Recovery.Gov Project Tracker

Point out news stories, on the net or in mainstream media, related to polywell fusion.

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swamijake
Posts: 26
Joined: Tue Oct 01, 2013 4:09 pm
Location: Vancouver, B.C.

Re: Recovery.Gov Project Tracker

Post by swamijake »

Coal is not cheap. It offloads a lot of its costs. Here is a good paper outlining the true cost of coal.

http://solar.gwu.edu/index_files/Resour ... 20coal.pdf

As an aside, I'm a power developer. I'm technology agnostic. Today the cheapest form of new generation is wind. Coal is dead and the sooner it is definitively killed the better off everyone will be.

KitemanSA
Posts: 6179
Joined: Sun Sep 28, 2008 3:05 pm
Location: OlyPen WA

Re: Recovery.Gov Project Tracker

Post by KitemanSA »

swamijake wrote:Today the cheapest form of new generation is wind.
Only if you are allowed to externalize all the system costs.

choff
Posts: 2447
Joined: Thu Nov 08, 2007 5:02 am
Location: Vancouver, Canada

Re: Recovery.Gov Project Tracker

Post by choff »

The study is flawed, it incorporates carbon capture and storage/greenhouse gasses into the costs, since CAGW is a complete hoax this can be discounted immediately. Coal contains 13 times more energy from extractable Thorium and Uranium than from directly burning it. Do a search on the Kerrick process and you will discover that coal's true potential has never been realized. Smokeless semichar coke(ideal for industry and heating without pollution), oil, hydrogen rich water gas, plastic feed stock, fertilizer, pharmaceutical chemicals, steam powered electric cogeneration.

With burning coal you get Sulfuric acid in the atmosphere that would shield against the phoney global warming, the down side being in increases lung cancer rates. Rich idiots have gotten burning coal banned, but they want to inject Sulfuric acid into the atmosphere to prevent warming. So now you get the lung cancer and higher electricity bills, and it's still irrelevant to the climate.
CHoff

Skipjack
Posts: 6805
Joined: Sun Sep 28, 2008 2:29 pm

Re: Recovery.Gov Project Tracker

Post by Skipjack »

choff wrote: With burning coal you get Sulfuric acid in the atmosphere that would shield against the phoney global warming, the down side being in increases lung cancer rates. Rich idiots have gotten burning coal banned, but they want to inject Sulfuric acid into the atmosphere to prevent warming. So now you get the lung cancer and higher electricity bills, and it's still irrelevant to the climate.
Coal kills 30,000 people in the US every year. Sulfuric acid is responsible for acid rain that ruined many forrests in Europe. I hope there wont be a need to burn coal soon.

93143
Posts: 1142
Joined: Fri Oct 19, 2007 7:51 pm

Re: Recovery.Gov Project Tracker

Post by 93143 »

happyjack27 wrote:
mvanwink5 wrote:Yes, whatever you want to think.
No, it's not whatever I want to think. We don't get a choice in whats true and reasonable and what isn't.
That's true, but one of you has presented something resembling a case, and one of you hasn't.

You do not get to declare your opponent's position unreasonable without saying why, and it doesn't much matter what that position is. That's not how rational discourse works.

The reason, of course, is that if someone else can strongly hold an erroneous opinion, so can you - and if you can't explain why you're right, you might very well not be.

choff
Posts: 2447
Joined: Thu Nov 08, 2007 5:02 am
Location: Vancouver, Canada

Re: Recovery.Gov Project Tracker

Post by choff »

As mentioned, with the Kerrick process, which has been around since the 1920's, you can create smokeless semi-char. Germany used the Bergius and F-T methods which were inferior and actually developed later. The Germans are going back to coal plants, now that they're determined to quit nuclear, they do a great job of selling wind turbines to the suckers in S. Europe. Pushing green tech on potential rivals and helping secessionist movements in other countries is part and parcel of German foreign policy.

http://www.ecofascism.com/article26.html

The poster child of acid-ruined forests was a wretched stand of spruce on Camel Hump Mountain, Vermont. ABC Television ran a lengthy hysterical national news piece about Camel Hump. (This news piece blamed Acid Rain for the premature deaths of 50,000 American citizens per year.) Journalists following up the ABC story were surprised to find this tragic stand of spruce engulfed by a thriving forest. Further analysis revealed the celebrity spruces to have been irreparably damaged by a rare localized drought.

