Borst said, regarding the possibility of recycling the partially spent fuel,"Hopefully, we'll figure out something to do with it by 2035". Well, that's only 18 years from now. Anybody got any ideas? I'm for shooting it into space (set the controls for the heart of the sun). Now I've got that song in my head, cool.

 

I'm for shooting it into space (set the controls for the heart of the sun).

 

Burn it.

 

Yah, we'd probably screw that up too.

 

Your angst is a product of your liberal teachers instilling fear in you all your life that mankind -- and his interactions with mother earth -- are bad.

Get over it. Capitalism will solve any problems when and as necessary. Government -- and its guns -- not required.

Oh you sweet summer child. Capitalism can only do so much. There is still smog in 3rd world countries.

Not that the government would do any better since they are all hardcore survivalists capitalists. Even in North Korea.

Your angst is a product of your liberal teachers instilling fear in you all your life that mankind -- and his interactions with mother earth -- are bad.

My angst is way calmer than a Louis Rossmann video on an apple product.

 

There is still smog in 3rd world countries.

And there is still no capitalism there.

 

Photovoltaic panels ?
What is their efficiency? 4%....7%??????????????

Modern panels are over 20% and still rising. Cells have exceeded 40% in the lab I believe, but are not yet commercial.

They cover a land where plants would have grown.
If the plants are fat, oil production, and from the oil used in the kitchen you can produce biodiesel.
Maybe it has greater efficiency.

Good land is too expensive to use for solar farms, which are ideal is desert locations. Lots of sun, lots of otherwise useless land.

Maybe plants use sunlight with greater efficiency than solar panels.

Not really. Plants can make things besides just energy (such as proteins) and thus have value far above their ability to capture energy. Purely for energy, they're not so hot.

Let's talk about corn, which is not as efficient as other plants. (Switchgrass is one being looked at for energy.) A good corn crop might be 150 bushels per acre. At the industry standard of 3 gallons per bushel, this would produce 450 gallons of ethanol at 22.27 kWh each. Total = 10,021 kWh per acre, let's call it 10MWh.

The non-starch portion of the corn kernel ends up in the DDGS and has value for its protein content. I don't know how to score that but it does have caloric content of ~2.8Cal/g. Each bushel yields about 4kg of DDGS, so the total would be 150 bushels x 4 kg DDGS/bu x 2.8Mcal/kg x 1.16222 kWh/Mcal x 1 MkWh = 1953 kWh, let's call it 2 MWhr.

So we get about 12 MWh per acre from raising and processing corn.

Solar insolation where I live is about 5,500 MJ/m^2 per year. That's 1,528 kWh/m^2 and 6,183MkWh per acre. If solar panels could capture 20% of that, you'd have 1,237 MWh per acre, or just over 100 times more energy captured.

But someone is working on research and studying solar panels.
The state pays you to buy them. Strange, is not it?

States have an interest in diversifying their energy grid, which they control in most (all?) states. Some, maybe most of that interest is pure politics but there are legitimate reasons to add solar. It's beating wind and new electrical capacity coming on line in the U.S. is mostly renewable.

 

And there is still no capitalism there.

That is simply not true. What you mean that the idea of a "free market" isn't there.

But that's the entropy of capitalism. The big get bigger and mom and pop stores need to operate under the radar.

 

Borst said, regarding the possibility of recycling the partially spent fuel,"Hopefully, we'll figure out something to do with it by 2035".

People I know in the industry tell me they would be happy to recycle "spent" fuel and greatly reduce the waste issues with nuclear, and the need to mine fresh fuel. Can you guess what prevents them from doing so? Yup, your government.

 

So we get about 12 MWh per acre from raising and processing corn.

Is this before or after accounting for the energy expended to actually cultivate and process it?

 

Lets talk about the free market for a sec. You guys have made cannabis legal in some states and some mom and pop stores/manufactures have sprung to being.

In 20 years or even less I'm betting $10 that the whole market will be owned and run by 3 companies with "in agreement" price on all of their product.

