If political ads were brutally honest, rather than attempts at tricking and spinning, this one would have summed-up a good deal of the Pro-Obama energy in 2008:
They should have just left it at the HOAP sign. Honestly, Steve Idiocracy is a funny movie but this just confirms people's opinions that it was stupid.
Yea that's a good strategy get used as a club by liberals against the neo-cons then I guess go back to being an object of hate. At least Frum can be pretty sure they'll keep him around once he's out lived his usefulness, they wouldn't even pretend they weren't going to go right back to calling Steve a racist.
If anything, I'd say Idiocracy is a vastly underrated movie. It did things that few comedies, let alone social satires, are able to do, and it did them very well. Pus, when the movie's over you drive around and realize it's not set in any distant fiction but in a world that resembles our own with a disturbing degree of closeness.
Who? iSteve Sailor? Wierd name, never heard of him. And, like you, I totally disagree with all his ideas, especially the ones that are novel, and have considerable explanatory power. Which I've never encountered anyway, in case you're wondering. The NYT and LAT are much better sources for acceptable conservative thinking.
"They should have just left it at the HOAP sign. Honestly, Steve Idiocracy is a funny movie but this just confirms people's opinions that it was stupid."
They left the best video segment until the end, IMO - the economy. "The election" was good too, if brutal. Seems violence against the meek, law abiding white guy is entertainment if anything.
Kramer and Steve both wish upon a star for human nature not to be filled with war, violence, and aggression. And that its "the neocons" rather than US dependence on cheap middle east oil that causes lots of ugly fighting, because guess what "they" have the Maxim Gun too (basically AK-47s and IEDs).
Yeah I wish I woke up every morning to unicorns and rainbows, but that's just a kid's wish. It is not realistic.
Its as bad as President Camacho, basically the idea that you can have something for nothing. People in NYC and the NE are getting a good, up close and personal view of what life is like with no oil and no power. Its not pretty. And no solar, wind, or recycled farts will free us from oil. So you can live like the people in Staten Island today, or kill lots of angry foreigners for years in a proxy fight with Iran/Russia over wold oil prices.
We get more oil from Canada than the Middle East. And other countries use plenty of oil without having to mess with any of this nonsense. Places like Afghanistan, Somalia & Yemen don't have much oil but we still mess around there.
How many times do people like TGGP have to keep repeating this canard. Oil is a commodity therefore you pay the world wide price even if you buy only from your neighbors. This is basic guys. If the Gulf gets closesed then China and Europe start bidding on Canadian oil.
Whiskey hits on something important about the new generation of paleocons. I think he is wrong to include Steve in this group however. Basically the new paleocons have adopted the pessimism, paranoia, and general fogginess of the old right without retain the concept of original sin from which those attitudes originated. Because of this, they see the world purely through the lens of blow back rather than the Christian vision of war as inevitable in a fallen world. That's why people booed Paul at the debate, when he invoked Christ; to them it seem like your typical obnoxious who would Jesus bomb bumper sticker.
The fundemtal weakness about the realist school is that it is not realist about human nature. I think Steve largely avoids this pratfall and focuses his frustration on the waste and futility of changing human nature in the ME rather than the more paulian/isolationist critique of the need to engage the world at all. At least it seems Steve rarely invokes the concept of blowback. Then you have the Larisons of the world who embrace the cause of Russia just as fervently as your average neo con embraces Israel. I mean ten posts on the Georgian elections.
It's not oil that we're hooked on. There are lots of technical options to oil. No, what we're hooked on is the inner-chimpanzee. Let me explain.
Part of the reason -- maybe the main reason -- it is so painful being a human is that we're technological creatures. Indeed it is our technology more than our ability to speak to each other that most distinguishes us from other animals. Human heritage is a huge technological fix progressing from one stage to the next. Each stage of technical advance does two contradictory things: 1) It takes us a little further from where we can afford to indulge our inner chimp. 2) It provides the illusion that we have turned the universe into a sub-Saharan Africa habitat complete with climate control and abundant food. It is the second thing, the illusion that the universe has been tamed into being a sub-Saharan habitat, that we're hooked on. We remember what it was like to be chimps back home. It was much nicer then even though we'd get in nasty fights and be eaten by lions. All our technology is nothing more than a simulation of chimp habitat. We hope to have everything under enough control that we can forget about all this machinery around us and just do chimp things again. Things don't work that way.
