long term perspective, .. .*
>



> You can’t dismiss the long term perspective.
>

No, you can't, but I just did. My sentence begins "putting aside the long
term perspective" meaning "let's not talk about the future for a moment
here; let's look only at the present."



> What happens in the future is important.
>

Yes, it is. What happens in the present is also important. An accident that
bankrupts the biggest power company on earth and costs the Japanese
taxpayers several hundred billion dollars is important.


Your value system is completely opposite to what it should be on this
> issue; let me explain.
>

You don't need to. I made it quite clear that I agree that coal is a bigger
threat in the long term. However, nuclear power is a gigantic economic
threat in the short term. If 3 more Japanese reactors were to go out of
control and explode, it would paralyze the entire economy, which is of the
third largest in the world. It would be roughly the equivalent of the U.S.
fighting the Iraq war again, 5 times in a row.

Coal threatens global warming which in the worst scenario will destroy
entire nations and kill millions of species and individual people. That's
horrible. But a disaster that would impoverish an entire nation -- 4
reactors exploding -- is also horrible, albeit in a different way. Neither
risk is acceptable. Both coal and nuclear have to go.

We need something better. I hope that cold fusion can overcome the academic
politics and replace them both, but if that is not to be, I am sure that
solar and various other methods can replace them. This will be more
expensive than coal per kilowatt hour (ignoring future costs). It will be
far cheaper than nuclear however, now that we have seen the true dollar
cost of nuclear power. After Fukushima it became the most expensive method
of generating electricity in history. I believe it wiped out all of the
profits ever made by TEPCO.

Before Fukushima I supported nuclear power.  I knew that nuclear accidents
have occurred and that they might be severe. However, I never imagined that
a reactor manufactured in the US and installed in Japan could malfunction
to this extent and cost this much money. If you asked me before 2011 I
would have said: "that that might happen in theory but in actual practice
we should not worry about such extreme scenarios." Before 9/11 I would have
dismissed the likelihood of fanatics crashing commercial airliners into
buildings. Life is full of surprises.

- Jed

Re: [Vo]:The Fukushima disaster

2012-04-02 Thread Jed Rothwell 
Robert Lynn  wrote:

Maybe the best long term answer for nuclear is to put reactors in large
> barges or on platforms 10's-100's of miles off-shore.


That seems like a bad idea to me. A rogue wave or a storm at sea can
capsize or break apart any ship, including the largest aircraft carrier or
containership. That happens even when the ships are skillfully handled to
reduce damage. Barges and platforms cannot be handled.

In any case, the long term answer in Japan is already clear. They will
build no more reactors. The public will not stand for it. I doubt they will
even turn back on most of the remaining ones, which are presently off line,
pending inspections. Nuclear power is dead in Japan. Probably in Germany,
too.

- Jed

Re: [Vo]:The Fukushima disaster

2012-04-02 Thread Bruno Santos 
It is also important to notice that japanese government overlooked serious
issues with the Fukushima power plant. The plant cooling design was not
optimal and they knew it.

The japanese government must be held responsible for the disaster as much
as TEPCO.

Accidents happen, but this was no accident. This was people making bad
judgements on safety issues that they knew were wrong. Many have pointed
out that Fukushima was vulnerable, but people decided to overlook and kept
the plant in use anyway.



Em 2 de abril de 2012 18:08, Robert Lynn
escreveu:

> Maybe the best long term answer for nuclear is to put reactors in large
> barges or on platforms 10's-100's of miles off-shore.  While they would be
> more vulnerable to the elements they would not threaten any land.

Re: [Vo]:The Fukushima disaster

2012-04-02 Thread Jed Rothwell 
Bruno Santos  wrote:


> The japanese government must be held responsible for the disaster as much
> as TEPCO.
>

It is a little difficult to know what you can do to a government. Vote them
out of office? The people who authorized this plant retired and died long
ago.



> Accidents happen, but this was no accident. This was people making bad
> judgements on safety issues that they knew were wrong.
>

I doubt that. They are not fools. Generally speaking, power company
officials and engineers are risk adverse.

