New Mars Forums

Louis,

Wind turbines in the northern US states last as little as 10 years before major refurbishment or replacement of components is required, and we already know that they require at least an order of magnitude more resources than nuclear.  The act of making a semiconductor of any kind, a photovoltaic cell being only one example, consumes around 100,000 times more input material than useful output semiconductor material.  There's another problem, though, and that's all the gas or battery production you intend to use to deal with the fact that your energy sources are so dilute.  If we include the natural gas or batteries in the total consumption tallies, then there's no contest whatsoever between nuclear and any other form of power.  The 700 tons of fresh fuel are a resource not being used for any other useful purpose, but the resource still exists, so those of us making rational rather than ideologically motivated arguments say we should use it.  Uranium and Thorium are only useful for generating electricity more efficiently than any other resource ever could, precisely because those resources are so energy-dense.

While you're correct about the fresh fuel consumption, it still doesn't matter unless the employees working at nuclear power plants cease to exist as living human beings merely because they're employed elsewhere, while consuming enormous quantities of coal / gas / oil / batteries to make up for the fact that nuclear materials are at least a million times more energy-dense.  This has to be one of the poorest arguments you've ever attempted to make here.

As someone who is intellectually honest, I must admit that there will likely be far more permanent high-paid employees going to work every day in nuclear power plants than employees going to work at wind farms or solar farms.  Fewer than 100 nuclear reactors supply just shy of 20% of America's electricity.  Those reactors directly employ 100,000 people and indirectly employ 475,000 people.  If we went 100% nuclear, then using simpleton math we'd employ 400,000 directly and 1,900,000 indirectly.

That said, all of those nuclear plant employees are going to one place.  If they live near the plant, as many of them do to make it easy to get to work, then transporting those 1,000 to 2,000 employees could be done with public transportation such as buses.  That's how we used to do it when we had fewer motor vehicles.  South Texas Nuclear Project has 1,200 employees.  The pay scale ranges between $56K and $140K a year.  Those are excellent middle class jobs.  You won't get rich, but you'll never go broke, either.  Many of their employees have college level education.  Mom can afford to stay home and raise her children and Dad can go work at the plant.  That was the way we used to do it, before our brain dead SJWs ruined social norms to distort the world to their dystopian worldviews.  My wife works like I do, but I've never once heard her say, "I really wish I could spend more time at work instead of with my children."  I hear the exact opposite quite often, though.

The people who installed the solar panels on my roof were all high school graduates or dropouts living paycheck to paycheck.  I think the sole person amongst them who had earned a college degree was their supervisor.  I guess if my goal was to exploit a bunch of working poor uneducated people, then I would make them all manual laborers installing solar panels and wind turbines for the rest of their lives so that wealthier Americans could afford to purchase the electricity that they could not.  In either case, all of those people operating the nuclear power plants continue to exist, with or without high paying STEM jobs that typically cause them to seek out college education so that they can learn about why protecting the environment is a useful goal, as well as the monetary wealth to educate their own children at a collegiate level.  I can't possibly fathom why we'd want more of that.

The US solar industry directly employs 250,000 people and solar supplies.  The pay scale can be every bit as high, but most of them, by numbers, who are installers, make between $30K and $40K per year, sometimes with benefits, which is nice, and very few of those people have college degrees, because they can't afford to go to college with $30K/yr salaries.  The US wind industry employs, I think, 100,000 to 110,000.  I'm almost certain that your next argument will be that wind and solar employ more people than nuclear, therefore it's better than nuclear due to the jobs created.  Those people are also consuming things and creating waste to transport and repair / refurbish / replace everything they install.

I don't want a future filled with barely-educated manual laborers who can scarcely afford to use the product or service that they produce.  Henry Ford had the correct model.  Nuclear power is the most efficient society-level pooling of labor, resources, and capital to produce the energy, the master resource, that technologically advanced human civilization requires, so that everyone can reap the benefits.

The embodied materials requirements of a wind / solar energy system are orders of magnitude greater than the fossil fuel energy system that they are trying to replace. 

