Hm, hydrogen is the lightest element, stat is by weight. Also the oceans, even if we think they are huge they are just a small part of our planet. And third - even if percentage is small that's still an insane amount. (Ah, sorry did not read Sarges post in time, hehe)

Alternative energy is still at it's beginning. It's a rather complex area and you can't take items out of context. Biofuel is for example by some scientists rated as a not very "clean" energy because producing them causes pollution, trees being cut off and so on (Brazil, f.e.)

Technology will for sure make big steps ahead, especially more powerful batteries or alternative storage of H2 have a potential to change the world.

One thing not mentioned is geothermal power. A huge resource with all the benefits on nuclear but none of the drawbacks.

Here in Australia, we have huge geothermal resources but a government that is determined to go nuclear, damn shame pollies are allowed to run anything.

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Qunpu' lo'taHmo' jIH yItamQo'

Out of ground cost for a barrel of oil from Saudi Arabia is about $4.00 US, everything after that is people around the world selling at whatever the market will bear. If the cost of burning water is less than about $20.00 for an equal amount of energy produced by burning oil it has a chance. (Oil is trading at $90.00 to $100 a 55 gallon barrel at this time - Anything that costs less would drive that down and would undercut any new type energy producer out of business.)

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Man - a creature made at the end of the week's work when God was tired. - Mark Twain

I don't see how water could be burned anyway. I thought it was a product of combustion. Can carbon dioxide be burned? Electrolyzing water would be "reverse burning". I thought burning was combining something with oxygen in such a way that the reaction produces heat and light. I understand that something can be burned in chlorine, also - that chlorine would be the oxidant in this case.

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Out of ground cost for a barrel of oil from Saudi Arabia is about $4.00 US, everything after that is people around the world selling at whatever the market will bear. If the cost of burning water is less than about $20.00 for an equal amount of energy produced by burning oil it has a chance. (Oil is trading at $90.00 to $100 a 55 gallon barrel at this time - Anything that costs less would drive that down and would undercut any new type energy producer out of business.)

A barrel of oil contains 5.8 million BTU's of energy. Maybe 80% of this can be converted to fuel--the rest is asphalt, lubricants, gas etc. So lets say it contains 5 million BTU of energy for moving vehicles or producing power. A kilowatt/hour of electricity contains 3413 BTU's. Currently I am paying about 7.6 cents per kilowatt hour. So this barrel is equal to about 1500 kilowatt hours or about $114. There would be a loss in dissassociating water into hydrogen and oxygen and then burning it back again to drive an engine. I have conveniently ignored the cost of the Hydrogen production plant and the transportation, storage and refueling equipment cost.

The trick here is that an auto engine or deisel engine is less than 50% efficient. Even so there may not be enough cost advantage inherent here to spur a national intent. Burning hydrogen in a fuel cell may be more efficient. Probably using the electricity directly from batteries would be much closer to 100% efficient as viewed from the delivery point( ignoring production and transmission losses) where I have used the delivered cost for comparison purposes.

Now all we need is to have cheap batteries that can store enough energy for 250 miles and be recharged in ten minutes. Currently the replacement batteries for a Prius (which is a hybrid with a low output electric motor) is expected to have a replacement cost of perhaps $3000. These costs will probably come down but its hard to schedule a breakthough.

We probably need massive amounts of nuclear energy in the 4cent per kilowatt hour range and then we need a way to produce hydrogen from water as efficiently as possible. It would also be nice to find a way to "fix" the energy of hydrogen into a room-temperature liquid that could be delivered via the existing fuel supply system. It's hard to schedule a breakthrough(s) and it would take a long time to transition.

We could probably start on the front end of this right now with some National will and leadership.

Regards,

Bill
AKA DADDIO

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Another followup to the larger question. A ton of coal (say Illinois washed coal at 3.8% sulfur) contains 21 million btu's --more or less. This is going for $32 per ton so the cost per million BTU's (about 8 gallons of gasoline equivalent) is:

Coal (less delivery) $1.53 per million btu's
Gasoline (at the pump) $25 per million btu's
Oil (at $100/barrel) $15-$20 per million btu's for motor fuel
Electricity (TVA residential rate) $22.25 per million btu's


Sooooo It would appear that the cheapest source of energy for fuel would be coal--Actually Powder River Basin Coal with .8% sulphur (ie lignite) would come in at about 65 cents per million btu's. So the cheapest raw energy source (other than solar,wind etc) would appear to be coal. This is not to say that the cost of coal at the source can be compared to a pump-delivered motor fuel--but there appears to be a lot of room to play with from the cost of the source ENERGY to the end-user price. This has been looked at (coal to gasoline) by some universities --apparently the transportation and refining costs are too high and the waste stream is formidable (as it is with burning coal for electric power production.-especially using scrubbers).

As for solar and wind, the high cost of the technology of conversion plus the inability to ecomomically store the source energy or deliver it at night or in the calm; and to match output with demand makes these forms less attractive.

