rant 0004
some time back, i wrote a quick post on my googal plus (as in "goolag") account about the way we (the human race) generate energy. for our entire existence on this planet, we have needed energy, and for the larger part of that existence, our need for energy has been critical, in that lacking an energy source, even temporarily, would cause our demise. within the past few thousand years (a blip, geologically speaking), we have created cooperative social structures that taken together, we can call civilization; because of the specializations of people living in civilization, our ability to find and generate energy has grown by orders of magnitude. now, some say that our generation and use of energy is threatening the very stability of the environment, potentially even causing it to go into thermal runaway and end up at a new equilibrium point at the melting point of some metals, much like that of the planet venus.
that's as may be, although i have my doubts; it is *extremely* hard to predict the weather even a single week in advance, and that's with fairly reliable and consistent data. when trying to predict the path of the environment far into the future, one must include older and older data, data which has varying quality, usually lower the further back its origin. anybody who knows anything about statistics knows that data quality is *everything*, and if our sample is garbage, then so is our output. nevertheless, for the sake of argument, let us assume that we must *immediately* stop dumping carbon into the atmosphere.
no one company controls the entire energy generation and sale chain, so it is not likely that the world energy economy will organically change over to some magical non-carbon-generating energy source. since *really* efficient energy sources - nuclear - have been essentially prohibited, only second-rate sources can be tapped, and none of these can compete economically with coal- and oil-fired generation. in other words, this will take further government interference. that interference can be done well, done badly, or done somewhere in-between, but given the history of government efforts in the u.s., i would guess that such interference would not go well.
it need not be so. surprisingly, there have actually been government initiatives that have worked. one of these was the u.s. national government's subsidy of air travel via airmail. only old farts like me remember "air mail stamps," but at one time, one could write a letter on special light-weight paper, put an airmail stamp on it, and have it sent via an airplane to another city. the national government lost money on the deal, because it cost more to ship the mail by air than it did by train (trucks weren't widely used until after WWII, because the road systems between cities were pretty poor), but the result was that airlines were able to make money and buy better, safer aircraft, which encouraged the growth of passenger traffic. the extra charge for airmail ended in 1975. so what form should the interference of the national government take? i'll get to that in a bit.
as i intimated above, nuclear power in uneconomical, but there is a reason: stupid over-regulation. in the u.s., almost all reactors that have been put online have been designed and built from the ground up. anybody who knows anything about engineering or business knows that this is a stupid approach, but the national government has rigidly controlled nuclear power generation from the get-go, and their demands pretty much drove the stupid approach. one need only look at france, which generated 72% of its electricity using nuclear plants in 2016 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_France), and has had no major reactor failures (INES 4 or above) since 1980. this is largely because almost all french reactors are generic, with each new reactor benefiting from lessons learned from previously-built models. nevertheless, the anti-nuke guys do have a point; if a nuclear reactor fails, the consequences can be spectacularly terrible. this does not mean that reactors should not be built; instead, they need to be put where failures cannot have devastating effects. so where on earth could that be? U guessed it: *not* on earth.
energy can be stored in lots of forms. the energy we use is stored mostly in energy-dense materials like oil-based liquids and coal. these are chemical storage methods, and are believed to have been deposited by geological means. regardless of *where* and *how* they were generated, they are *not* the only means of chemical energy storage. one fuel that has been tantalizing and frustrating engineers for decades is hydrogen, which can be burned to generate electricity, producing only steam (kinda, sorta) as exhaust. unfortunately, most effort has gone into making hydrogen-fueled cars and trucks, and most of these have been uneconomical, mostly because trying to store enough hydrogen to give the vehicle a decent range is *extremely* difficult, and also because vehicle crashes can be explosive and dangerous.
what if we built reactors in high earth orbit (HEO), or on the surface of the moon? both places are already deadly radioactive, so even if a reactor melted completely into a pool or sphere of magma, the radiation in the immediate vicinity would not change appreciably. thus, we could ship water up to the reactor (in HEO or on the moon), crack it to H2 and O2, and send the gases back to earth in autonomous return craft. once recovered, the O2 could be sold or released, and the H2 could be burned in hydrogen-powered electrial-generation plants. because the plant is stationary and large, the fuel could be stored in standard H2 tanks. burning things - like H2 - at high temperatures in the earth's atmosphere, which is 80% N2, usually generates nitrous oxides, but electricity generation companies are familiar with reducing NOx compounds, and standard technology could be applied to removing those pollutants. yes, there is a possibility of Bad Things happening; an autonomous return craft could crash into a city, an H2 tank could rupture and explode, and so forth, but need i recall the lac-mégantic oil-tanker train disaster of 2013-07-06 (40+ dead)? Bad Things happen because of things civilization does all the time; it's part of life, and *cannot* be avoided. all we can do is design the process to be as safe as possible. or we can all go huddle in caves with sharp sticks.
