HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: kevin@nuchat.sccsi.com (Kevin Brown)
Subject: Re: Radioactivity and Superstition (and the *Real* Problems)
Organization: I can't see any in the immediate vicinity...
Date: Fri, 11 Sep 1992 02:22:50 GMT

In article <53127@dime.cs.umass.edu> yodaiken@chelm.cs.umass.edu (victor yodaiken) writes:
>In article <1992Sep8.232846.1206@nuchat.sccsi.com> kevin@nuchat.sccsi.com (Kevin Brown) writes:
>>This may not be true, of course, but I can unequivocally state that, at least,
>>*I* am one such person.  Give me sufficient evidence that nuclear powerplant
>>designs that are currently on the drawing board are, in fact, relatively
>>likely to cause widespread damage, and I'll switch sides.  Convince me that
>>nuclear waste, on a per-joule basis, is more damaging than the waste from
>>a coal-fired plant, and I'll again switch sides.
>
>See: "Safety Second" by the UCS, and "History of Nuclear Power Regulation"
>by Okrent. Okrent is pro-nuke and concludes his book by arguing for the
>safety of nuclear power, but my reading of his evidence leads to the
>opposite conclusion. As for the novel nuclear power designs now
>being proposed, I don't yet have an opinion.

Hmm...okay.  I'll look this up when I get a chance.  What are Okrent's
qualifications?

>>> The nuclear power lobby, the
>>>NRC/AEC and all sorts of pro-nuclear hangers including some in this forum
>>>have been repeatedly guilty of authoritatively insisting on some falsehood
>>>or half-truth. 
>>
>>Such as?
>>
>>Which things have they insisted upon that are *blatantly* false?
>
>E.g. containment structures in US plants were *designed* to handle
>meltdowns, 

Could you be more specific?  *How* were they supposed to handle meltdowns?
By somehow containing the core?  Or does this mean that they were designed
not to rupture even in a meltdown situation?

> and probabilities of nuclear power accidents can be, and have
>been, quantified well enough to enable straightforward
>quantitative risk comparisons  between technologies. 

Hmm...this is a harder statement to justify.  However: humans have been
running nuclear power plants all over the world for over 30 years
(particularly in the military) with only one major accident (i.e., one
that resulted in significant damage to the environment and the population)
that I'm aware of: Cherynobl (sp?).

What other power generation methods have as good or better safety records?

>yodaiken@chelm.cs.umass.edu


-- 
				Kevin Brown

			    kevin@nuchat.sccsi.com
			    kevin@taronga.taronga.com
From: jgd@dixie.com (John De Armond)
Newsgroups: sci.energy
Subject: Re: electrical generation unit VAR?
Date: 11 Sep 92 17:37:48 GMT
Organization: Dixie Communications Public Access.  The Mouth of the South.

sherwood@fenris.space.ualberta.ca (Sherwood Botsford) writes:

>Recently at a tour of the Bighorn Dam on the N.  
>Saskatchewan river, I noticed a strip chart calibrated in  
>megavars, adjacent to one calibrated in megawatts.

>What exactly is a var?  From context of the guide's talk, I  
>think it deals with impedance matching between the local  
>generation and the net consumption on the grid, but his  
>explanation was keyed to grade 6's and was somewhat less  
>than complete.

A VAR is a Volt-Amp Reactive.  This is the so called "wattless current"
that flows whenever a low power factor load is involved.  VARs are 
very undesirable because the contribute nothing to power but cause
ohmic heating in the transmission and distribution equipment.  A high
VAR level can also cause large voltage concentrations in generating 
equipment.  Some VAR compensation is possible by adjusting the field
excitation of the generator.  Normally the real correction is done
by capacitor banks placed near the load.  These banks supply leading
VARs that cancel the lagging VARs produced by electric motors and 
magnetic ballasts.

