Brians Blog

Sunday, February 21, 2010

Populus to Ben Lomond Transmission Line

Pacificorp is building a 345KV, double circuit power line, that runs by my house, to transmit electrical power from their Populus substation north of Malad, Idaho to their Ben Lomond substation near Ogden, Utah. I took a hike with my son yesterday, since I wanted to see the power poles up close and because it was a good excuse to get out of the house and see a little blue sky and sun, even if it was still below freezing.

The transmission towers are a marvel of engineering. The highest tower near my house stands 155 feet above the ground and weighs 47,556 pounds. Here is the actual placard that is on the pole:

The line covers 135 miles, so that means there are hundreds of poles. This is obviously a very expensive project, whose merits I am not questioning. I would just like to point out that it would be neat to see a disruptive technology that would obviate the need for these large, interstate transmission lines.

Imagine small liquid fluoride thorium reactors (LFTR), so economic that every city of 20,000 or more could have one of their own for all their electric needs with enough waste heat left over for district heating of the entire town with heated streets for snow removal. I know, I know, I’m day dreaming again.

A step beyond that would be zero point energy (ZPE) devices compact enough to fit in a car and provide 50 KW. I know that ZPE is all very speculative, but how long did it take humanity to invent suitcases with retractable handles and rollers?

Since molten salt reactors have already been built and operated for periods of years, LFTRs are in no way speculative. This is technology that we could have today. And I believe that LFTRs would be very disruptive for the current players and a godsend for the rest of us. So, lets disrupt!!! Every garage inventor, every Tesla, every Newton, every Galileo, every Scaliger, every Rutan, every Paul Allen – come on, we need you to disrupt! We especially need disruption of the sclerotic bureaucracies and fear mongering pressure groups that have thwarted peaceful nuclear power since the beginning!

(As an aside, I scaled a photo of the 155 foot tower to measure the distance to the next pole and calculated 886 feet. Assuming the same spacing between the rest of the poles, 135 miles times 5,280 divided by 886 feet equals 804 towers. That’s a lot! This transmission line project is one of nine Pacificorp projects totaling $6 billion. Couldn’t a utility easily develop a LFTR for a cool billion dollars?)

Thursday, February 18, 2010

Dreams Versus Reality

This was my dream airplane when I was 10 years old. I drew it myself on a 4 hour trip from Elko, Nevada to SLC, Utah, somewhere between Wells and Wendover. I modeled it after the B-25. Of course, it was big enough for the whole family and probably some neighbors too.

Next, when I was a teenager, this was the airplane that I loved. I had a subscription to Flying magazine, which I used to drool over and the Bonanza was featured regularly on its pages. I think the cost of a new one today is a cool 3/4 of a million dollars and they say that the nose gear doors still don't close completely.

Now that I am middle-aged grouch (according to my wife) this is what the dream has turned into - reality. A Cri-Cri. This is the kind of flying that I can afford.

I'm being a little bit facetious about the Cri-Cri, but not much. Seriously, I hope to soon have some good news about a plane (still extremely modest) in the near future. Stay tuned.

Sunday, February 14, 2010

LFTR Fuel Cycle

I lifted this from Kirk Sorensen's blog. It shows the simple and robust fuel cycle for the Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor. This is truly a gift from nature!

Saturday, February 13, 2010

Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor

I recently discovered a 60 year old treasure. It's called a Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor. I read about it in the current issue of Wired magazine, which referred me to a blog by Kirk Sorensen called Energy from Thorium. I heartily recommend his blog. He gave a tech talk at Google last year that I also recommend along with the PowerPoint presentation that you can down load at http://www.energyfromthorium.com/ppt/Sorensen_Google_20090720.ppt.

This reactor is even better than the 4th generation light water reactors and even General Atomics 4th generation gas turbine reactor. Less waste, less cost, even greater safety! I wish I could buy one!

Tuesday, January 5, 2010

Nice Try

My flying buddies and I went to the Ogden Airport to check out a couple of Ercoupes. One was a basket case that is for sale for $10,000 and the other we tried on for fit. Neither I nor John fit. My head hit the canopy and my knees were in the panel, while I had to cross my legs to get them to fit lengthwise (remember there are no rudder pedals in a standard Ercoupe). Ditto for John and he is 2 inches shorter than I!

