Sunday, March 08, 2009
TESLA
On another blog, there was a discussion about energy and our future. It seemed that there was one faction that believed that only possible future was nuclear and the new undeveloped fusion technology.
The other faction believed that we were doomed so why bother?
I was the only person who even spoke of alternate energy. Normally, the majority of the people on this blog seem like open minded individuals but on this subject I have concluded that the power of the nuclear industry is so great that they have been blinded to the reality of a clean, abundant cheap energy future.
No matter what real advance I tried to show, or suggest. The things that are really happening now in the fields of alternate energy, I got images of giant wind turbines cluttering the skyline of Paris thrown back at me.
I found it very hard to accept that so many people have ignored the rapid progress of tidal, geo, wind, solar and the other technologies in the last few years.
We have lived with the promise of nuclear energy for the last 70 years. In that time, the nuclear industry has been sheilded by the veil of national security and given practically carte blanche to ignore our future health and safety while they made as much money as possible building plants and generating nuclear waste.
It comes down to money, doesn't it? I was reminded of the story of Nikola Tesla, the Serbian genius who was born in 1856 and who was destroyed by the forces of capitalistic greed. Tesla gave us AC Current, he designed the first hydro electric generating system at Niagra Falls. Before 1900, he had built and demonstrated radio controlled robotic devices. He invented Neon, worked with X-rays, developed particle beams. Einstein spent years disproving his Unified Field theory and then before he died, admitted that Tesla was right.
When Tesla died in 1943, an impoverished "crackpot" who had been ruined by J.P. Morgan after Morgan relized that if the project of Tesla's that he was funding succeeded, he would be giving away free energy, Tesla's files were seized by J.Edgar Hoover.
Much of what was in his files when he died remains secret.
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13 comments:
Hey Microdot,
I was almost guilted into returning to that other place of which you speak, but having popped into the conversation at that point you mention to read comments, I decided I CBF (couldn't be fucked) as my son would say. I'm not sure why, perhaps it is just a matter of perception, I certainly haven't spent that much time there, and probably won't again, but I tend to think that certain members of the vocal majority are less than open-minded. However, they seem to get something from presenting themselves as though they are. It probably wouldn't hurt one or two to to step away from the internet and live a little real life.
If I'd been able (to be bothered), I'd have written at length in agreement with you. I don't know enough about nuclear power in France to comment, but I understand enough to have protested any efforts to establish such an industry here without properly investigating utilising natural resources. Wind and sun are in abundance here, as is the potential for many other viable alternatives which are, fortunately, being explored and practised in parts of the country. There's a long way to go. but things are improving, and I see a far brighter future as government are more accountable and people actually THINK about the implications of future energy and resource developments.
What I don't understand about the mentality that the, "we are all fucked, so lets not bother people", is what they actually DO other than spout off passionate, but ill-researched rants. To me, that attitude is a cop-out, an excuse to live a life where you don't actually make any effort to change your own life on a micro-level, much less engage with any constructive efforts to participate in what could be an opportunity for humankind to redress the balance to some extent. 'Cos hey, we humans have made too much of a mess and now we're doomed, let's just keep wasting resources, and consuming all that terrible stuff that is forced on us, and being angry until the inevitable happens.
I refuse to buy into that. Yes, humans made a mess, some was driven by stupidity, greed, and selfishness, but some was through lack of knowledge, not intent. But whatever the reasons, it happened and there is no reason we can't clean it up to some degree, in fact, the way I see it we have a responsibility to. The fact that we are able to learn from the mistakes of the past, and choose live life a better way for the future of the planet shows we are not totally inept, in my eyes, anyway.
Bah, this is going nowhere. It probably reads like one of those rants I just bitched about.
Take care
Argh, it frustrates me when I can't go back and edit my comments. Please pretend my punctuation is all present and correct in previous comment ;-)
I know what you mean about stepping away from the internet. I try to make my time here worthwhile. This blog is an outlet for my politcal frustrations which are usually expressed in obscure humourous references.
I really appreciated your comment and the lack of punctuation only emphasises the wealth of passion!
Alternate energy is someting thqt has passionaltely interested me for at least 40 years and it seems so close now...
Everyday I see more evidence that we are there and the economic crisis has only given more impetus to governments to fund the innovators!
I found it very hard to accept that so many people have ignored the rapid progress of tidal, geo, wind, solar and the other technologies in the last few years.
To me it is one more example of the fairly low level of both curiosity and intelligence here in America. We pretend to be #1 and the 'best' nation on earth when, in reality, we wait for other people to move forward first and then, often way-too late, we join the process already under way.
Look, for example, how long it has taken for the American car manufacturer to develop hybrid technology and offer it to the American citizen. Rather, they continue to make SUV's.
wind and solar power are worth looking into, but they'll never produce enough amounts of power steadily and reliably to be considered base load generating capacity.
in fact, i'm not sure if weather-dependant sources can even in theory supply enough power to take over the entire base load of the industrialized world. well, tidal maybe could, if we were willing to dam off the oceans ruthlessly. but tidal isn't available everywhere, and power transport is costly to build.
for the large bulk of our power needs, now and in the long-term future, we need something more reliable. in the intermediate term, that might be plain old fission; it's got the capacity and it's cheap in every currency except for political will. in the longer term, we might use breeder reactors.
but since political will is the one necessary currency, what we actually will use is coal power, with a bunch of windmills thrown in for show and to placate the consciences of folks who don't understand what base load power is. depending on just how pessimistic you want to get about global warming, that may very well mean that we are fucked.
I follow energy issues / technology like it was my religion.. it just fascinates me. Anyway, I had this idea that we could power underground algae bioreactors with small thorium nuclear reactors. The thorium reactor would power light tubes that would be immersed in these giant underground vats of algae. The algae would soak up C02 from the air like a sponge and millions of gallons of algae oil would be siphoned off daily.