Below is a link to the 2015 Quadrennial energy review, produced by the US department of energy. A reliable enough source?
https://www.energy.gov/quadrennial-tech … eview-2015

Go to Section 10, Table 10.4 for a summary of materials inputs into several different types of powerplant in ton/TWh. Here are some tallys per TWh:
Nuclear (PWR) = 760t concrete / cement; 3t copper; 0t glass; 160t steel; 0t aluminium.
Wind = 8000t concrete / cement; 23t copper; 92t glass; 1800t steel; 35t aluminium.
Solar PV = 4050t concrete / cement; 850t copper; 2700t glass; 7900t steel; 680t aluminium.

Compared to a pressurised water reactor nuclear power plant:

1. A solar PV plant producing the same electric power output will require some 5.3x more concrete; some 280x more copper, some 49.4x more steel; and thousands of times more glass and aluminium.  A plant producing the same average electrical power output as a largish nuclear reactor, will occupy 200 square kilometres of land in northern Europe.

2. Wind turbines (presumably onshore) require about an order of magnitude more materials for the same amount of electrical energy generated.

3. There is no indication that these quantities include any materials investments needed for energy storage. This would require further materials investments in pumped hydro, CAES or some other means. This increases the materials cost of wind and solar still further. Embodied materials are a reflection of embodied energy.

The energy needed to mine and manufacture these materials is presently produced using fossil fuels.  Concrete is cheap because kilns have access to cheap natural gas.  Steel is cheap thanks to coke that reduces iron oxide and natural gas, coal and baseboard nuclear that provide cheap electric power for electric furnaces.  What will happen to the cost of renewable electricity, when we have to use renewable electricity to manufacture the materials needed to build new wind farms and solar power plants?  Is it realistic to suppose we can substitute wind and solar electricity for fossil fuels and produce orders of magnitude more steel and concrete?  And just how renewable will these things be, when we take into account the fact that only a portion of their large material requirements are recyclable? 

What these materials budgets tell me is that there is no possibility of renewable energy systems scaling up to provide the quantity of energy that we presently derive from fossil fuels.  So far, these energy sources have substituted a small proportion of the electricity in a handful of wealthy countries.  But even in these countries, the contribution of wind and solar is small when compared to the net energy required for all heating, process heat, transportation and electricity markets combined.  And complete replacement of fossil infrastructure must be carried out across the world in all of these sectors.

I find it wryly amusing that anyone wanting to get humanity to Mars would advocate an energy policy that is certain to impoverish industrial nations, if not return them to the stone age.  There is a bizarre contradiction embedded in this obsession.  Somehow we are supposed to afford spaceflight and high technology, whilst subsisting on diffuse energy sources that reduce average income to a few thousand dollars per year.  And Louis thinks we can get to Mars by doing this?  Seriously man, you have not thought this through.

I guess I thought if articles come out that seem to help understand Mars, and especially early Mars, it would be nice to list them here.
The moderators can do as they like however, of course.

https://www.space.com/ancient-mars-inte … y-warm-wet
Quote:

Ancient Mars' warm spells probably didn't last long
Ancient Mars was warm and wet only intermittently, a new study suggests.

Although the Martian surface is bone-dry today, it's clear that liquid water flowed across it billions of years ago. The planet is scored by river channels, and ancient lakebeds lurk on the floors of multiple craters — including Gale and Jezero, which are currently being explored by NASA's Curiosity and Perseverance rovers, respectively.

But it remains unclear, and a topic of considerable scientific debate, what ancient Mars was really like. Was the planet warm and wet continuously long ago, or has it pretty much always been frosty, with only sporadic balmy stretches allowing transient water flows?

The search for life on Mars: A photo time line

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A new study bolsters the latter view, suggesting that it took dramatic events to warm Mars' cold heart, and that such ancient deviations never lasted long.

“Mars was intermittently warmed when its atmospheric composition was altered by the input of gases derived from volcanism and meteorite impactors," co-author Joel Hurowitz, a geoscientist at Stony Brook University in New York, said in a statement.

