Environmentally friendly delusions

[Mooshi]

You hear the phrase all the time. Usually by smug Toyota Prius drivers in California. Let's all join hands for the environment! While it's a really good idea to stop depending on a region of the world that bloody hates Western views, our governments kiss their bums for their precious oil.

What sparked this discussion was checking out our current craze. Electric vehicals. Sparked..electric..I made a pun..ahah! Anywho, it infuriates me the smugness these half-wits have when they promote how this is a good alternative, our future. Anyone else remember the embarassment of Ethenal? Took more energy to produce the stuff than it put out + the pollution from the additional pestisides and machinery to distill it.

Electric cars are no better. Looks cutesy on paper and has the appeal to plug in and charge, but it isn't that simple. In spite of the cool factor and the loads of torque, you're doing MORE harm to the environment, not less! Batteries don't grow on trees. I swear the supporters of those horrible cars like the Prius must think cars run on magic. They don't. Mining all the materials for those batteries requires heavy equipment. Said equipment pumps out carbon to create the batteries for your "green" car. To charge your "green" car, you plug it into a socket. Unless your power provider uses renewable energy, you're contributing to more C02 if they are burning coal. Not so environmentally friendly no more, is it? Not might be as fuel efficient, but driving an old school muscle car is actually better for the environment than driving a brand new Prius.

Do you think we'll ever have a viable alternative? :/

[Yip]

Couple of things,

Even if the power providers are "contributing to more C02 if they are burning coal", what you then have is a more isolated source of the pollution, and therefore it's a problem that's easier to correct. With millions of cars polluting all over the place, it's much harder to get it under control.

Another point that shouldn't be overlooked is that pollution caused by a renewable fuel is less harmful than pollution caused by fossil fuels. Why? Because for example, in the case of renewables, the CO2 being released into the atmosphere has recently been taken out of the atmosphere. Whereas with fossil fuels you are talking about a process that takes millions of years to take the CO2 out of the atmosphere. It's this massive disproportion of CO2 going out and going in that's the one of the key problem with relying on fossil fuels.

On a slightly different note, we may be able to vastly reduce the pollution from gas-powered vehicles if everyone kept their vehicles tuned up and running well. If one car in ten* is running really bad, that one car will likely cause far more pollution then the other nine combined. (*note: numbers made up for illustration purposes. I don't have facts to back that up, so I might be way off. )

[Furlong]

Indeed, the electric car is, if you ask me, a dead end.  There are too many obstacles for it to be economical. 

Now, hydrogen cars, those have potential.  And I am not talking about super advanced ultra-expensive concept cars.  I am talking about one that has been in production since 2008.  Honda has the FCX Clarity.  As James May of Top Gear puts it, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZvyYvbXjEM

Yes, it costs about $120,000, but it is coming down in price.  And, if you have a clean energy grid to support the energy needed to extract the hydrogen into usable form (nuclear, wind, solar, geo-thermal, natural gas, etc) 

Some other alternatives include diesel, which is far cleaner, CO2 wise, then gasoline, and is fast becoming more efficient.

[Shabbernigdo]

with current trends in tec and the rate at which its improving eletric vehicles will be power source of the future.  They do in fact run a lot greener and cleaner then gas / desil vehicles.
True batterys do take some resources to produce but at the end of there use full life span they can be recycled and made into other products or even more batteries.

LiFe / LiPo / LiIo batteries are nothing to snub at. They have a ton of potential and they are fairly recent. Also a lot of these newer gen coreless / brushless eletric motors pound for pound out perform gas / desil engines in just about every way shape and form.  not to mention there fairly simple design and lack of neumerous moving parts there maintance needs are almost 0.

A lot of eletric motors run at about 80+ % efficency while gas engines struggle to hit 20%

[Alsek]

You have to look at the cradle to grave aspect if you really care about it.

Cars that are made from parts that are shipped all over the world (like the Prius) use an AMAZING amount of fossil fuels to make.  Why?  because something has to power the massive ships that moves all the parts around.

Because vehicles like the Hummer and jeep wranglers are made all in one place,  from their creation to their demise all factored together,  they are more environmentally friendly than the Toyota Prius is...  And that's not even factoring in where the electricity powering a prius comes from.   xD

By the time a Prius is ready to be sold in the united states,  it's already done more damage to the environment than a hummer that's been on the road for many,  many years.

Prius owners confuse me.  They care about the environment...  but apparently not enough to do a quick google search and to research what they're doing.