VARs are measured by inserting a 90 degree phase shifting network in
the potential leg of a wattmeter or transducer.  If the load were
100% reactive - current leading or lagging voltage by 90 degrees,
VAR meter would read the product of the volts and amps flowing.  
Since the voltage and amperage would be 90 degrees out of phase, no
real power is delivered to the load and an associated wattmeter would
read zero.  A pure resistive load will register zero VARs.

John
-- 
John De Armond, WD4OQC               |Interested in high performance mobility?  
Performance Engineering Magazine (TM) |
Marietta, Ga                         |Interested in high tech and computers? 
jgd@dixie.com                        |Write me about PE Magazine
Need Usenet public Access in Atlanta?  Write Me for info on Dixie.com.
Newsgroups: sci.energy
From: whitlock@dcss.mcmaster.ca (Jeremy Whitlock)
Subject: Re: Radioactivity and Superstition (and the *Real* Problems)
Organization: Department of Computer Science, McMaster University
Date: Wed, 9 Sep 1992 14:26:08 GMT

In article <53089@dime.cs.umass.edu> yodaiken@chelm.cs.umass.edu (victor yodaiken) writes:

>I must have misread the following passage. If so, I apologize.
>
>|>Come on now.  Of course if you walked into an anti-nuke demonstration and 
>|>asked around if anyone was a Luddite, or if anyone had a fear of technology, 
>|>you'd find no-one.  If you asked the anti-automobile crowd at the turn of the
>|>century you'd also find no-one.  If you asked the anti-vaccination,      
>|>anti-airplane, anti-immunization, anti-genetic engineering, anti-steam power,
>|>anti-electric light bulb, anti-pasteurization, anti-space travel,     
>|>anti-blood transfusion, anti-X-ray, or any anti-<new technology> crowd over
>|>the last century of so, you'd likewise find few who outright expressed a
>|>fear of technology.  Unless, of course, you looked deeper.

You misread it.  Apology accepted.

>So, you think that Lovins believes that fluidized coal, active glass, and
>photo-electron equipment are "low tech"? That would be rather an odd
>thing to believe.

I believe he is hyprocritical, and you've pointed out the hypocrisy nicely.

Surely you noted the "aside" in my previous post? :  "(his obvious ignorance
of the high-tech nature of "soft" energy systems notwithstanding)"

As a further note -- I know you don't believe that someone who receives 
$600 an hour for energy managment consultation could possibly have "deeper
motives", but in the light of some of the statments he's made, I'd say that
"having deeper motives" is giving him the benefit of the doubt.  The  
alternative is that he is a blithering idiot.

>yodaiken@chelm.cs.umass.edu


-- 
Jeremy Whitlock                 "My thoughts are mine, not Mac's"
Dept. Engineering Physics
McMaster University
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
From: pw@panix.com (Paul Wallich)
Newsgroups: sci.energy
Subject: Re: Waste Facts
Date: 10 Sep 92 16:39:01 GMT
Organization: Trivializers R Us

In <1992Sep10.103338.18375@cs.rochester.edu> dietz@cs.rochester.edu (Paul Dietz) writes:

>In article <BuCELI.2ru@world.std.com> kkirksey@world.std.com (Ken B Kirksey) writes:
>>The following was posted in alt.cyberpunk recently.  It's an excerpt from
>>the speech that Bruce Sterling gave at this year's ALA conference:
>> 
>>>         We're already leaving some impressive gifts for the remote
>>> future of this planet. Namely nuclear wastes. We're going to be
>>> neatly archiving this repulsive trash in concrete and salt mines and
>>> fused glass canisters, for tens of thousands of years. Imagine the
>>> pleasure of discovering one of these nice radioactive time-bombs six
>>> thousand years from now. Imagine the joy of dedicated archeologists
>>> burrowing into one of these twentieth-century pharoah's tombs and
>>> dropping dead, swiftly and painfully. Gosh, thanks, ancestors.
>>> Thanks, twentieth century. Thanks for thinking of us.
>> 
>>Ok, as an exercise, I'd like to see how many holes sci.energy readers
>>can poke in this one.  It's been a long time since I reviewed my nuclear
>>waste info, so this should be educational. :)