These warm spells "allowed water to flow across the surface, forming rivers and lakes and the rocks and minerals we associate with water on Mars,” Hurowitz said.

The new study, led by Robin Wordsworth of Harvard University, presents a novel climate model of ancient Mars. The model takes into account a variety of factors, including the effects of volcanic eruptions, which poured greenhouse gases into the Martian air, and the escape of hydrogen from the atmosphere into space.

That hydrogen escape, driven by the solar wind, ramped up dramatically after Mars lost its protective global magnetic field. By about 3.7 billion years ago, the once-thick Martian atmosphere was just 1% as dense as that of present-day Earth, and the era of rivers and lakes on the Red Planet's surface was coming to an end.

The new study, which was published online today (March 8) in the journal Nature Geoscience, helps flesh out that era and the Red Planet's life-hosting potential. For example, it suggests that "wet" Mars was still very cold, with average annual surface temperatures below minus 28 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 33 degrees Celsius).

Click here for more Space.com videos...
"The dynamic history of Martian environments proposed here suggests opportunities for the emergence of life during warm, wet intervals when reducing conditions would have favored prebiotic chemistry, but also challenges for the persistence of surface life in the face of frequent and, through time, lengthening intervals of mainly cold and dry oxidizing environments," Wordsworth and his colleagues wrote in the new study.

"Reducing conditions" refers to an atmosphere in which oxidation — the stripping of electrons from atoms and molecules — is prevented or minimized. By contrast, oxidation is prevalent in "oxidizing environments."

Oxygen is a commonly proposed biosignature — a possible sign of life for which to search in the atmospheres of alien planets. Interestingly, the new model predicts that Mars had an oxygen-rich atmosphere for long stretches "in the middle period of its history without requiring the presence of life, indicating that O2 detection alone can be a 'false positive' for life in some circumstances," the researchers wrote in the new study.

Mike Wall is the author of "Out There" (Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), a book about the search for alien life. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or Facebook.

Join our Space Forums to keep talking space on the latest missions, night sky and more! And if you have a news tip, correction or comment, let us know at: community@space.com.

louis wrote:

Of course it doesn't but the energy storage issue will be overcome.

Within our lifetimes?  There's no evidence of that, whatsoever.

louis wrote:

Solar energy contractors in the SW USA are now covering the nighttime gap using capacitors, chemical batteries and other storage. So that's a first step. Of course the technology needs to go a lot further.

I once worked out you could produce enough storage if you filled the equivalent of six of the huge NASA rocket assembly building with top of the range chemical batteries. If the cost of battery storage continues to fall as it has done, we will see a powerful price effect.  Chemical batteries definitely work well with electricity generation. If the cost comes down enough, then they may be the solution.

louis wrote:

15 years ago the complaint against green energy was that it was "too damn expensive"...now, thanks largely to technological developments and manufacturing efficiencies, green energy is amongst the lowest cost profiles.

It's still too expensive.  Our rooftop photovoltaics and two Tesla PowerWalls, which can't even run one of our three AC units, at all or ever, cost around $60K.

louis wrote:

That's a common confusion - using domestic solar as the price guide, rather than utility scale solar. But even at the domestic level I think the average payback time is something like 6 years.  That's in unsunny UK! Might involve some subsidies though, so you might not like that...

louis wrote:

In another 15 years, I think we'll find the energy storage has been resolved. It already is being resolved over the 24 hour day-night cycle.

Again, claiming something doesn't make it true.  The same claim was made 15 years ago.

How do you people do this to yourselves?

Running that Monty Python skit against yourselves, wherein you smack yourselves silly with the huge books while running around in a circle and chanting the same nonsense over and over again, DOESN'T MAKE IT TRUE!

Good grief, man.  This isn't about what I or you want, it's about what science and engineering can realistically deliver.

louis wrote:

  I not sure what more you require. Evidence is evidence. The cost of solar and wind have both reduced dramatically over the last 15 years and they are now right at the bottom end of electricity generation costs - much better than coal or nuclear for sure. There is nothing to suggest that prices will continue to fall significantly (indeed nearly analysts agree on this).

