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http://www.nrl.navy.mil/media/news-releases/2014/scale-model-wwii-craft-takes-flight-with-fuel-from-the-sea-concept





really neat concept that has a lot of potential.


Imagine, the entire navy and air force powered by sea water!



also, I am slightly disjointed we have potentially unlimited fuel before we get giant robots or flying cars.

WTF future?

Not quite. They're just isolating what boils down to gasoline from sea water. It's not even close to energy neutral, and still needs a pretty hefty power source to create the fuel.

Not to say it doesn't have some pretty awesome uses. For one, it DOES create a potentially unlimited (and carbon neutral) source of petrol for civilian use given enough power thrown at it (ideally from green sources like nuclear, solar, and wind). Not to mention the fact that all those nuclear powered super carriers could make jet fuel for their aircraft.

 Laughing Man wrote:
Not quite. They're just isolating what boils down to gasoline from sea water. It's not even close to energy neutral, and still needs a pretty hefty power source to create the fuel.

Not to say it doesn't have some pretty awesome uses. For one, it DOES create a potentially unlimited (and carbon neutral) source of petrol for civilian use given enough power thrown at it (ideally from green sources like nuclear, solar, and wind). Not to mention the fact that all those nuclear powered super carriers could make jet fuel for their aircraft.

energy neutral? thats not what fuel is for, its for energy SURPLUS.

and compare a nuke powered naval vessel converting this stuff at sea, verses drilling in the earth for oil, using up FRESH water, then processing the fuel, then shipping the fuel.

Im not sure you fully grasp how much of a game changer this is... for the military alone this is huge, let alone civic implications, they want this in production in 10 years.

Nuclear isn't a green source of energy production.

Pretty cool video/concept regardless.

It's not naval aviation if you're not getting buzzed off JP-5.

I think he means energy neutral in the sense that it creates a useful amount compared to what goes into it. X electric energy from nuclear power into X-1 gasoline energy which airplanes can use.

If you had the option, it would be better to just use the Nuclear reactor itself for power directly to the planes. Once we have decent batteries that could power a plane for a length of time that would be a better choice. Cut out the middle man.

This is the main problem with Hydrogen as a power source for cars. The energy it takes to make the Hydrogen is less than it would take to just power the car with electricity, and even that is still a long way from being viable.


The reason this isn't particularly viable is because to make said hydrocarbon it takes more energy than it releases when its burned. The only way an energy source is viable is if its preexisting.

The only long term viable source of renewable Hydrocarbons I see is the genetically engineered algae(or other organism) that secretes them by using energy from the Sun. Any other source of energy is going to consume more energy than it produces and would have been more efficient to just use whatever energy source you are using to make it.

We'd be better served using existing oil up while developing better and more efficient batteries. With the long term goal of converting everything over to nuclear power. Or genetically engineered organisms that can turn sunlight into a liquid hydrocarbon fuel.

Nuclear power and better batteries are probably the way to go, while also getting biotechnology up to speed.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Medium of Death wrote:
Nuclear isn't a green source of energy production.

Yes it is.

It doesn't require Solar Panels, the construction of which creates some rather nasty byproducts.
It doesn't release greenhouse gasses.
It doesn't create the volume of toxic waste of other sources of energy.
Its more efficient than other sources of energy.
It has much more potential energy than other sources.

The spent fuel rods are rather easily contained and buried deep beneath the earth. and it doesn't produce very much of this waste relative to other energy sources. Thus its actually easier to contain and safely dispose of.

You and I have very different definitions of the word "Green" when it comes to energy generation.

You're seriously saying that nuclear energy is an environmental equivalent to real green energy sources such as as solar, wind or wave?

yes it is... nuclear is very green, solar wind, ect still have environmental impacts... let alone the simple fact its IMPOSSIBLE to meet current energy demand with them.

maybe stop poo poo ing alternatives that work just because they dont produce rainbows as byproducts, less radiation per kilowatt hr from nuclear then coal. heck we could shoot the waste into space with sea water powered rockets, problem solved. The radiation from coal however is already spread out and dispersed into the environment.



to grey templar: you bet, it would definitely be more efficient to cut out the middle man if battery tech were that good. I really dont see it working for aircraft anytime soon though, batteries may have high energy output, but they inevitably are very dense and heavy if you want them to last. Im rooting for them though!

I didn't "poo poo" anything...?

I've just taken umbrage at the fact that your calling it a "Green" energy source.

Shooting it into space is a fantastic idea... oh no wait...




Yeah it's older footage, but as far as I'm aware these are all unmanned, didn't really want to post the Space Shuttle explosion to prove a point.

While nuclear power has some very obvious and unpleasant byproducts, you also have to consider the amount of energy they output comparative to that waste; as such they are probably the most environmentally sound option. If you like, you can call it the "least bad" option, it's just as true.

