Blog
Energy
07.25.2005
Energy seems to be a hot topic nowadays. It really started with the fake energy crisis cause by Enron and Williams holding back there surpluses of natural gas and other energy sources. It of course resulted in the gov of CA signing huge overpriced contracts, and as a result Arnold. So we need more energy. I am an electrical engineering grad student in CU’s power electronics group, so i have a little incite into world of power. I also worked a bit at PECO Energy a while back. When i worked there they were always talking about how much power is lost in long power lines like the Hover Dam to LA. They explained how large power plants end up being less efficient small distributed plants due to these losses. Which segways me to my next point. Renewable energies are here. We are no longer at the stage of research.
Wind power is one of the cheapest energies available, ranging from 3 cents to six cents per kilo Watt-hour. Coal the dirties of power sources averages around 4 cents. Wind can be utilized almost any ware in the US. It requires an average wind speed of 15mph, which is quite common. Here is a wind speed map of the US. http://rredc.nrel.gov/wind/pubs/atlas/maps/chap2/2-01m.html The dark colors show the large areas with proper wind speed. This does not show local areas that have the necessary average winds, such as hills, mountains, etc.
This link shows state by state wind maps
http://www.windpowermaps.org/default.asp
As you can see there are many places that have necessary wind speeds that are not shown on the larger map. And Finally this link shows the current US power distribution.
http://www.awea.org/projects/
, and as u can see almost every state already has at least some wind power. But needless to say, there are plenty of opportunities available that are not being used. One large tower takes the area of a large SUV. If these towers were doted across the US they could be placed on farms, next to highways, almost any ware. The large distribution would save in power line loss and increase reliability greatly. Some have commented that they are tall and ugly, and who would want them near there town. But think about it. Almost every town has a very large water tower. Radio towers peak almost every mountain. Large tall chains of power lines cross our country everyday, across mountains, farms and even baseball fields. So are they really anymore ugly that what we are used to seeing every day. and since this the only real complaint, isn't it worth it. Instead of your daughter having aphsma and fish being too poisenious to eat more that once a month.
Solar. Solar, photovoltaic, is expensive. photovoltaic power cost about 23 cents per kilowatt-hour. The most expensive mainstream power source. However mirrors are cheap. Very cheap. That is idea behind used in solar concentrators. They use hundreds to thousands of mirrors to focus the suns light on one spot. In CA they build an experimental 10MW solar concentrator, called Solar One, and was upgraded to Solar Two. It used thousand mirrors to follow the sun and focus on a giant water tower. This boiled saltwater which turned a turbine to generate power. This ended up being an increadable success, much more efficient that photovoltaic, and when commercialized much cheaper. "This technology has been successfully demonstrated and is ready for commercialization. From 1994 to 1999, the Solar 2 project demonstrated the ability of solar molten salt technology to provide long-term, cost effective thermal energy storage for electricity generation.", Boeing. Here is a link with details
http://www.boeing.com/assocproducts/energy/powertower.html
Another benifit of Solar Two is the ability to store energy in a seperate tank for night time power. Astronamers are also a fan of Solar Two because they can use it as a gamma ray telescope. Solar Tres is being built in Spain. An more solar towers are in development. Solar concentrators can be built small, however they seem to be more practical larger. As for photovoltaics, they may not have become economically practical yet, however research is being done into extreamly cheap organic(plastic) solar cells. So far organic solar cells have only become 3% efficient, while silicon cells have gotten higher than 30%. Consumer solar cells are around 10-16% efficient, so it is gotten closer but not yet practical. The benefits of organic solar cells are tremendous. Silicon is extremely brittle, takes allot of energy to produce, a large percentage of manufacturing materials is waste, and must be produced in a vacuum. Organic cells are not. Plus the organic cells are less than one tenth the cost, less than all other current on energy sources. And even better, some forms of plastic cells can be used as paint. Clearly this technology deserves attention and funding.
Micro-Hydro
Hydroelectricity has often been frowned by environmentalist due to drastic transformation of landscape, and blockage of fish pathways. However there is a tremendous opportunity for hydro, while remaining environmentally friendly. No big Hover Dams are needed to tap into our plethora of water resources. Mircohydro deal with smaller rivers, and streams, causing small land disturbace to generate 5kW to 100kW. Microhydro can involve a dam creating a small pond, or more commonly using an aquaduct. That dam can easly be built with envronmental concerse addressed such as fish ladders and filters. The aquaducts would only divert some of the water and would not effect the water life much. And since most towns are built around some water source the river could be taped localy and not disturb the envrioment at all.
http://www.itdg.org/docs/technical_information_service/micro_hydro_power.pdf
The opertunites for this type of power generation are plentyfull, and mostly unused. In fact, there are already thousands of waterways that are already setup to take advantage of their power. There are reservoirs all over the US that damed up, environmental damage done, yet the water passing through them produce no hydroelectricity. There is no recent count of the number of reservoirs in the United States, but a 1982 inventory of artificial barriers that are more than 25 feet high or that impound more than 50 acre-feet of water, listed approximately 66,000 structures (U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, 1982). And most of them are not hydroelectric. And fish ladders could easly be install for a significantly lower cost.