Battery storage costs have recently been following a similar strong downward trajectory.

If you dispute any of this, please post links with the counter-evidence.

louis wrote:

With further dramatic cost falls we will see green energy used to create its own energy storage (most likely as artificial methane) to combine with chemical battery storage. That is the simplest solution. Eventually we will be able to cover any reasonable low output event. In the UK that  rarely extends beyond 3 days for both wind and solar. Once automobiles are all EVs you can also draw on the energy from their batteries offering people financial incentives to do engage in "reverse charging".  Once you have sufficient green energy production, you can also turn all your hydro facilities into, effectively, energy storage.

Again, what planet are you living on?

Here on Earth, except for hydrocarbon fuels extracted from the ground, there is no energy storage to speak of.  None.  The batteries in Australia are a sales stunt that the purchasers of that system can't afford to repeat.

EVs supplying the grid with power is nuts.  You can use the electric cars to drive places, you can recharge them using coal / oil / gas, or you can very temporarily make up for the fact that there aren't enough batteries in the world to power the grid for one lousy minute.

Hydro is a fixed resource, and it doesn't supply nearly as much energy as nuclear does.  Here in the US, land of more navigable waterways and lakes than the rest of the world combined, in 2020 we received 790TWh from nuclear power, 388 TWh from wind, and 291TWh from hydro.  Are we going to create brand new rivers and lakes using battery powered construction equipment?

You keep talking about things that simply don't exist at any significant scale, and probably never will, because the amount of energy and resource consumption required to create them with the benefit of fossil fuels, is so enormous that we can't figure out how to do it economically using the cheapest energy we'll ever have.  You still can't figure out why we keep burning oil like mad, can you?

louis wrote:

Well if coal is energy storage, so is geothermal, so is waste for incineration.

The point is that with a green energy system you would have a different strategy from today. Hydro might only contribute 10% of your power, but you would keep your reservoirs topped up for the periods of low green energy. Likewise with energy from waste, you would be keeping considerable stores of waste material so that could come into play You'll find in most wast incineration plants they might have 3 burners and they normally use only one or two. The strategy with green energy would be to ensure you have 3 burners ready to go into full operation during critical periods. Likewise with biofuels. So a green energy strategy might mean during the critical period (when maybe your solar and wind sources have dropped to 10% of the requirement) you switch to full hydro (10%), full energy from waste (5%), full biofuel usage (5%), draw on EV batteries (might be 1 or 2%), reduce electricity usage in large user locations (20%), and then use your artificial methane store to generate the remaining 48% of normal or thereabouts. Of course that final figure could be further reduced through use of geothermal, tidal energy, and so on. Use of chemical batteries would also reduce the figure. Another element is of course creating continental size grids. We in the UK  already import energy from neighbouring countries on mainland Europe. But there is a proposal we could connect up to Iceland and use some of their geothermal energy. That would fit well with a green energy strategy.

louis wrote:

It should be remembered that nuclear power in the past certainly has been vulnerable to very hot weather events - when reactors had to be closed down because cooling systems weren't working properly.

Reactors may have to reduce power output if their lake of water coolant warms up a bit, but they don't have to shut down because the water warms a few degrees, and any such claim is provably false in nature, and made for reasons not related to science, such as an anti-nuclear political agenda.

It should also be remembered that nuclear powered aircraft carriers routinely transit through some of the hottest and coldest regions of Earth, and sail in circles there at top speed for months on end, without refueling once over the same period of time required for a newborn baby to grow and age to the point that they can become a new sailor who can serve aboard the same ship that their mother or father served aboard.

Sailing ships can technically sail without using any onboard power source, but they also don't sail very fast and are completely at the mercy of the winds, which doesn't work from the standpoint of maintaining a technologically advanced civilization.

At some point in time in humanity's future, there will almost certainly be a battery as energy dense as an equivalent weight of liquid hydrocarbon fuel.  It's almost equally certain at this point that neither you nor I will be alive to witness that.