Skip, from the Ercoupe Owners Club (EOC), says there isn't anything to be done to increase the headroom or legroom (no STCs to modify the seats).

I guess we're back to square one.

Electrical Charge Anomaly

I did an experiment a couple of years ago that clearly demonstrated an electrical charge anomaly. For example at the start of the experiment the voltages on the two 1000mF capacitors were:

V1 = 118.0 v
v2 = 0.246 v

The test lasted 8 seconds and then the voltages were measured again
V1 = 80.1 v
v2 = 66.9 v

The circuit used in the experiment is shown below and was taken from JL Naudin at
http://jnaudin.free.fr/html/tepcoil.htm

I performed the experiment many times with different capacitors and initial voltages. The charge anomaly was very repeatable. I even did the experiment once in a fully enclosed and grounded Faraday cage and still showed the same charge anomaly.

The experiment seems to show that the "law" of charge conservation is more like a "guideline".

Global Warming in Northern Utah

As you can see from all the snow, it has already been a harsh winter in Northern Utah. We have had numerous severe winter storms and the temperatures are very cold. The warmers would have us believe that the cold temperatures are caused by warming, just like brilliance is caused by stupidity, or an oven is used for cooling. It is Orwellian newspeak! This extreme solar minimum has cooled the whole globe in the last few years. The sun is the driver of our climate, not a parts-per-million increase in CO2.

Even Jesse “The Body” Ventura is dissing global warming on cable TV! Proof positive that global warming is on life-support. Well, folks it’s time to pull the plug!

Only one question remains to be answered now; What will our would-be masters think of next?

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Culture

The self-educated individual – confident in his gender, his heritage, his religion, and the traditional culture that he seeks to project into the future – stands as a threat to the very existence of the state: He does not need its ministrations.

Where then to begin the creation of capitalist culture? The destruction of the moral pretenses of the state is the irreducible first step toward the realization of a capitalist culture….

Terry Hulsey

I would add:

The destruction of the moral pretenses of the state is the irreducible first step toward preserving traditional culture.

Delusionists

The delusionists are those who believe that the current system can be reformed, made more efficient, streamlined. The delusionists believe that government bureaucracies act on market-like incentives. The delusionists believe that those in government bureaucracy can be convinced to reduce their role and influence. The delusionists believe that the president is in control of the bureaucracies. The delusionists believe that government bureaucracies are led by good people just trying to do the right thing. The delusionists believe that individuals, acting as central planners, are even capable of identifying the right thing to do.

Bionic Mosquito

The State

"A state is absolute in the sense which I have in mind when it claims the right to a monopoly of all the force within the community, to make war, to make peace, to conscript life, to tax, to establish and disestablish property, to define crime, to punish disobedience, to control education, to supervise the family, to regulate personal habits, and to censor opinions. The modern state claims all of these powers, and, in the matter of theory, there is no real difference in the size of the claim between communists, fascists, and Democrats." - Walter Lippmann

Solving the Crisis of American Schooling

"The logic of compulsory schooling in the middle of a democracy is a contradiction of the original national charter; it breaks the contract of the Bill of Rights, using as its justification the excuse that kids can't learn any other way, that they can't be trusted with responsibility. The truth is exactly the opposite: unless they are trusted with responsibility they cannot learn much, and under the thumb of central compulsion the lessons they do learn are bad ones."

John Taylor Gatto, "A Different Kind of Teacher", pg. 193-194

Robert P. Murphy

In particular, the market interest rate coordinates the "intertemporal" (i.e., across-time) activities of investors, businesses, and consumers. If consumers become more future oriented and want to reduce consumption in the near term in order to provide more for later years, what happens in the free market is that the increased savings push down interest rates, which then signal entrepreneurs to borrow more and invest in longer projects. Thus resources (such as labor, oil, steel, and machine time) get redirected away from present goods, like TVs and sports cars, and the freed-up resources flow into capital or investment goods like tractors and cargo ships.

Now when the Federal Reserve artificially reduces interest rates below their free-market level, it sends a false message to entrepreneurs. Firms begin expanding as if consumers have increased their savings, but in fact consumers have reduced their savings (due to the lower interest rates). Businesses that churn out durable goods, such as furnaces, cargo ships, and, yes, houses will find business booming, because these sectors respond positively to low interest rates.