One commentator in Japan remarked that  after any major industrial
accident, if you go into the files of the plant, you will find someone at
sometime did a study and warned this might occur. It does not matter what
happens; someone anticipated it. They're supposed to think about every
possible scenario. That's their job. In this case someone made careful
studies of tsunamis in local history and determined that a large one might
come. It turned out this person was right.

The problem is, if you were to take action against every accident scenario
suggested by every engineer, no power plant would ever be built or allowed
to operate anywhere. That is more or less the situation they have now got
themselves into, with 50 out of 52 remaining nuclear power reactors turned
off. Local citizens and government regulators are now demanding such
impossibly high standards of safety that I doubt more than a handful of
these reactors will be turned on again. This is bad. At present Japan does
not have clean energy replacements for these reactors, so they are burning
a great deal more coal and natural gas, and they're having severe shortages
of electricity.

It would make more sense to implement some immediate short-term fixes such
as higher seawalls, and then put in place a 20 or 30-year phaseout of
nuclear power. They should live with the risks of another accident for 20
years. It is an unfortunate necessity, better than the alternatives.

- Jed

Re: [Vo]:Advanced Theory of Energy/Being

2012-04-02 Thread LORENHEYER 
If a Spaceplane was equipped with 3-ea Light Energy Systems, that could 
produce a combined TPF equal to that of the EVW, the Spaceplane could 
accelerate down the runway at a fairly good rate. > It would obviously be 
advantageous if the TPF was at least double the EVW, because then you'd be 
enable with 
VTO capability, otherwise weighty landing-gear of some type will be 
required, and of course you'd no longer be able to attain orbit at any speed, 
you 
desired.   
Also, considering a Spaceplane 
the rough equivalent size of a larger private jet, or a smaller commerical 
jet (707?) would most likely cost around a Billion Dollars or so, you would 
of course want to avoid making any crash landings. > Not to mention if the 
HENR was compromised and/or went supernova, which of course, would most likely 
eliminate any problems you had previously.  

   So, the idea would be to take the time to build this rather 
sophisticated spaceplane as good as humanly possible, which of course, would 
likely 
only be satisfactory by "you know who's" standards. > Now, we wouldn't want 
to offend our highly advanced caretakers above by sending more garbage into 
space, so as to make them stir-up a few earthquakes or violent storms, or 
whathaveyou, and/or enrage them enough that they go out in the solar system 
and alter the path of a fairly large comet or asteroid, so as to collide with 
our already half destroyed planet,,, would we? (I shouldn't have to ask)

Re: [Vo]:Advanced Theory of Energy/Being

2012-04-02 Thread LORENHEYER 
Yeah, I've seen all the episodes, just recently over the past year or so, 
but especially when I was only 7 or 8 yrs old, some 50 yrs ago. > At that age 
I was mostly scared half outta my wits by alot of that stuff, but it also 
inspired me to persue the reality of how this civilization has been 
intervened upon, & motivated, and/or influenced by our extremely advanced 
caretakers, 
and/or creators currently operating up in space, w/o our knowledge and/or 
so much as anyone of us believing or having faith in IT, instead and/or as 
opposed to the rather meaningless spritual god that most honest down to earth 
people tend to believe in... they can't handle the truth, not if they saw 
with their own two eyes what that so-called god actually looks like... no 
friggin way!

<< The energy being.
 
 http://www.hulu.com/watch/63084/the-outer-limits---original-galaxy-being >>

[Vo]:Prof. Bardi’s Cold Fusion Breakthrough: the B-Cat

2012-04-02 Thread Alan J Fletcher 

http://cassandralegacy.blogspot.it/2012/04/breakthrough-in-free-energy-b-cat.html

Yesterday's news, but quite good.  Be sure to check out the 1MW movie.

(lenr.qumbu.com -- analyzing the Rossi/Focardi eCat  -- and the 
defkalion hyperion -- Hi, google!)