America’s Acid Rain crusade differed slightly from Europe’s by its emphasis on alleged damage to lakes, especially lakes in New York’s Adirondacks. In 1980 the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the National Academy of Sciences issued alarming proclamations about dramatic increases in the number of acidified lakes and the degree of these lakes’ acidity. The EPA arbitrarily deemed pH levels below 5 as aberrant; ignoring glacial evidence of natural pH levels as low as 4.2.

(Acidity is measured on a 14-point power of Hydrogen – “pH” – scale. The lower the pH, the higher is the acidity. Note: “Acid Rain” is a misnomer as dissolved CO2 renders all rain acidic. Also note: Apple juice is 16 times more acidic than the worst Acid Rain.)

Acid Rain alarmists initially focussed on anthropogenic nitric and sulphuric acidity but soon dropped nitric acidity after it became obvious that rain-borne nitrogen is readily lapped up by plants. While sulphur is also a vital plant nutrient, there can be surplus sulphur dioxide (SO2) in rain, and this does trickle through watersheds into lakes.

In 1980 President Carter endorsed a report from his Council on Environmental Quality christening Acid Rain a grave crisis. In the same year, the EPA launched its National Acid Precipitation Assessment Project (NAPAP) with a $10 million budget. NAPAP morphed into a ten-year $550 million project. NAPAP endures as the most exhaustive scientific analysis of Acid Rain.

A 1984 NAPAP report identified a meagre 630 acidic lakes whose combined surface equalled 0.02% of total American lake surface area. Most acidic lakes were in Florida, an area unaffected by coal emissions.

A 1987 NAPAP report doubted any connection between coal emissions and Acid Rain damage. This set off an enviro-tempest culminating in the firing of NAPAP’s Director. His replacement was ordered to rewrite the report.
NAPAP’s final report (1990) concluded:

Acid Rain does not harm human health.
Acid Rain benefits agriculture. (Several European and North American studies likewise concluded sulphur-loaded rain improves crop yield and protein content).
Acid Rain has not harmed forests. The at-risk trees – high altitude East Coast spruces – represent less than 1% of North American forest cover, and even here Acid Rain damage is dubious. Between 1952 and 1987, forests of the US Northeast grew by 78%.
Four percent of US lakes were acidic. One quarter of these lakes were naturally acidic. The rest had been “somewhat influenced” by human activity. All acidic lakes could be quickly de-acidified by sprinkling lime into them. The cost of a national liming program would be $750,000.
A lake’s acidity is determined by the bedrock beneath, and human land-use of a lake’s environs. Run-off from surrounding land contributes 90% of lake water. Precipitation onto a lake contributes 10%. If rocks and flora around a lake are alkaline, then the lake will have low acidity and abundant aquatic life.

Fossils prove Adirondack lakes were historically acidic due to run-off through peat and pine and due to the bedrock’s low limestone content. Indians knew Adirondack lakes were fish poor. Settlers tried and failed to stock these lakes with fish. Then 19th century lumbering and slash-and-burn agriculture covered watersheds with ash. Run-off through this alkaline surface reduced lake acidity and fish thrived. 20th century conservation programs rejuvenated the forests and re-acidified the lakes.

The release of NAPAP’s final report was delayed until after the passage of the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments. Politicians did not want to disturb the delicate consensus they had assembled around SO2 emission cuts. Senators skimmed the NAPAP report for an hour. The House of Representatives never looked at it at all. The Clean Air Act Amendments mandated 10 million tonnes per annum of SO2 emission cuts by 2000 at a projected cost to industry of $5 billion.