This new method is very intriguing.

The cleaness of nuclear could actually have it considered green, its just mostly that label is put onto things like solar and wind. Ignoring things like the byproducts of producing solar.

Nuclear would be the strongest form of green energy and considered renewable, but, it would be much better if solar could be improved further. To reduce the byproducts of producing it and to increase the energy produced by it. Either way nuclear is in fact the best alternative to coal burning presently, the other green options can only supplement existing infrastructure presently because they are simply not efficient enough yet. The main issue nuclear has is the hysteria created by movies and simple misunderstandings because of nuclear weapons; a reactor won't be blowing up like a bomb.

 Medium of Death wrote:
You and I have very different definitions of the word "Green" when it comes to energy generation.

You're seriously saying that nuclear energy is an environmental equivalent to real green energy sources such as as solar, wind or wave?

Nuclear energy produces pollution of spent fuel, coal produces smoke, and so on, while solar and wind do not. However all generation equipment requires materials such as concrete and steel, and there is an environmental impact associated with the inputs.

That is not the whole story, though. Energy use is cyclical, so we need a baseline production that is always on. Solar obviously can't do that like nuclear. There are potential ways to store the energy produced from solar, such as pumping water up hill during the day and pushing it through a hydroelectrical plant at night. This obvious requires another load of equipment to be built. Even then, solar power is less useful in the winter, when energy demand is higher.

The question is whether the lifetime megawatts per ton of concrete and steel production of solar is better than nuclear.

Remind me of the Aircraft Carriers made of ice and woodchips.

What I find interesting is that it seems to carbon dioxide neutral?

So while you are liberating carbon dioxide gas at the end of the process, it's just carbon dioxide gas that was previously sucked out of the hydrosphere in the first place.

More or less a neutral, one carbon dioxide atom liberated for each carbon dioxide atom consumed process. I'm sure that the process adds some carbon dioxide, as energy is needed to catalyze this whole process... maybe add nuke reactors to supply that demand?

What nukes can't do?

I wouldn't agree with the comment that nuclear is renewable.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
[
The question is whether the lifetime megawatts per ton of concrete and steel production of solar is better than nuclear.

That is a good point. I'd bet that has been assessed somewhere. I'll have a nosy.

I'm not anti-nuclear, I just don't like calling it green because it seems like admitting so would really diminish the need to improve actual green resources.

They have practically gotten to the point where there is no nuclear waste. They can recycle and reuse the spent material and get usable stuff out of it again. The days of needing to bury spent rods which can no longer provide power but are still releasing radiation are basically over.

Of course you can still have the exposure issues, but the risk of exposure vs the guarantee of decades of fossil fuel exposure or the impact to the environment like solar/wind and the carbon footprint to produce those, I would take a well-regulated and maintained nuclear source any day.

well... considering that had we switched to nuclear from coal back in the 50's, that would have reduced emissions by at least 80% if not more....

but apparently its a bad thing to reduce emissions while we work on getting solar/wind/cold fusion up and running, so lets just flood the earth with radioactive coal smoke for a century or so.

why on earth would solar/wind/fusion tech be done away with just because we reduced our emissions with nuclear...


thats like saying "hmmm, lets NOT bandage up this gaping wound in your side, because we might develop some super duper better bandages some time in the future."

environmental "movements" have done far more to preserve the mass use of coal as fuel then anyone else since they are largely responsible for the overwhelming lack of support and smearing of nuclear tech.

The thing is, Solar/Wind have shown to be devastating to wildlife, I question putting water blenders on the ocean floor to turn ocean waves into power and the impact that has on wildlife as well.

I would hardly call Solar/wind 'green' at this current implementation. The only 'green' implementation involves all the humans on earth putting a bullet in their own head.

Not really sure why you quoted "movements"...

It would be odd for an environmentalist to promote nuclear energy just on the waste and potential impact for future generations.

Notice how I've never said I don't want or like nuclear. I just don't want people green washing it. It's quite clear that nuclear isn't a green resource when it has the potential for catastrophic damage to ecosystems and life in general. You can support something even if it's not "green" and say it's a good stop gap.

 Medium of Death wrote:
Not really sure why you quoted "movements"...

It would be odd for an environmentalist to promote nuclear energy just on the waste and potential impact for future generations.

Notice how I've never said I don't want or like nuclear. I just don't want people green washing it. It's quite clear that nuclear isn't a green resource when it has the potential for catastrophic damage to ecosystems and life in general. You can support something even if it's not "green" and say it's a good stop gap.

I thought Green Energy is a term used to describe any sort of alternative energy that is produced with less negative impact on the environment than 'non-green' energy sources such as fossil fuels.

Nuke reactors does that in spades.

It's time for the Greenies to jump on that Nuke bandwagon.

 Medium of Death wrote:
Not really sure why you quoted "movements"...