On the other hand, other sectors don't need to contract, because (unlike the scenario of genuine savings) nobody is cutting back on consumption. This is precisely why the Fed-induced boom is unsustainable — real resources have not been released from consumer sectors in order to fuel the expansion of the capital sectors. Because modern economies are so complex, the charade can continue for a few years, with entrepreneurs cutting corners and "consuming capital" (i.e., postponing necessary replacement and maintenance on equipment) while both investment and consumer goods keep flowing out of the pipeline at increased rates. But the music eventually stops, since (after all) the Fed's printing of green pieces of paper doesn't really make a country wealthier. When the Fed "cuts interest rates" it isn't really creating more capital for businesses to borrow; it is instead distorting the signal that the market interest rate was trying to convey.

From mises.org

Gary North

Gary North recently wrote a great article on the politico-economic outcome caused by the anti-nuclear media forces following the Japanese earthquake and tsunami:

"Energy is the key to output. This has been true for over 200 years. To control a primary source of energy is to get rich. China will be able to buy uranium by means of its output from uranium. It will convert uranium into wealth. It will do so with the lowest energy cost-per-output ratio of any nation. Its people will find employment.

I think this has shifted the balance of economic power away from India. India will face public resistance to nuclear power. China will not. India has a lot of advantages: English, the legal system, the free flow of ideas, and a lot of motivated, well-educated people. I am not saying that India will fall behind the world. It will advance. But with respect to the job market for millions of recent arrivals from rural districts, nuclear power will give China the edge.

The anti-nuke forces will never talk about this in public. They will never say publicly, "We have delivered the world's economy into the hands of China." But they will have done just that."

Lew Rockwell - again

The beauty and glory of economic science is that it consists in a series of laws and principles that do not change according to time and place. The prescription for prosperity and stability and human economic flourishing is always and everywhere the same: freedom of association, freedom of contract, freedom of enterprise, freedom to trade across borders without penalty, sound money that is redeemable in something besides paper, private property rights, wages and prices that adjust by market conditions, and a legal structure that shores up these institutions rather than undermines them.

James H. Polve

“Mechanical engineers design and manufacture machines, machines to help mankind, to ease his burden and to make like more abundant. Machine work supplants slave labor and provides power far in excess of muscle power to free men from hard labor and yet provides the means to accomplish. Automobiles, airplanes, tractors, electrical and nuclear power plants, steam plants and many other similar kinds of plants and machines are typical examples of design and manufacture by the mechanical engineer. His special abilities are aimed at coupling natural laws with natural materials to produce work. He channels energy available on earth, and wherever possible in the universe, through devices into more usable forms to aid man. He can multiply man’s strength and quickness through hydraulic, pneumatic, and electrical devices. He can transport men and goods faster, further, and more efficiently than man can walk or carry. He provides for warmth in the winter and coolness in the summer. He is aided and yet constrained by the physical laws and the characteristics of resources that surround him; and yet he has made great advances to free men somewhat from the edict ‘In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, til thou return unto the ground’ (Gen. 3:19).”

Ted Rockwell - The Best Quote Ever

That tactic, of making problems out of advantages—making sow’s ears out of silk purses, I call it—permeates the whole nuclear enterprise. The advantage that radioactivity continually and automatically gets less and less toxic every day, is converted to, “it stays toxic for thousands of years.” And this is implied to pose an unprecedented problem that humanity is not equipped to deal with. And breakable light bulbs containing mercury are called “green,” and radioactivity is called uniquely hazardous.

http://www.nucleartownhall.com/blog/townhall-qa-rickover-to-the-renaissance/

Thesis Topics for Research

How much money will UTOPIA ultimately consume? Currently they have spent $516 million. I bet the total goes over $700 million before bankruptcy is declared.
Why does lightning occur with earthquakes? Is Harold Aspden's theory about this correct?
Where was Joseph, the Carpenter when Christ was crucified? Had he already died?
What was it like to be a Christian in the 1st century, when the Apostles were still alive?
What influences Americans against nuclear power?
Chinese Trade - what was it paid with in AD 800?
History of Property Taxes in Utah. When Brigham Young said "This is the right place", there weren't any property taxes.
What determines left or right-handedness?