"Heatwaves forced nuclear shutdowns or curtailments across Europe in 2003, 2006, 2015 and 2018. In 2003 alone, EDF lost a record of 5.5 TWh in nuclear output. In 2006 2.5 TWh. Last year hot weather brought EDF to temporarily shut down three reactors in eastern France, resulting in 1.7 TWh loss in output."

https://www.climateforesight.eu/energy/ … -the-heat/

Yes we won't be around to see such an efficient battery but we may be around to see a battery that costs 20% of what it does today and cost is just as crucial as energy efficiency when it comes to electricity generation - in fact more so.

Louis,

It doesn't matter if "green energy", whatever that is, is free, when output drops to less than 3% of what it was before a little winter weather.

We certainly do spend a lot of "green" without getting much energy though.

For Louis and SpaceNut ... thank you both for giving this new topic a boost!

SpaceNut.  ..As I interpret your comments, you seem to have a better understanding of the prospects for success of this new direction for nuclear fission.  The marketplace for raw electricity is not the best target for managers of nuclear power plants.  A far better use of nuclear power is to make products of greater intrinsic value that are NOT easily made by other carbon free means.

For Louis ... If you are interested in the economics of competition between green suppliers, I hope you will contribute actual data to this new topic, from time to time. I expect to see that the advantages of nuclear power will prove superior to all other competitors over the long term.

In any case, this is NOT a theoretical exercise!  The managers (and stockholders) of nuclear facilities are looking for ways to earn the best possible return for their investment over the LONG term, so I expect to see continued movement away from supply of raw energy and on to value added products that can be stored until the price is highest.

Thanks again for giving the topic a helpful push as it sets out on what I hope will be a fruitful and rewarding voyage.

(th)

------
Some further thoughts on the use of nesting in a habitat structure.
I is normal in our day that we likely spend ~8 hours sleeping, and so, perhaps in a situation which to a degree resembles microgravity.  I am wondering if the blood pooling problem can be addressed in a similar way, where in a 24 hour period, a person could be in microgravity for a certain number of hours.   This would likely be to do work in the Null Frame areas outside of the Rotators.   I am guessing that their are chances.
In the last post I suggested a nested rotor with vacuum methods, which I would hope could reach to 1 g simulated spin gravity.   The question is how many hours should a person be in that nested Rotor, to maintain health?   We will have to experiment to find out.   It is also possible that over time, medicine discoveries will also help with the ill effects of micro-gravity for humans.
Now, I am thinking of alternate rotors.  If you have low enough spin gravity, can you have a lesser magnitude of vacuum.   Lets say for Ceres.  I am guessing that you could get away with no vacuum in the "Pink" area, and so no seals.
I anticipate that it might be possible to do that, or even dispose of the complete structure of the rotor.  I am thinking of a open torus, rotor.  I will make a drawing.
https://i.imgur.com/7uDmv2x.png
Obviously it might be possible to get away with a greater spin gravity and still not use a vacuum.  This would be particularly true if the air in the air gap rotates, and even may be laminar in flow.
This would be good, as say perhaps 1/10 g might be enough for water plumbing to work.
This again would be a field for discovery.  At what g force does blood pooling become a problem?   And so on.
How much gravity do you need to sense up and down something like on Earth?
Done.

Louis:

Paragraph 6 from post 967:

"I find that landing leg trouble unsurprising,  to say the least.  I don't know how they are operated,  but either plumbing or electricity (or both) are used.  Doesn't matter which,  it was exposed to a big fire in the bay for a significant time,  and fire is hell on wiring or plumbing. Odds are the bay fire caused the leg malfunction."

Yes,  fire can distort mechanisms.  It usually does.  It also destroys controls,  which causes failures even when mechanisms remain undistorted.  If the fire destroys hydraulic plumbing,  or the controls for hydraulics,  the mechanisms operated by hydraulics cannot function.    Same for electrically-operated stuff:  wiring is extremely vulnerable to fire,  whether control wiring or the electric motors themselves. 

GW