It would be odd for an environmentalist to promote nuclear energy just on the waste and potential impact for future generations.

Notice how I've never said I don't want or like nuclear. I just don't want people green washing it. It's quite clear that nuclear isn't a green resource when it has the potential for catastrophic damage to ecosystems and life in general. You can support something even if it's not "green" and say it's a good stop gap.

from wiki:

"The anti-nuclear movement is a social movement which operates at the local, national, and international level. Various types of groups have identified themselves with the movement:[3]

environmental groups, such as Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace;"




unfortunately, we have "green" activists stopping a "green" (or at the very LEAST greener) technology from being adopted. Which is de facto support of the less green tech that we are forced to continue using. These groups should have been stopping the far less green process of burning coal (again, adding more radiation then nuclear, let alone the CO2) and welcoming the greener nuke tech, but instead they fought tooth and nail to keep it from being accepted/used. Preventing a viable alternative, is defacto supporting the coal plants. So while they intended nothing but sunshine and rainbows, the effect was simply to maintain the status quo of the worst option available...

"green" is not a well quantified label, and for some reason harnessing the radioactive power of the sun is "green" while harnessing the radioactive power of elements is "not green" despite both having 0 emissions, and very VERY low impact on the environment.

Im not trying to belittle you here, you are acting out of genuine concern I think, and I applaud ANYONE who at least tries to lead a better life with less negative impact on others/animals/the planet.

I just want to educate you that it is in fact green, and it was a forward step in becoming an enviromentally sustainable world, that was rail roaded by wll intentioned but misinformed/scared groups claiming to be environmentally concerned.

 easysauce wrote:
well... considering that had we switched to nuclear from coal back in the 50's, that would have reduced emissions by at least 80% if not more....

but apparently its a bad thing to reduce emissions while we work on getting solar/wind/cold fusion up and running, so lets just flood the earth with radioactive coal smoke for a century or so.

why on earth would solar/wind/fusion tech be done away with just because we reduced our emissions with nuclear...


thats like saying "hmmm, lets NOT bandage up this gaping wound in your side, because we might develop some super duper better bandages some time in the future."

environmental "movements" have done far more to preserve the mass use of coal as fuel then anyone else since they are largely responsible for the overwhelming lack of support and smearing of nuclear tech.

Windscale, Dounreay, 3 Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima did a pretty good job of making nuclear smearable

Anyway, the major growing users of coal are the Chinese, not noted for their environmental credentials.

 easysauce wrote:
These groups should have been stopping the far less green process of burning coal (again, adding more radiation then nuclear, let alone the CO2) and welcoming the greener nuke tech, but instead they fought tooth and nail to keep it from being accepted/used. Preventing a viable alternative, is defacto supporting the coal plants.

Why are you suddenly worrying about CO_2 emissions? You don't believe in man-made climate change anyway, so why would it matter if we released more carbon dioxide?

As for the supposed green nuclear fission plants, they do produce non-trivial amounts of highly radioactive waste (plus some more low- and intermediate level waste). And even though some laymen might proclaim the safe storage of aforementioned waste is rather simple, it's apparently not, as there's only one(!) high-level radioactive waste storage in use worldwide (in Finland) while a few more are still in evaluation phases after decades of nuclear power usage (the US storage might be a bit further than evaluation though). Furthermore, there are currently no sub-critical spallation driven reactors in use that might be able to transmute the worst elements in our radioactive waste. They are not even in serious development at the moment.

And then there's the slight risk of releasing nuclear inventory due to an accident, war or terrorism. I would rather experience less than more of these occurrences.

Therefore, we should rather concentrate on wind, solar, and water power and continue research on nuclear fusion. The stellarator experiments seem promising.

Coal burning also releases a large amount of particulates including radioactive atoms that would otherwise have been left safely underground.

I don't know the details of the science, but apparently there is a lot more radioactivity released from coal burning than from the equivalent amount of nuclear generation. However that message was never effectively presented by the nuclear industry.

 Kilkrazy wrote:

 easysauce wrote:
well... considering that had we switched to nuclear from coal back in the 50's, that would have reduced emissions by at least 80% if not more....

but apparently its a bad thing to reduce emissions while we work on getting solar/wind/cold fusion up and running, so lets just flood the earth with radioactive coal smoke for a century or so.

why on earth would solar/wind/fusion tech be done away with just because we reduced our emissions with nuclear...


thats like saying "hmmm, lets NOT bandage up this gaping wound in your side, because we might develop some super duper better bandages some time in the future."

environmental "movements" have done far more to preserve the mass use of coal as fuel then anyone else since they are largely responsible for the overwhelming lack of support and smearing of nuclear tech.

Windscale, Dounreay, 3 Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima did a pretty good job of making nuclear smearable

Anyway, the major growing users of coal are the Chinese, not noted for their environmental credentials.