Thorium reactors are totally safe, they cannot go critical, the waste half life is measured in hundreds of years instead of millions, and plutonium isn't a byproduct. Thorium is more plentifull in the earths crust vs uranium 3 to 1.
We don't really have an energy shortage issue in the comming decades, we have a liquid fuel shortage issue. We need an all hands on deck approach to energy.. solar, geothermal, biofuels (non crop based), tidal, wave, ocean temp gradiant, and yes - even nuclear. How about that company that thinks they may have found a way to tap into the cassimir force? They claim a device the size of a sugar cube could pump out killowats of power... anywhere in the universe.
So Nomen says go with coal because nothing works...
Nomen, whaaaaa????? You sound like a shill for the coal industry. Read, think, talk to people who are doing hands on research and developemt on alternate energy, then maybe, you might have an opinion that isn't 45 years out of whack with reality.
Steve is living in a real future, he has been reading about the leaps in algae generation systems...Yeah, it works..
I'm not so sure about thorium reactors, the technology hasn't really been successful except
theoretically on a small scale.
Manhattan is going ahead with its project of tidal generators in the East River...already an entire portion of the Lower East Side is getting tidal power.
There is just too much happening and I think I am going to start investigating and reporting on the real progress that is being made in alternative energy NOW.
We are there, we just have to stop letting corporate interests dictate the future so they can milk every last cent out of us in our need for energy to play video games...
Nomen, I saw the singing Christmas coal videos...really getting your message out there!!! Koff, Koff....
no, i'm not saying "go with coal". that's an idiotic notion. i'm cynically betting that that's what will end up happening, because it's politically safe and cheap all around.
it will also end up poisoning our atmosphere and worsening global warming, but once again --- politically safe, cheap option; and people are lazy, greedy fucks who can't seem to think long-term or deal with diffuse risks. you watch, coal power is what we'll actually get, whether we like it or not.
(well, you're living in France; you may get nuclear. i wish the USA had that option, politically. we don't --- we can't even seem to build a final storage location for our used reactor fuel here and get it done. more nations should emulate the Swedes and Finns on that subject, but few nations seem to be moving on it. Yucca Mountain is a train wreck that's years overdue for cancellation.)
nor am i saying that "nothing works". nuclear, just for one example, works fine. wind and solar work fine too, they just don't work at very high output 24/7 all year long, which is what you need for base load power. they have their place, but they're no silver bullet; nothing is.
it's all our common loss that coal works, too, for all too many definitions of "works". i wish it didn't, but it does, and nobody's interested in forcing everybody to use any of those definitions of "works" for which coal doesn't. nobody could so force us, anyway.
tidal is a good idea, but we can't move all humanity close to where the tide meets the coastline. unless we're willing to build enormous new power distribution networks and overengineer the tidal plants to compensate for transport losses, we'll need something else to power the continental interiors.
Nomen, thank you for clarifying your comment. I agree that the lobbies for coal in America are very powerful.
I don't believe that the coal industry has to fear renewable energy.
Coal is finite, it will be phased out because if reality.
Beware of France and sleazy little presidents bearing nuclear reactors.
When Sarko visited Bush last year, he concluded a deal selling 13 new plants to America...
Yes, Areva, the French Nuclear Giant and Westinghouse are going to suck trillions out of your pockets to build "new technology gravel bed reactors" which have as yet to be actually proven even though they have been biulding one in Finland for the last 5 years...Billions of Euros in cost overruns and years behind deadline.
Germany has abandoned gravel bed technology after a number of "accidents" which have been kept under wraps for "security' reasons.
you seem to be trying to complain about pebble bed technology, which is indeed still experimental and largely unproven. it's considered a fourth-generation design; once developed to reliability, this holds a promise of being an excellent reactor design as far as safety goes. it's physically incapable of melting down, for instance. most of the development on it seems to be happening in China, now that Germany's given up on most all nuclear power and South Africa doesn't have the money.
but Olkiluoto 3 is not that. it's a much more pedestrian, third generation, pressurized water reactor. as for why they're having such difficulties getting the thing finished and in production, i can't really say; i'm half the planet away from that story.
Hey there,
just wanted to let you know that you made some good points and to give you some hope that you can transmit a message when people are willing to question what they take for granted.
I have generally always rooted for green power - being a kiwi I guess it's kind of reflexive - but for a long time held a resigned point of view similar to Nomen. Now though I really want to believe that humanity can forge a clean and worthwhile future with our ingenuity and ever-increasing understanding of the natural universe.
That science and technology can be used for the light as well as the dark side of the force is a given. Still it would be refreshing to think, as Michele said, that it doesn't have to be our Midas' touch.
A better way to live, perhaps even mitigating and repairing the monumental damage we've done so far - why not?.
yikes, batboy...
nice to see you on my blog.
I would have replied sooner, but we have had our power disrupted by the EDF most of the day.
They sent us letters that the power would go out at 10 this morning and almost on the dot...
Then after I finished my work around here, it was so nice, I decided to go biking.
Yes, it would have been nice to have had a more receptive response
on pourquoi pas regarding these issues, but. I find Pourquoi pas a real subculture of its own.
I find the people there an extrememly iunteresting mix of disimular personalities and I am very happy to be one of the human flotsam caught up in the eddies and whirlpools.......
That said, I am still and have always been passionaltely involved in the idea of alternate energy.
I feel that at this point in time, we are actually there, it's just the implementation of the techniques that exist that is holding us back.
I also feel that the real research of the future regarding nuclear energy has only just begun and it will be a fusion of the two concepts, nuclear and green that will lead us to an abundant clean energy future.
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