President Camacho turned out to be the most intelligent person in the whole movie:
1) he did what it took to capture and maintain power (succeeding as a porn star and pro wrestler, addressing his constituents in a language they could understand, marginalizing his opposition bloodlessly by shooting his M249 in the air.) While in power, he kept the trains running on time and the Costcos functioning smoothly.
2) he accurately identified and prioritized the most urgent problem facing his country (dust storms and crop failure, shortage of french fries and burrito wrappers.)
3) he identified the one person in the world capable of solving this problem (Not Sure) and publicly delegated the necessary powers to him, setting a timeline (one week) and consequences for failure. Having done so, he got out of the way and did not micromanage his subordinate.
4) when it appeared that Not Sure failed in his task, President Camacho remained true to his word and sentenced him to Monday Night Rehabilitation, further establishing his credibility as a leader.
5) when it turned out that Not Sure had indeed saved the crops and 'comony, President Camacho rapidly adjusted to the new facts on the ground and amnestied him.
6) having solved the most urgent problem facing the world and found an acceptable successor, President Camacho retired, Diocletian-like.
I don't vote, but I would vote for Camacho. Not Sure, on the other hand, was kind of an ineffectual little faggot.
"what life is like with no oil and no power. Its not pretty. And no solar, wind, or recycled farts will free us from oil. So you can live like the people in Staten Island today, or kill lots of angry foreigners for years in a proxy fight with Iran/Russia over wold oil prices."
So long as Whiskey keeps posting his hooey, I'll keep countering him, not that he'll ever pay attention. This is for other people reading here:
"No oil" =/= "no power."
And, no, I'm not hoping for a boom in unicorn farts.
There exists an energy-independence silver bullet.
A safe, proven technology that, if built out, could utterly remove any dependence on foreign oil.
The technology was proven in the '50s at the same time light-water-cooled uranium reactors were developed.
Thorium is abundant, 4x as abundant in the Earth's crust and 100x more usable than uranium. (For a net effect of 400x the available energy per pound of fuel). In fact, the ash of the *coal* we burn contains enough thorium, currently considered a waste product, to net out more energy than the coal itself.
LFTRs are safe because, the fuel being already molten, can run safely at much higher temps and lower pressures, such that in the event of a breakdown, the system will passively cool itself, eliminating the risk of meltdown and the attendant need for expensive containment buildings.
And since water isn't required for cooling, LFTRs can be built in areas remote from population centers, avoiding the NAMBYs.
With the 3 trillions spent on just the Iraq war (that was sposed to give us back $1 / gal gas, remember) we could have built out this technology already.
We Americans could have had safe, abundant domestic supplies of cheap nuke power -- and could have been in a position to tell the damned middle east to pound sand. That we don't is because of squid-ink squirted by folks like Whiskey who have a hidden agenda.
I'll leave it to the student to work out what that agenda is. (Hint: loyalty to one's people.)
People in NYC and the NE are getting a good, up close and personal view of what life is like with no oil and no power. Its not pretty. And no solar, wind, or recycled farts will free us from oil. So you can live like the people in Staten Island today, or kill lots of angry foreigners for years in a proxy fight with Iran/Russia over wold oil prices.
Every POTUS since Jimmy Carter has been promising "energy independence" for the United States. So why are America's vital national interests STILL centered on the oil fields in the Middle East 40 years later?
The answer is because that is the way the political establishment wants it.
Without our dependence on oil there would not be anywhere near the support we have for our interventionist foreign policies and endless wars.
The Petro Dollar has been a curse for the American people. It has destroyed our manufacturing economy, making us almost completely dependent on imported goods. It has seduced us into allowing the federal government and the Federal Reserve System to bankrupt our nation and destroy our currency.
The mantra of "Drill Baby Drill" and "encouraging" reports of increased domestic oil production appeal to our nationalism but leave us enslaved to an economy based on fossil fuels in general and oil in particular. Even if we doubled our oil production we would still be dependent on the global economy for our energy and at the mercy of the international trade and environmental organizations that threaten our sovereignty.
