Japan quakes

[Sparky]

Why do you mention power density? For batteries it matters, for reactors I don't see what you mean.

megawatts vs land space used.

I'd argue that a high power density is a bad thing. If anything happens to a single high density source then suddenly you have a huge power deficit. Distributed power generation allows the risk to be spread across a larger number of power generation sites.

Well yeah I agree, but there are many cases where you need higher density. Small countries that don't have a lot of space to begin with, for example. Japan is a great example of such a place.

[Solus Corvus]

Well yeah I agree, but there are many cases where you need higher density. Small countries that don't have a lot of space to begin with, for example. Japan is a great example of such a place.

Point well taken. But Offshore wind, ocean thermal gradient, tidal, and wave power don't take up any land at all. Geothermal, solar, and biodigesters don't take up any more land per facility than nuclear/coal/etc. They have a lower power density, but wouldn't have to be especially numerous if part of a diversified energy strategy.

[Dave_Sz]

I feel sorry for the Japanese people at first but not anymore.

Really? I still feel sorry for them.

[Buckeye]

Point well taken. But Offshore wind, ocean thermal gradient, tidal, and wave power don't take up any land at all. Geothermal, solar, and biodigesters don't take up any more land per facility than nuclear/coal/etc. They have a lower power density, but wouldn't have to be especially numerous if part of a diversified energy strategy.

I really don't think that even if they used all that to the max they would even be close to the power output of that one plant alone with 6 reactors.

Back in the day when I worked at Lawrence Livermore Lab, 1970- late 1980's they had the Shiva/Nova systems running I thought this would be the answer. Turns out that it wasn't, to many problems getting the beams all hitting the target with the exact same amount of power, plus other problems.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shiva_laser

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nova_(laser)

Now they have the National Ignition Facility which has a shakey start to it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Ignition_Facility

They also tried the Spheromak MFE Magnets that capped a long tube where plasma inside the tube would supply the heat. These were huge base ball like magnets that capped each end of the tube.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spheromak

And a new way of doing this, Spheromak Tokamak

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spherical_tokamak

So far none of these have been the golden goose of creating more energy that it takes to run them.

[saaya]

It's a historical fact that both those things start wars + a multitude of other factors, you can't generalize that everything you think is bad is the fault of human greed alone.

so you're saying shutting down nuclear reactors = world war 3?


http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/14_02.html
Tepco is preparing to set up a polyester sheet covering reactor1
Am I the only one who thinks this is a budget sarcophagus?
Why a giant Wal-Mart bag instead of concrete?

[Power5]

I do not think fukushima was running all 6 reactors when the disaster happened. Of course a single Solar panel or Wind turbine will not replace a single reactor.

[highoctane]

Solar and wind are simply not reliable as primary power, a nice secondary source to work in tandem with geo, hydro, fuel burning and nuclear. What we want is stable voltage coming from the grid not fluctuations and overloads from overcast and calm days.

At any rate its sad whats happening in Japan but the world as we know it must go on and that means more power and continued nuclear power use until a reliable long term affordable alternative for sustainable energy is found.

All that can be done is learn from the problems japan is experiencing and develop effective safety measures and keep researching alternative power sources.

We're depleting & destroying the planet in numerous ways and as all things will eventually come to an end.

The next big seafood boom, glowing sushi anyone!

[NEOAethyr]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110514/...pan_earthquake
:\ ....

...
1: 460 mw
2: 784 mw
3: 784 mw
4: 784 mw
5: 784 mw
6: 784 mw
Total: 4380 mw, 4.38gw

I'de have to check up on the indian solar dish array to see if that could put any dent in that at all...

As for wind, vawts are the future in that respect, there's no point in using obsolete designs especially when you're trying to replace nukes with anything viable...
This is my fav prototype like design:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gOl7KZptCkY
With something like that you could put a grill on it to protect birds and such, and it wouldn't hurt the flow so much.

Biofuel I think is a good way to help compensate.
Gasification..., wood/hemp, rice, algea, plant waste products, waste disposal gasification, etc etc..

To save power they should probably shut down there colliders if they have any...
There's probably a handful of things they could shutdown without hurting the public in any way.

Niagra fall's puts out 1926 MW mw or more.
"Sir Adam Beck Hydroelectric Power Station", I don't know if that means just one turbine or what though.
I know tesla built them ages ago, it was one of his life goals.
Hydroelectric has it's downfalls too when it comes to the fish safety but there's probably ways to design them to be safer I don't know.
It's still better then a nuke I think.

Lots of quake activity lately around the world.
Not sure if that's normal or not though.
There was another tsunami warning for another country and etc etc...
The storms around my house are alot more freq and stronger then the last few years combined so far, ever since this accident, probably nothing though...
Lol, it's not like anti matter coming from japan's reactors are gonna provide the storms with more energy..., I don't know whatever.