Re: [Vo]:The Fukushima disaster

2012-04-02 Thread Jarold McWilliams 
Where do you keep getting this $600 billion dollar number?  Most of the sources 
I've seen say it's around $50 billion.   And Tepco is the 4th largest electric 
utility in the world, not the 1st.  Adding Chernobyl to nuclear's safety record 
is unfair.  Chernobyl just showed what can happen to a nuclear reactor if you 
ignore all safety issues.  The Soviet Union didn't really care much about 
safety.  Current nuclear reactors are much safer than Fukishima and Chernobyl 
reactors.  Most future nuclear reactors can be designed to use passive safety 
which makes it an order of magnitude safer still.  I don't care about global 
warming.  Nuclear can be far safer, cheaper, and cleaner than any other power 
source.  Do you know how much subsidies wind and solar receive?  The subsidies 
are much larger/kwh than other power sources.  Solar costs about a $1/kwh 
without subsidies.  Renewable energy subsidies are paid for by coal, so the 
more subsidies you have, the more coal you are burning.  Research 4th 
generation nuclear concepts, more specifically the LFTR, and you will see that 
nuclear can be very safe and economical at the same time.  
On Apr 2, 2012, at 3:02 PM, Jed Rothwell wrote:

> No one disputes that coal fired plants kill far more people than nuclear 
> power, even taking into account casualties from uranium mining pollution.
> 
> Anyone who believes that global warming is real will certainly agree that 
> nuclear power is safer even factoring the Chernobyl and Fukushima accidents. 
> I think alternative energy such as wind and solar would be more 
> cost-effective and much safer. Unfortunately Japan does not have significant 
> wind resources, and not much potential solar power either.
> 
> Putting aside the long term perspective, nuclear power is uniquely disastrous 
> from an economic and business point of view. No other source of energy could 
> conceivably cause so much damage in a single accident, or cost even a small 
> fraction as much money. As I said, this accident bankrupted the world's 
> largest power company and effectively destroyed the houses, towns, bridges 
> and livelihood of  90,000 to 150,000 people in 5,000 square miles of land.
> 
> (It turns out 90,000 people were ordered out by the government but 60,000 
> others left on their own after they and their local governments detected 
> radiation far above natural background. TEPCO and the government say they 
> will not pay compensation to these 60,000 people, even though no one disputes 
> their land now has lethal levels of radioactivity.)
> 
> If TEPCO had known this might happen I seriously doubt they would've built 
> any nuclear power reactors. No corporate executive would risk the destruction 
> of the entire company in a single accident. It reminds me of Churchill's 
> description of  World War I Adm. Jellicoe as "the only man on either side who 
> could lose the war in an afternoon."
> 
> People say that no one was killed. I expect many of the young workers will 
> prematurely die of cancer in the next 20 or 30 years. But assuming for the 
> sake of argument that no one was killed the situation is still unprecedented. 
> Consider this:
> 
> The U.S. commercial airline fleet consists of 7185 airplanes. That includes 
> "3,739 mainline passenger aircraft (over 90 seats) . . . 879 mainline cargo 
> aircraft (including those operated by FedEx and UPS) and 2,567 regional 
> aircraft jets/turboprops." I believe the average replacement cost of the big 
> mainline ones is around $150 million per aircraft.
> 
> http://atwonline.com/aircraft-engines-components/news/faa-us-commercial-aircraft-fleet-shrank-2011-0312
> 
> http://www.boeing.com/commercial/prices/
> 
> Okay imagine that in the middle of one night, when these airplanes are parked 
> with no one aboard, all 4,615 of the big passenger and freight airplanes 
> suffer fuel leaks and are destroyed by fire. No one is hurt, but the entire 
> fleet is destroyed. The replacement cost of the equipment would be ~$692 
> billion, which is roughly how much the Fukushima disaster will cost. Do you 
> think that Boeing, Airbus or any airline would survive this? Do you think any 
> insurance company would? I don't.
> 
> As it happens, this incident did not destroy the Japanese insurance industry. 
> That is because no nuclear power plant in the world is covered by private 
> insurance. When nuclear power was invented, the insurance companies took a 
> close look and decided it was too risky and they would never cover it. From 
> the very beginning of nuclear power this risk has been assumed by national 
> governments only. So the Japanese government and TEPCO customers are on the 
> hook for this. Obviously, no power company can pay for an accident that costs 
> ten times their entire annual revenue!
> 
> TEPCO's earnings are here:
> 
> http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/corpinfo/ir/tool/annual/pdf/2011/ar201101-e.pdf
> 
> 5065 billion yen = $62 billion
> 
> Jones Beene and others have correctl