there are, of course, other energy sources available to us beside nuclear energy. one of the favorites of the left is solar power. unfortunately, mirror farms spend about 50% of the year in the dark, producing nothing; furthermore, bad weather can reduce sunlight, and can also damage the equipment. even so, the sun is the largest nuclear reactor within lightyears, and produces orders of magnitude more power than the entire human race uses, or probably has used since the beginning of the species; it would be silly to ignore its potential. where on earth could we put a mirror farm that could avoid the problems? hmm-m-m ...
needless to say, there is no wind (other than the solar wind) in orbit, whether earth orbit, lunar orbit, or solar orbit; there is also little in the way of weather (other than solar storms). a mirror of a thin metallic film (Al, perhaps?) about a km on a side can easily be built and deployed in HEO, lunar orbit, or solar orbit. each mirror could have a simple guidance unit and small rocket motors to keep it on station and pointed in the right diretion, and a farm of these mirrors could be aimed at a central point, at which water could be cracked into H2 and O2. the rest of the system would be like the nuclear option mentioned above. of course, solar wind will tend to blow the mirrors around a bit, and the guidance/station rockets will eventually run out of fuel, so there must be some maintenance of the mirror farms. also, a solar storm is likely to destroy electronic systems, so part of the process will have to include responding to solar flare damage and the like. there is also the possibility that one of our friends of the Religion that Must Not Be Mentioned By Name might take control of a mirror farm and point it at some city on earth, so some of the system design has to take malevolent actors into consideration.
finally, if we insist on continuing to use fossil fuels, there are probably *lots* of such chemicals on the moons of jupiter and uranus. there is also likely to be huge amounts of water in the form of dirty ice (mixed with methane ice, etc.) in the same area. all of these could be mined and returned to earth, but better use could be made of these as chemical feeds, possibly to colonies on the moon, on mars, and even on the moons of jupiter and uranus. no matter how U look at it, there is money to be made off the surface of the planet, and a lot of good that could be done by eliminating the use of carbon-based fuels on its surface.
so where does the national government come in? it could "subsidize" companies that develop transport to and from HEO, and to other planets, by giving them a reduced tax rate. if an energy source is tapped and used to generate H2 and O2 for use in generating electricity on the surface of earth, they could reduce the tax rate more. the subsidy could be planned for a period of 50 years or so, with the "subsidy" slowly getting smaller, until ending at 50 years. with any luck, companies like SpaceX and Virgin Galactic will somehow manage to make such transport remunerative, and the only hard part will be to get the mirror farms and nuclear reactors set up. the transport is not yet viable, however, so every little bit helps; this is one case where i kinda, sorta lean towards interference by the national government.
just a thought.
that's as may be, although i have my doubts; it is *extremely* hard to predict the weather even a single week in advance, and that's with fairly reliable and consistent data. when trying to predict the path of the environment far into the future, one must include older and older data, data which has varying quality, usually lower the further back its origin. anybody who knows anything about statistics knows that data quality is *everything*, and if our sample is garbage, then so is our output. nevertheless, for the sake of argument, let us assume that we must *immediately* stop dumping carbon into the atmosphere.
no one company controls the entire energy generation and sale chain, so it is not likely that the world energy economy will organically change over to some magical non-carbon-generating energy source. since *really* efficient energy sources - nuclear - have been essentially prohibited, only second-rate sources can be tapped, and none of these can compete economically with coal- and oil-fired generation. in other words, this will take further government interference. that interference can be done well, done badly, or done somewhere in-between, but given the history of government efforts in the u.s., i would guess that such interference would not go well.
it need not be so. surprisingly, there have actually been government initiatives that have worked. one of these was the u.s. national government's subsidy of air travel via airmail. only old farts like me remember "air mail stamps," but at one time, one could write a letter on special light-weight paper, put an airmail stamp on it, and have it sent via an airplane to another city. the national government lost money on the deal, because it cost more to ship the mail by air than it did by train (trucks weren't widely used until after WWII, because the road systems between cities were pretty poor), but the result was that airlines were able to make money and buy better, safer aircraft, which encouraged the growth of passenger traffic. the extra charge for airmail ended in 1975. so what form should the interference of the national government take? i'll get to that in a bit.
as i intimated above, nuclear power in uneconomical, but there is a reason: stupid over-regulation. in the u.s., almost all reactors that have been put online have been designed and built from the ground up. anybody who knows anything about engineering or business knows that this is a stupid approach, but the national government has rigidly controlled nuclear power generation from the get-go, and their demands pretty much drove the stupid approach. one need only look at france, which generated 72% of its electricity using nuclear plants in 2016 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_France), and has had no major reactor failures (INES 4 or above) since 1980. this is largely because almost all french reactors are generic, with each new reactor benefiting from lessons learned from previously-built models. nevertheless, the anti-nuke guys do have a point; if a nuclear reactor fails, the consequences can be spectacularly terrible. this does not mean that reactors should not be built; instead, they need to be put where failures cannot have devastating effects. so where on earth could that be? U guessed it: *not* on earth.