Of course, but really aside from Chernobyl those events didn't cause any significant damage. And all except Fukushima happened a while ago, back when we didn't have nearly the same level of safety standards or were caused by major stupidity. And Fukushima was really a freak accident, nothing really would have prevented that.

The risks of such accidents are well worth the rewards of nuclear power. You're in more danger getting cancer from sun exposure than from the result of a nuclear power plant.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Coal burning also releases a large amount of particulates including radioactive atoms that would otherwise have been left safely underground.

I don't know the details of the science, but apparently there is a lot more radioactivity released from coal burning than from the equivalent amount of nuclear generation. However that message was never effectively presented by the nuclear industry.

Its the normal radiation released just by burning coal IIRC. The difference is Coal plants aren't built to contain dangerous radiation while Nuke plants are, and do a very good job of containing it.

Heck, airplane personnel get more radiation exposure just by flying at high altitudes for extended periods than you get by living near any type of powerplant.

 Minx wrote:

 easysauce wrote:
These groups should have been stopping the far less green process of burning coal (again, adding more radiation then nuclear, let alone the CO2) and welcoming the greener nuke tech, but instead they fought tooth and nail to keep it from being accepted/used. Preventing a viable alternative, is defacto supporting the coal plants.

Why are you suddenly worrying about CO_2 emissions? You don't believe in man-made climate change anyway, so why would it matter if we released more carbon dioxide?

As for the supposed green nuclear fission plants, they do produce non-trivial amounts of highly radioactive waste (plus some more low- and intermediate level waste). And even though some laymen might proclaim the safe storage of aforementioned waste is rather simple, it's apparently not, as there's only one(!) high-level radioactive waste storage in use worldwide (in Finland) while a few more are still in evaluation phases after decades of nuclear power usage (the US storage might be a bit further than evaluation though). Furthermore, there are currently no sub-critical spallation driven reactors in use that might be able to transmute the worst elements in our radioactive waste. They are not even in serious development at the moment.

And then there's the slight risk of releasing nuclear inventory due to an accident, war or terrorism. I would rather experience less than more of these occurrences.

Therefore, we should rather concentrate on wind, solar, and water power and continue research on nuclear fusion. The stellarator experiments seem promising.

dude... you are NOT listening.. I dont deny that C02 emissions have an effect, I simply state that the effect is not proven to be causing a cataclysm via the climate, as well as stating that even if there was no man made climate change, the earth can, and will, warm or cool by 3+ degrees naturally, and we will, and HAVE, adapted to these changes before.

maybe instead of frothing at the mouth over how awful a person I am, and how much I hate the environment, take a step back and listen.

solar, wind will NOT work, nuclear WILL. nuclear produces LESS radiation and less c02 then coal... get that through your head before you complain about radioactive waste from nuclear, because its LESS radioactive waste then from coal, and its CONTAINED instead of dispersed...

My actual stance is that we do EFFECTIVE changes, not keep wasting time on feel good do nothing pipe dreams like meeting our current energy demands with techs that simply cannot do it.

the health effects on humans from c02, are quite proven, and there is no reason to not reduce emissions.

nuclear produces less emissions then coal, less radioactivity then coal, and its more contained. It can ACTUALLY meet energy needs, unlike solard/wind/ect, and its available now.

its literally only because the idea of a melt down is so scary (but again, every melt down, EVER, does less damage then equivalent over time effects of burning coal, its just not as sexy of a news story, so its information that is ignored)

and so far, the melt downs have been more due to people being idiots, more then the tech being unstable. Again, the meltdowns did less damage then coal, its just not as fantastical of a news story.

So think about that, next time you start clamoring for 80% reductions in emissions, we can achieve that goal with nuclear, and still have less radiation then we did with coal.

why are you against reducing emissions by 80% or more while we develop magic super solar that actually CAN power the world?

why are you so in bed with coal power as to say we should keep burning the stuff?

why are you so adamant that we continue to use coal, producing C02 and more radiation then nuclear, while we develop alternatives that pollute less?

why not reduce emissions, dispersed radiation, ect, RIGHT NOW, so that the next 50-100 years that we spend researching "perfect green energy" isnt spent throwing all this radiation and C02 into the air?

 easysauce wrote:
maybe instead of frothing at the mouth over how awful a person I am, and how much I hate the environment, take a step back and listen.

=)

 easysauce wrote:

solar, wind will NOT work, nuclear WILL. nuclear produces LESS radiation and less c02 then coal... get that through your head before you complain about radioactive waste from nuclear, because its LESS radioactive waste then from coal, and its CONTAINED instead of dispersed...

Solar, wind, etc work, it's just an engineering and political challenge. Nuclear fission works as well, it's just the lazy way out that will prevent the development of cleaner alternatives while at the same time producing waste that will become somebody else's problem in the future.