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Guest Post: The Fukushima Cloud's Green, Not Silver Lining
From John Daly at Oil Price
The Fukushima Cloud's Green, Not Silver Lining
The ongoing tragedy of Japan’s Daichi Fukshima nuclear complex will
prove to be a boon for renewable energy in Japan, and astute investors
should begin carefully to follow Tokyo’s new priorities.
Before the March 11 twin disasters of a massive earthquake followed
by a devastating tsunami, about 30 percent of Japan’s electricity was
generated by nuclear power, and Tokyo had ambitious plans to raise its
market share to 50 percent over the next two decades, with renewable
accounting for 20 percent, Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan told
journalists earlier this month.
That optimistic policy is now in tatters, and Kan added, "However
(following Fukushima), we now have to go back to the drawing board and
conduct a fundamental review of the nation's basic energy policy."
Kan is now touting the government's “Sunrise Project,” which has been
moribund for the last seven years. The goal of the Sunrise Project is
to reduce the cost of solar power over the decade to a third of current
levels and to one-sixth by 2030 as an incentive for more people to
install it.
At the 50th anniversary of the Organization for Economic Cooperation
and Development in Paris Kan told reporters, "Japan will now review its
basic energy plan from scratch and is set to address new challenges."
The scale of the government’s turn away from nuclear and fossil fuel
power is extraordinary, as currently renewable energy resources, such as
solar and wind, only make up about 1 percent of Japan's total power
supply. Even with hydropower, the ratio is about only 9 percent.
According to China Business the earthquake and tsunami halted
production at most of Japan’s giant solar power companies, including
Kyocera, Sharp and Sanyo because of the subsequent lack of electricity.
Prior to the earthquake China and Japan essentially shared the European
photovoltaic (PV) market; since the earthquake analysts predict that
Japan will lose one quarter of its market share.
The shift has already started, as The Nikkei business daily reported
on Wednesday that Softbank Corp, Japan's third-largest mobile phone
operator, has announced plans to assist in the construction of about ten
20-megawatt facilities, costing about 8 billion yen ($100 million)
each. But, as in many Western countries dominated by the nuclear and oil
industries, solar energy policies have up to now enjoyed fitful support
in Japan, where pioneers such as Sharp Corp and Kyocera Corp have lost
their lead to overseas rivals that received larger subsidies and lower
production costs. Furthermore, the cost of solar panel installation in
Japan is double that in Germany.
So, who will be one of the major beneficiaries of this policy shift towards reducing solar costs?
China, surprise surprise.
China now has over 400 PV companies and now produces approximately 23
percent of photovoltaic products used worldwide. Three years ago China
produced 1,700 megawatts of solar panels, nearly half of the world
production of 3,800 MW, of which 99 percent were exported. According to
Huang Xinming, head of a research institute at JA Solar, a large Chinese
solar power company, JA Solar has just developed a new technology that
could cut the cost of producing silicon, an important material in
manufacturing solar panels, by 60 percent.
Expect to see a flood of yen into China’s PV industries; smart
Western investors will head east as well, where the sun always rises.
»
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GE's new solar panels in Japan catch fire due to bad weather.
This overcomes that problem. Shovel ready alternative.
http://www.hidroonline.com/
Heh. Doubtin' that one, yo.
From the FAQ:
Is Hidro+ a Perpetual Motion Machine?
No because the perpetual motion and conservation of energy refers to thermodynamic principles (1st, 2nd and 3rd laws); but not fluid mechanics and dynamics, flow of physics, Archimedes Principles and Newtown's Laws (1st and 2nd Laws of Physics).
I am only providing this link as a concerned citizen who has a vested interest in leaving a cleaner nest that the one I was born into. I am only a layman on this and so can't contribute anything to a discussion on the viability of the project at a scientific level. As a discussion topic, can you elaborate on the scientific concern that you have (in layman's terms, please). I'm pretty easy on being suckered into false hope offerings, due to my sorry lack of scientific grounding.
I have requested info from the company on how to answer your doubts. We'll soon see whether or not if they are responsive to queries from the general public. I am only assuming that they are promoting a genuine process. Looking at their various Utube listings, it seems the real deal.
However, looking at your concerns a little deeper, to me they don't dismiss the possibility of this working. Am I correct in saying that you don't believe that this is a valid alternative because it is not an over-unity generator or a perpetual motion machine? They aren't claiming that at all. Can you elaborate please as I am highly interested in viable alternatives to coal fired and, solar, wind and nuclear systems.