On the other hand, if Americans became "panicked" enough about the very REAL energy crisis, we might just stumble across a solution that would truly make us energy independent, like Thorium liquid salt breeder reactors.
And since water isn't required for cooling, LFTRs can be built in areas remote from population centers, avoiding the NAMBYs."
I don't believe that. Water would indeed be required for cooling a LFTR. That said, I agree with you that this is a promising technology.
However, nuclear power does not obviate the need for petroleum. Nuclear power is good for generating electricity - but it does not replace the liquid fuels required for motor vehicles, at least not short of enormous improvements in battery technology which would permit electric cars (to say nothing of airplanes).
"However, nuclear power does not obviate the need for petroleum."
Sure, it does, Mr. Anon. We can use the cheap, abundant electrical energy from thorium to run Fischer-Tropsch process on the coal we would have burned generating electricity, into gasoline, jet fuel and diesel. Fischer-Tropsch is another proven tech. (Invented by the Nazis to fuel their war machines when the Allies had them blockaded from importing any oil.)
"I don't believe that. Water would indeed be required for cooling a LFTR"
Nah. Read the info at my link. The reactor is cooled by molten fluoride salts. The only water required is that which turns the turbine -- which can be recaptured. Because copious amounts of water are NOT required in LFTR tech, reactors can be built far away from rivers and oceans (i.e., population centers).
The fellow who started FLIBE corp was a former NASA engineer tasked with thinking about how to power a Lunar colony. He discovered that LFTR answers all constraints in a Lunar colony, including the scarcity of water.
Also, we could: Place electrical pads in highways to charge batteries in cars on the fly -- OR use electricity to make ammonia, which could be used to fuel slightly-modified internal combustion engines.
How come the creators of this character didn't give him any stupid made-up black names? Or at least misspell some of his names? That kind of stupidity happens often enough in the present, let alone the future!
"However, nuclear power does not obviate the need for petroleum."
Sure, it does, Mr. Anon. We can use the cheap, abundant electrical energy from thorium to run Fischer-Tropsch process on the coal we would have burned generating electricity, into gasoline, jet fuel and diesel. Fischer-Tropsch is another proven tech."
Yeah, it certainly helped the Germans win the war, didn't it?
"Nah. Read the info at my link. The reactor is cooled by molten fluoride salts. The only water required is that which turns the turbine -- which can be recaptured."
Read the second law of thermodynamics. A Brayton cycle is, perhaps 25-30% efficient. The waste heat needs to be rejected. What will be used to cool the molten salt? Fairy dust? The water used in the primary loop of a LWR is in a closed loop too, yet they still need cooling water. Whatever applies to LFTR would probably apply to them too.
"The fellow who started FLIBE corp was a former NASA engineer tasked with thinking about how to power a Lunar colony. He discovered that LFTR answers all constraints in a Lunar colony, including the scarcity of water."
So where's that lunar colony? One should not necessarily believe every last claim made by the proponents of any given technology.
"LFTR *IS* the answer to neocon warmongering."
How naively American - the belief that material progress actually solves social problems. The solution to neocon warmongering is to kick the neocons out of power. Everything else follows from that.
How naively American - the belief that material progress actually solves social problems. The solution to neocon warmongering is to kick the neocons out of power. Everything else follows from that. - Mr Anon.
True.
Yeah, it certainly helped the Germans win the war, didn't it?
The Germans also fielded the world's first operational jet fighters and bombers - but they lost the war. Thus, looking around the world, we shouldnt expect to find anyone else using military jet aircraft.
Fischer Tropsch is the only thing that kept the Nazis going as long as they did -- for well over a year of blockading by the Allies and under constant bombardment.
With abundant enough, cheap enough, energy, anything can be accomplished, including making synfuel from coal.
"The water used in the primary loop of a LWR is in a closed loop too, yet they still need cooling water"
Light water cooled reactors need copious water (lakes, rivers, seas) nearby as a heat sink to dump off the excessive waste heat, because to keep the solid uranium fuel solid, the reactor must be cooled so greatly. That's why you have to site them in areas with water (i.e., population centers).
