No way! In SimCity, my hydroelectric plants work forever!
Man, you can’t believe anything in computer games these days.
Fine by me. Someone has to take responsibility, and not be the NIMBY.
Talk about strawmen. Well, sure, they can if they pay me enough for it.
We’ve covered electric vehicle efficiency in GQ several times now; if you search there you may find several threads in fact.
But as to your question…in general, a gasoline IC engine is at best 30% efficient for taking the energy in the gasoline and converting it to usable power at the drive wheels. A diesel can be about 35%. Mind you, these are very general numbers here, with a large error.
A modern, US coal power plant is between 30% to 35% efficient at taking the energy in the coal and delivering electrical power to the grid.
A modern, US combined cycle natural gas turbine is between 40% to 55% efficient at taking the energy in the natural gas and converting it to electricty.
Now of course, we also have to add in transmission and distribution losses, battery charging/discharging losses for the electric vehicle, the efficieny of the motor, etc, etc. Some of these values were discussed in GQ a month ago or so.
I might do this if I get motivated, but it’s not easy, and no one is paying me for it. 
Only for some pollutants, like ozone. The effects of CO[sub]2[/sub], SO[sub]2[/sub], and NO[sub]x[/sub] are widespread in the forms of greenhouse gases and acid rain, respectively.
As for creating electricity, may I offer landfills burning methane?
Methane is created in landfills as part of the whole garbage deal, and being pretty flammable and heavy has to be sucked off the surface of a landfill for safety reasons. Many landfills just pipe it off and light it up to get rid of it. A few (Granger has several plants) have built turbines at the end of thier pipe systems (with some filters and other fun engineering) that make electricity quite well…from waste gas.
Personally, I don’t see how it could get much cleaner than pulling power out of trash we have laying around anyway. IMHO.
Talk about courage through denial.
Besides, why should they have to pay you much of anything for the storage? Nuclear waste is harmless, right? As Paul Harvey once said, “It can’t be seen. You can’t smell it. It won’t jump up and bite ya.”
Just because a nuclear plant’s not spewing out dioxins or other chemicals doesn’t mean it’s not producing pollutants.
This is irrelevant. I expect that anyone that stores anything on my property pay me considerably for it. It is called private property. Whether they want to store bowling balls or drums of waste I’m going to get paid for it.
This whole argument of yours is a strawman, since no one is advocating storing nuclear waste in people’s backyards and personal property.
“is Califonia up a creek without a paddle on this subject”
Some Calif cities have their own power plants.
There is plenty of electricity & its dirt cheap right now, believe it or not.
However, natural gas Is not cheap. Its about three times what it was a year back. Just gas for the hot water heater costs about $28/month. Also, power plants here use natural gas to make electricity. Odd.
It goes to the point that folks who think nuclear power is without consequences are not only sadly mistaken, but also often use strawmen themselves to maintain their blissful suppositions.
Nuclear power doesn’t produce dioxins or other “traditional” chemical pollutants. It does, however, produce waste that will be a lot tougher to deal with.
Nuclear is no magic bullet.
Great googly moogly, Mister Literal. Good thing no one here used the phrase, “Nuclear waste will be around 'til the cows come home.” No doubt you’d start hopping around, freaking out that someone’s now involving livestock in a discussion of electrical power.
And your claim to do whatever you want with your property ends at your property line. Water tables don’t respect property lines whether they’re personal boundaries or governmental lines of jurisdiction. I’d wager that nuclear waste will remain dangerous a hell of a lot longer than will the governments that store the stuff.
The few electric cars that have been released lately,
including GM’s EV1 and Honda’s EV-Plus, were expensive
and impractical for most drivers because of their limited range and need for frequent, lengthy recharging.
Both companies have ceased making them.
Consumers Union compared the electric’s with “the equivalent of a three-gallon gas tank that takes eight hours to fill.”
Oh, so this is how it’s going to be now. :rolleyes: Look dude - you were the one who first threw out the “backyard” comment, and then made the comment in the following post about why should I be paid to have something stored on my property. So you were continuing down that vein, and now have decided it was not to be taken literally. Well, I believe you, but you ought to know that e-text does not convery tone very well sometimes, so it may not have been totally obvious to me what you really meant.
OK…so now once again you bring up a reference to my property line. See? You need to be clear what your issue here really is.
SPOOFE mentioned the fuel-cell car, that will rock, I think. Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t that essentially powered by hydrogen, or am I thinking of another car? Either way, I saw a snippet of a report on a car powered by hyrdogen and it was efficient, and it will be easy to convert existing gas stations to pump hydrogen instead of gas.
Plus, once scientists and engineers get this whole cold-fusion thing down (and I think they will) we’ll all be set with enough power for life. Plus, I think that cold-fusion has no waste (or it’s waste is water, or something harmless like that,) but I could be wrong.
In any case we are going to have to stop using fossil fuels, because we are running out. It may take 50 years, 100 years, 200 years, but they WILL become to scarse for us to use as a major source of fuel.
Making hydrogen currently is neither efficient nor inexpensive. And it would in fact be pretty difficult to convert an existing gas station to pump hydrogen instead of gasoline. I would be interested in seeing what the source is of anything that says otherwise.
Naw, it’s mostly correct. My understanding is that there are small amounts of light, short-half-life radioactive elements that are produced as waste, but they are pitifully tiny in quantity, and not very dangerous - relative to fission energy processes.
More likely 300 years to 400 years, but scarcity is not the only issue. Potential climate change is a much bigger one.