Re: [Vo]:The Fukushima disaster

2012-04-02 Thread Jarold McWilliams 
Greenpeace is not a credible source.
On Apr 2, 2012, at 3:24 PM, Jed Rothwell wrote:

> I wrote:
>  
> The replacement cost of the equipment would be ~$692 billion, which is 
> roughly how much the Fukushima disaster will cost.
> 
> As Greenpeace pointed out, by coincidence this is roughly the cost of the 
> 2008 TARP bailout. Note however, that nearly all of the TARP money was 
> returned the U.S. government by the corporations and banks. Most of them paid 
> high interest rates on the loans, so they were anxious to return the money. I 
> think most of the money came back within two years.
> 
> As of last year all but $19 billion of the TARP money was returned to Uncle 
> Sam. The remaining $19 billion will probably not be returned because the 
> companies went bankrupt. That's not good, but you cannot compare it to a $650 
> billion dead loss. That is, to money spent cleaning up tens of millions of 
> tons of contaminated soil, building a giant sarcophagus for a nuclear power 
> plant, and compensating people for the loss of their houses and livelihoods. 
> Such activities contribute nothing to long-term prosperity or happiness. It 
> is like hiring hundreds of thousands of people to spend 20 years digging 
> holes in the ground every morning, and filling them in every afternoon for no 
> purpose.
> 
> - Jed
>

Re: [Vo]:The Fukushima disaster

2012-04-02 Thread Jarold McWilliams 
If we decide to get rid of nuclear and coal in favor of wind and solar, a 
millions of  people will die of starvation. Our GDP would decrease by half.  
I'd rather take a "risk" that a nuclear reactor explodes or a coal mine 
collapses than the alternative.   
On Apr 2, 2012, at 4:16 PM, Jed Rothwell wrote:

> Axil Axil  wrote:
> 
> Putting aside the long term perspective, .. .
> 
>  
> You can’t dismiss the long term perspective.
> 
> No, you can't, but I just did. My sentence begins "putting aside the long 
> term perspective" meaning "let's not talk about the future for a moment here; 
> let's look only at the present."
> 
>  
> What happens in the future is important.
> 
> Yes, it is. What happens in the present is also important. An accident that 
> bankrupts the biggest power company on earth and costs the Japanese taxpayers 
> several hundred billion dollars is important.
> 
> 
> Your value system is completely opposite to what it should be on this issue; 
> let me explain.
> 
> You don't need to. I made it quite clear that I agree that coal is a bigger 
> threat in the long term. However, nuclear power is a gigantic economic threat 
> in the short term. If 3 more Japanese reactors were to go out of control and 
> explode, it would paralyze the entire economy, which is of the third largest 
> in the world. It would be roughly the equivalent of the U.S. fighting the 
> Iraq war again, 5 times in a row.
> 
> Coal threatens global warming which in the worst scenario will destroy entire 
> nations and kill millions of species and individual people. That's horrible. 
> But a disaster that would impoverish an entire nation -- 4 reactors exploding 
> -- is also horrible, albeit in a different way. Neither risk is acceptable. 
> Both coal and nuclear have to go.
> 
> We need something better. I hope that cold fusion can overcome the academic 
> politics and replace them both, but if that is not to be, I am sure that 
> solar and various other methods can replace them. This will be more expensive 
> than coal per kilowatt hour (ignoring future costs). It will be far cheaper 
> than nuclear however, now that we have seen the true dollar cost of nuclear 
> power. After Fukushima it became the most expensive method of generating 
> electricity in history. I believe it wiped out all of the profits ever made 
> by TEPCO.
> 
> Before Fukushima I supported nuclear power.  I knew that nuclear accidents 
> have occurred and that they might be severe. However, I never imagined that a 
> reactor manufactured in the US and installed in Japan could malfunction to 
> this extent and cost this much money. If you asked me before 2011 I would 
> have said: "that that might happen in theory but in actual practice we should 
> not worry about such extreme scenarios." Before 9/11 I would have dismissed 
> the likelihood of fanatics crashing commercial airliners into buildings. Life 
> is full of surprises.
> 
> - Jed
>