It's the NYMBYs who've prevented the beginning of building of any new light-water-cooled uranium reactors since the '70s. Placing reactors in remote areas, as is possible with liquid-salt coolants, lessens the NYMBYism.
But LFTR, because the fuel is already melted, runs much hotter, at atmospheric pressures. The cooling salts exchange heat with the gas (hydrogen or nitrogen) that expands to turn the turbine. Then after that, the still hot gas can be further routed to do things like desalinate drinking water, or their heat transferred to water to provide steam heat to homes -- or run the Fischer-Tropsch process.
And when sufficiently cooled, (but requiring much less cooling than the water-cooled reactors,) returned to the primary heat exchanger.
But because the LFTR core is so much hotter than light water reactors, there is not nearly so much excessive heat needing to be dumped off, so you don't need to be sited near copious supplies of cold water, as in light-water uranium reactors.
Remember, LFTR is a *proven* technology. Oak Ridge had a fully functional prototype running for 5 years in the early 70s. They were cancelled only because the Bomb Boys wanted plutonium, and thorium doesn't make enough.
Sorensen gave a talk in my area, recently. Wyoming would be a great place for his reactor (since we DO have remote areas, being rural, and DON'T, being the West, have a lot of water). We also have the coal to Fischer-Tropsch into synfuel.
What a better deal, than endless money poured into the rathole of the Middle east to keep their oil flowing.
"How naively American - the belief that material progress actually solves social problems. The solution to neocon warmongering is to kick the neocons out of power. Everything else follows from that. - Mr Anon.
True"
Well, yahbut, the reason the neocons are *in* power is due in large part to the fact that America is dependent on Middle easter oil for our fill-'er-upping.
The neocons peddle hooey like, "We need to fund Israel to be our unsinkable aircraft carrier (which we've NEVER made use of - ed.) in case Iran mines the Straits of Hormuz and shuts down oil shipping," and the average American Faux News patriotard goes, "Hell, yah!"
If we didn't need the oil, the American electorate would, I'd wager, be much more likely to tell the neocons Yerrrr OUTta here!
But because the LFTR core is so much hotter than light water reactors, there is not nearly so much excessive heat needing to be dumped off, so you don't need to be sited near copious supplies of cold water, as in light-water uranium reactors."
No, that's wrong. If a reactor produces 1,000 MW, 700 MW of which is waste heat, then the amount of heat that needs to be rejected from the core is 700 MW - it doesn't matter how hot the core is. Besides, consider this: Okay, so the fissile material is molten. Something still has to hold it though, right? The vessel which holds the molten salt can not, itself, be molten, neither can the structure that holds that vessel together.
Like I said, I think, the LFTR idea is a good one, but you still need to view it skeptically. TED talks often tend to feature a lot of power-point engineering. The real world tends to operate differently.
"The neocons peddle hooey like, "We need to fund Israel to be our unsinkable aircraft carrier (which we've NEVER made use of - ed.) in case Iran mines the Straits of Hormuz and shuts down oil shipping," and the average American Faux News patriotard goes, "Hell, yah!"
You may be right about that. In which case, we are probably doomed as a nation.
It's spelled "Elizondo" with two Os, not with an A.
ReplyDeleteIf political ads were brutally honest, rather than attempts at tricking and spinning, this one would have summed-up a good deal of the Pro-Obama energy in 2008:
ReplyDeleteNot Your Country Anymore.
They should have just left it at the HOAP sign. Honestly, Steve Idiocracy is a funny movie but this just confirms people's opinions that it was stupid.
ReplyDeleteOff Topic:
ReplyDeleteHave you seen this Martin Kramer post about Steve Sailer:
http://www.martinkramer.org/facebook/2012/10/31/i-dont-see-eye-to-eye-with-steve-sailer-on-much-of-anything-but-i-found-this-a/
This could be a great strategy to introduce people to the "red pill world" and still be PC. Here is a sample link on FB or a blog:
"I don’t see eye to eye with Steve Sailer on much of anything, but I found this post on education very interesting"
or how about this:
"I totally disagree with Steve Sailer normally, but I am in total agreement with this post highlighting that the NeoCons are out of control"
Yea that's a good strategy get used as a club by liberals against the neo-cons then I guess go back to being an object of hate. At least Frum can be pretty sure they'll keep him around once he's out lived his usefulness, they wouldn't even pretend they weren't going to go right back to calling Steve a racist.