If you(or anyone else interested) have discernible theories that dismiss their claims, I would like to hear them, so that I can stop promoting this (supposedly working) technology.
Cheers, Al.
I have a clue as to the proposed mechanics, but the inventor does a good job of not really describing where "the rubber meets the road," so to speak.
Basically, it appears that increasing the buoyancy of one of the internal "float tanks" helps provide work to raise and drop an external stator/solenoid-kinda-thingie which generates electricity and also turns a flywheel. That flywheel appears then to be used to compress the gas which then "inflates" second float tank, which then ascends while the first drops, and so on.
The implication is (and I say this as someone who doesn't have a complete picture of what the system does): the energy generated by the falling stator is sufficient both to compress the gas that elevates the second buoyancy tank AND generates electricity which can be captured with some surplus of energy.
If this is possible, I'd be astonished. I am not an engineer by profession, but there have been people working with fluid/pressure dynamics since about 600BC, and electrical generation for a few hundred years. What is shown in schematic could, in principle, have been discovered in 1880.
I don't believe that (if this worked) it would've taken until 2011 to develop a working model.
(Oh, BTW: the first thing I thought to myself was that if one unit which is $3.75million could provide power for 1000 households at $0.01/kWh, it should be easy enough to sell 'em to the inhabitants of Galt's Gulch.)
Gut feeling is that it's snake oil, but if it's the real deal, good for them.
Sometimes technologies that could have been developed long ago simply lost because they were completing against an alternative that was better at the time, and this could be one of them- although it seems a stretch here.
A good example of one of the abandoned technologies is the Stirling engine. It was invented as a safer alternative to the steam engine, but happened to co-incide with the invention of the internal combustion engine, and simply lost the fight because it wants to run at a constant velocity, and burning gasoline directly allows for much more responsive increases and decreases in speed.
The Stirling is incredibly efficient, runs quietly, and will operate with almost any heat source. I mention it here because it is a goofy thing to understand kind of like the system proposed in the link. It works by heating a gas in a sealed chamber to increase the pressure, which pushes a piston out, and a displacer cylander into the heat chamber at the same time, moving the air into a cooling area that causes it to contract, pulling the piston back and moving the displacer back into the cool area. It works well enough that GM made at least one working prototype using the tech in the 70's, but it was apparently abandoned when the gas prices went down again. I gather there were some problems with the batteries (it was an electric car) and a few other engineering issues.
It's a neat idea, but tough to approach- I had to model a whole system in Solidworks before I really could see what it was doing, as the drawings available looked unworkable. At any rate, even though it seems weird, it does work. It still requires a heat gradient, though, and that is where the deepwater thing is tough to swallow, as it seems to imply that gravity can somehow provide the power to overcome itself.
Nothing is impossible though, so I guess we'll see if it makes it to market. Odds are it's got a long way to go before it's ready to take on the world, kind of like the Stirling.
Actually, once you get it around your head that the entire engineering paradigm that has it's oily claws around our ability to truely perceive how thing should work, you understand that :
It is not that over-unity devices that are scams, it is the WHOLE SCIENTIFIC ESTABLISHMENT that refutes the possibility that is the scam.
And that, is too difficult to swallow.
Yes, this edifice works too, but... think about collateral damage sometime...
http://aadivaahan.wordpress.com/2010/06/12/collateral-damage/
ORI
Carnot cycle, squaring the circle, blah blah blah.
See my comment below. It's actually quite simple to tell if something violates conservation of energy. Just draw the right "control volume" and if there is energy coming out with nothing starting inside or going inside, it's bullshit. Ignore all hand waving, velvet lined boxes and flashpowder decorating the periphery.
oops, double clicked there.
I'll jump in there. I have a Ph.D. in fluid mechanics and I'm a mechanical engineering professor, but most of what I will say is actually fairly simple.
In a nut shell, there is no way possible to generate energy from nothing. Full stop. You can always do a quick bullshit detection on a complicated looking technology in the following way: If there is any line you can draw that encircles a space out of which energy comes with nothing going in or starting inside it's impossible.
Except for the extremely rare instances where matter is actually converted into energy (the old E=mc2), this rule is effectively immutable. Any pitchman that tries to tell you this is a "special case" is full of it. Deny this at the risk of your own self esteem, you will always be proven wrong and may potentially look foolish.