Re: [Vo]:The Fukushima disaster -- 34 meter tsunamis?

2012-04-02 Thread mixent 
In reply to  Jed Rothwell's message of Sun, 1 Apr 2012 23:17:19 -0400:
Hi,
[snip]
>I think the problem can be addressed by putting emergency generators far
>above the waterline, perhaps in the second story of the reactor building.

I suggest building the entire reactor on the sea floor off shore. That way there
would never be a shortage of cooling water, even if all electrical systems
failed completely and permanently, provided of course that the design used
gravity feed for the cooling water. If the reactor was far enough off shore, and
deep enough, then tsunamis would go right over it, making little impact.

Regards,

Robin van Spaandonk

http://rvanspaa.freehostia.com/project.html

Re: [Vo]:The Fukushima disaster

2012-04-02 Thread Jed Rothwell 
On Mon, Apr 2, 2012 at 10:03 PM, Jarold McWilliams wrote:

> Where do you keep getting this $600 billion dollar number?
>

The Japanese mass media, NHK, and The Japan Center for Economic Research.
See:

http://www.jcer.or.jp/eng/research/pdf/pe(iwata20110425)e.pdf

This shows 20 trillion yen for the cleanup ($243 billion). Since this was
written in April 2011, the estimated costs have climbed considerably, and
far more land had to be abandoned.

I estimated the cost to individuals in an earlier message. That is on the
order of $250 billion. Based on Japanese history I doubt the government or
the power company will pay anything to this group. They have offered
families $12,000 each. Their strategy is clear: they will hire an army of
lawyers and delay and stonewall until the people die. This is how Japanese
industry dealt with previous cases of pollution at Minamata and similar
cases, such as ex-U.S. POWs who demanded payment for slave labor during the
war.




> Most of the sources I've seen say it's around $50 billion.
>

It has cost more than that already, and they have hardly begun.

The cleanup may not cost as much as anticipated because they are already
saying it is impossible, and the only alternative is to abandon the towns
and cities for 50 years or longer. In other words, there is no way to clean
it up at any cost.



>   And Tepco is the 4th largest electric utility in the world, not the 1st.
>

I stand corrected.



>  Adding Chernobyl to nuclear's safety record is unfair.
>

No one would compare the two. I merely mentioned that Chernobyl reportedly
dumped more radioactive garbage into the air and soil than all coal fired
plants in history. I am pretty sure Fukushima did as well, since thousands
of square miles are now at levels ~100 times background.



> Solar costs about a $1/kwh without subsidies.
>

What does nuclear power now cost, taking into account the cost of Fukushima?

In this report, Greenpeace uses mainstream, official sources such as the
Japanese government and The Japan Center for Economic Research. Their
numbers are as reliable as any. All official sources reportedly
underestimate the likely cost by a wide margin.

- Jed

Re: [Vo]:The Fukushima disaster

2012-04-02 Thread Jed Rothwell 
Jarold McWilliams  wrote:

If we decide to get rid of nuclear and coal in favor of wind and solar, a
> millions of  people will die of starvation. Our GDP would decrease by half.
>

This is nonsense. Five states in the U.S. alone have more potential wind
energy than the energy from all the oil pumped in the Middle East. It can
be converted to liquid fuel, and we could use it to put OPEC out of
business. The solar energy from a small section of the desert in Nevada
could also outproduce the Middle East, or generate all of the power in the
U.S., if we can find a way to store it.

