# We shouldn’t forget — that solar energy comes from the constant nuclear fusion reaction in the Sun.
# And wind energy comes from the daily ground temperature changes as the solar radiation goes through its night and day cycle.
# And geothermal heat energy derives from the constant fission of uranium within the Earth
Its “sustainable” and its “renewable” because it’s nuclear
Nuclear fission reactors will need to be, and I’m sure will be the main electric power producers for all industrial societies in a few years.
First let’s consider self-contained transport.
And self contained transport is currently all about the petrol and diesel engines. There is as yet, no electric “T-Model Ford”.
First the petrol engine motor vehicle.
These vehicles are going to be on our roads, probably for the next fifteen years, no matter what we do. But almost all of them that are now on the road will happily run on a petrol/ethanol blend.
We could therefore reduce world consumption of fossil fuel-based petrol by near 15% simply by growing more sugar cane and building a few low cost, high production distilleries (we’re all good at that, and have been for several thousand years at least).
Motorists would switch to ethanol blended fuels in droves if fuel taxes were sufficiently loaded against pure petrol and massively in favour of ethanol blends.
You, dear reader must insist that your government adjust petrol taxes accordingly.
Now diesel. The oil industries and the oil producing countries know that a lot more money flows into their coffers when the country’s motor vehicles run on petrol and not diesel.
It’s simply that you use considerably less diesel to go from Point A to Point B than petrol. Hence the never-ending tirade against the diesel-powered automobile.
Their job, they recognise, is to make diesel somehow socially unacceptable. And they have done that very successfully in Europe.
The oil moguls have an additional problem. It’s because diesel engines run beautifully on 100% biodiesel.
And biodiesel is incredibly easy to make. You simply mix ethanol (made from sugar cane) with any vegetable oil (palm oil is the cheapest) in an empty drum and throw in some caustic soda to get the chemical reaction going. After a few days the end product becomes a mixture of biodiesel and glycol. The two fluids automatically separate themselves like oil and water.
Glycol is the raw material for a whole group of plastics so additionally you’re producing the raw material for making “bioplastics”. That’s another win-win for humanity and a loose-loose for the oil companies.
So we want – we demand -, high taxes on petroleum diesel, and no taxes – and better still – subsidies on biodiesel. No “ifs,” no “buts”.
So go tell ‘em – loud and clear.
Now let’s consider industrial power.
Current designs of solar power or wind power might supply a significant proportion of the electric power to a town. However total backup power will always be needed at some time as both are specifically weather dependent.
Local back-up batteries can never be sufficient. It might rain for a month. The economics don’t work. Very roughly speaking the cost of just one local overnight battery storage system would likely cost more than the original capital cost of the wind or solar installation. In addition, in good wind or sunshine conditions the whole back up system has to sit idle doing nothing.
The consumer therefore, effectively, has to pay for two systems, plus batteries (and write them off over their short lives) to be able to tell their friends all about the “environmentally friendly power systems they now have at their house.”
It’s certainly been happening in Australia over recent years. Australia has now gone from having one of the lowest cost household electric supply charges of any country in the world, to a country with one of the most expensive. And we wonder why!
Fusion power is an incredibly expensive pipe dream and too far away to be of relevance to global warming.
In late 2022 a much-publicised breakthrough in fusion research was announced. It told us that more power had been produced “out”, than the power “in” needed to produce initial fusion reaction.
A few of my friends had read, or heard the announcement and believed that – and then informed me that:
“Fusion power looks like it’s going to be available soon. So our conclusion must be that we can now all relax because cheap clean nuclear power is just around the corner”.
It seems like that’s not quite true. The scientists and engineers involved in the research had a slightly different story. Their conclusion was that:
“Maybe this time ‘the 50-year waiting time’ was more likely something believable.”
Unfortunately, we don’t have 50 years. I don’t think we even have 50 months. And I’m not alone. Anybody that understands the simple basic physics and some basic meteorology will say the same.
Above is a good and typical example of how the “false image creation” thing is constructed.
The sane reality is that–
Every developed country should be like France, and be totally self-sufficient in safe cheap fission nuclear generated electric power.
And remember: France is, by far the world’s biggest exporter of electricity.
On the other side of the world, China is gearing up to build some 400 nuclear power stations. That’s more than enough to power both the US and Canada. Wholesale price of that power would be about 3 cents. Same as, or cheaper than coal or gas. What happened to our own “common sense”.
The alternative is, “let the heating continue” and have nations constantly at war. At war to grab somebody else’s usable un-flooded land. Or, at war to keep their own usable un-flooded land.
