James May: James May's Big Ideas

Seems to be a bit slow today.
 
Another great episode. He should've driven the Honda Clarity thing instead of that motorbike tho...
 
I had no clue that sunlight can get that hot. It just punched its way through solid steel! O_O
 
Episode 3 was alright, I liked it more than the first episode.

I was thinking though, what exactly is the drawback of hydroelectric power for those who have water? I know it's not really groundbreaking technology, but it's one of the best sources of power all around. Sure water will eventually run out, but so will the sun. I was kind of surprised he didn't mention it at all.
 
Shawn said:
I was thinking though, what exactly is the drawback of hydroelectric power for those who have water? I know it's not really groundbreaking technology, but it's one of the best sources of power all around. Sure water will eventually run out, but so will the sun. I was kind of surprised he didn't mention it at all.
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There's quite a lot of pumping involved which is pretty wasteful. Plus the whole damming rivers thing is less popular than it used to be (except in China).

In small scale where there is continuous running water it has plenty of merrit.
 
Shawn said:
I was thinking though, what exactly is the drawback of hydroelectric power for those who have water? I know it's not really groundbreaking technology, but it's one of the best sources of power all around. Sure water will eventually run out, but so will the sun. I was kind of surprised he didn't mention it at all.
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It's horrible for the fish. Something like 90% of Oregon's power comes from hydroelectric I believe, but we're actually blowing up (dynamite) our smaller dams as they're just utterly destroyed our salmon populations.
 
Hmm, same with BC actually. It's mostly from hydroelectric dams and that makes our electricity damn cheap.
 
thanks for posting the third installment of James series. It was pretty good but not as good as the others. I hope you will bring more of James series. Thanks FinalGear.
 
Mercedes5CLR said:
thanks for posting the third installment of James series. It was pretty good but not as good as the others. I hope you will bring more of James series. Thanks FinalGear.
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It would be pretty difficult to bring you more, since that was the last episode.

Oz and James' Big Wine Adventure season 3 is just around the corner though. :woot:
 
Something about hydroelectric power: On the 100 km stretch of the Sava river from the capital of Slovenia to my town, there are (planned) 6 hydropower plants with a combined optimum output of 30 MW. That might seem a lot, but just one asphalt concrete plant, that produces about 200 metric tonnes of asphalt an hour (medium sized one), uses up 15 MW on its own.

They're good enough for powering small towns, but when it comes to industrial power consumption, there's no better way than nuclear. Our small local plant outputs 600 GW. :)
 
Yeah, nuclear = the way to go. It still pollutes, but at least you can control the pollution if done right.
 
I disagree, the real costs are totally unacceptable - they have been heavily subsidized in the past due to their propensity to produce weapons grade plutonium.

Take the decommissioning costs in to account plus the proper rate of insurance for public liability that should be allocated and the numbers do not, nor will they ever stack up.

On top of that when things go wrong the loss of life and increased cancers and birth defects are too high a human price - sorry we have to think again.
 
Cobol74 said:
I disagree, the real costs are totally unacceptable - they have been heavily subsidized in the past due to their propensity to produce weapons grade plutonium.
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Oh dear, you seem to be under the same illusion as Greenpeace, namely that any nuclear reactor can generate weapons grade nuclear fuel. If it ain't a fast breeder it's not going to happen. (There is one in the UK...)
 
Yeah, nuclear is great if done right... which means it's not viable for most countries. Chernobyl was in a state of disrepair when the incident happened, but still, doesn't that scare you guys? If the wind was blowing the other way Kiev would've been done for.

Maybe a few first world nations can pull it off, but if the Soviets messed up so badly there isn't much hope for others.

Hydroelectric is actually adequate Ice, I'm pretty sure British Columbia gets most of its power from hydroelectrics which is why we get relatively cheap electricity. I'm sure most places in the world wouldn't work as well as BC, but it is viable for more than just small towns, at least in our situation.
 
My post is to do with the subsidizing of the initial research costs - the justification was nuclear power the real reason was to get the plutonium for Bombs.

"Fuel
Unenriched uranium metal in aluminium cans with fins to improve cooling was used for the production of plutonium. As this plutonium was intended for weapons purposes, the burnup of the fuel would have been kept low to reduce production of the heavier plutonium isotopes (240Pu, 241Pu etc)."


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windscale_fire



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Mile_Island_accident

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster


I am not Green per se - this stuff is NOT ECONOMIC! They lie about the true costs. You and I are poorer because of it. The Greenies are now the people wanting it to stop global warming and it stops research into other more sensible approaches to these problems.
 
France is doing a great job with nuclear power, and Canada as well. All you hear about are the disasters, and not the successes in those countries and others... unfortunate.

Back on topic, that solar fuel generator is brilliant. I wonder if a higher concentration of CO2, such as from a coal-fired power station, would increase the efficiency of those generators. Sadly, I, like James, strayed from the chemistry path ages ago.
 
Thanks for the link, Viper!

I think this one was my favorite of the three! It gave a balanced view of each of the inventions, I thought. They each have their pros and cons, but just proves that we humans are capable of thinking out of the box after all. ;)

Especially loved all the nuclear science- it's so far over my head, but shows what true power lies in nature. At first I confused the tokamak with the Z Machine (which just looks cool) because of all of the 'plasma' talk. My brothers and I also giggled our heads off while watching the solar furnace boil away the steel. Wouldn't making fuel out of thin air be similar (in principle, anyway) to making deuterium? Take elements that are abundant and put them together to make something we can use. Don't know if that's even close to being a good analogy, it's just the first example I thought of. In any case, it'll be amazing to see how these technologies are refined and improved on in the future.

"Can you de-dog my stick for me?" :lol:

Sad that this is the last one. Can't wait for new TG stuff.
 
Unenriched uranium metal in aluminium cans with fins to improve cooling was used for the production of plutonium. As this plutonium was intended for weapons purposes,
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Congratulations, you've just discovered where the UKs weapons grade nuclear material manufacturing facilities are! Note that the only plant to have an issue in the UK was the one for weapons fuel production. None of the purely civilian plants have had such problems, so it becomes not a question of if civilian nuclear sites in the UK are safe, but are weapons production facilities safe?


Cobol74 said:
I am not Green per se - this stuff is NOT ECONOMIC! They lie about the true costs. You and I are poorer because of it. The Greenies are now the people wanting it to stop global warming and it stops research into other more sensible approaches to these problems.
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Ah but the joys of the modern energy market (where the cost of carbon is really starting to kick in) is that they will become more economic to operate. Once fossil fuels are forced out of the market nuclear starts to look like value for money.

A study showed that to convert to purely wave and wind power, not only would every shoreline in the UK be covered in turbines and wave capture devices, but every large lake above sea level would have to be converted into a storage facility. Essentially this would decimate the UK landscape. By contrast the nuclear option left the landscape virtually as is (with the exception of the deep storage facility).

The problem is that the Green movement are loathed to make such a trade off and would rather just protest every individual project. Fundamentally whatever energy solution we choose at least 60% of it will need to be always-on base load for which renewable such as wind or wave are unsuitable. Hence nuclear...
 
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