Edit:
Mmm...., didn't do much research lol so don't quote my #'s but eh...
12kw per dish, * 20k array = 240000 kw, or 240 gw...
You guys with a back yard could fit 2 of these np, 4-5 if you put them side by side...
No way is japan gonna put 20,000 solar dish's up but still...

[saaya]

Has any of you read the Stanford paper on powering 100% of the worlds energy needs with renewable energy by 2030?
Did they mention how to buffer widower? Their plan bases 50% on wind...

[saaya]

Reactors 5 and 6 are still operating.
I thought the newer reactors had a higher power output?

Average wind turbines create around 2mw, so it would take around 500 to replace a single reactor, and around 2000 to replace all of fukushima daiichi (5&6 are daini)

How much does one offshore windmill cost?
It's all about money...


BTW, Wikipedia:
Globally, the long-term technical potential of wind energy is believed to be five times total current global energy production, or 40 times current electricity demand.

So much for the lack of alternatives for nuclear power the atomic industry and lobby is claiming... there's more than enough energy around, its just expensive... short term... long term its the same or cheaper as fission and even coal.

[OutSider]

The best power source is Sun for me they just need to make more efficient panels and some infrastructure to store the extra energy

[saaya]

Worlds largest offshore windfarm thanet:
300mw max, 100mw average, cost 1.3bn us$
Covers an area of only 25 square km

So offshore windfarms cost around 10$ per watt produced right now
Replacing fukushima would cost around 30bn us$

How much does it cost to build a nuclear reactor for that capacity*

[NEOAethyr]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OTQ4cFn5sXs

This is thee best in solar tech, panels can't compare.
Unless you are thinking uv cells, I've only heard of 1 prototype 3d uv cell.
And that was a few years back...

25kw per dish, not 12kw like what I stated above.
I would assume 10-22kw for your own design given a similar size.

These things though you could place on top of each sky scraper..., essentially the city of tokyo powering it's self.

If you worry about the sun not being out..., having both solar and wind helps balances out that prob.

To much wind or solar generators is probably not the best thing to do...
To much sun glare and wind reduction in the earth's own wind.., still it's an option, etc etc.
I could go on and on about the neg's and how we could go about it, but whatever's.

Heck we could even use the sea current's to spin up vawts but that would screw over the current's probably unless you designed them just right and place them in the right locations.
Then again, I'm thinking maybe if you setup a few pillars of them close to land it might not be as harmful to the env.

Edit:
One other idea, line certain outside walls of each building with solar "panels" to get what ever you can get too...

Oh, and btw they can use flywheels to store energy, not sure if they called them that though.
They are loud, but if they were built using mag lev tech then they would be silent, and you could have a handful of them per plant/array.
Much more reliable then our crappy battery tech (I had read last year, that batt's made in ww2 still work today, yet we have to worry about the cell's we make today going bad wth..., I figure it must be a lead+something else in those old batt's though I'm not sure).

[saaya]

So, an offshore windfarm for 3gw costs 30bn more or less
According to some googling reactors cost 5bn plus for construction only, and the biggest reactors product 1gw, so offshore windparks cost twice as much as nuclear reactors, are 100% safe while nuclear reactors will NEVER be 100% safe, and that's not taking into account operational costs and fuel costs...

So yeah, we need nuclear! There's no way around it! There just aren't any alternatives...

[highoctane]

So, an offshore windfarm for 3gw costs 30bn more or less
According to some googling reactors cost 5bn plus for construction only, and the biggest reactors product 1gw, so offshore windparks cost twice as much as nuclear reactors, are 100% safe while nuclear reactors will NEVER be 100% safe, and that's not taking into account operational costs and fuel costs...

So yeah, we need nuclear! There's no way around it! There just aren't any alternatives...

One can only imagine the management/maintenance of large scale wind farms distributed over large areas. The more components there are to break, wear out, malfunction, cables and connections to go bad the less reliable something is going to be. Not to mention an entire wind farm is probably more likely to be taken out by severe weather than any conventional power plant. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3FZtmlHwcA

Sure nuclear has its obvious draw backs but it's compact, reliable and cost effective and as long as there is no disaster has relatively small environmental foot print.

We don't "need" just nuclear, we need reliable power from any source and neither wind or solar alone can provide consistent power no more than you can depend on nature to give you a perfect day everyday of the year.

Disconnect your house from the grid and put up a wind mill and solar array and let us know how things go is what comes to my mind.