I believe such wars are inevitable.
If our effectively continuously unchecked heating of the Earth’s biospherel, the standard of living of all societies, especially Western Societies will drop dramatically and stay down for a very, very long time. And how can it not?
The serious threats to the fossil fuel countries and corporations. are nuclear energy and biofuels. Solar cells are encroaching into their market as is wind energy but both these demand massive and expensive back up. Storage batteries periodically can’t cater for excessively long periods of unsuitable weather.
Now a new threat is emerging. It’s called organic photovoltaics or OPV. These coupled with all electric ammonia production might finally mean – “We win, fossil carbon based fuels loose”. Hopefully just in time.
Biofuels costs are around $100 a barrel. Ball-park, they’re about the same, or a little dearer than petroleum based petrol and diesel. For best theoretical efficiency it requires a slight change to engine timing and compression ratios. As a driver you couldn’t tell the difference. So, the oil industry and the oil producing countries are terrified. So they call in their public relations – image creating – advertising gurus and tell them “Work harder – create more doubt – dream up more fictions – create endless diversions.
And keep selling lies to the gullible multitudes.
(PS The “gullible multitudes” are you and me. And I for one, don’t like that.)
The Superior safety of nuclear power is becoming apparent to more and more people.
Recognise clearly that burning fossilized carbon materials for energy; they being gas, oil, coal and peat kills and maims more human beings than any system or product created by man. Our current “relatively safe” systems of using and handling the fossil fuel power production kills at least a thousand times more people than does nuclear electric power systems when generating the same power. Including the deaths at Hiroshima and Nagasaki that ended WW2, it’s still true.
Perception Management is incredibly effective.
We’ve been sold a bunch of lies. Despite nuclear’s almost ridiculously safe history and its incredibly tiny risk factors we’ve been conditioned to “know”, deep within us, that nuclear energy is all, somehow, very dangerous. We all “know” deep down, and irrationally, that “nuclear waste disposal is a huge problem that will last for thousands of years”, and of course we all “know” that even the tiniest dose of nuclear radiation could trigger a deadly cancer.
Nuts! nuclear radiation cures cancer. Nuclear radiation has been part of Earth life from day one. Nuclear radiation cures cancer
The human body needs it – same as we need sunshine.
What happened to our common sense?
It becomes surprisingly difficult to even doubt their ingrained “truths”.
The fossil fuel countries and companies also created the hypothetical “nuclear waste problem”. The fact is mostly we store it for later use. Most of it is just too valuable to just dump. But if you want to dump some just drop it in a subduction trench. A subduction trench is where the ocean floor, near continents, dives down into the Earth’s upper mantle. It’s like a slow, up-side-down volcano. They suck stuff in. They don’t spew stuff out. Anything that falls in is gone for a million, maybe a billion years. Never to be seen again. It’s gone forever. Mix the waste with concrete and drop the blocks into one. It’s not “polluting the oceans”, it’s dumped it in the Earth’s own geological drain holes, and eventually it becomes part of the Earth’s molten interior.
They’re called “subduction zones” or “ocean trenches” . They are the deepest part of the Earth’s surface. Dump Mount Everest in some and it would be all under water.
The fossil fuel people managed to stop subduction zone disposal of nuclear waste from it ever happening by having it classed as “dumping at sea” in international treaties, as if it’s household trash. And people again fell for the “fake news” the well-structured lies. The cheap, safe and simple subduction zone solution never got to see the light of day.
The most sensible biofuels are ethanol from sugar cane and biodiesel from oil palms.
To make biodiesel you just mix ethanol and palm oil with a little caustic soda to act as a catalyst all in say a 200 litre drum, and then wait a couple of days. A slow chemical reaction then produces two layers of liquid in the drum. One is pure biodiesel and the other is glycol. Glycol’s main use is in the production of a range of plastics. So there is no waste. Of course large scale commercial production is a little more sophisticated. But not much more.
Both sugar cane and the palm oil tree – the plants biodiesel is made from – grow best in the hot wet tropics. That’s the reason the oil companies dreamed up the “save the Amazon” and the lie that it’s a producer of oxygen. The, so lovely “lungs of the world” advertising slogan. And the complementary lie that it removes carbon from the air.
If it did, where is all that carbon?
There’s no carbon rich humus in the soils of tropical jungles – no where. Trees? I don’t think so. For if true then after a few thousand years the trees would have to be at least a mile high, and with a base as big as a tennis court.
And if there is no carbon capture (from atmospheric carbon dioxide) there can’ t be any oxygen release into the air.