One would think that the Free Market would sort all this out--maybe it has-or maybe the market dosen't function as a free market or it needs some National Direction and impetus.

I can see a whole bunch of schemes for sequestering CO2 from power plants on the horizon. I say lets get on to nuclear and short circuit the Global Warming arguements, the inefficient use of our food grains and the politics of the Oil ecomomy.

regards,

Bill

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It'd be nice to know how much a million Btus of nuclear energy would cost and how much uranium, etc, we have to "burn". Also there is a thing called a hydrogen bomb that may use something else for nuclear fuel.

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It'd be nice to know how much a million Btus of nuclear energy would cost and how much uranium, etc, we have to "burn".

That is listed just as is the 'assumed' fossil fuels reserves. Bound to be on the web.

The easily extracted uranium is very finite but still 'a lot' and I'm sure it must be listed on the web also. Meanwhile, there is enough stockpiled to get a good few new power stations up and running.

Also there is a thing called a hydrogen bomb that may use something else for nuclear fuel.

If you're thinking of nuclear fusion (as opposed to fission), then that uses hydrogen (isotopes). Look up ITER.

Oh, and it's not a bomb and it can't explode. You need to make a bomb for that. You can ofcourse suffer spills and steam accidents just as with any big industry... Including such as the steam pipes in New York City!


One possible scenario to move away from fossil fuel generation is to use a new generation of fission (uranium & mixed oxides) reactors to then move over to fusion reactors from the lessons learnt from ITER.

That is still no excuse for us all to also 'go green' to help save our planet in all other ways possible!


And no, this isn't only to save the polar bears...

Regards,
Martin

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See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

In January 2007, the approx. US $ cost to get 1 kg of uranium as UO2 reactor fuel at likely contract prices (about one third of current spot price):
Uranium: 8.9 kg U3O8 x $53 472
Conversion: 7.5 kg U x $12 90
Enrichment: 7.3 SWU x $135 985
Fuel fabrication: per kg 240
total, approx: US$ 1787

At 45,000 MWd/t burn-up this gives 360,000 kWh electrical, hence fuel cost: 0.50 c/kWh

(1 KWH = 3,413 BTU with a 1500W electric heater)

Kilowatts to 1,000,000 BTU's = 293 (292.997)

cost of uranium fuel of 1,000,000 BTU's = $00.005 x 293 or $1.465
the fuel cost is not what runs up the price of nuclear electric power. most cost is in building and then tearing down the plant.

Consumer cost of 1,000,000 BTU's by Nuclear .07 x 293 = $20.51

the fuel cost is not what runs up the price of nuclear electric power. most cost is in building and then tearing down the plant.

This is mostly copy and paste of US Goverment figures hopefully I didn't step on anyone's copyright stuff.

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Man - a creature made at the end of the week's work when God was tired. - Mark Twain

The costs for Nuclear power production have been coming down. They are around $30 per megawatt/hour and are nearly identical to coal burning plants. These are all costs for Nuclear plants of which fuel is about 15% 0f the $30. This does not refer to those plants that are using scrubbers to clean the exhaust gases when burning coal.

Of the $30 for nuclear power, almost one third is capital cost

This would then be 3 cents per kilowatt hour or about $9.00 per million Btu's or about $1.25 per gallon of gas equivalent --at the power plant. transmission and delivery costs would have to be added. remember that electricity if used directly would likely be at least twice as efficient that an internal combustion engine. Problem would be heavy batteries and poor storage capacity especially in cold weather. Fuel cells would be more likely to go 300 miles but would bring with it all the apparatus of high pressure hydrogen fuel systems.

Regards,

DADDIO

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It seems like the nuclear reactors and buildings would last forever; therefore their cost per kilowatthour would approach zero someday.

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It seems like the nuclear reactors and buildings would last forever; therefore their cost per kilowatthour would approach zero someday.

All machinery wears and corrodes eventually; structures weather, settle, and develop cracks. The duty cycle of nuclear power plants is long, but I’d still expect them to require extensive overhauling—at a cost of the same order of magnitude as the initial build—something like once or twice per century. So I should think a realistic accounting of the capital cost would have to depreciate by at least one percent per year or thereabout, on top of the interest or royalties owed to the investors.

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Neutrons are heavy particles which can damage any material they impinge on. This brings the "swelling" phenomenon in fuel elements, which must be substituted. This is possible during operation in gas graphite ("Magnox") and heavy water reactors, bur light water PWR and BWR must be shut down regularly to do the substitution.
Tullio

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[quote]Neutrons are heavy particles which can damage any material they impinge on. This brings the "swelling" phenomenon in fuel elements, which must be substituted. This is possible during operation in gas graphite ("Magnox") and heavy water reactors, bur light water PWR and BWR must be shut down regularly to do the substitution.
Tullio[/quot
Yes fuel may have to be reprocessed we already have these facilities in operation--one is in Paduca Kentucky --near the Southern Illinois border.