[n!Cola]

National Geographic Witness Disaster in Japan :
lots of unseen footage

http://chitekizaisan.blog28.fc2.com/...ntry-2714.html

[FischOderAal]

So, an offshore windfarm for 3gw costs 30bn more or less
According to some googling reactors cost 5bn plus for construction only, and the biggest reactors product 1gw, so offshore windparks cost twice as much as nuclear reactors, are 100% safe while nuclear reactors will NEVER be 100% safe, and that's not taking into account operational costs and fuel costs...

So yeah, we need nuclear! There's no way around it! There just aren't any alternatives...

With wind energy you need a decentralised power grid as well. Currently around the world the grid is centralised at the power plants. This means heavy investment is necessary in order to substitute big ass plants with many comparably small wind turbines.

Furthermore, since the amount of energy generated from wind turbines fluctuates, you need pumped-storage plants to have the energy available whenever needed.

Hell, I want nuclear energy gone asap, but it's not as easy as you might think.

[Solus Corvus]

I really don't think that even if they used all that to the max they would even be close to the power output of that one plant alone with 6 reactors.

That is incorrect. Some existing windfarms already have installed capacity compared to all but reactor #6. All together Fukushima had an installed capacity of 4,696MW. The Gansu wind farm (a collection of smaller wind farms, on land) in China currently being built has an installed capacity of 5,160MW and within 10 years is planned to have 20,000MW. Even if we estimate an extremely conservative .25 power factor (new turbines in prime locations are more like .35-.40) for the wind farm and a generous 1.0 power factor for the Fukushima plant the Ganshu wind farm would produce more power. Since the wind can flow over the surface of the ocean without obstruction the power factor for offshore wind farms is even greater than that of onshore wind farms. And that is just wind, not including the other technologies I mentioned.

The largest power station in the world is Three Gorges dam in China. In fact 7 of the 10 largest power stations in the world are hydroelectric. And the other 3 are Nuclear. Now obviously a dam isn't practical for Japan because it eats up a lot of land. But run-of-the-river hydro is certainly possible for local microgeneration projects. Geothermal, wave, and tidal have a huge power potential that are barely utilized, and yet could be very useful to an island nation like Japan.

One can only imagine the management/maintenance of large scale wind farms distributed over large areas. The more components there are to break, wear out, malfunction, cables and connections to go bad the less reliable something is going to be. Not to mention an entire wind farm is probably more likely to be taken out by severe weather than any conventional power plant. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3FZtmlHwcA

That sounds like a lot of technical/skilled jobs would be created to design and maintain such a system. That's a good thing.

As for that turbine in youtube, it had faulty brakes that allowed it to over-speed. A well maintained turbine will not be harmed by storm speed winds. And if not well maintained the pieces flying everywhere are composite materials not radioactive heavy metals. Though even if a storm takes out an entire wind farm - in most cases it would only be taking out the capacity equivalent of one Fukushima reactor instead of 6. This is what a well-behaved turbine does in a storm: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2MsUeV-KFs

Disconnect your house from the grid and put up a wind mill and solar array and let us know how things go is what comes to my mind.

Where I live, in the desert, that is exactly what some people do (without disconnecting from the grid). A single turbine can produce enough power that it exceeds the household's power needs. The excess is fed back into the grid and earns them money. In some cases enough to pay for the cost of the turbine. The same with solar cells, though the payoff is usually a lot longer.

With wind energy you need a decentralised power grid as well. Currently around the world the grid is centralised at the power plants. This means heavy investment is necessary in order to substitute big ass plants with many comparably small wind turbines.

Furthermore, since the amount of energy generated from wind turbines fluctuates, you need pumped-storage plants to have the energy available whenever needed.

Hell, I want nuclear energy gone asap, but it's not as easy as you might think.

Here you have essentially described the problem. We have picked the low hanging fruits and now our infrastructure isn't designed to handle the distributed power generation that is needed for the future.

The mix of power generation would ideally be diverse. So when winds are slow on a clear summer day solar could pick up for demand and on stormy days when solar is useless wind would be at max capacity, for example. Fluctuations in the power generation of all the diverse sources from diverse locations would need to be regulated by a smart grid and smoothed by power storage such as pumped water stations. But it would require a huge investment that likely won't happen until it is no longer financially viable to continue using nuclear and fossil fuels.

[saaya]

One can only imagine the management/maintenance of large scale wind farms distributed over large areas. The more components there are to break, wear out, malfunction, cables and connections to go bad the less reliable something is going to be. Not to mention an entire wind farm is probably more likely to be taken out by severe weather than any conventional power plant.

Sure nuclear has its obvious draw backs but it's compact, reliable and cost effective and as long as there is no disaster has relatively small environmental foot print.

We don't "need" just nuclear, we need reliable power from any source and neither wind or solar alone can provide consistent power no more than you can depend on nature to give you a perfect day everyday of the year.

Disconnect your house from the grid and put up a wind mill and solar array and let us know how things go is what comes to my mind.