SO2 emission reductions were achieved by power companies’ installing expensive “scrubbers” and other technologies to capture sulphur from coal. Greater reductions were achieved by switching to low-sulphur lignite coals. This unintended consequence caused a boom in lignite mining, particularly in Wyoming, which had not been a major coal producer. Now Wyoming’s lignite mines account for 40% of US coal production. Seventy-five coal trains, each 130 cars long, leave Wyoming’s Powder River Basin every day. Powder River coal fuels a fifth of US electricity.

SO2 emission reduction targets were achieved ahead of schedule, but environmentalists were flummoxed because coal-fired electrical generation had not been curtailed – albeit it was made less efficient and more expensive.
CHoff

mvanwink5
Posts: 2143
Joined: Wed Jul 01, 2009 5:07 am
Location: N.C. Mountains

Re: Recovery.Gov Project Tracker

Post by mvanwink5 »

The elephant in the room is economic fusion and time value of money. To say that we don't know when the elephant will sit on the furniture is claiming ignorance as justification for ignoring it. Besides CHoff's extensive and nice illumination of insane politics and Bankster Machiavelli manipulations and the clear fact that CO2 net increase in the atmosphere is a massive green growth gas (think farming, massive fertilizer, irrigation, insecticide reductions, greening of the earth concomitant with CO2 atmospheric increase), even if human use of coal had any net measurable effect on it, it is easily argued the net effect is massively beneficial as others have done. All that distraction aside which was included only for secondary emphasis, economic fusion will make this whole debate moot which was the original point and what this thread is about. Before CAPS went ballistic on a secondary point. Just to restate, it is my view that at least GF has a sterling chance of making 2014 a breakthrough year for economic fusion, the impact for which the landscape of the field itself, politics and economics of energy, and even war, will be changed.
Counting the days to commercial fusion. It is not that long now.

choff
Posts: 2447
Joined: Thu Nov 08, 2007 5:02 am
Location: Vancouver, Canada

Re: Recovery.Gov Project Tracker

Post by choff »

Even if GF doesn't do it this year, Sandia Z pinch should make breakeven, that should generate more interest and research funding.
CHoff

mvanwink5
Posts: 2143
Joined: Wed Jul 01, 2009 5:07 am
Location: N.C. Mountains

Re: Recovery.Gov Project Tracker

Post by mvanwink5 »

CHoff, GF is in your neighborhood... :D
Counting the days to commercial fusion. It is not that long now.

happyjack27
Posts: 1439
Joined: Wed Jul 14, 2010 5:27 pm

Re: Recovery.Gov Project Tracker

Post by happyjack27 »

choff wrote:The study is flawed, it incorporates carbon capture and storage/greenhouse gasses into the costs, since CAGW is a complete hoax this can be discounted immediately. Coal contains 13 times more energy from extractable Thorium and Uranium than from directly burning it. Do a search on the Kerrick process and you will discover that coal's true potential has never been realized. Smokeless semichar coke(ideal for industry and heating without pollution), oil, hydrogen rich water gas, plastic feed stock, fertilizer, pharmaceutical chemicals, steam powered electric cogeneration.

With burning coal you get Sulfuric acid in the atmosphere that would shield against the phoney global warming, the down side being in increases lung cancer rates. Rich idiots have gotten burning coal banned, but they want to inject Sulfuric acid into the atmosphere to prevent warming. So now you get the lung cancer and higher electricity bills, and it's still irrelevant to the climate.
Forgive me if I don't give an ounce of credibility to someone who rejects science.

happyjack27
Posts: 1439
Joined: Wed Jul 14, 2010 5:27 pm

Re: Recovery.Gov Project Tracker

Post by happyjack27 »

93143 wrote:
happyjack27 wrote:
mvanwink5 wrote:Yes, whatever you want to think.
No, it's not whatever I want to think. We don't get a choice in whats true and reasonable and what isn't.
That's true, but one of you has presented something resembling a case, and one of you hasn't.

You do not get to declare your opponent's position unreasonable without saying why, and it doesn't much matter what that position is. That's not how rational discourse works.

