Tesla Turns Power Back On At Children's Hospital In Puerto Rico (npr.org) 203
Elon Musk took to Instagram yesterday to announce the "first of many solar+battery Tesla projects going live in Puerto Rico." Tesla has used its solar panels and batteries to restore reliable electricity at San Juan's Hospital del Nino (Children's Hospital) after the country was devastated by two powerful hurricanes in September. NPR reports: Musk's company announced its success in getting the hospital's power working again less than three weeks after Puerto Rico Gov. Ricardo Rossello tweeted on Oct. 6, "Great initial conversation with @elonmusk tonight. Teams are now talking; exploring opportunities." Tesla's image of the project's solar array, in a parking lot next to the hospital, has been liked more than 84,000 times since it was posted to Instagram Tuesday. The hospital's new system allows it to generate all the energy it needs, according to El Nuevo Dia. The facility has 35 permanent residents with chronic conditions; it also offers services to some 3,000 young patients, the newspaper says. As for who is paying for the power system, the head of the hospital tells Nuevo Dia that for now, it's a donation -- and that after the energy crisis is over, a deal could make it permanent. Both Rossello and the tech company tweeted about the project this week, with Tesla saying in a post, "Grateful to support the recovery of Puerto Rico with @ricardorossello" -- and Rossello stating, "A major contribution of @Tesla to the Hospital del Nino."
Turn it OFF! (Score:2, Funny)
Why the fuck would they waste their resources? Get the support to the people who will create JOBS! Not lazy dying losers!
Puerto Rico Power (Score:2)
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Now would be a great time to convert to something more energy efficient.
That is way out of scope of providing power.
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It's pretty common practice to boost voltage from low to high and down to low again. The long high voltage line means lowering losses on the line, less energy lost to heat. Even small DC to DC converters will have an AC step in the middle so a transformer can step the voltage up or down.
What do you propose that would be more efficient? Step up the voltage higher? Then you'd need transformers or something to step it down for things like standard 110 VAC lights and tools. Use DC instead of AC? Then that
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Do you have any idea what the line losses would be sending 5V across a hospital? I'm guessing no.
Also, are you really proposing that they spend the metric assload of money and years converting all the equipment for some sort of DC standard rather than get up and running today?
Meanwhile, modern power supplies are pretty efficient.
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It's actually not. Line losses are known as IIR losses, and they increase at the square of the current. So a line carrying 2A will have 4 times the losses as one carrying 1A.
It's why high current applications are typically run at high voltages - to reduce the current. The PowerWall internally would probably
FEMA needs to buy a few dozen of these sets (Score:5, Insightful)
Each set would consist of batteries and the accompanying solar array to charge them, packaged so it could be deployed as a first response to disasters like this.The ability to get early power to critical facilities would be really valuable. The array shown here looks as though it could fit into a standard 2 TEU, to be shipped or trucked anywhere.
Gibber away all you want about your favorite Elon Musk conspiracy theory. The rest of us have long since stopped listening to you.
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Each set would consist of batteries and the accompanying solar array to charge them, packaged so it could be deployed as a first response to disasters like this.The ability to get early power to critical facilities would be really valuable. The array shown here looks as though it could fit into a standard 2 TEU, to be shipped or trucked anywhere.
Gibber away all you want about your favorite Elon Musk conspiracy theory. The rest of us have long since stopped listening to you.
Generators are much more compact, easy to transport and get going. That is why FEMA has generators for this purpose. They just didn't have enough to cover every place in P.R. Look at the pictures and see how much it takes to support just this small hospital. PV and batteries make a very poor fast-deploy solution. Even Elon took this long to get one up and running.
http://media.npr.org/assets/im... [npr.org]
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First response though it is the only option. A few designated shelters could be planned with solar roofs from flexible thin film PV and batteries to cover air conditioning and first-round needs... but that requires planning.