This of course isn't an end all solution (for us all to drive hummers) but it does mean that you really need to look at more than just what powers the car on a day to day basis.

[Shabbernigdo]

You have to look at the cradle to grave aspect if you really care about it.

Cars that are made from parts that are shipped all over the world (like the Prius) use an AMAZING amount of fossil fuels to make.  Why?  because something has to power the massive ships that moves all the parts around.

Because vehicles like the Hummer and jeep wranglers are made all in one place,  from their creation to their demise all factored together,  they are more environmentally friendly than the Toyota Prius is...  And that's not even factoring in where the electricity powering a prius comes from.   xD

By the time a Prius is ready to be sold in the united states,  it's already done more damage to the environment than a hummer that's been on the road for many,  many years.

Prius owners confuse me.  They care about the environment...  but apparently not enough to do a quick google search and to research what they're doing.


This of course isn't an end all solution (for us all to drive hummers) but it does mean that you really need to look at more than just what powers the car on a day to day basis.

true they need to have parts shipped in from other locations but if you look at the tonage moved versus the ammount of fuel used its not as extreme as people make it sound not to mention its not like then entire ship is used just to ship car parts its shipping goods from many different places and if those containers dident have car parts in them then they would just be filled with other items so the same ship would still be burning the same ammount of fuel  getting from point a to point b weather it has car parts on it or not.

now if the ship was used strictly just to move prius parts then there may be somthing to it.

[Yip]

Because vehicles like the Hummer and jeep wranglers are made all in one place,  from their creation to their demise all factored together,  they are more environmentally friendly than the Toyota Prius is...  And that's not even factoring in where the electricity powering a prius comes from.   xD

And with just a little bit of google searching, I found this: http://www.pacinst.org/topics/integrity_of_science/case_studies/hummer_versus_prius.html

Apparently the study which this Hummer vs Prius info came from may not be reliable.

Another thing to consider is that if cars like the Prius are ever in big demand, then US companies might get their butts in gear and start making more stuff like that. Not just to cut back on pollution, but also to move towards something more sustainable than fossil fuels.

[Foxpup]

Now, hydrogen cars, those have potential.  And I am not talking about super advanced ultra-expensive concept cars.  I am talking about one that has been in production since 2008.  Honda has the FCX Clarity.  As James May of Top Gear puts it, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZvyYvbXjEM

Yes, it costs about $120,000, but it is coming down in price.  And, if you have a clean energy grid to support the energy needed to extract the hydrogen into usable form (nuclear, wind, solar, geo-thermal, natural gas, etc) 

Wrong. Yes, you can extract it from seawater, but that requires enormous amounts of electricity. Even if that electricity was produced cleanly, it's way more efficient to use it directly. The only way to obtain hydrogen that's not ludicrously inefficient is steam reforming of our favourite fossil fuel methane, thus:
CH₄ + H₂O -> CO + 3H₂
So not only does hydrogen come from a fossil fuel, it produces carbon monoxide in the process! If that's not an environmentally friendly delusion, then I don't know what is.

[Avan]

Somebody did a study - i think it was in SciAm - of electric vs. hybrid vs. gas based on region (because different regions have different ways of producing electricity, some more polluting than others) - while yes, certain regions did do really badly, others did produce less CO2 producing electricity for the car than if gas was used.

Anyways, fusion powered car would be awesome... no, even better, a spaceship! >
MWAHAHAHAHAHA!

[Mooshi]

Maybe I did bash up the Prius, but for good reason. It isn't the petrol engine that is the problem per say. What a car puts out right in front of you is only a tiny piece of the puzzel. You have to look at how the car was put together, not just the emissions. Using the Prius, the nickle for the batteries is mined in Canada. The surrounding area of the smelting plant has no living life and has to deal with acid rain. The nickle then travles by sea over to Europe, from Europe it gets shipped to China to turn into some type of foam and from China it gets made in Japan. And this is just for the batteries. If you want something fuel efficient that does less harm, drive economically in a diesel.

Strip mining the Earth and burning up fuel with lots of transporting is hardly an environment saver. Sooner or later, I fear our government officials will fail to do their research and go along with the rest of the yuppie crowd just like they tried to in the US with ethenal made from corn. The only way I see electric working is if batteries got a newer design that didn't cause all the harm they currently do to produce and that every power plant has a clean(er) source of electricity. Not every plant is located near a water source, sunny or windy area. Of those 3, solar panels are still really expensive and you wont get your money back from your investment in quite a long time. Wind turbines are probably the same, but I didn't research them up to make a more accurate statement.