The reason, of course, is that if someone else can strongly hold an erroneous opinion, so can you - and if you can't explain why you're right, you might very well not be.
Actually rational discourse works this way: the burden of proof lies with the person making the extraordinary claim. (Which is now un-fillable, since his rejection of science lost him all his credibility. But if you would like to take over... you can start with providing evidence for the most extraordinary premise (since an argument can be no stronger than its weakest premise): industry has been destroyed. Ready, go...)
Last edited by happyjack27 on Wed Jan 29, 2014 2:33 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Skipjack
Posts: 6805
Joined: Sun Sep 28, 2008 2:29 pm

Re: Recovery.Gov Project Tracker

Post by Skipjack »

choff wrote:As mentioned, with the Kerrick process, which has been around since the 1920's, you can create smokeless semi-char. Germany used the Bergius and F-T methods which were inferior and actually developed later. The Germans are going back to coal plants, now that they're determined to quit nuclear, they do a great job of selling wind turbines to the suckers in S. Europe. Pushing green tech on potential rivals and helping secessionist movements in other countries is part and parcel of German foreign policy.

http://www.ecofascism.com/article26.html

The poster child of acid-ruined forests was a wretched stand of spruce on Camel Hump Mountain, Vermont. ABC Television ran a lengthy hysterical national news piece about Camel Hump. (This news piece blamed Acid Rain for the premature deaths of 50,000 American citizens per year.) Journalists following up the ABC story were surprised to find this tragic stand of spruce engulfed by a thriving forest. Further analysis revealed the celebrity spruces to have been irreparably damaged by a rare localized drought.

America’s Acid Rain crusade differed slightly from Europe’s by its emphasis on alleged damage to lakes, especially lakes in New York’s Adirondacks. In 1980 the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the National Academy of Sciences issued alarming proclamations about dramatic increases in the number of acidified lakes and the degree of these lakes’ acidity. The EPA arbitrarily deemed pH levels below 5 as aberrant; ignoring glacial evidence of natural pH levels as low as 4.2.

(Acidity is measured on a 14-point power of Hydrogen – “pH” – scale. The lower the pH, the higher is the acidity. Note: “Acid Rain” is a misnomer as dissolved CO2 renders all rain acidic. Also note: Apple juice is 16 times more acidic than the worst Acid Rain.)

Acid Rain alarmists initially focussed on anthropogenic nitric and sulphuric acidity but soon dropped nitric acidity after it became obvious that rain-borne nitrogen is readily lapped up by plants. While sulphur is also a vital plant nutrient, there can be surplus sulphur dioxide (SO2) in rain, and this does trickle through watersheds into lakes.

In 1980 President Carter endorsed a report from his Council on Environmental Quality christening Acid Rain a grave crisis. In the same year, the EPA launched its National Acid Precipitation Assessment Project (NAPAP) with a $10 million budget. NAPAP morphed into a ten-year $550 million project. NAPAP endures as the most exhaustive scientific analysis of Acid Rain.

A 1984 NAPAP report identified a meagre 630 acidic lakes whose combined surface equalled 0.02% of total American lake surface area. Most acidic lakes were in Florida, an area unaffected by coal emissions.

A 1987 NAPAP report doubted any connection between coal emissions and Acid Rain damage. This set off an enviro-tempest culminating in the firing of NAPAP’s Director. His replacement was ordered to rewrite the report.
NAPAP’s final report (1990) concluded:

Acid Rain does not harm human health.
Acid Rain benefits agriculture. (Several European and North American studies likewise concluded sulphur-loaded rain improves crop yield and protein content).
Acid Rain has not harmed forests. The at-risk trees – high altitude East Coast spruces – represent less than 1% of North American forest cover, and even here Acid Rain damage is dubious. Between 1952 and 1987, forests of the US Northeast grew by 78%.
Four percent of US lakes were acidic. One quarter of these lakes were naturally acidic. The rest had been “somewhat influenced” by human activity. All acidic lakes could be quickly de-acidified by sprinkling lime into them. The cost of a national liming program would be $750,000.
A lake’s acidity is determined by the bedrock beneath, and human land-use of a lake’s environs. Run-off from surrounding land contributes 90% of lake water. Precipitation onto a lake contributes 10%. If rocks and flora around a lake are alkaline, then the lake will have low acidity and abundant aquatic life.