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Plugging in Puerto Rico's zip code (00901) into the PWatts calculator [nrel.gov] yields a 17.4% capacity factor (this factors in night, weather, movement of the sun across the sky, etc). Add in 14% system losses and 96% inverter efficiency, and you get an average actual power production of (160 kW) * (17.4%) * (100-14%) * (96%) = 23 kW. (Judging from th
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They would be for early restoration of power to critical facilities, not permanent infrastructure. Look at the picture: the solar array is deployed on the hospital parking area.
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Also, just looking at it, these panels seem to be very low slung and at shallow angles. If you were to concrete those frames to the ground, and they had sufficient wall thickness, I could easily picture those withstanding huge winds.
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Very little will survive intact with 150mph winds; much over 120 and the economics go to hell. It seems like the monocrystaline thin film/flexible systems are the only ones that have much of a chance of surviving, but the economics of them seems to have gotten worse over the years.
And, for the great grandparent post, these little doodads [solopower.com] are great for emergencies... but they don't do much to help with air conditioning needs in PR.
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What "deadline"?
Do you mean the target, an S-curve which was described in advance as something fully expected to be "production hell"?
Mud on the federal governmet's face (Score:5, Insightful)
This may have something to do with the idiot in charge.
It's also the first real nail in the fossil fuel industry's coffin. For remote sites, solar generation, with batteries, is cheaper that any other source.
It may not be long before you can remove the remote from that statement.
Re:Mud on the federal governmet's face (Score:5, Informative)
Here's an aerial video of Puerto Rico's Wind/Solar remains after the hurricane.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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Here's an aerial video of Puerto Rico's Wind/Solar remains after the hurricane. https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Wow.
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It looks to me like they didn't design it with the winds Maria generated in mind. There are wind turbines in the north sea designed for 200MPh wind speeds that likely would have survived just fine. It all depends on what it is designed to handle. Maria was far more devastating than what the building codes require. Not a lot can stand up to a cat-5 hurricane. I imagine the replacement costs will be quite a bit lower unless the underlying structure was also damaged.
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Solar [solarpower...online.com] survives [pennenergy.com] what [electrek.co] it's [greenmatters.com] designed to [sun-connect-news.org].
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Point taken... but it just takes a tiny bit of debris at 150mph to change the picture.
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If it's just the blades and the generator didn't get bent out of shape...
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Heck, it's not that rare for companies to go back to perfectly functional older turbines and upgrade their generator and add longer blades, to get more power out of a given tower. There's a project like that going on in Iowa right now.
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Yeah that should be really cheap. Last I heard here In Europe we're gonna be paying off the loans to build the damned things for at least 20 years.
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1) Loans are amortized capital costs. Capital costs being the overwhelming majority of the cost of wind turbines. If you weren't paying off the capital costs, you'd be getting power for nearly free.
2) It doesn't matter what you think. They've found that the extra power they get justifies the cost of the upgrade. That doesn't even imply that the older technology's economics are bad, just that the new technology's are even better.
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federal government's responsibility to clean-up after PR nationalized all of their power companies
If PR managed to nationalize their power companies, then that would make them the direct responsibility of our federal government. Do you even know what words you're saying?
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If PR managed to nationalize their power companies...
Apparently you are unaware that Puerto Rico is a part of the United States...
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Apparently you are unable to read to the end of a sentence. You should probably electrocute yourself.
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And that's why if they nationalized, it would be under the US government. Practice your reading comprehension.
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Yet the hospital had no power until Tesla showed up. It's still egg on the government's face.
Hospital and generators (Score:2)
You're delusional. They couleave shipped a diesel generator
Actually forget about shipping the diesel generator.
It's a hospital, it probably already has it's own generator.
(Well, maybe not this peculiar hospital, but in general hospital have generators and you could ignore shipping them in the general picture).
and a few hundred gallons of fuel in less time.
Yeah ! Great, we can now run the hospital on monday !
Hey, what shall we do on tuesday, once around a hundred of gallons of fuel have been burned ?
Here lies your problem.
This is about restoring EMERGENCY power asap.