energy can be stored in lots of forms. the energy we use is stored mostly in energy-dense materials like oil-based liquids and coal. these are chemical storage methods, and are believed to have been deposited by geological means. regardless of *where* and *how* they were generated, they are *not* the only means of chemical energy storage. one fuel that has been tantalizing and frustrating engineers for decades is hydrogen, which can be burned to generate electricity, producing only steam (kinda, sorta) as exhaust. unfortunately, most effort has gone into making hydrogen-fueled cars and trucks, and most of these have been uneconomical, mostly because trying to store enough hydrogen to give the vehicle a decent range is *extremely* difficult, and also because vehicle crashes can be explosive and dangerous.
what if we built reactors in high earth orbit (HEO), or on the surface of the moon? both places are already deadly radioactive, so even if a reactor melted completely into a pool or sphere of magma, the radiation in the immediate vicinity would not change appreciably. thus, we could ship water up to the reactor (in HEO or on the moon), crack it to H2 and O2, and send the gases back to earth in autonomous return craft. once recovered, the O2 could be sold or released, and the H2 could be burned in hydrogen-powered electrial-generation plants. because the plant is stationary and large, the fuel could be stored in standard H2 tanks. burning things - like H2 - at high temperatures in the earth's atmosphere, which is 80% N2, usually generates nitrous oxides, but electricity generation companies are familiar with reducing NOx compounds, and standard technology could be applied to removing those pollutants. yes, there is a possibility of Bad Things happening; an autonomous return craft could crash into a city, an H2 tank could rupture and explode, and so forth, but need i recall the lac-mégantic oil-tanker train disaster of 2013-07-06 (40+ dead)? Bad Things happen because of things civilization does all the time; it's part of life, and *cannot* be avoided. all we can do is design the process to be as safe as possible. or we can all go huddle in caves with sharp sticks.
there are, of course, other energy sources available to us beside nuclear energy. one of the favorites of the left is solar power. unfortunately, mirror farms spend about 50% of the year in the dark, producing nothing; furthermore, bad weather can reduce sunlight, and can also damage the equipment. even so, the sun is the largest nuclear reactor within lightyears, and produces orders of magnitude more power than the entire human race uses, or probably has used since the beginning of the species; it would be silly to ignore its potential. where on earth could we put a mirror farm that could avoid the problems? hmm-m-m ...
needless to say, there is no wind (other than the solar wind) in orbit, whether earth orbit, lunar orbit, or solar orbit; there is also little in the way of weather (other than solar storms). a mirror of a thin metallic film (Al, perhaps?) about a km on a side can easily be built and deployed in HEO, lunar orbit, or solar orbit. each mirror could have a simple guidance unit and small rocket motors to keep it on station and pointed in the right diretion, and a farm of these mirrors could be aimed at a central point, at which water could be cracked into H2 and O2. the rest of the system would be like the nuclear option mentioned above. of course, solar wind will tend to blow the mirrors around a bit, and the guidance/station rockets will eventually run out of fuel, so there must be some maintenance of the mirror farms. also, a solar storm is likely to destroy electronic systems, so part of the process will have to include responding to solar flare damage and the like. there is also the possibility that one of our friends of the Religion that Must Not Be Mentioned By Name might take control of a mirror farm and point it at some city on earth, so some of the system design has to take malevolent actors into consideration.
finally, if we insist on continuing to use fossil fuels, there are probably *lots* of such chemicals on the moons of jupiter and uranus. there is also likely to be huge amounts of water in the form of dirty ice (mixed with methane ice, etc.) in the same area. all of these could be mined and returned to earth, but better use could be made of these as chemical feeds, possibly to colonies on the moon, on mars, and even on the moons of jupiter and uranus. no matter how U look at it, there is money to be made off the surface of the planet, and a lot of good that could be done by eliminating the use of carbon-based fuels on its surface.
so where does the national government come in? it could "subsidize" companies that develop transport to and from HEO, and to other planets, by giving them a reduced tax rate. if an energy source is tapped and used to generate H2 and O2 for use in generating electricity on the surface of earth, they could reduce the tax rate more. the subsidy could be planned for a period of 50 years or so, with the "subsidy" slowly getting smaller, until ending at 50 years. with any luck, companies like SpaceX and Virgin Galactic will somehow manage to make such transport remunerative, and the only hard part will be to get the mirror farms and nuclear reactors set up. the transport is not yet viable, however, so every little bit helps; this is one case where i kinda, sorta lean towards interference by the national government.
just a thought.
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