- Jed

Re: [Vo]:The Fukushima disaster

2012-04-02 Thread Jed Rothwell 
Jarold McWilliams  wrote:

Greenpeace is not a credible source.
>

That is true. Greenpeace gets most of the numbers in the report from
official source in the Japanese government and TEPCO. These are not
credible sources -- as you say -- but there are not many independent
sources in Japan. Local governments are now conducting their own research,
and measuring radioactivity themselves. They show much higher levels, or
much broader areas than the Japanese government. So the problem is much
worse than Greenpeace estimated. However, you have to start somewhere with
a rough estimate.

Most people in Japan do not believe the government, according to public
opinion polls. You would have to be crazy to believe them, because they
have been lying, stonewalling and distorting the facts from day one. After
the reactors blew up, TEPCO spokesmen were actually on NHK denying that
anything had happened. They said there were some "sonic effects" (loud
noises) but it was unclear what, if anything they meant. To this day, they
have never shown the video of the explosion on TV as far as I know. They
even censored the Emperor when he spoke about it!

A few weeks ago, the Japanese Parliament investigating committee finally
tossed out their own government reports and began using copies of the U.S.
NRL report instead because -- as one MP put it -- the Japanese reports are
"a pack of lies."

- Jed

Re: [Vo]:Brillouin Energy making waves

2012-04-02 Thread Eric Walker 
As long as LENR can't be patented there is no way for it to be really
> profitable. Three weeks after someone comes out with a working device the
> e-cat will be out of the bag and you'll have dealextreme.com selling
> disposable LENR devices for $10.00 inc delivery. While I'm sure a few
> million could be recouped by 'first mover' advantage, it's never going to
> provide the kind of killer profits that some might imagine. Great for
> humanity, but bad for business.
>

I must disagree on this point.  Screwdrivers, guitars and cars are not
patented, but money is made off of them.  The profit margins are not
excessive, but I would argue that the patent system is broken.  If a world
with less patent protection means inventors fail to disclose, that's
totally fine by me; they can do whatever they want.  There's always other
routes to profit, including the building up of a respected brand over the
long term through a focus on quality and utility.

Eric

Re: [Vo]:"There is no tomorrow" Video

2012-04-02 Thread Eric Walker 
>
> It would be nice to see them all funded to the
> $50-100 million level for a few years to see if one or more of them
> looks promising enough to carry on with
> 1/ Field Reversed Configuration - eg Helion Energy, Tri Alpha
> 2/ Electrostatic Confinement - eg Polywell/EMC2
> 3/ Magnetised Target Fusion - eg General Fusion
> 4/ Levitated Dipole - eg MIT LDX
> 5/ Focus fusion - LPPX
>

I won't argue that large investments in research aren't needed in order to
improve the world's energy security over the long run.  But I'm beginning
to think the large numbers you see in connection with some projects are
evidence of something in the system that's failing.  Does it make sense to
invest 3.4 billion dollars to create the National Ignition Facility in
order to carry out basic fusion research?  Maybe.  Maybe, though,
restrictions on funding are actually a blessing.  Assuming LENR will be
recognized and commercialized at some point in the medium term, I think the
relative cost of the two research programs will present an object lesson in
what can be done on a tight budget.

It doesn't seem like starving projects of funding is a good way to go; it
just seems like the grand-project approach may not be all that efficient a
way to advance science, either.

Eric

Re: [Vo]:The Fukushima disaster

2012-04-02 Thread Eric Walker 
On Mon, Apr 2, 2012 at 1:55 PM, Axil Axil  wrote:

 Without moral hazard, there is no way for a party to be motivated to
> change his behavior, improve his design, or pay for any damage caused.
>

I think you have moral hazard exactly backwards.  Moral hazard is a bad
thing -- it's what happens when people are not held to account for the
money they spend.

Eric

Re: [Vo]:The Fukushima disaster -- 34 meter tsunamis?

2012-04-02 Thread Axil Axil 
 Both underwater and underground deployment of nuclear plants is ideal for
certain types of nuclear designs that are totally passively controlled.
This design is old and venerable. Being greatly concerned about nuclear
safety, the last paper that Dr. Edward Teller (designed the H bomb) wrote
before his death recommended this design.