Generators are good for *emergency* power, as you say.
i.e.: making sure that during the fi
Surprising Whitefish Energy didn't do it (Score:4, Interesting)
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Remember that side note halfway through the NPR story? "As of Wednesday morning, the Electric Power Authority reported that its power service was at 25 percent." Who do you think was doing that - the magic power faries? And remember, we're not talking just restoring power to one building here - pretty much the entirety of the power transmission lines from the power plants to all of the buildings in Puerto Rico was down. Rebuilding those properly and permanently is going to be a hell of a lot more work than
Re:Surprising Whitefish Energy didn't do it (Score:5, Informative)
It looks like they have very competitive rates and minimal initial payment, and were one of two bidders on the contract. As much as I thought there was a scandal there... it doesn't seem to be the case. I don't know how they are getting linemen at less than $400/day plus accommodation... but they have 300 in place and more on the way. (They are one of many contractors working on different parts of the project to restore power.)
People don't seem to understand the magnitude of the problem when complaining.
source [enr.com].
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$400/hour, not $400/day.
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What, are you saying that it doesn't actually cost $300 an hour to employ a lineman?
Parking? (Score:5, Interesting)
>"the project's solar array, in a parking lot next to the hospital, has been liked more than 84,000 times since it was posted to Instagram"
While that is neat looking, is it temporary? It appears to fill almost the entire parking lot, leaving no place to park... Are there other lots? Looks like maybe 150 spots gone. Power is important, but parking is kinda important too, isn't it?
https://www.instagram.com/p/Ba... [instagram.com]
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Parking is probably a lot less critical when huge amounts of roads are impassable in cars.
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Long term, there will be power and a way to fuel the generator. The OP wasn't thinking. Period.
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>"Long term, there will be power and a way to fuel the generator. The OP wasn't thinking. Period."
Um, sorry, but the OP *is* thinking. I asked a question if this was temporary or not and that is perfectly valid. You are assuming that it is temporary. What do you base your answer on? A guess?
If they just need temporary power, then all they need is some fuel. That would be a hell of a lot easier/cheaper to get them than a million dollar (?) solar array and battery system.
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>"the project's solar array, in a parking lot next to the hospital, has been liked more than 84,000 times since it was posted to Instagram"
While that is neat looking, is it temporary? It appears to fill almost the entire parking lot, leaving no place to park... Are there other lots? Looks like maybe 150 spots gone. Power is important, but parking is kinda important too, isn't it?
https://www.instagram.com/p/Ba... [instagram.com]
When a facility such as a hospital does not have power, parking goes from relevant - pointless in 2 seconds flat.
There appears to be land available around them to expand the parking lot. Or build a parking garage, which could likely also serve as a future hurricane shelter.
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It looks very temporary. It would be interesting to see how a permanent installation would be designed to handle a hurricane.
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"150 spots gone" This is what I remarked also. Why not arange them as roofs to provide shade for the cars in the parking lot? This will make the cars cooler instead of getting hot in the sun and reduce the need for airco.
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Which part of "PR is currently cleaning up from a devastating hurricane" do you not understand?
Re:Parking? (Score:4, Interesting)
The higher the panel, the less stable it will be and the more of a sail in the event of a high wind.
I really like your idea for a planned, long-term installation, but this is a quick-fix, path-of-least-resistance job.
Still, yeah - I'd be really tempted to look into sinking some solid posts into the ground and mounting the entire array 10' higher than it currently is and creating covered parking as a secondary benefit. Why NOT dual-purpose the space? I just wouldn't worry so much about it in the immediate future where there are likely a lot of more important concerns in a disaster area.
One Hero (Score:2)
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I googled "stacked ranking" and the first page of search hits contained titles like "stack ranking employees is a bad idea", "the trouble with stacked rankings", "Amazon to drop dreaded stack-ranking".
I hadn't heard of the thing before now, but reading up on it I get the impression it would be very hard to apply to anything but very specific types of jobs where it's possible to come up with clear and relevant metrics (e.g. "number of chairs assembled per day", "number of chairs failing QA"). For more comple
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I get the impression it would be very hard to apply to anything but very specific types of jobs where it's possible to come up with clear and relevant metrics (e.g. "number of chairs assembled per day", "number of chairs failing QA").