>"Gee, thanks 20th Century!  You were stupid enough to throw away all
>this useful plutonium, spent uranium and other fuels, but we can use
>em.  And the platinum group element fission products are also useful.
>The radioactivity is now so low that the canisters are easy to mine
>than the high grade uranium ore you used.  Our only complaint is that
>you isolated them so well that they're hard to find from the surface.
>If you had been considerate and let them leak a bit, we could have
>found them that way."

There have also been a couple of bizarre workshops sponsored by the
DOE looking at ways to make sure that information about radioactive
dangers gets preserved. Among the possibilities are bunches of 
pictograms showing the waste canisters and then showing people 
going near them and dying, the establishment of some kind of nuclear
waste religion (no kidding) and I forget what else. The working
assumption is that "civilization" will fall and be rebuilt at least
twice before the canisters are safe, and that no current language
will be known to the people of the time in question.

(Of course this brings up the possibility: "Gee, we deciphered the
writing on the wall of this big mausoleum and it says that some
kind of strange invisible curse will visit anyone who disturbs the
relics. Must be something _really_ valuable in there." ... "What
the $#^%$%^ did our ancestors venerate these undecorated urns for?"
. . . Tabloid Headlines: Fermi's Curse! Archaeologists who opened
Atomic Tomb die mysterously! Witness:"Their hair fell out")

paul
From: howard.smith@spacebbs.com (Howard Smith) 
Newsgroups: sci.energy
Subject: Re: Wind Farms  (was: Re:
Date: 5 Sep 92 01:03:00 GMT
Distribution: na
Organization: SPACE BBS - Menlo Park, CA - 10 Lines + 4gB - 415-323-4193
Reply-To: howard.smith@spacebbs.com (Howard Smith) 

JWS> As far as wind power in upstate New York, it's not going to suffer from
JWS>lack of resource (especially near Albany...). Anyhow, with the Great Lakes
JWS>and all, there is a lot of weather activity. Thing is, most of the
JWS>energetic weather is nasty. I hope they have some sort of plan to deal with
JWS>icing. The eastern end of Lake Ontario gets worse snow and ice storms than
JWS>Buffalo, where I grew up (or didn't).

The "five-cent" turbines being installed near Lake Ontario are designed
to deliver %100 of rating (300KW) at wind speeds of 25 knots to above 60
knots and will produce usable power at 8 knots. These are of a fairly
new, variable speed design. The generator, hooked to the propeller,
produces a voltage of variable frequency that is fed to a solid state
cyclo-converter which rectifies and then converts the power into
regulated 60 cycle a.c. Pretty amazing considering the 300KW power
level.

I don't know what they do about icing, but some European turbines are
being installed in remote villages in Alaska and they seem to be
worrying more about the lubricants freezing up.

There are some 2200 turbines installed in Denmark which is further north
than New York state and has weather probably even more foul. But they
report 97.7% availability of the machines, so the machines seem to be
able to take it.

Europeans are going for wind power in a big way, with wind farms being
installed in Great Britain, Holland, East and West Germany, and Spain,
as well as Denmark.

There is a magazine, "Wind Power Monthly", published in Denmark that
covers wind power developement all over the world. There is much
coverage of the considerable activity going on in the U.S. You can get a
free copy of the current English edition by contacting the U.S.
correspondent and agent, Ros Davidson, in San Francisco at
(415)775-1985. It was so fascinating that I broke down and subscribed.

I will fax the question of the problem of icing to U.S. Windpower in
Livermore, CA and will report back.

