...Lesson for Nasa! US Airmail and Aviation

Pat Flannery wrote:

:They had an article in Newsweek- oil sands generate oil at $20 to $30
er barrel.

And there is a HUGE oil sands operation up in Canada. It's expanding
hugely, much to the chagrin of Canadian greens, because all by itself
it imperils Canada's adherence to Kyoto.

We buy most of the output.

--
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable
man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore,
all progress depends on the unreasonable man."
--George Bernard Shaw

Fred J. McCall wrote:
Pat Flannery wrote:

:They had an article in Newsweek- oil sands generate oil at $20 to $30
er barrel.

And there is a HUGE oil sands operation up in Canada.

Several, in fact, all located just north of Fort McMurray. (I've done
some consulting for one of them.)

It takes a fair amount of energy (and water!) to liberate the tar from
the sand, then add hydrogen to produce light crude. There is some talk
about building a nuclear reactor to supply the required power rather
than rely on ATCO.

--
Dave Michelson

Henry Spencer wrote:
In article .com,
Dave O'Neill wrote:
Depends on the "office building", but if you consider the average home,
even in the relatively sun starved UK, covering the roof in PV cells
should make a typcial home a nett exporter of electricity.

The problem is currently it doesn't make economic sense for the
individual because energy is still so cheap.

The other problem is that the storage systems needed to hang onto that
energy until it's needed cost even more than the PV cells.

Which is why the total set up is circa £20K.

There is a good argument for a subsidised system part funded for all
new builds though. Of course, the storage cells will need to be
renewed too.

Dave

In sci.space.policy Henry Spencer wrote:
In article .com,
Hyper wrote:
...and the limits imposed on fission by uranium supply.

Isn't the problem of supply obviated by using breeder reactors?

If you build the breeder reactors, and the corresponding reprocessing
plants; there are non-trivial political obstacles to doing so, not to
mention some remaining technical issues with existing breeder designs.

After India builds a dozen - and there are good reasons to think they
will - it will be much less of a problem. Give it a couple of decades.

[snip]

a long-term energy infrastructure on. Breeding -- preferably U-233 from
thorium rather than Pu-239 from U-238 -- would fix that, but it means
restarting breeder-reactor technology work quickly, and then building a
lot of breeder reactors and reprocessing plants in a hurry.

A lot of that demand is in places that have far more easier access to
thorium than uranium.

--
Sander

+++ Out of cheese error +++

In sci.space.policy Henry Spencer wrote:

For example, I see no mention of the problem of keeping the collection
system free of barnacles and other sea life, a problem that's never been
fully solved even for ships.

Bear in mind that we're talking about doing chemical processing on an
enormous scale. To get 30 TW-yr worth of U-235 per year, assuming
complete recovery of U-235 from natural uranium, would require complete
extraction of the uranium content of about a cubic kilometer of seawater
per *minute*. I'm not aware of any chemical process -- not even
purification of drinking water -- which has ever been done on anything
like that scale.

The trick is growing the right kind of sponge as the filtration medium ;-)

--
Sander

+++ Out of cheese error +++

Sander Vesik wrote:

After India builds a dozen - and there are good reasons to think they
will - it will be much less of a problem. Give it a couple of decades.

I seriously doubt this will happen soon. Breeding has very serious
economic problems. Reprocessing is expensive, fabricating fuel
elements containing Pu or 233U is expensive (due to the high
alpha activity, particularly of the latter if it is contaminated
with 232U), and ordinary uranium is still comparatively cheap.

You *might* see thorium used to extend enriched uranium
in once-through fuel cycles, since that avoids reprocessing.

Paul

The point is, of course, that even the most expensive viable
alternative power source is orders of magnitude cheaper than designing,
testing, building, and maintaining structures in space.

On 16 May 2006 04:53:53 -0700, wrote:

Lacking anything valid to say, you just hurl insults. That kind of
speaks for itself.

....His inability to post more than two-line retorts speaks volumes as
well.
OM

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