And the funny thing is, the GP was raging against its use in a company that does actually make cars / solar panels, and had a massive recall on cars due to quality control issues.
Since when did firing people for doing consistently substandard work become a bad thing?
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I have nothing against firing people who won't do their job (if they can't, it depends on the reason), the question is whether the stack rank system aids in doing that and does so in a way that does not have a significant negative impact.
A lot more goes into making a Tesla or solar panels than thousands of people standing at an assembly line performing an easily quantifiable monotonous task. How do you create metrics that accurately judges a person's overall value to the company? That one guy in R&D tha
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Well, if you had to prioritize wouldn't that hospital make it near the top of your list?
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Restoring power is more their line of work. Providing clean water during a hurricane is as much Tesla's ideal job as it is Best Buy's.
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The rich will buy their own firemen, the rest of us will burn.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Look, I love Elon as much as the next sycophant (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm as happy as the next guy to hate on Elon - and have done it here, more than once - but it's hard to argue this isn't a good thing regardless of his motivation.
Re:Look, I love Elon as much as the next sycophant (Score:5, Insightful)
A motivation to prove that his technology is rapidly deployed and viable? After everyone hates on him and says he's selling pipe dreams?
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regardless of his motivation
When motivation perfectly aligns with a practically ideal solution the hero will be labelled a villain regardless of what happens.
But I am keen to hear a better site proposed. Given a country that is suffering from a devastating storm there are a few effects at play:
- destroyed sanitation
- damaged food in circulation
- dead plant and animal matter
- hazards everywhere.
Frankly he should be criticised if he *didn't* pick a hospital as priority one.
Re:Look, I love Elon as much as the next sycophant (Score:5, Interesting)
Of course it was done for PR-reasons
Yeah. PR as in Puerto Rico >.>
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To put this in perspective, this is being spun as some kind of victory over the evil, hidebound Puerto Rican electricity company which only managed to restore power to about a quarter of the whole of Puerto Rico in the time it took Musk to get power to this one hospital. It's totally a PR stunt, and it's working.
Re:Look, I love Elon as much as the next sycophant (Score:5, Insightful)
Please, by all means, show me the solar power generation and storage facility that you built in a country whose transportation infrastructure was devastated, completed just 2 1/2 weeks after speaking with the local government for the very first time.
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Musk didn't "get" power to a hospital. He created power at a hospital. Comparing it to repairing a few trunks in existing infrastructure is childish.
I assume the only reason you're shitting on Musk's achievements is because you lack any of your own?
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That is 35 patients who CANNOT leave the hospital. You helpfully ignore the other 3000 patients who have acute illness that get treated there on a daily basis from all over the island.
Holy fuck, are you retarded? Can you not read?
The facility has 35 permanent residents with chronic conditions; it also offers services to some 3,000 young patients
Do you see that? Do you? Can you READ IT NOW?
Retard.
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Chosen, seriously chosen. You people are so gullible buying into any bullshit. Why the big strangle on Puerto Rico, to drive the population out, to force them to sell on the cheap, so developers can buy it up on cents on the dollar, demolish the homes, redevelop everything to sell for maximum profits. You want to know why others countries do not, absolutely do no want to join the US, who the fuck wants to become another Puerto Rico. Bankrupted on purpose by the US Congress and Senate and then blamed for the
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Um...no.
Puerto Rico used to make its money by being an inexpensive place to make goods and pharmaceuticals for the mainland US. Because PR is a US territory, there were no tariffs.
Then a whole lot of "free trade" agreements were signed. Suddenly, PR wasn't the cheap place on the manufacturing front, and the Jones Act meant it was much more expensive to ship from PR to the mainland than to ship from, say, China.
Add in the fact that PR residents are US citizens and can easily resettle on the mainland, and w
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Elon Musk lives here and gave NO FUCKING POWER SHIT TO ANYONE IN AMERICA.
Puerto Rico is in America.