Hava a nice holiday!

hhs
---
 . SLMR 2.1a . Back Up My Hard Drive? I Can't Find The Reverse Switch!
From: mancus@zaphod.jsc.nasa.gov (Keith Mancus)
Newsgroups: sci.energy
Subject: Re: Wind Farms (was: Re:
Date: 4 Sep 1992 21:45:03 GMT
Distribution: na
Organization: NASA Johnson Space Center, Houston

In article <zxmnz2b.sss@netcom.com> sss@netcom.com (Small Systems Solutions) writes:
>In article <viking.715624825@vincent1.iastate.edu> 
>  viking@iastate.edu (Dan Sorenson) writes:
>>
>>	As an idea, coat the blades with teflon or even a silicon wax and
>>let centrifugal force wipe that ice right off the blades.  I've never heard
>>of airplane props icing up
>
>You clearly aren't a pilot, then....

  Yeah, the responder is right.  Have you ever heard of "hot props"?
These are aircraft propellers that have heated leading edges to
melt ice off.  Some aircraft (generally older birds) have an anti-freeze
feed at the root of the propeller; the anti-freeze is then thrown outward
by centrifugal force, along the leading edge.
  Airfoils of *any* kind don't mix well with ice.
-- 
| Keith Mancus    <mancus@sweetpea.jsc.nasa.gov>                         |
|                 N5WVR                                                  |
|  "If I owned Texas and I owned Hell, I'd rent out Texas and live       |
|  in Hell." -General Sheridan                                           |
From: dietz@cs.rochester.edu (Paul Dietz)
Subject: Re: SOLAR efficiency
Organization: Computer Science Department University of Rochester
Date: Mon, 14 Sep 1992 17:06:58 GMT

In article <1992Sep12.220549.14317@nmt.edu> houle@nmt.edu (Paul Houle) writes:

>improving and has plenty of room to improve.  Existing solar thermal
>systems that use natural gas backup generate electricity for 8 cents/kWh,


If you are refering to the Luz plants, note that with the financing
available to utilities and no tax breaks, they would produce
electricity for about $.12/kWh.  It was uncertainty about extension
of the tax breaks that drove them to bankruptcy.  Their product
was not competitive without the tax break subsidy, and they needed
to keep building new units to maintain enough cash flow to stay
in business.

	Paul F. Dietz
	dietz@cs.rochester.edu
From: yodaiken@chelm.cs.umass.edu (victor yodaiken)
Newsgroups: sci.energy
Subject: Re: Radioactivity and Superstition (and the *Real* Problems)
Date: 7 Sep 92 13:35:40 GMT
Organization: University of Massachusetts, Amherst

In article <1992Sep6.143035.2837@sugra.uucp> ken@sugra.uucp (Kenneth Ng) writes:
>In article <52907@dime.cs.umass.edu:, yodaiken@chelm.cs.umass.edu (victor yodaiken) writes:
>: In article <1992Sep3.133036.25840@mcshub.dcss.mcmaster.ca> whitlock@dcss.mcmaster.ca (Jeremy Whitlock) writes:
>: >the last century of so, you'd likewise find few who outright expressed a
>: >fear of technology.  Unless, of course, you looked deeper.
>: And what about if you looked "deeper" into the motives of those who
>: are against wind and solar technolgies? 
>
>Are you infering that those who are pro nuclear are anti wind and solar?  About

No. I'm commenting on the wisdom  of argument by fabricating
"deeper motives".




-- 


yodaiken@chelm.cs.umass.edu
From: rmartin@crchh109.bnr.ca (Richard Martin)
Subject: HOME ENERGY EVALUATION
Reply-To: rmartin@crchh109.bnr.ca (Richard Martin)
Organization: Bell-Northern Research, Richardson, Tx
Date: Thu, 10 Sep 1992 14:41:14 GMT


I am about to have a new house designed and built.  I am interested in
information regarding tradeoffs between insulation, windows, attic ventilation,
A/C and heating, etc.  I've heard of a so called energy audit, but don't know
anything about it.  Is there a computer program available that one can input
different variables, do some calculations, and then compare the outputs?

