Michele Comitini wrote:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_Pacific_Big_Boy
I already posted a picture of the above as an example of a machine
that had thermal power of at least 10MW.
Those locomotives were made around 1940. They ran at 80mph max speed. . . .
Sure. No one disputes that people have been using large heat engines for
a long time. I suppose the first ones exceeding 1 MW thermal were made
in the 1820s. The Great Western, the first big, successful oceangoing
steamship was built in 1838 and had a 750 hp engine (560 kW). Given the
inefficiency of steam engines at that time I suppose that was roughly 5
MW of steam.
Here is a triple expansion marine steam engine rated 2500 hp (1.8 MW):
http://www.lanevictory.org/laneVtour_museum2.php
(Scroll down the page a little)
That's roughly 5 MW of steam, which starts at high pressure and then
works its way down to the large, low-pressure cylinder.
Let me point out something about this engine. I do not know much about
these things, but as I mentioned, my father spent years working on one,
until a deck engine nearly killed him. I have heard a lot about what it
was like working on them. If you made a mistake, or if a steam hose came
off or something else went wrong, it could maim you for life or kill you
faster than you can say knife. My father said there wasn't a voyage he
made when he did not see someone at the docks in New York maimed,
crushed or decapitated.
Modern machines are much safer than these old ones, but untested
prototype reactors like Rossi's are probably back to being dangerous.
Right back to 1938. Especially when they are not designed by teams of
experts with supercomputers at a leading industrial corporation.
Any machine on the scale of a megawatt, and any steam production on that
scale is inherently dangerous. It can be tamed, but you have to spend
millions of dollars to do it. You probably need more than five people
working on the project. Perhaps Rossi has consulted with experts and
used supercomputer simulations. He is an experienced and successful
engineer who has developed heavy diesel equipment. He understands how to
do these things. But someone who recently had to sell his house to
finance the project is not working on the kind of scale you expect to
see in modern industrial R&D. It sounds like a shoestring operation to
me, and I do not think it is wise to build heavy equipment on a shoestring.
There is a reason why people nowadays demand ultrahigh-tech
test-everything-to-the-n'th degree before you turn on the first time,
and OSHA rules galore. It is a conspiracy to prevent innovation. It is
because our fathers and grandfathers worked with heavy equipment like
marine engine, and with weapons and aircraft during WWII. They knew darn
well what heavy equipment can do to you. After the war, people of my
father's generation who had worked in industry, factories, ships, or in
the army, went to college with G.I. Bill, and then went to work at
places like the National Bureau of Standards. They put into place
industrial reforms and new rules which revolutionized workplace safety
and equipment safety. Nowadays it costs far more to develop machines
that it used to. I think it cost $1 billion to develop the Prius.
Believe me, these extra layers of safety are worth every penny. Every
year, tens of thousands of lives are saved, and hundreds of thousands of
people walk away from automobile accidents that would have sent them to
the hospital decades ago. The same kinds of improvements have been made
in engine rooms, mines, factories and everywhere else. if you want to
know what industry was like 60 years ago look Russia and China, and the
appalling casualty rates there.
- Jed