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Fact 1 - Puerto Rico was bankrupted by its own foolish investments and corrupt leaders.
Puerto Rico was bankrupted by the relaxing of tariffs combined with the Jones Act.
It used to be a cheap place to make stuff for the mainland. It isn't cheap enough anymore. When the factories and other businesses shut down, the people who could afford to relocate to the mainland did so. As US citizens, there was no barriers to moving to FL or NY or a host of other places.
That left an island mostly of retirees and people who could not afford to move. That destroyed Puerto Rico's tax base.
Elon Musk lives here and gave NO FUCKING POWER SHIT TO ANYONE IN AMERICA.
First, Puerto Ri
Such hatred (Score:5, Insightful)
A children's hospital with 35 permanent residents?
Clearly, a site chosen at random for power restoration...
I see that you haven't proposed what would have been a *better* installation, just a comparison to a big nebulous "he could have done better". Where is your analysis? What alternatives were there, and why was his choice sub-optimal?
Can't we just say "bravo" or at least "congratulations" or something?
Elon didn't do it the way *you* would have liked, but note that he actually did something.
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Can't we just say "bravo" or at least "congratulations" or something?
While your at it, how about a bravo for all those people and companies helping but not seeking publicity.
Re:Such hatred (Score:5, Informative)
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Well, we would but don't actually have any idea who they are...
How about the line workers who have restored power to 20% of P.R. in the time it took Musk to supply power to one 35 bed hospital.
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Yeah let's give a hurrah to those doing their normal jobs doing basic. Fuck those people going out of their way.
Can you please list some of your achievements so we can all take a turn in shitting on them too? It sounds like fun and makes me feel like I have a bigger penis.
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I've actually spent many shifts helping clear power lines, driveways, roads, when Hugo hit NC. My job was engineering, but they asked for volunteers to help clear the damage. Not bragging, many others did it for even longer than I, but it gave me an appreciation for what those people do, an appreciation
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Do you ignore the "And serves 3000" part?
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Serves 3000+ people during the day.
Next...
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Serves 3000+ people during the day.
Next...
No, it 'offers services' to 3000. Meaning there are that many potential people that might use the hospital if they needed it. It is no indication of how many are actually served in any given time period.
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Diarrhea can kill a small child, you know.
Particularly if they are standing right behind you...
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It has 35 permanent residents. It also treats a considerably larger number of children who then go home after recovering, much like any hospital. If it's life or death, they can probably take care of adults as well.
In any event, it's probably more useful than throwing paper towels at people.
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Clearly, a site chosen at random for power restoration...
Just to turn your cynical remark on its head, what kind of brain dead idiot would chose a site at random?
Re: Look, I love Elon as much as the next sycophan (Score:5, Insightful)
You're right, you can't. You have to actually go out and help people. What a concept!
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I agree. Whoever he chose as his successor is really fucking things up.
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This whole mess is all Obama's fault
No, it's a collaborative attack from North Korea and Russia. I have an unnamed confidential source that told me so. But they are really trustworthy!
Re:Obama's fault (Score:5, Interesting)
Not true, the hurricanes are caused by Trump's unnatural love of coal.
In the long run yes, but in line with your own climate hypothesis today's hurricanes are being caused by Carter not allowing nuclear fuel to be reprocessed and Obama killing off Yucca Mountain.
Re:Obama's fault (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Obama's fault (Score:4, Interesting)
This is true, but in the absence of reprocessing the flat-earth lobby insists that spent fuel is some sort of massive unsolved problem that threatens our very existance. Even though reprocessing will cost more than dry storage for years to come, we have to implement it just to kill off this stupid argument.
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Reprocessing increases waste... which is a large part of why it is uneconomical.
Re:Yucca Mountain (Score:5, Informative)
I actually know a geologist who worked on that project. Was a German fellow, so he didn't care too much about the politics of the situation.
His take was that the site is and will continue to be geologically stable for many 1000's of years.
The big concern was that the rock which makes up the thing is hard and has many fractures. This allows a relatively rapid transfer or rain water to seep through to the aquifer below.