Sure, but what's the worst thing that could happen? A wind turbine breaking and damaging some around it... so what? Compare that to what nuclear gone wrong can do...

And yes, lots of maintenance over the years, but it runs for decades if not centuries... without any fuel and without creating hazardous waste at all.

And nuclear has a small footprint on the environment?
There's still no final storage space for nuclear waste, and repressing facilities are known for clear affecting the surrounding environment.

And with this many plants around, especially old ones, ancient ones rather, its just a matter of when and not if... why take any risks to begin with if we don't have to? And we are gonna run out of nuclear fuel within some time as well, and then what? Why not switch to a permanent sustainable system right away?

With wind energy you need a decentralised power grid as well. Currently around the world the grid is centralised at the power plants. This means heavy investment is necessary in order to substitute big ass plants with many comparably small wind turbines.

Furthermore, since the amount of energy generated from wind turbines fluctuates, you need pumped-storage plants to have the energy available whenever needed.

Hell, I want nuclear energy gone asap, but it's not as easy as you might think.

Easy is relative... the alternative is to build 6x as many nuclear reactors as we have now since right now nuclear only makes up 15% of our power worldwide and coal and petrol will be gone soon... how easy is that? And do we want to multiply our chances of another incident? Really?

Yes its not easy, but its possible, that was my main point. Not only are there alternatives to nuclear, but they are right in front of our feet, they are viable and they are affordable enough to be feasible....
that's all... not easy yea...
Didn't somebody once say the right thing is never easy to do?
And Kennedy said, although I doubt he wrote this line himself, we will do it not because it is easy, but BECAUSE it is difficult!

You never grow without a challenge...

Oh and yes, Im actually looking into a wind turbine and solar panels or mirror water boiling reactor to reduce my consumption of nuclear, oil and coal power generation...
I don't just talk... I'm serious about this...

[Solus Corvus]

Oh and yes, Im actually looking into a wind turbine and solar panels or mirror water boiling reactor to reduce my consumption of nuclear, oil and coal power generation...
I don't just talk... I'm serious about this...

Good to hear. You might want to look into stirling engines fed by concentrating solar or to reclaim any waste heat you currently produce.

[saaya]

Good to hear. You might want to look into stirling engines fed by concentrating solar or to reclaim any waste heat you currently produce.

Thx, was thinking about doing that for our ac units... but it may affect their efficiency, plus we are trying to use them as little as possible... using a water bed has reduced our need for acs a LOT ...and I'm thinking, why cool our air and walls and floor and ceiling and furniture, when cooling us is what's matters... so I'm thinking of cooling the water in the matress instead... just gotta fine tune it to reduce condensation

Any suggestions for wind turbines and solar? the sun is fierce down here...

[FischOderAal]

Oh and yes, Im actually looking into a wind turbine and solar panels or mirror water boiling reactor to reduce my consumption of nuclear, oil and coal power generation...
I don't just talk... I'm serious about this...

My parent's home has solar energy since 2008 or something. They are currently thinking of buying an electric car since they only drive short distances. For longer distances they take the train (my father is a civil engineer at DB Netz).

Since the end of last year they get 100 % hydro energy as well. And they even pay less than they would at EON and the like But I think regenerative energy might increase in price since many are now considering paying a premium for regenerative energy.

Good to hear. You might want to look into stirling engines fed by concentrating solar or to reclaim any waste heat you currently produce.

Do Stirling engines actually work? I had the theory about them during study in Thermodynamics but my understanding was that they only work in theory Or do I confuse them with something else?

[Solus Corvus]

Any suggestions for wind turbines and solar? the sun is fierce down here...

Personally I'd go with concentrating solar for efficiency, regardless of if the receiving end is photovoltaic, gas turbine, or sterling. For wind I'm not as sure. There are so many different types and brands that you'd have to do a bit of research to ensure enough capacity, bird compatibility, etc.

Do Stirling engines actually work? I had the theory about them during study in Thermodynamics but my understanding was that they only work in theory Or do I confuse them with something else?

They work well enough. They are actually much better than they were in their heyday (~1800s IIRC) because new materials allow much better designs. They are actually really great for remote communities because they can be a used in a combined power station that provides heating and power to homes.

[Serra]

I'm going to close this thread. There is just too much going on in here about alternative energy options when this thread was meant to be more of an information system / ensure-our-members-are-safe thread.

As far as I could track everyone has reported in... if any forum members are missing by all means let us know and we'll see if we can get some members in the area to peek in on them.

If anyone wants to start up a thread about the pros and cons of alternative energy sources in Wamps they are more than welcome to, ditto for anyone who wants to create a SEPARATE post for up-to-date info on what's going on in Japan in the aftermath of what happened.