ReplyDeletePresident Camacho seems to have basically the same opinions about the Middle East as commenters here.
ReplyDeleteWhich means either Camacho is actually smart or...
@Anonymous of 7:53pm:
ReplyDeleteIf anything, I'd say Idiocracy is a vastly underrated movie. It did things that few comedies, let alone social satires, are able to do, and it did them very well. Pus, when the movie's over you drive around and realize it's not set in any distant fiction but in a world that resembles our own with a disturbing degree of closeness.
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/movies/moviesnow/la-et-mn-hollywood-values-20121021,0,4168909.story
ReplyDeleteObama certainly has been over-valued.
@ Five Daarstens --
ReplyDeleteWho? iSteve Sailor? Wierd name, never heard of him. And, like you, I totally disagree with all his ideas, especially the ones that are novel, and have considerable explanatory power. Which I've never encountered anyway, in case you're wondering. The NYT and LAT are much better sources for acceptable conservative thinking.
Meanwhile...
ReplyDeleteRomney: Elect Me Or House GOP Will Wreck The Economy
"They should have just left it at the HOAP sign. Honestly, Steve Idiocracy is a funny movie but this just confirms people's opinions that it was stupid."
ReplyDeleteThey left the best video segment until the end, IMO - the economy. "The election" was good too, if brutal. Seems violence against the meek, law abiding white guy is entertainment if anything.
Kramer and Steve both wish upon a star for human nature not to be filled with war, violence, and aggression. And that its "the neocons" rather than US dependence on cheap middle east oil that causes lots of ugly fighting, because guess what "they" have the Maxim Gun too (basically AK-47s and IEDs).
ReplyDeleteYeah I wish I woke up every morning to unicorns and rainbows, but that's just a kid's wish. It is not realistic.
Its as bad as President Camacho, basically the idea that you can have something for nothing. People in NYC and the NE are getting a good, up close and personal view of what life is like with no oil and no power. Its not pretty. And no solar, wind, or recycled farts will free us from oil. So you can live like the people in Staten Island today, or kill lots of angry foreigners for years in a proxy fight with Iran/Russia over wold oil prices.
We get more oil from Canada than the Middle East. And other countries use plenty of oil without having to mess with any of this nonsense. Places like Afghanistan, Somalia & Yemen don't have much oil but we still mess around there.
ReplyDeleteHow many times do people like TGGP have to keep repeating this canard. Oil is a commodity therefore you pay the world wide price even if you buy only from your neighbors. This is basic guys. If the Gulf gets closesed then China and Europe start bidding on Canadian oil.
ReplyDeleteWhiskey hits on something important about the new generation of paleocons. I think he is wrong to include Steve in this group however. Basically the new paleocons have adopted the pessimism, paranoia, and general fogginess of the old right without retain the concept of original sin from which those attitudes originated. Because of this, they see the world purely through the lens of blow back rather than the Christian vision of war as inevitable in a fallen world. That's why people booed Paul at the debate, when he invoked Christ; to them it seem like your typical obnoxious who would Jesus bomb bumper sticker.
The fundemtal weakness about the realist school is that it is not realist about human nature. I think Steve largely avoids this pratfall and focuses his frustration on the waste and futility of changing human nature in the ME rather than the more paulian/isolationist critique of the need to engage the world at all. At least it seems Steve rarely invokes the concept of blowback. Then you have the Larisons of the world who embrace the cause of Russia just as fervently as your average neo con embraces Israel. I mean ten posts on the Georgian elections.
Irishfan87
Shouldn't the sign say "BRAWNDO!"?
ReplyDelete"Romney: Elect Me Or House GOP Will Wreck The Economy"
ReplyDeleteHe's a lowlife two-faced snake.
It's not oil that we're hooked on. There are lots of technical options to oil. No, what we're hooked on is the inner-chimpanzee. Let me explain.