The containers themselves by regulation must last between 300-1000 years. Of course in 100 years, the company that made them will be long, long, long out of business so if they should fail at 250 or even 299 years, it's not like anyone would be around spank them.
Statistically, it is likely we would see at least 1 or two barrels which will fail at the lower end of the spectrum and start leaking. Do these things break catastrophically? I have no clue. I would assume they just develop small leaks which increase over time as the base material gets exposed to the radioactive elements and moisture.
If you are not an expert, it is down to who you believe.
The DOE says, hey...everything is fine and even when the containers fail (and they will) it will take a super long time to pollute the water and even then, we think it is an acceptable level of pollution.
The NV State scientists say, no no no, due to the properties of the underlying rock, we calculate that should a barrel leak, the ground water will be polluted to a deadly level in about 1000 years.
I have no idea who is actually correct. In general though, humans are pretty crap about thinking 10 years into the future let alone 1000. I could imagine that many folks would say..meh...that's like 1000 years from now! For sure we will have thought of something to fix it by then.
Maybe we will have. Maybe we wont. Maybe we will have been killed off by then. If that's the case, I hope all the barrels leaks and kills who ever takes over the planet.
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The sad part is that there are better locations to store the nuclear waste such as the salt mines in Texas, but Texas has a lot more political clout. Meanwhile, we have a slow-motion disaster forming at the Hanford nuclear site.
Re:Yucca Mountain (Score:5, Interesting)
I love thinking about the long term, and I wish more people did. I'm in the middle of a house construction project, trying to design it for a many-hundred to couple-thousand year lifespan (just the basic structure, not everything in it).... and it touches on everything that you do. And I know the exact same things would apply to repository design.
Example: first off, let's assume that like me they're building out of concrete. Well, unless your wall thickness is dam-thick, what's going to happen is CO2 will slowly dissolve into the concrete, converting the cement to limestone and lowering its pH. When the lowered pH zone reaches the rebar, it'll suddenly begin to rust and increase in size (as it's no longer protected by a highly basic environment); within a few years, the concrete is spalling out, and if not repaired, the structure will soon be unsafe.
What do you do? Well, one answer is, like dams, extreme thickness. This keeps the CO2 from ever reaching the rebar, although it also means a very expensive build. The answer of "no rebar", like the Romans did, may seem tempting, but beyond how that means that you can no longer have any shear or tensile stress (shear = loads that aren't in perfectly balanced arches; tensile = loads for example in the foundation, meaning you have to have a crazy-overbuilt foundation), it also means no safety factor against shifting loads. What's the balance?
Stainless steel has excellent (although somewhat uncertain in the long-term) lifespan. It's a bit unpredictable... you may find not the slightest bit of corrosion on 99% of the stainless but then heavy pitting on 1%, with no obvious rhyme or reason as to why. In general, though, it's quite good, but very expensive - 5x more than mild steel.
Loose plastic fibres again appear to have extremely long lifespans in concrete, and play a role akin to the horsehair that Romans added to concrete - helping resist the formation of microcracks. But while they can add some limited tensile strength to concrete, the structural benefits are limited.
Fibre-reinforced plastic rebar has superb tensile strength and can can resist shear loads. Carbon fibre is best, but very expensive; basalt fibre looks best for my needs. Unfortunately, FRP has inelastic stress-strain behavior which means that it can't directly substitute for steel in all roles. Also, tensile strength of FRP rebar does drop with time, but mainly early on; the rate of decline slows and slows with time (unlike basalt and glass, degradation in carbon fibre rebar is minimal with time... it shrugs off almost anything. But again, crazy expensive).