Thanks gentleman. Your comments readily make sense. If it's that easily refutable (and I don't doubt your word), then this guy is putting a lot of effort into a crazy con! Like I said, I don't have a clue on how it works but as you stated, if they are claiming over unity, then I just rely on the old saw, "You don't get something for nothing". I'm not sharp enough to derive from his system whether or not if there was an input loss. He does mention an output loss from friction etc but doesn't offer any explanation on how that is compensated.
I've contacted the company and await reply. Until then, I'm out.
Cheers and thanks for your efforts. Much appreciated.
Al
Thanks Bob. You just reminded me of my old trouble shooting days as a mechanic.
Input - Control - Output.
http://www.free-energy-info.co.uk/
http://www.rexresearch.com/invnindx.htm
Brownian ratchet
how do solar panels react to radioactive rainfall? just sayin..............
That actually depends on what type of solar panel it is. The amorphous solar cells (cheap ones) are terrible, and take a huge hit. (This is why they have a shorter average lifespan, the UV and such kills them.) CIGS solar cells actually improve under the initial bombardment.
Paging Leo! Your ship has come in!
He has bought the dip the last 2 years and retired broke with a snap card
he has made so much cash, he can buy his own greek island at the official greek government , state sanctioned auction and shishkabob cookoff. they even take loonies in payment........
That was my first thought as well.
Ah, poor Leo. I love solar, but that sector is a stinker.
I can't believe no one has come up with a plan to use all those above ground geo-thermal cone-shaped mountains for a green power source yet. I mean, nukes on a costal fault line, what could go wrong?
well the real pain in the ass is how do they harness all of the power being lost by all of those uranium reactor cores that are in full meltdown......
Noble, token, but a decent start. 10x 20MW = 200MW for $1Billion?? 200MW peak is less than 100MWhr per day for solar. Don't mean to be a party spoiler but that's not at all cheap power, and yet another indicator of inflation. Before all the environs jump on my back, 200MW in a power central yet very efficient hub like Japan is little more than a cup full of water to an elephant. Location is not likely to assist them any for year round steady supply.
Quietly in the back blocks of planet earth will rebirth the nuclear push when materials advance ever further, and the reality of energy becomes better understood. Rah rah the environment and all that.
You bet it's expensive. Anybody who tells you we can segue to a society that uses/wastes the same amount and still be sustainable is smoking some wacky tobaccy. The deep deep denial of our predicament is funny to watch people try to bargain their way out of. Even funnier is to hear flat-earth morons talk about how everybody in India and China can consume/waste like us if we just put up enough wind turbines.
I'm all for green but it has to come some realities that will completely wipe out the current continuous exponential growth models.
yes. "the current continuous exponential growth model" (which also rewards waste and destruction at the macro level) is the problem.
Which 'renewable' energy source do they have in mind to replace nuclear? The Fukushima complex was generating 4500MW on about 2 sq mi of land. It made that power 24/7; that is, it was baseline power, and it made baseline power without burning polluting hydrocarbons. What did they have in mind to compete with that?
Pixie dust.
Algae? Seaweed? Sushi?
The power of a positive mental outlook?
Hope and change?
Hope for a change?
Change hope?
Mind over matter?
Decentralized power that the big utilities like TEPCO can not control. For example, millions of magnifying glasses so every man, woman, and child can focus the free, abundant solar energy on tiny twigs to start a small fire so more wood can be added to make a fire to cook breakfast or dinner, or make a bigger fire to heat the house or hut or lean-to on cold nights or cool the hut on unbearably hot nights and run refrigerators to preserve food...and even bigger fires to power fire-mobiles that will drive 10 miles without a need for another fire to drive another 10 miles...we can do this and SAVE THE FORESTS. Woodman, spare that tree!
and now Fukushima lites the streets of Tokyo for free.
Japan will abandon nuclear.
And their transition to a second world economy will be complete. Next up: start working on becoming a third world economy!
Was Israel responsible for Fukushima? Was it all planned to stop them from enriching for Iran?
http://www.jimstonefreelance.com/fukushima.html
For shits and giggles, and you have 10 minutes of your life to waste, I recommend any bored ZH reader to see what the aforementioned link has to say, namely, that the Japanese earthquake never really happened, and that the tsunami was a man-made event. The web guy proves this by noting that the streets were empty in the tsunami videos, meaning that the whole population was in on the scam, and off of the streets....not fleeing as one might expect.