Thanks,
Richard Martin
....standard disclaimer............
From: dietz@cs.rochester.edu (Paul Dietz)
Newsgroups: sci.energy
Subject: Re: Running out of oil  -
Date: 7 Sep 92 22:41:07 GMT
Distribution: na
Organization: Computer Science Department University of Rochester

In article <2855.1460.uupcb@spacebbs.com> howard.smith@spacebbs.com (Howard Smith)  writes:

> Don't we have a "chicken vrs. the egg" situation here. I'm under the
> impression that a large chunk of inflation is due to rising energy
> prices; so if our economy is based on an increasingly scarce form of
> energy, we can expect inflation to increase proportionally. Thus the
> price of the energy would not seem to rise, when adjusted for inflation.
>
> But then I'm just a dumb engineer and can't fathom the real mistery of
> the universe - Economics.


I believe this is incorrect.  If energy had indeed become scarce, we
should have seen an increase in the relative price of energy vs. other
goods and services.  Energy prices would therefore rise more than the
average rate of inflation.

Economics 101 would tell you that inflation is caused by excessive
increases in the supply of money.

	Paul F. Dietz
	dietz@cs.rochester.edu
From: sherwood@fenris.space.ualberta.ca (Sherwood Botsford)
Newsgroups: sci.energy
Subject: Re: Wind Farms  (was: Re: rad
Date: 11 Sep 92 01:35:46 GMT
Article-I.D.: kakwa.1992Sep11.013546.10756
Distribution: na
Organization: University Of Alberta, Edmonton Canada

Paul Dietz writes
> In article <2819.1460.uupcb@spacebbs.com>  
howard.smith@spacebbs.com (Howard Smith) writes:
> 
> >... the fact that most farms and ranches still use
> >wind pumps to obtain water from an aquifer ...
> 
> I don't believe this.  Most farms have access to the  
grid, and
> electric pumps are easier to install and more reliable.
> 
> 	Paul F. Dietz
> 	dietz@cs.rochester.edu

Can't talk about the quantity, but I see a lot of windmills  
still operating.  Particularly on large ranches, it's  
cheaper to keep a windmill pump running than it is to run  
powerlines over miles of prairie.  Remember too, that if  
it's watering a few hundred head of cattle it may only need  
to pump a thousand or so gallons of water per day.

You're probably right that if you already have electricity  
at a site an electric pump makes more sense.  But for sites  
without power, windpower gets competative once you are over  
a mile from the nearest line.
From: howard.smith@spacebbs.com (Howard Smith)
Newsgroups: sci.energy
Subject: Re: Running out of oil  -
Date: 6 Sep 92 05:32:00 GMT
Reply-To: howard.smith@spacebbs.com (Howard Smith)
Distribution: na
Organization: SPACE BBS - Menlo Park, CA - 10 Lines + 4gB - 415-323-4193

GC>You have this backward I think. In the past thirty years we've seen a
GC>barrel of oil go from $2 to the current $18 with a short period around
GC>$30 engineered by OPEC. The reality was that OPEC couldn't hold the
GC>line at $30 no matter how hard they tried, somebody always decided to
GC>cheat and turn a fast buck. Supply and demand really did break OPEC's
GC>stranglehold on world oil prices. Current price is slightly lower than
GC>the price 30 years ago when inflation is factored in.

Don't we have a "chicken vrs. the egg" situation here. I'm under the
impression that a large chunk of inflation is due to rising energy
prices; so if our economy is based on an increasingly scarce form of
energy, we can expect inflation to increase proportionally. Thus the
price of the energy would not seem to rise, when adjusted for inflation.