Also being greatly concerned about nuclear safety, the designer of the
light water reactor also fought for this design and was fired for pushing
too hard.

Light water reactors are good at producing Pu239 which was important in
those days at the begining of the cold war.


These designs behave like a nuclear battery. In such a design, the core
supplies heat as required. The heat output of the design is load leveled.


The laws of nature regulate the nuclear reaction automatically and without
the possibility of error.



If no heat is extracted then the plant goes subcritical and dormant.



The core is the only part of the reactor that is below the sea. Reactor
automated core control and the power plant is on a surface barge or
platform that can be unmoored and remove to port if required to avoid a
strong hurricane.



The core would remain underwater in a dormant shutdown state.



Delayed heat remove from the core is enabled using a chimney effect where
heated water would rise to the surface through a large pipe.



The surface turbo-generator rejects heat into the ocean surface and joins
the prevailing ocean current flow.



Reactor refueling is simple and can be done automatically and waste
processing is integral to the reactor design were 99% of the nuclear fuel
is consumed.



The underwater deployment is highly resistant to terrorism since the core
is maintained in a hot cell supported by robots.



The core is deployed at a 100 meters depth and can withstand any natural
disaster (earthquake and associated wave generation) or the crash of any
sized plain no matter the size.





Using water as a structural material will greatly reduce the size of the
plant minimizing the cost of structural material to a small fraction of the
size and cost of current reactors.




Such a plant is unlikely to be built because of a lack of heart and
incipient fear from many quarters.


Too bad the advice of the great men in American science was ignored for
political reasons…





 Regards: axil










On Mon, Apr 2, 2012 at 10:33 PM,  wrote:

> In reply to  Jed Rothwell's message of Sun, 1 Apr 2012 23:17:19 -0400:
> Hi,
> [snip]
> >I think the problem can be addressed by putting emergency generators far
> >above the waterline, perhaps in the second story of the reactor building.
>
> I suggest building the entire reactor on the sea floor off shore. That way
> there
> would never be a shortage of cooling water, even if all electrical systems
> failed completely and permanently, provided of course that the design used
> gravity feed for the cooling water. If the reactor was far enough off
> shore, and
> deep enough, then tsunamis would go right over it, making little impact.
>
> Regards,
>
> Robin van Spaandonk
>
> http://rvanspaa.freehostia.com/project.html
>
>

Re: [Vo]:"There is no tomorrow" Video

2012-04-02 Thread Axil Axil 
The National Ignition Facility is only one of a number of projects used by
the DOD to ensure that their H bombs explode when they want them to. Fusion
research is just a PR thing.




On Mon, Apr 2, 2012 at 11:16 PM, Eric Walker  wrote:

> It would be nice to see them all funded to the
>> $50-100 million level for a few years to see if one or more of them
>> looks promising enough to carry on with
>> 1/ Field Reversed Configuration - eg Helion Energy, Tri Alpha
>> 2/ Electrostatic Confinement - eg Polywell/EMC2
>> 3/ Magnetised Target Fusion - eg General Fusion
>> 4/ Levitated Dipole - eg MIT LDX
>> 5/ Focus fusion - LPPX
>>
>
> I won't argue that large investments in research aren't needed in order to
> improve the world's energy security over the long run.  But I'm beginning
> to think the large numbers you see in connection with some projects are
> evidence of something in the system that's failing.  Does it make sense to
> invest 3.4 billion dollars to create the National Ignition Facility in
> order to carry out basic fusion research?  Maybe.  Maybe, though,
> restrictions on funding are actually a blessing.  Assuming LENR will be
> recognized and commercialized at some point in the medium term, I think the
> relative cost of the two research programs will present an object lesson in
> what can be done on a tight budget.
>
> It doesn't seem like starving projects of funding is a good way to go; it
> just seems like the grand-project approach may not be all that efficient a
> way to advance science, either.
>
> Eric
>
>