[Avan]

Fusion power!
Fusion power!
Fusion power!
Fusion power!
etc...!

Ok, so yeah I am shamelessly promoting one of my pet projects, but still...
My reactor's only exhaust would be hydrogen-1 gas and helium-3 & 4 - helium 3 can be recycled as fuel for the reactor or sold to people working on other types of fusion, hydrogen 1 gas can be used for combustion or fuel cells, helium 4 can be sold for whatever people use helium 4 for... dirigibles, gas discharge tubes, non-reactive atmospheres, etc.
All tritium would be entirely contained within the reactor, which by its own design is intrinsically heavily shielded by its own core, and even if there was a leakage of tritium - ie, from the fuel injection system or from the lithium breeding tank, the quantities in the reactor at any one time are simply miniscule. Radiotherapy is likely to give you a bigger dose of radiation than a tritium containment leak in the reactor.
Eventually the core itself may become radioactive after all the neutron bombardment under normal operating conditions, but the core is the size of a grapefruit, and will be more likely to be only mildly radioactive... not exactly piles of radioactive waste.

Of course, this is all assuming I can get my reactor build, and then make it work. So yeah... XD

[Mooshi]

Avan, do lemme know whenever the governmeent gives you some multi-billion dollar grant for your shananigans.

[Serra Belvoule]

Let me be a little pessimistic in here and say that as long as we, as a whole, continue living in the way we do, it won't really matter if we "protect" and "save" and whatnot, we are still harming the environment more than it can regenerate, and most don't even care or notice they even are.
The simple fact we use clothes, cars, plastics, electricity, and a big etcetera is part of that steady environment toll. We are a big part of it, as conscious as we are, and a car that does slightly less damage isn't gonna make it better.
On the other hand, yes, small actions can get to big acts. Still, we're very comfortable damaging the environment to stop doing it.

[Foxpup]

Fusion power!
Fusion power!
Fusion power!
Fusion power!
etc...!

Oh yeah, I almost forget. Fusion power is the only thing which makes extraction of hydrogen from water for energy production reasonable, since extracting hydrogen from water requires more energy than can be obtained from burning it (that's not a matter of technology, that's just conservation of energy - you cannot change the laws of phyics). Fusion power!

My reactor's only exhaust would be hydrogen-1 gas and helium-3 & 4 - helium 3 can be recycled as fuel for the reactor or sold to people working on other types of fusion, hydrogen 1 gas can be used for combustion or fuel cells, helium 4 can be sold for whatever people use helium 4 for... dirigibles, gas discharge tubes, non-reactive atmospheres, etc.
All tritium would be entirely contained within the reactor, which by its own design is intrinsically heavily shielded by its own core, and even if there was a leakage of tritium - ie, from the fuel injection system or from the lithium breeding tank, the quantities in the reactor at any one time are simply miniscule. Radiotherapy is likely to give you a bigger dose of radiation than a tritium containment leak in the reactor.

Maybe I've completely misunderstood your design, but doesn't the D-D fuel cycle render a lithium breeder unnecessary? Or are you taking an entirely new approach?

Eventually the core itself may become radioactive after all the neutron bombardment under normal operating conditions, but the core is the size of a grapefruit, and will be more likely to be only mildly radioactive... not exactly piles of radioactive waste.

But you still have to keep the spent cores out the hands of terrorists, if only because people are overly worried about that sort of thing. When a dirty bomb goes off, the phrase "only mildly radioactive" doesn't tend to reassure people.

[Avan]

The D-D reaction actually produces a lot of neutrons (~66% of the energy is in the neutrons), so why not just breed some tritium while you are at it? Also the D-D reaction is less efficient than the D-T reaction, thus a greater deal of power is obtained via breeding Tritium.

Nearly spent cores cannot be made into a bomb; even radiation sources from hospitals are a far greater danger; actually, if a core was melted down and dispersed, the radiation could be only about as bad as coal soot, if even that bad.

[Foxpup]

The D-D reaction actually produces a lot of neutrons (~66% of the energy is in the neutrons), so why not just breed some tritium while you are at it? Also the D-D reaction is less efficient than the D-T reaction, thus a greater deal of power is obtained via breeding Tritium.

Don't you mean 33%? And while it is less efficient, it produces helium-3, which can be reused to produce more power. Are you saying your reactor produces helium-3 (except as decay product of tritium) without a D-D cycle?

Nearly spent cores cannot be made into a bomb; even radiation sources from hospitals are a far greater danger; actually, if a core was melted down and dispersed, the radiation could be only about as bad as coal soot, if even that bad.