But then I'm just a dumb engineer and can't fathom the real mistery of
the universe - Economics.

hhs
---
 . SLMR 2.1a . hAS ANYONE SEEN MY cAPSLOCK KEY?
From: jym@mica.berkeley.edu (Jym Dyer)
Newsgroups: sci.energy
Subject: Re: Radioactivity and Superstition (Appropriate Technology)
Date: 14 Sep 92 18:20:06
Organization: The Naughty Peahen Party Line
	<1992Sep3.133036.25840@mcshub.dcss.mcmaster.ca>
NNTP-Posting-Host: remarque.berkeley.edu
In-reply-to: whitlock@dcss.mcmaster.ca's message of 3 Sep 92 13:30:36 GMT

=o= Most of Mr. Whitlock's misstatements about appropriate
technology have already been addressed.  Some of his basics
could stand more examination.

> Let's take a look at what the anti-nuclear movement pushes
> as "appropriate technology".  According to Amory Lovins,
> "appropriate" means simple, decentralized, easy-to-understand
> and control, small-scale, and suited to a particular end-use.

=o= I don't agree with this list.  In particular, "simple" and
"easy-to-understand" are inaccurate.  "Easy to control" is more
what Lovins, Karl Hess, _et_al_ are getting at.

> Anyone who works for an anti-nuclear group -- especially those
> hired full-time -- is reaping the benefits of public fear over
> nuclear power.

=o= Most of the work done in anti-nuclear groups is volunteer.
That which isn't, doesn't pay much.  I can't think of anyone
who's made any amount of money in the movement who hasn't earned
it with hard work, several times over.

> As for sincerity -- when you hear some of the most disgusting
> lies and half-truths about . . .

=o= Let's assume there really are these disgusting lies and
half-truths.  I'm opposed to them, okay?  Now how about all the
disgusting lies and half-truths promulgated by the industry.
Have you nothing to say about them?  Whose lies are doing the
most damage?  Whose lies are harming the most people?
    <_Jym_>
--
Time's up!
                -- Vice President George Bush, to Alexander Haig,
                   when Haig asked questions about the Iran-contra
                   affair during a debate, January 1988.
Newsgroups: sci.energy
From: dietz@cs.rochester.edu (Paul Dietz)
Subject: Re: SOLAR efficiency
Organization: Computer Science Department University of Rochester
Date: Mon, 14 Sep 1992 02:43:54 GMT

In article <1992Sep12.193225.27592@dragon.acadiau.ca> 891666t@dragon.acadiau.ca (Trish Turliuk) writes:

>I've always been taught and read that solar power is too inefficient to
>be used as a power source beyond subsidization of other power.
>
>	I'm also aware that it's quite cost-inefficient.
>
>Can anyone change my viewpoint? 


What does it mean for solar power to be "too inefficient"?

This could mean two things: (1) the low efficiency means too much land
would be needed, or (2) the low efficiency contributes to high costs.

(1) is clearly false.  In the US (for example) the total amount of
sunlight hitting the country in a year exceeds primary energy
consumption by a factor of 500.  So, with 10% efficient PV cells, and
assuming the primary energy is replaced by PV electricity 1 for 1,
we'd naively need to cover 2% of the country with collectors.  This is
small compared to the area covered by, say, farms.

(2) is currently true, to some extent, but the cost/watt can be
reduced without increasing the efficiency at all, simply by finding
ways to make the collectors more cheaply.  Economies of scale would no
doubt apply to manufacture of collectors as they do to all other
manufactured goods.  DOE estimates that costs will fall 70% for every
tenfold increase in production experience and 40% for each tenfold
increase in annual output.  PV has many profitable niche applications,
and sales are growing about 20%/year in the US.

PV currently costs about $5/W (for modules) and $1-2/W for balance of
system costs.  Modules cost will have to fall to $3/W for PV to
compete for peaking power and $1/W to compete for bulk power.

Module efficiency does affect balance of system costs (supports,
installation, etc.)  DOE thinks 15% efficiency is the goal to shoot
for for flat plate collectors.

	Paul F. Dietz
	dietz@cs.rochester.edu
Newsgroups: sci.energy