“Lungs of the World” hog wash, it’s a sick and deceitful advertising gimmick.
What is Organic Photovoltaics (OPV) and-
What Can it Do? (It’s new info)
It’s an amazing idea that, just amazingly, actually works
Imagine a solar panel consisting of two sheets of plastic stuck together. The plastic sheets are a bit unusual in that they are not an insulating material. They are in fact conductive. Attached to each sheet is a copper wire. The copper wires just act like conduits – to which electrons easily travel.
Sunlight shines on the first sheet and agitates some electrons. These electrons jump across to the second sheet and then they can’t get back and it gets crowded. Attached to the second sheet is a copper wire which allows them to get away. They might then go through a light globe and make it shine. After that they are not agitated. Then where do they go? Well there’s an outlet wire there, they try that.
And of course at the same time the first sheet of plastic now finds itself short of electrons.
So we join the two bits of copper wire and the electrons flow on down to the first sheet as it’s now deficient in electrons. These new ones to the first sheet again get agitated by the sunlight which starts them off again on their round trip, through the light bulb etc.
The process constantly repeats, and the light globe stays bright.
It’s a perpetual motion machine starting with sunlight energy dislodging electronics. Then the latest version of these OPV cells there are a couple of extra plastic sheets between the first two. These make it harder for electrons to go back the wrong way. They’re just refinements.
Researchers are now making organic photovoltaic cells with over an 18% efficiency in converting sunlight energy into electricity. That’s about as good as the best solar cells on the market today. They’re even at the stage where the four plastic sheets are no more than four unique coats of paint. At this time – December 2022 the problem with this fantastically efficient and phenomenally inexpensive photovoltaic cell design is that the cells don’t have a long enough operational life. I hope and expect this problem will be solved within the next year or so. Admittedly, one can never be sure.
======================
I talk about nuclear history in my book Priority One. The following are a few pages from the chapter The Sabotaging Of Nuclear Energy. which highlight the concept. (I wrote this about twenty years ago, and nothing’s changed)
As at 23/1/23 and as requested I’m assembling for you a “what to hammer list” of the basic ideas and concepts in my assembled solution to our biosphere’s rapid overheating.
Nutshell reminder list of what we need people to know and understand – especially people who construct the laws we have to live by.
1 Per unit of power produced, coal, oil and natural gas kill over 500 times more people than die from either wind or nuclear or solar. And that’s with the two nuclear bombs that ended WW2 included.
2 Cease all government subsidies to the fossil fuels and agrochemical industries.
3 Convert the air’s carbon overload (existing as carbon dioxide) into soil humus and doing so by any means selected or invented by the farmer. And pay them at least US$10 per ton – carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2-eq) for that removal. It’s the cheapest way to remove it. The quantity removed, however has to be easily and accurately measured. Or nothing happens. The Yeomans Methodology solves that problem. Read it. One farmer’s comment was – “It’s simply unfettered common sense“.
The existing carbon dioxide overload is enough to keep the biosphere heating for decades. Its therefore imperative that we in Australia demand that our federal government use the existing “Carbon Farming Initiative Act 2011” to approve the Yeomans Methodology to create Australian Carbon Credits. Businesses, organisations and governments around the world could use the Methodology to create their own carbon credits and so demonstrate to all, the methodology’s enate practicality.
4 To be clear we are defining “humus” as those molecules that are created from the final breakdown of soil life in the presence of air and water. Humus molecules are also huge – they can have molecular weights in the millions. They have long life-spans – up to thousands of years. In soil they are almost chemically inert. We also include as “humus” soil organic matter that will pass through a 2 mm sieve without any prior grinding. That means the material must have decomposed to the point where it is no longer a fibrous material.
5 In the air, methane gas is 225 to 350 time worse a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.
6 Fracking is the process of forcing high-pressure liquids deep into the earth to fracture the rock structures and so release trapped oil and gas. That is oil and gas that’s been safely trapped, usually for millions of years.
7 Apply continuous and enormous monitory penalties to “Fugitive Gas” (methane) discharges that mining companies are constantly releasing into the atmosphere.
8 Ammonia liquid will be, and must be the primary fuel for all our portable energy requirements. It’s the only sane choice we have that we don’t have to grow on farm land, such as ethanol.
9 Ammonia is easy and cheap to produce from air and water and electricity. And now possibly from air and water and strong blue light. Also, ammonia is safer to handle than either gas, or oil, or coal.
( My mother always had a bottle of ammonia in the kitchen to clean the bench top. It’s safe stuff)