Zero Emmisions Coal
http://www.zeca.org/process_overview/process_overview.html
http://pubs.acs.org/cen/coverstory/8208/8208coal.html
Geothermal
http://www.smu.edu/geothermal/heatflow/geothermal_all_us_clipped_150dpi_pagesize_legend.gif
Torture
07.07.2004
By now everyone knows about the "prisoner abuse scandal", which was
tacitly never called torture. This was, of course, because America would
never participate in torture. We are so sure of this that not only would
be not sign the International Criminal Court Treaty, unless it exempted
US citizens, but Congress authorized the invasion of the Netherlands, if
ever a US citizen was tried. So the Bush administration has been fervent
about the fact that these "few" solder's acts were "abhorrent". Acts
like forcing prisoners into sexual positions [that are sinful in their
religion]. Or forcing them to balance on a crate hooded under fear of
electrocution is they fell. This is abuse, not torture. The
Administration claims that none of these acts were condoned or
encouraged by the Government.
Well here are a few acts that are not only condoned but encouraged as
techniques for acquiring information by the Bush Administration. All
Guantanimo Bay detainees are "initiated" by being forced to kneel with
bags over their heads for 24 hours. Kneeling doesn't really sound like
torture, but think about it. Or better yet try kneeling for 15 minutes
on a concrete floor. After that they are isolated in solitary
confinement for over 6 months. A popular technique for the interrogators
is to deprive the subjects of sleep. This also includes not allowing the
prisoners to have a sleep schedule by waking them up in the middle of
the night or forcing them to sleep in brightly light rooms; a technique
that reporters praised as a great way to get around the Geneva
Convention. Another technique that has been used is putting prisoners in
bags and pouring water over them. This is supposed to simulate drowning.
The technique of threatening to kill the subjects' family has been used
on more than one occasion. The Government once went as far as to kidnap
he detainees' family in order to make the threats more realistic. These
are only a few of the techniques that the White House has approved. They
released a list, in light of the abuse scandal. They blacked out 3 for
security reasons but they promised they weren't in violation of the
Geneva Convention.
Torture or not the Bush Administration is forgetting one thing. Torture
does not work. There has a plethora of psychological studies that have
shown that a subject will admit to anything after being tortured for a
long enough period of time. But false confessions do not only occur in
abundance in acts as extreme as torture. There are numerous examples in
our own justice system. Interrogations that last over 12 continuous
hours, almost always lead to confessions whether or not the subject is
guilty. False confessions are also commonly accompanied by threats and
other techniques to disorient and confuse the subject. So in the end the
adage, "If it saves American lives ..." isn't really the best way to
combat terrorism. Or maybe that's why the terror level changed every
other day.
Genocide in Progress
05.29.2004
As we all know by now all of Bush's excuses for going to war have failed, so when the administration speaks of the war on Iraq the resone they give for going to war is, "To liberate the people from a brutal dictator." Meanwhile in Sudan there is current and continuing ethnic cleansing of black sudanese by the Arab Sudanese Government. Close to 1000 people are killed each week totaling more than 30,000 deaths. Over 700,000 people have been internaly displaced, and another 120,000 have fled into Chad, a country even poorer than Sudan. Gang-raping of women has been widely reported as well. All this comes as an end was in sight to a 20-year civil war in which the ruling Arab Muslims of north Sudan killed 2 million black Christian and animist south Sudanese, displaced scores more, forced children into slavery and engaged in widespread human rights abuses. The United Nations' undersecretary general for humanitarian affairs has called it probably "the world's greatest humanitarian catastrophe." Doctors Without Borders has observed "catastrophic mortality rates." And yet, so far as most of the world is concerned, it isn't even happening.
Due to the Iraq war becomeing more and more unpopular, there has been no pushes from the US or the UN to stop this massacere, aside from standard condemnations which were largly ignored by the media. This paralels the the cotastrophy in Rwanda in 1993. In a mear 100 days an estimated 800,000 Tutsi were slautered in a attenpt to ethnicly cleanse the land. The US, under Clinton, was slow to react to the attrocities in Rwanda because of an unfavorable public due to the deaths of US solders.