Fossils prove Adirondack lakes were historically acidic due to run-off through peat and pine and due to the bedrock’s low limestone content. Indians knew Adirondack lakes were fish poor. Settlers tried and failed to stock these lakes with fish. Then 19th century lumbering and slash-and-burn agriculture covered watersheds with ash. Run-off through this alkaline surface reduced lake acidity and fish thrived. 20th century conservation programs rejuvenated the forests and re-acidified the lakes.

The release of NAPAP’s final report was delayed until after the passage of the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments. Politicians did not want to disturb the delicate consensus they had assembled around SO2 emission cuts. Senators skimmed the NAPAP report for an hour. The House of Representatives never looked at it at all. The Clean Air Act Amendments mandated 10 million tonnes per annum of SO2 emission cuts by 2000 at a projected cost to industry of $5 billion.

SO2 emission reductions were achieved by power companies’ installing expensive “scrubbers” and other technologies to capture sulphur from coal. Greater reductions were achieved by switching to low-sulphur lignite coals. This unintended consequence caused a boom in lignite mining, particularly in Wyoming, which had not been a major coal producer. Now Wyoming’s lignite mines account for 40% of US coal production. Seventy-five coal trains, each 130 cars long, leave Wyoming’s Powder River Basin every day. Powder River coal fuels a fifth of US electricity.

SO2 emission reduction targets were achieved ahead of schedule, but environmentalists were flummoxed because coal-fired electrical generation had not been curtailed – albeit it was made less efficient and more expensive.
Well acid rain used to be a huge problem in Austria (and still is), where we have a lot of high altitude spruces. It did not only cause environmental damage that cant be measured in money, but also monetary damage in the billions to the wood industry. Acidic, dead lakes were also a problem in Europe and quite a bit in Scandinavian countries, IIRC. Things have improved since then, mostly with stricter regulations for filters and the reduced use of coal to heat homes and apartment buildings.
The fact that it does not affect much forests in the US is an interesting piece of trivia, but irrelevant. The US does not stand alone in the world. It is affecting other countries as well.
The Germans are mostly switching to natural gas, IIRC, not to coal to replace their nuclear plants. I think they are totally bonkers for shutting down their nuclear plants and there are a bunch of lawsuits coming their way (good). Personally, I can do without coal. It kills people. It is dirty. It stinks and it is not necessary. Whether global warming is scam is an opinion that you have, but that you don't share with the majority of scientists. Personally, I am not sure either way, but I don't think it is a good idea to keep doing what we are doing. Even if it does no harm, it does certainly not help.
I sure hope we will see a lot more nuclear power and hopefully soon some form of fusion. So we can turn off those fossil fuels.

happyjack27
Posts: 1439
Joined: Wed Jul 14, 2010 5:27 pm

Re: Recovery.Gov Project Tracker

Post by happyjack27 »

KitemanSA wrote:
swamijake wrote:Today the cheapest form of new generation is wind.
Only if you are allowed to externalize all the system costs.
could you expand on that? What do you mean by "externalize"? What are the "system costs"? How do those things for wind energy compare to same for other energy sources?

paperburn1
Posts: 2484
Joined: Fri Jun 19, 2009 5:53 am
Location: Third rock from the sun.

Re: Recovery.Gov Project Tracker

Post by paperburn1 »

How soon they forget, If you want to see the effects of too much coal burning just grab a plane ticket and go to china. Beijing, Shanghai or any major city in china.
Image
I am not a nuclear physicist, but play one on the internet.

Betruger
Posts: 2321
Joined: Tue May 06, 2008 11:54 am

Re: Recovery.Gov Project Tracker

Post by Betruger »

Can you guys take this to its own evil bastard tangent thread? I clicked thinking there were lots of Polywell tracker news. :P
You can do anything you want with laws except make Americans obey them. | What I want to do is to look up S. . . . I call him the Schadenfreudean Man.

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