ReplyDeletePart of the reason -- maybe the main reason -- it is so painful being a human is that we're technological creatures. Indeed it is our technology more than our ability to speak to each other that most distinguishes us from other animals. Human heritage is a huge technological fix progressing from one stage to the next. Each stage of technical advance does two contradictory things: 1) It takes us a little further from where we can afford to indulge our inner chimp. 2) It provides the illusion that we have turned the universe into a sub-Saharan Africa habitat complete with climate control and abundant food. It is the second thing, the illusion that the universe has been tamed into being a sub-Saharan habitat, that we're hooked on. We remember what it was like to be chimps back home. It was much nicer then even though we'd get in nasty fights and be eaten by lions. All our technology is nothing more than a simulation of chimp habitat. We hope to have everything under enough control that we can forget about all this machinery around us and just do chimp things again. Things don't work that way.
President Camacho turned out to be the most intelligent person in the whole movie:
ReplyDelete1) he did what it took to capture and maintain power (succeeding as a porn star and pro wrestler, addressing his constituents in a language they could understand, marginalizing his opposition bloodlessly by shooting his M249 in the air.) While in power, he kept the trains running on time and the Costcos functioning smoothly.
2) he accurately identified and prioritized the most urgent problem facing his country (dust storms and crop failure, shortage of french fries and burrito wrappers.)
3) he identified the one person in the world capable of solving this problem (Not Sure) and publicly delegated the necessary powers to him, setting a timeline (one week) and consequences for failure. Having done so, he got out of the way and did not micromanage his subordinate.
4) when it appeared that Not Sure failed in his task, President Camacho remained true to his word and sentenced him to Monday Night Rehabilitation, further establishing his credibility as a leader.
5) when it turned out that Not Sure had indeed saved the crops and 'comony, President Camacho rapidly adjusted to the new facts on the ground and amnestied him.
6) having solved the most urgent problem facing the world and found an acceptable successor, President Camacho retired, Diocletian-like.
I don't vote, but I would vote for Camacho. Not Sure, on the other hand, was kind of an ineffectual little faggot.
"what life is like with no oil and no power. Its not pretty. And no solar, wind, or recycled farts will free us from oil. So you can live like the people in Staten Island today, or kill lots of angry foreigners for years in a proxy fight with Iran/Russia over wold oil prices."
ReplyDeleteSo long as Whiskey keeps posting his hooey, I'll keep countering him, not that he'll ever pay attention. This is for other people reading here:
"No oil" =/= "no power."
And, no, I'm not hoping for a boom in unicorn farts.
There exists an energy-independence silver bullet.
A safe, proven technology that, if built out, could utterly remove any dependence on foreign oil.
I'm talking about
Liquid fluoride-cooled thorium-burning reactors (LFTR).
http://energyfromthorium.com/
The technology was proven in the '50s at the same time light-water-cooled uranium reactors were developed.
Thorium is abundant, 4x as abundant in the Earth's crust and 100x more usable than uranium. (For a net effect of 400x the available energy per pound of fuel). In fact, the ash of the *coal* we burn contains enough thorium, currently considered a waste product, to net out more energy than the coal itself.
LFTRs are safe because, the fuel being already molten, can run safely at much higher temps and lower pressures, such that in the event of a breakdown, the system will passively cool itself, eliminating the risk of meltdown and the attendant need for expensive containment buildings.
And since water isn't required for cooling, LFTRs can be built in areas remote from population centers, avoiding the NAMBYs.
With the 3 trillions spent on just the Iraq war (that was sposed to give us back $1 / gal gas, remember) we could have built out this technology already.
We Americans could have had safe, abundant domestic supplies of cheap nuke power -- and could have been in a position to tell the damned middle east to pound sand. That we don't is because of squid-ink squirted by folks like Whiskey who have a hidden agenda.
I'll leave it to the student to work out what that agenda is. (Hint: loyalty to one's people.)
People in NYC and the NE are getting a good, up close and personal view of what life is like with no oil and no power. Its not pretty. And no solar, wind, or recycled farts will free us from oil. So you can live like the people in Staten Island today, or kill lots of angry foreigners for years in a proxy fight with Iran/Russia over wold oil prices.
ReplyDeleteEvery POTUS since Jimmy Carter has been promising "energy independence" for the United States. So why are America's vital national interests STILL centered on the oil fields in the Middle East 40 years later?