Thanks, Mr. Murray for your careful screening of the linked article.
Yes. The Fukusuima coolant rod storage containers actually served as makeshift holding cells for the passengers of Flight 77, who had been kidnapped before takeoff on 9/11 by Mossad, which then shot the Pentagon with a cruise missile, then held said passengers hostage in said Japanese nuclear reactor as collateral against W. so he wouldn't squeal about his and Cheney's involvement in planning the false flag operation to...
Chalk up one USA useful idiot whose never been in an earthquake.
Empirical disclosure - I have, and the effect is very, very odd due to 'vibration'. [For the record - the videos are in Tokyo, 150 km+ away, in skyscrapers that are specifically built to withstand shocks]. I was in a 6 or 7, and initially thought that a heating water tank was blowing up due to over-pressure. Above me, one story. The ground doesn't shake, it shakes the pilings driven into the ground, which diffuse the vibration through the core parts of the structure. Certain stuff vibrated, others didn't. This includes bottles of wine.
Odd, but kinda cool. Sadly, my (then) partner wasn't too impressed I saved the dogs first. [Logically, it made sense - boiler coming through roof? Save the bottom floor. Partner would be fine, as emergency isn't on that floor. Understanding: zero, treated like a Greek bond afterwards for 4 months]
Insane fringe theory of doom, bitches
OK, let's say that the first cost of solar collection is zero yen/dollars.
Anyone want to do the math on the ROI after the first cost? skoshi' comes to mind.
- Ned
Geothermal - in about 3 months, you'll be able to sink a line down to the melted reactors & free energy for everyone.
[woke up, was being slow - recent IPOs are worse than mail.ru, and that was an eye opener, and the same players are in place. At some points, fraud becomes an art, one supposes]
Hey ZedHeds...with all do respect,
Why couldnt the destruction of the Fukushima Plant may have been possibly 'man-made' and they just said it was the Tsunami as an excuse?
Its so errie because we just had a major oil spill last year in the Gulf - leaking for several weeks...
And 1 year later, we have another hazardous leakage entering the several week range as well...
You can't put ^that^ past 'these' type of people(if you want to call them that) and the dark forces at work.
This is so way beyond just Au/Ag and PMs...
Fried(e)
Begone, friend and sodomite of purest idiocy!
It is the power of reason which compells you!!
Go back to the shadows!!!
when people in power cut costs due to global recession accidents happen. especially when the powers know they are immune.
Japan's market was a little under pressure amid domestic political turmoil.
Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan survived a no-confidence vote in Parliament Thursday,by promising he will resign after the country's nuclear crisis is under control.
that would be in the year of 202011 according to our calculations...
OK, this is a joke right. What the hell are they going to power, robotic grave digging machines??
You know, open air fission processes, ongoing, 24/7, radiation too high to read SW of Tokyo, irradiated ocean,
irradiated people, the little shit like that.
Kan, you already have 3 suns on the fucking ground, how many more do you need?
Put the fuckin solar panels on top of the reactors and plug the other end in your ass,
open your mouth, and light the way home, you ignorant fuck.
They are cleaning up with blue goo to keep radiation levels down. But the fukishima 50 is already dead just slowly dead and working towards quickly dead.
You can't use robotic grave digging machines. The cpu's would burn out.
Chernobyl had to push everything off the roof into the wreckage, it was so radioactive that it destroyed the robotic construction equipment before it moved one piece of wreckage. Solider had to radiation proof as much as possible and run up and throw it off the roof into the wreckage before they could do a sarcophogus. They were each given 1 minute to throw 3 pieces of wreckage back into the building.
This is going to kill over half of japan, kill nearly every nuclear worker they got and eat through thousands of global nuclear workers. Airplanes will get caught up in radiation winds and crash, boats who try to operate in the area will have their computer controlled guidance systems fail. Food will stop moving from low radiation places to high radiation places. People will eat radiated food till they die.
Trade will come to a nearly complete halt as it becomes more and more dangerous to ship anything by plane or boat. MSM will talk about the ongoing recovery and which college degree will provide the big bucks after graduation.
The band will play while the ship sinks just like titanic.
I guess I better load up on our Japanese bearing orders. Great, just great.
Wind and solar are a waste of time.
When you look at potential energy output, you'd be better off investing in a remake of the Apple II.
Germany is fucked as soon as they get rid of their nuke plants.