 

That is simply not true. What you mean that the idea of a "free market" isn't there.

But that's the entropy of capitalism. The big get bigger and mom and pop stores need to operate under the radar.

Capitalism, in its true laissez faire form, has never existed -- especially in third world countries. The closest any country has ever come is turn-of-the-20th-century USA.

There is always a bureaucrat who thinks he knows better than an industrialist seeking profit -- and he has no problem impoverishing the masses in the name of "helping" them.

 

Is this before or after accounting for the energy expended to actually cultivate and process it?

Definitely before. You wouldn't get 150 bushels per acre without a substantial amount of nitrogen fertilizer. You do get a net energy gain from ethanol from corn, but it's not huge. Inefficiency on the farm or in the ethanol plant can make it go the other way. But of you're running well enough to stay in business, you're in the black for net energy.

 

But of you're running well enough to stay in business, you're in the black for net energy.

Discounting government subsidies?

 

In 20 years or even less I'm betting $10 that the whole market will be owned and run by 3 companies with "in agreement" price on all of their product.

If the laws were held constant, I'd bet against that for one simple reason: The federal law makes the cannibis business technically illegal. You simply could not risk being a huge company engaging in an activity that could be shut down at any moment by the federal government. Frankly I don't understand how these companies are getting listed on the public exchanges. I would have though you had to be complying with all laws to qualify for being publicly listed.

Of course, the laws may well change at the federal level within two decades, possibly much sooner.

The industry consolidation you cite is mandated by customers, not the manufacturers. When customers demand a race to the bottom on price, that's what the industry delivers. Walmart didn't kill Mom and Pop shops, customers did. They voted with their dollars and they voted for cheap crap.

 

Capitalism, in its true laissez faire form, has never existed .

Bull. Every drug deal where narcotics is illegal is unregulated. Pure capitalism.

I hand you money by my free will and you by your free will hand me the product.

 

Discounting government subsidies?

The government (EPA) has the renewable fuel standard to promote oxygenated fuel. There isn't really a subsidy per se anymore. At one time there was a "blending credit" but that is long gone. The EPA mandate could probably also be lifted without much impact now that the market has built out and stabilized.

 

Borst said, regarding the possibility of recycling the partially spent fuel,"Hopefully, we'll figure out something to do with it by 2035". Well, that's only 18 years from now. Anybody got any ideas? I'm for shooting it into space (set the controls for the heart of the sun). Now I've got that song in my head, cool.

Until we've perfected a better way to recycle it, why can't we keep doing what we've been doing?
People make a big deal about it; "what are we ever going to do with all this nuclear waste?"

https://www.nei.org/Knowledge-Center/Nuclear-Statistics/On-Site-Storage-of-Nuclear-Waste

Over the past four decades, the entire industry has produced 76,430 metric tons of used nuclear fuel. If used fuel assemblies were stacked end-to-end and side-by-side, this would cover a football field about eight yards deep.

A football field (1.32 acres) 8 yards high. Probably about the same volume of as a typical Walmart; maybe Costco. 40 years to accumulate that.
The space required to store this stuff is infinitesimal in contrast to how much space is available. A 10,000 acre facility could probably store it for the next millennia.

Meanwhile, a 100,000 acre wind farm delivers 782MW, less than most nuclear plants.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/worlds-largest-wind-farm-churns-in-texas/




https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=104&t=3

http://ceepr.mit.edu/publications/working-papers/662

 

Bull. Every drug deal where narcotics is illegal is unregulated. Pure capitalism.

I hand you money by my free will and you by your free will hand me the product.

LOL. You just described a highly regulated market.

 

Bull. Every drug deal where narcotics is illegal is unregulated. Pure capitalism.

I hand you money by my free will and you by your free will hand me the product.

Laissez faire capitalism requires unfettered transactions between buyer and seller -- with no third party interference. By definition, the illicit drug trade is the furthest thing from capitalism.