The answer is because that is the way the political establishment wants it.
Without our dependence on oil there would not be anywhere near the support we have for our interventionist foreign policies and endless wars.
The Petro Dollar has been a curse for the American people. It has destroyed our manufacturing economy, making us almost completely dependent on imported goods. It has seduced us into allowing the federal government and the Federal Reserve System to bankrupt our nation and destroy our currency.
The mantra of "Drill Baby Drill" and "encouraging" reports of increased domestic oil production appeal to our nationalism but leave us enslaved to an economy based on fossil fuels in general and oil in particular. Even if we doubled our oil production we would still be dependent on the global economy for our energy and at the mercy of the international trade and environmental organizations that threaten our sovereignty.
On the other hand, if Americans became "panicked" enough about the very REAL energy crisis, we might just stumble across a solution that would truly make us energy independent, like Thorium liquid salt breeder reactors.
"JSM said...
ReplyDeleteAnd since water isn't required for cooling, LFTRs can be built in areas remote from population centers, avoiding the NAMBYs."
I don't believe that. Water would indeed be required for cooling a LFTR. That said, I agree with you that this is a promising technology.
However, nuclear power does not obviate the need for petroleum. Nuclear power is good for generating electricity - but it does not replace the liquid fuels required for motor vehicles, at least not short of enormous improvements in battery technology which would permit electric cars (to say nothing of airplanes).
"However, nuclear power does not obviate the need for petroleum."
ReplyDeleteSure, it does, Mr. Anon. We can use the cheap, abundant electrical energy from thorium to run Fischer-Tropsch process on the coal we would have burned generating electricity, into gasoline, jet fuel and diesel. Fischer-Tropsch is another proven tech. (Invented by the Nazis to fuel their war machines when the Allies had them blockaded from importing any oil.)
"I don't believe that. Water would indeed be required for cooling a LFTR"
Nah. Read the info at my link. The reactor is cooled by molten fluoride salts. The only water required is that which turns the turbine -- which can be recaptured.
Because copious amounts of water are NOT required in LFTR tech, reactors can be built far away from rivers and oceans (i.e., population centers).
The fellow who started FLIBE corp was a former NASA engineer tasked with thinking about how to power a Lunar colony. He discovered that LFTR answers all constraints in a Lunar colony, including the scarcity of water.
Also, we could: Place electrical pads in highways to charge batteries in cars on the fly -- OR use electricity to make ammonia, which could be used to fuel slightly-modified internal combustion engines.
LFTR *IS* the answer to neocon warmongering.
How come the creators of this character didn't give him any stupid made-up black names? Or at least misspell some of his names? That kind of stupidity happens often enough in the present, let alone the future!
ReplyDelete"JSM said...
ReplyDelete"However, nuclear power does not obviate the need for petroleum."
Sure, it does, Mr. Anon. We can use the cheap, abundant electrical energy from thorium to run Fischer-Tropsch process on the coal we would have burned generating electricity, into gasoline, jet fuel and diesel. Fischer-Tropsch is another proven tech."
Yeah, it certainly helped the Germans win the war, didn't it?
"Nah. Read the info at my link. The reactor is cooled by molten fluoride salts. The only water required is that which turns the turbine -- which can be recaptured."
Read the second law of thermodynamics. A Brayton cycle is, perhaps 25-30% efficient. The waste heat needs to be rejected. What will be used to cool the molten salt? Fairy dust? The water used in the primary loop of a LWR is in a closed loop too, yet they still need cooling water. Whatever applies to LFTR would probably apply to them too.
"The fellow who started FLIBE corp was a former NASA engineer tasked with thinking about how to power a Lunar colony. He discovered that LFTR answers all constraints in a Lunar colony, including the scarcity of water."
So where's that lunar colony? One should not necessarily believe every last claim made by the proponents of any given technology.
"LFTR *IS* the answer to neocon warmongering."
How naively American - the belief that material progress actually solves social problems. The solution to neocon warmongering is to kick the neocons out of power. Everything else follows from that.
How naively American - the belief that material progress actually solves social problems. The solution to neocon warmongering is to kick the neocons out of power. Everything else follows from that. - Mr Anon.
ReplyDeleteTrue.