Plutonium is produced from U-238 reactors--more is produced than goes in as far as fissionable material is concerned.

Regards,

Daddio

It seems like the nuclear reactors and buildings would last forever; therefore their cost per kilowatthour would approach zero someday.

All machinery wears and corrodes eventually; structures weather, settle, and develop cracks. The duty cycle of nuclear power plants is long, but I’d still expect them to require extensive overhauling—at a cost of the same order of magnitude as the initial build—something like once or twice per century. So I should think a realistic accounting of the capital cost would have to depreciate by at least one percent per year or thereabout, on top of the interest or royalties owed to the investors.

It seems to me like the cost of remodeling a nuclear plant could exceed it's initial cost. When a nuclear plant is first built, humans can walk around anywhere without any protective equipment at all. But after the fuel has went in and it's put into operation then there would be residual radioactivity which would require special protective gear, robotic manipulators and special decontamination procedures to handle.
I know they don't use ordinary bricks here, but for example replacing a single cracked brick in your house requires only a hammer and chisel and a trowel costing maybe thirty dollars tops, and maybe twenty dollars in labor. The same brick inside a nuclear reactor might require a million dollar robotic manipulator and thousands of dollars to pay the operator and support crew.

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Jim

Some people plan their life out and look back at the wealth they've had.
Others live life day by day and look back at the wealth of experiences and enjoyment they've had.

Hey There,

Well, the intent of this thread has been vindicated. For $100 or so you can buy a high-tech model car that you fill with water. A solar array provides energy to make hydrogen and oxygen by electrolysis - a few batteries provide back up energy if the solar output is too low. The car has a fuel cell which then uses the hydrogen and oxygen to create electricity to run the car. It is available from Hammacher Schlemmer in their recent Christmas catalog. OF COURSE IT WOULD BE MORE EFFICIENT IF THE SOLAR CELL OUTPUT WAS USED DIRECTLY TO POWER THE CAR. It's an interesting glimpse at a possible future if we can learn how to economically produce, store and distribute Hydrogen.

Enjoy

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Hey There,

Well, the intent of this thread has been vindicated. For $100 or so you can buy a high-tech model car...

But they are only TOY cars.

What would be the details for something scaled up to something a lot more realistic?

Cheers,
Martin

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See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

Hey There,

Well, the intent of this thread has been vindicated. For $100 or so you can buy a high-tech model car...

But they are only TOY cars.

What would be the details for something scaled up to something a lot more realistic?

Cheers,
Martin

We would probably need a new "Drake"-style equation. Assume the cost of electricity is 4 cents per Kilowatt hour --provided by nuclear power or coal. Then multiply that times the efficiency of Hydrogen production (electrolysis or whatever) and then by the cost per energy unit for distribution and finally by the efficiency of the fuel cell ( can be quite High) and remember that the automobile can probably go as far on a liter of Hydrogen than as a gallon of gasoline. Convert all of this to an equivalent cost per gallon of gasoline to gain perspective--it would require guesses as to the distribution component. Remember to add in the tax load on our motor fuel.

Some people say that "hydrogen is the fuel of the future; it will always be the fuel of the future" I think that we could make it happen with a commitment to Nuclear power. If we dont then each time we fill up we will probably be enriching our enemies.

Regards,

DADDIO

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More on the subject. The current issue of Road and Track has an article about a long trek in a fuel cell/hybrid vehicle in rather cold conditions.. It appears that hydrogen had to be compressed to 10,000 PSI. "fuel economy" seemed to be quite good.

Motivation

Mr Gray,

Here is what I find on solar energy via photo-voltaic cells. In Key West Florida we had a thermal solar hot water heating system on our roof back in the 1950's. It generated plenty of hot water for a family of 5 except when it was overcast for a day or more.


I would favor Govt-sanctioned standards -maybe through the current Energy Saving TAX rebate program for all new homes. It would cost more up front but would speak to comfort and savings down the line.

yeh that was a few years ago now, there is a company in britain that makes flexible solar panels, its simply plastic sheeting with a pigment on it that converts solar power to electric, its a comercial business, and can convert in cloudy weather, and is more efficient than the old style glass tubes, we must all remember tecno;ogy dosnt stand still, its only ppl with fixed minds and an interest in old teck like they work in it or have a lot of money invested in it, that want us to stay were we are, as for burning water, when water is under presure and cold say 4 degrese c and you have natural gas seaping up into it from the ground ( these conditions are found all over the sea floor in several places) it forms a flamable waxy substance and can be harvested and used for fule, there are milions of tonnes of this at present on the ocean floor waiting to be collected, a simple problem waiting for a solution you would think, so why arnt we doing it, in fact why arnt we makeing plants in gas fields so make this stuff its easyer to transport, safer, you can even hold it in your hand and light it, as it heats the gas is realeased and burns away from your skin, and no gas explosion if a tanker is destroyed in a crash, so who is stopping this advance in energy?