Glass-Steagall
Has anyone bothered to check the statistics on sunny weather in Japan? Or the amount of space available for solar panel farms?
There is a reason it never took off in Japan.
Ever notice how they don't use solar panels to make solar panels?
Guess fuckin' why!
That's just too funny. Encourage China to subsidize solar. And wind. And fart power, too. With billions. More, more, more!
I have long advocated taking solar, geo and what have you to get off the grid and run the household and car yourself.
However because it is so expensive, it is much cheaper to stay with coal, nuke and hydro for the next 30 years when expressed in terms of what it will cost to take the house to solar and add sufficient battery to carry through the night.
When the last set of storms destroyed our substation, it cost me only 20 gallons gasoline to provide thousands of kilowatts over 4 days and nights.
Germany has it right, take the nukes off line and start building other ways to generate power.
Solar panels installations are a real issue for people living in cyclone prone areas.
You can't just bolt them on an existing roof and expect it to not cause that roof to load-up with extra stress in a cyclone, and suffer greater damage and structural failure than it otherwise would.
At a minimum you need to make the roof strong enough, you need to rebuild the roof, and add more structural bracing. I've been saying for years that in such areas you need to design the building especially to use solar panels, from scratch. Retro fitting I think is a bad and costly idea, prone to structural failure.
And until that’s fully worked through, tested, codified and implemented by local Govts in planning and standards I would not go near a solar panel roof.
That is one of the things I see that makes solar far more expensive and prohibitive than people think (especially greenies who can’t count and live in homes made of cow dung and cardboard)
The only way to reduce the cost and provide acceptable levels of cyclone resistance is to radically change roof designs and shapes, and the materials used in them.
A pine trussed roof with a pitched apex and tiles, or light metal sheeting, is TOTALLY inappropriate. The trusses and batons are far too weak and actually fragile. Plus a pitched apex creates aerodynamic lift at high wind speeds that simply rip the roof and walls away. The wind gusts in a severe cyclone are faster than a 747 needs to takeoff, and every building needs to NOT generate lift – especially the roof. Plus the tiles and light sheeting are rubbish in a real cyclone and just turn into deadly debris.
Putting extra solar panels lift and drag and structural loading on top means it will just get destroyed sooner, and at lower wind speeds (and when the storm is over your power is not coming on again – ever!).
It's actually VERY easy to design a strong solar panel equipped roof, for tropical cyclone prone coastal zones ... but no one wants to build them!
We get imprinted when about 4-years old as to what roof “should look like”, and people mostly just don’t want to be different, or have a superior design that looks different.
So they just keep on building the same old rubbish roof style, with all its problems and flaws and inappropriateness.
Thus no developer wants to do anything different and that is why building design standards must be forced upon new constructions, or else developers (just like seat belts for cars) and the builders will never do what is needed.
And we all know how that will go.
So at this point I don’t see potential for practical solar panels to blossom, until that is addressed.
And at present it looks like it will be several decades before the needed changes become standard practice.
It is a mistake to just focus on trying to get people to move to solar panel tech. The problem is to get local Govt and builders to make the right home designs, but mostly to get people (buyers) to accept the new design and styles that are necessary, and as desirable aesthetically (and for the tech to become cheaper).
There aren't really any buyers for houses right now, so this is a good opportunity to shift prevailing sentiment about sensible design/efficiency.
The past 20-odd years of malinvestment in RE has come to an end, so it's time to get the good ideas out in front.
Yep, can't understand why they keep using the same crap wood design in tornado-prone localities...
Its as if they they enjoy getting their houses blown to bits on a yearly basis...
Our power grid has been rebuilt, redesigned and restrung on the spot with a hodge podge of linemen working ad hock three times in the last 10 years.
5 minutes of tornado terror once a year is not a issue. If we get blown up? So fucking what. We take the insurance money and go build a new life somewhere else. In other words fuck it if our 40 year old home gets blown away.
In the meantime, that storm shelter had better be up to par. (Including fallout)
its a fucking miracle
ge to the rescue again!
http://ex-skf.blogspot.com/2011/06/radiation-in-japan-2-drugs-to-help.html
meanwhile this guy could have the whole mess cleaned up:
http://www.nuclearwasterecycling.com/
doesn't fit in with the great israeli stuxnet dieoff agenda.
http://www.atimes.net/The-Edge/Japan/179854-HAARP-+-STUXNET-TARGETS-FUKU...