Yeah, it certainly helped the Germans win the war, didn't it?
The Germans also fielded the world's first operational jet fighters and bombers - but they lost the war. Thus, looking around the world, we shouldnt expect to find anyone else using military jet aircraft.
Fischer Tropsch is the only thing that kept the Nazis going as long as they did -- for well over a year of blockading by the Allies and under constant bombardment.
ReplyDeleteWith abundant enough, cheap enough, energy, anything can be accomplished, including making synfuel from coal.
"The water used in the primary loop of a LWR is in a closed loop too, yet they still need cooling water"
Light water cooled reactors need copious water (lakes, rivers, seas) nearby as a heat sink to dump off the excessive waste heat, because to keep the solid uranium fuel solid, the reactor must be cooled so greatly. That's why you have to site them in areas with water (i.e., population centers).
It's the NYMBYs who've prevented the beginning of building of any new light-water-cooled uranium reactors since the '70s. Placing reactors in remote areas, as is possible with liquid-salt coolants, lessens the NYMBYism.
But LFTR, because the fuel is already melted, runs much hotter, at atmospheric pressures. The cooling salts exchange heat with the gas (hydrogen or nitrogen) that expands to turn the turbine. Then after that, the still hot gas can be further routed to do things like desalinate drinking water, or their heat transferred to water to provide steam heat to homes -- or run the Fischer-Tropsch process.
And when sufficiently cooled, (but requiring much less cooling than the water-cooled reactors,) returned to the primary heat exchanger.
But because the LFTR core is so much hotter than light water reactors, there is not nearly so much excessive heat needing to be dumped off, so you don't need to be sited near copious supplies of cold water, as in light-water uranium reactors.
Remember, LFTR is a *proven* technology. Oak Ridge had a fully functional prototype running for 5 years in the early 70s. They were cancelled only because the Bomb Boys wanted plutonium, and thorium doesn't make enough.
Here's LFTR advocate Kirk Sorensen's TED talk:
http://www.ted.com/talks/kirk_sorensen_thorium_an_alternative_nuclear_fuel.html
Sorensen gave a talk in my area, recently. Wyoming would be a great place for his reactor (since we DO have remote areas, being rural, and DON'T, being the West, have a lot of water). We also have the coal to Fischer-Tropsch into synfuel.
What a better deal, than endless money poured into the rathole of the Middle east to keep their oil flowing.
"How naively American - the belief that material progress actually solves social problems. The solution to neocon warmongering is to kick the neocons out of power. Everything else follows from that. - Mr Anon.
ReplyDeleteTrue"
Well, yahbut, the reason the neocons are *in* power is due in large part to the fact that America is dependent on Middle easter oil for our fill-'er-upping.
The neocons peddle hooey like, "We need to fund Israel to be our unsinkable aircraft carrier (which we've NEVER made use of - ed.) in case Iran mines the Straits of Hormuz and shuts down oil shipping," and the average American Faux News patriotard goes, "Hell, yah!"
If we didn't need the oil, the American electorate would, I'd wager, be much more likely to tell the neocons Yerrrr OUTta here!
"JSM said...
ReplyDeleteBut because the LFTR core is so much hotter than light water reactors, there is not nearly so much excessive heat needing to be dumped off, so you don't need to be sited near copious supplies of cold water, as in light-water uranium reactors."
No, that's wrong. If a reactor produces 1,000 MW, 700 MW of which is waste heat, then the amount of heat that needs to be rejected from the core is 700 MW - it doesn't matter how hot the core is. Besides, consider this: Okay, so the fissile material is molten. Something still has to hold it though, right? The vessel which holds the molten salt can not, itself, be molten, neither can the structure that holds that vessel together.
Like I said, I think, the LFTR idea is a good one, but you still need to view it skeptically. TED talks often tend to feature a lot of power-point engineering. The real world tends to operate differently.
"The neocons peddle hooey like, "We need to fund Israel to be our unsinkable aircraft carrier (which we've NEVER made use of - ed.) in case Iran mines the Straits of Hormuz and shuts down oil shipping," and the average American Faux News patriotard goes, "Hell, yah!"
You may be right about that. In which case, we are probably doomed as a nation.