In my case, the house is being shaped to try to - as much as is realistic - avoid shear stress. Which is challenging when it comes to price because, for example, have you ever gone out and shopped for curved windows? ;) So we're doing the windows as big arches, setting a frame inside them (not matching the wall's bend, just flat), and deviating slightly from a perfect arch so that most of the panes inside can be rectangular, with only a couple requiring a curved cut. Where reinforcement in the concrete is required it'll be a mix of FRP and stainless rebar, with a pozzolanic / loose fibre concrete. I'm also pushing for the use of very thick pumice crete walls, acting as their own insulation. "Thick" and "pore space" are two factors in concrete that have demonstrable very long term survivability - stress from a shear force is inversely proportional to the thickness squared, and pore space tends to mean that it "crushes into itself" over time rather than shearing / spalling off. But in addition to that not being traditional in modern construction, it can cause problems, say, when you're concreting a wall to a foundation and the wall shrinks as it hardens, putting stress (and thus cracking) at the connection point. A pozzolanic mix should reduce but not eliminate this (it also produces a stronger concrete in the end, and the CSH gel tends to self-seal cracks - although pozzolanic concrete
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When I say that dry storage of waste would be more economical than reprocessing for years to come, I do mean years, not ages. A repository like Yucca Mountain is just a buffer, big enough to hold a generation or two worth of waste while we develop better reprocessing technology. Long before those geologic eons commentators are worrying about, the unburned U and Pu in it will have been recovered and burned up.
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Your home project made me think of this video, it was the first time I'd heard of aircrete:
https://youtu.be/b9Gmor0I3mw [youtu.be]
I'm not sure how that would compare to pumice crete.
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900 jobs, $10 billion tax subsidies, whatever fee was charged upfront, and whatever fees will be charged later. Musk is evil, and using kids for PR is par for the course.
Let's throw another log on the Musk Evil fire. How dare he try and help save lives.
FFS, talk about damned if you do and damned if you don't.
Boy, sure is a good thing FEMA is funded by Santa Claus so no taxpayers have to pay for rebuilding efforts when disasters hit the US...
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FEMA doesn't tack on a profit margin.
Rather ironic when speaking about the land of cushy pointless Federal jobs and $1000 toilet seats. I'd take the honesty of a profit margin over immeasurable corruption and financial incompetence.
You don't think Musk did this as wedge into a future captive market, one where he can charge billions once the media leaves?
Yes. It's called capitalism. Also known as exactly what I expect any company to do that sustains itself with net-positive revenue streams. He's also the guy doing something rather than nothing in the aftermath of a disaster.
Besides, Musk is too "evil" to qualify himself as a religious leader, so redefining as a
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No, capitalism involves a market and options - this is about creating an isolated fiefdom for Musk to rule. A crack-dealer isn't participating in capitalism either, for the same reasons. PR must refuse everything else Musk does after the emergency. The poorly installed panels are designed to be maintenance cost-cows for Musk, and they will have to be scrapped ASAP.
Speaking of options, where's the competition?
Oh that's right. It's a couple of inexperienced guys from Whitefish Energy who got that no-bid deal after lubing it with a 55-gallon drum of palm grease and corruption. I'm sure that isolated bucket of incompetence will pan out with maximum efficiency.
I refer back to my original statement of doing something rather than nothing. And nitpicking about the installation quality of a solar array is pathetic when the end result is a functional solution. I've put in
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Making a durable installation isn't fashion, it is the difference between making a donation and making a slave from people. Your coding BS has nothing on physical work, so give up the martyrdom attempts. Physical work must withstand the elements that it will be subject to from day #1, or not only will it not last but will spawn more expenses and costs including failing and killing people. Musk could have done a better job, but he chose not to. There are reasons for that that don't fit in your Ayn Rand bible, and that are unethical and immoral it not illegal in every other situation.
When I was speaking about rushed installs, I wasn't talking about coding BS. I was talking about physical work, so let's just stop with the assumptions.
It's not likely a permanent installation, so enough of the nit-picking over the install. There's a lot of blue tarps doing their job as a rooftop on Florida homes right now, and no homeowners are bitching about them not matching the color of their stucco. Falling and killing people? It's mounted on the ground in a parking lot, not suspended from a roofto
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Go fuck yourself to death, you idiot. FEMA contracts out all actual work. You think those contractors don't work for a profit? You are so stupid, you are practically a disaster all by yourself. I feel bad for your family and neighbors.
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