Posted on 07/24/2008 7:00:09 AM PDT by rface
It will burn but much of the volume you start with will remain as solid, not just ash.
Nuclear for electricity as the exclusive energy source for electricity . That frees up oil shale, OCS, ANWR, coal for coal to oil , natural gas etc. all for cars.
Coal for coal to oil liquefaction.
Oil Shale only for petroleum.
Natural gas for cars.
etc.
Nuclear isn't very good for making swings in load needed in a electrical grid. It is great for the base load but will not be our only source.
They don't burn the shale directly, they extract the petroleum to make fuel oil. Most of Estonia's oil production comes from oil shale.
http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/cabs/Baltic/Oil.html
Oil shale is consumed for power generation by the Eesti Energia and Kohtla-Järve Soojus electric companies and for shale-to-oil processing by Kiviter AS, which processes the oil shale to produce about 8,000 bbl/d of distillate liquid fuels.
. Early settlers in the area discovered oil shale when the rocks they used for their chimneys caught fire, so it does burn; but the modern extraction technologies are in-place and underground, leaving little impact on the surface.
Shell's technology uses underground fracturing of the host rock, then heat to extract a high quality light sweet (very low sulfur) crude. Water already available in the rock is frozen into a curtain around the extraction area, so that nothing escapes into the local rock. When the area has produced all it can, the rock is cooled so that the residual oil hardens back up and stays put. The method produces no tailings, needs no additional water, and leaves only a well site pad to be reclaimed.
I need to correct myself. It appears Estonia still uses some direct burning of the oil shale “rock”.
Power plants are using the obsolete pulverized combustion boilers with efficiency 29 % (from mass of shale mined). It means big amount of ash and small particles after burning of this kind of fuel, but Estonian oil shale is rather specific fossil fuel because after the dissociation of carbonates (Ca and Mg) during combustion process, essential desulfurization of flue gases by ash sulfation in furnace and gas ducts takes place.
http://www.kirj.ee/public/oilshale/Est-OS.htm
Natural Gas and coal standby for load handling.
Which addresses the real point of energy independence ... it will be attained ONLY via a combination of energy sources.
By only source I meant close to 90%. Maybe I wasn’t exact enough in my wording . I know 100% is not realistic. But at 80%-90% nuclear for electricity would free up a lot of coal for coal to oil liquefaction, and natural gas for cars. France is pretty close to 70% to 80% nuclear powered.
By only source I meant close to 90%. Maybe I wasn’t exact enough in my wording . I know 100% is not realistic. But at 80%-90% nuclear for electricity would free up a lot of coal for coal to oil liquefaction, and natural gas for cars. France is pretty close to 80% nuclear powered.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5369610
“France has 58 nuclear power plants like this, which meet 80 percent of its total electricity needs and allow it to export power to Britain, ...”
Today most of our uranium comes from foreign suppliers. Quintupling that demand needs a change in supply. And a gift from President Carter means we still will not reprocess our nuclear waste (like France, Japan, Russia and others) requiring an even larger supply of “new” uranium.
We don't have a lack of resources, but a lack of will to use them (or rather a lack of will to elect those who will let us).
http://www.ecosmartconcrete.com/facts_what.cfm
Fly Ash
One of the most commonly used pozzolans in concrete is fly ash, a by-product from coal-fired power plants. Using fly ash in concrete generally decreases permeability, improves sulphate resistance and other durability aspects of concrete, and allows lower water content in the mixture. Using fly ash improves the plasticity and workability of fresh concrete, and produces a warmer colored concrete. The annual production of fly ash in the US and Canada is 60 million tonnes per year, and there will be an estimated 600 million tonnes produced worldwide by the end of this year. Currently, about 80 % of the fly ash produced ends up in landfills. In North America, fly ash is typically used to replace an average of 8 % of the cement in concrete, while in many European countries, the replacement rate is greater than 25%.
“We don’t have a lack of resources, but a lack of will to use them (or rather a lack of will to elect those who will let us).”
That true. But that’s true for nuclear, coal, oil ,oil shale , etc.
But liberals and those brainwashed by liberals elect these evil communist Democrats like Pelosi and Boxer who restrict our energy production of our companies. US conservatives no better and we vote for people like Tom Tancredo and Micth McConnel who are great. Long live Tom Tancredo and Micth McConnel.
Democrats and the liberal mainstream media have brainwashed the government educated public into thinking wrongly that these energy sources will ruin the environment and destroy the planet by causing global warming. Well the liberal media and Democrats have been lying through their teeth in their effort to destroy capitalism and our way of life. There is no global warming because the Earth is getting cooler and will continue to cool as the Sun is very inactive.
In the past, they observed that the sun once went 50 years without producing sunspots. That period coincided with a little ice age on Earth that lasted from 1650 to 1700. Coincidence? Some scientists say it was, but many worry that it wasn’t.
Geophysicist Phil Chapman, the first Australian to become an astronaut with NASA, said pictures from the US Solar and Heliospheric Observatory also show that there are currently no spots on the sun. He also noted that the world cooled quickly between January last year and January this year, by about 0.7C.
“This is the fastest temperature change in the instrumental record, and it puts us back to where we were in 1930,” Dr Chapman noted in The Australian recently.
If the world does face another mini Ice Age, it could come without warning. Evidence for abrupt climate change is readily found in ice cores taken from Greenland and Antarctica.
http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2008/06/the-sunspot-mys.html
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5369610
“France has 58 nuclear power plants like this, which meet 80 percent of its total electricity needs and allow it to export power to Britain, ...”
No reason why The U.S. can’t do the same.
“Another problem with nuclear is basically the same problem as coal, natural gas and petroleum have. Environmentalists and NIMBYs.”
One way to reduce the effects of NIMBYism is to build more reactors where reactors already are operating. In Maryland, the state government has given approval to Constellation Energy's adding a third nuclear reactor to Calvert Cliff's two existing reactors. It's still early on in the federal process, but Constellation is targeting 2015 for making the power plant operational.
The benefits here are two-fold: the new reactor will generate as much electricity as the two older reactors combined thus doubling the amount of electricity generated from Calivert Cliffs; because it's being built on a site with existing reactors (and because the new reactor has a fraction of the environmental impact as the two older reactors), it's tougher to hold it up for environmental concerns.
Additionally, many nuclear sites, including Calvert Cliffs, are large enough to handle the construction of several more reactors. At Calvert Cliffs, the old reactors are scheduled to be decommissioned by 2034. I wouldn't be surprised to see that extended by a few years. But in the meantime, Constellation could build two more beyond the one that is planned, decommission the old ones, and the net effect would be increase electricity generation from that one site three-fold.
I was looking at the nuclear industry's website and noticed that there are currently at least 33 new nuclear reactors in the works in the United States that will generate roughly 50GW of electricity, which is about a 55% increase over the 92GW currently generated.
I'm hoping that this is a trend.
sitetest
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5369610
“France has 58 nuclear power plants like this, which meet 80 percent of its total electricity needs and allow it to export power to Britain, ...”
No reason why The U.S. can’t do the same ( I mean if the Democrat party and the media are beaten and stopped then we can do that).
Your right GM makes 19 natural gas autos however none in the states.
I hope the same.
bump
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.