It doesn't matter how bad it really is, it only matters how bad the general public thinks it is. Heck, people are even worried about radiation from their mobile phones! Which (to try to steer this thread back to the original topic) is the reason for all these bogus environmental friendliness concerns.

EDIT: Whoops, forgot to factor in the tritium burnoff *headdesk*. You're right, it is 66% if you're not planning on reusing the helium-3 (38% if you are). It's a good thing you're building this reactor and not me! On the other hand, the D-T reaction has a neutronicity of 80% without breeding any usable fuel, so whatever.

[Yip]

I'm pretty sure you've lost most of us with the technical talk.

[Mooshi]

I would like to point out that you'd have to be a complete fool if you believe man will ever destroy this planet. It's been around billions of years before modern man and undergone much more extreme conditions than some petrol thirsty SUVs.

Sure, we aren't exactly helping and could stand to clean up our act, but you have to look at the bigger picture. A volcano is a natural event, when one erupts, it pumps more harmful stuff into the air than we could do in a year. That doesn't mean we should keep up our ways and be oblivious. Even if we'll never destroy Earth, we are still harming ourselves as a species. Look at the atmosphere around big cities in China. That's unacceptable. The whole purpose of any of this shouldn't be propaganda that man will somehow doom us all. The real message is what we should do to protect ourselves as a species and leave the environment in good shape for future generations. It's easy to say "screw them, I wont be alive to see it anyway!" but who is to say the generations before you didn't say the exact same thing?

[Avan]

During startup procedures when the reactor is burning D-D to generate tritium, it will produce some He-3; but the energy required for He-3 reactions happens to be too great for the current design to process economically. Perhaps the Mk2 reactor could, as it is designed to deliver more energy more efficiently (for heavier fuel ions anyways), but it is substantially more complex and far more difficult to build.

[Shabbernigdo]

I would like to point out that you'd have to be a complete fool if you believe man will ever destroy this planet. It's been around billions of years before modern man and undergone much more extreme conditions than some petrol thirsty SUVs.

Sure, we aren't exactly helping and could stand to clean up our act, but you have to look at the bigger picture. A volcano is a natural event, when one erupts, it pumps more harmful stuff into the air than we could do in a year. That doesn't mean we should keep up our ways and be oblivious. Even if we'll never destroy Earth, we are still harming ourselves as a species. Look at the atmosphere around big cities in China. That's unacceptable. The whole purpose of any of this shouldn't be propaganda that man will somehow doom us all. The real message is what we should do to protect ourselves as a species and leave the environment in good shape for future generations. It's easy to say "screw them, I wont be alive to see it anyway!" but who is to say the generations before you didn't say the exact same thing?

completly destroy? prolly not.
Render it unsutable to sustain life? very possable.
Its will be combination of things that eventuly lead to rendering the planet uninhabitable. Polution will just be a part of it.

[Foxpup]

During startup procedures when the reactor is burning D-D to generate tritium, it will produce some He-3; but the energy required for He-3 reactions happens to be too great for the current design to process economically. Perhaps the Mk2 reactor could, as it is designed to deliver more energy more efficiently (for heavier fuel ions anyways), but it is substantially more complex and far more difficult to build.

Ah, I see how it all works now.

completly destroy? prolly not.
Render it unsutable to sustain life? very possable.
Its will be combination of things that eventuly lead to rendering the planet uninhabitable. Polution will just be a part of it.

As far as I can tell it's already unable to sustain the amount of life on it. There are too many people!

[Avan]

Well, its impossible to completely destroy the earth with the means humans have at their disposal; even taking the entire energy output of the sun for a whole month, and then releasing it in a single burst at the core of the earth would be insufficient to destroy the planet. It would certainly mess it up and throw things around, but the mass of the planet is so huge that it would reform anyways. And yet life, in the form of certain extremophiles, will survive...

[Foxxhoria]

There's a programme on tonight (I think) here about "what the green movement got wrong"... could be relevant to this thread

[Mooshi]

BBC, right? :p Sounds like it could be interesting at the very least.

As for the too many people comment...maybe instead of being hand holding sissies, we should take a page from Texas and fry convicted murderers and the like instead of keeping them around? ;o

[Foxpup]

As for the too many people comment...maybe instead of being hand holding sissies, we should take a page from Texas and fry convicted murderers and the like instead of keeping them around? ;o

Yeah, who cares if some of them later turn out to be innocent? </sarcasm> Anyone got any ideas that don't involve killing people?