There is still an uphill battle to engage in. That of course is education of the public in a topic that they have little or no interest in, beyond the endless platitudes of the renewable fanatics. As a society with the current cultural norms, there is a general belief that renewables are the key to the castle of de-carbonization. The real fanatics will quickly point to TMI (as much as it still lingers with an older demographic), Chernobyl and Fukushima, as proof of the dead-end of nuclear power. Especially Chernobyl as it has received the Lion's Share of reporting and analysis, yet no more compares to our current state of the art designs for small modular reactors, that employ post-shutdown cooling systems independent of onsite power availability. Coming from nearly 25-years in the nuclear power business, it has always been frustrating that the industry never seriously tried to engage the public in the pros and cons of the business. Too often, in public when learning that someone is in the business, the big laugh is always 'Do you glow at night?' or some such dig. Beyond the foolish chuckle, they have no interest in listening to even a slight bit of defense for the business. Truly, in order to move forward with nuclear (IMO- the only real option for grid growth), the industry MUST engage the public somehow to show enough interest in learning a big picture of our grid and the challenges it faces. I would also point out the computing capacity for crypto currency mining is another huge, continuous load.
Ted — why do you state so firmly that you can’t do steady load with renewables and batteries? As you say electricity is not the constraining cost—why can’t you just build the battery big enough that you can be sure of local resources? Is it because you think you can’t get the cooling in places that are really sunny?
Ted - Excellent article. (I knew we would continue to agree on most topics.)
One aspect of Jacobson's modeling work that is rarely mentioned, by either acolytes or critics, is the fact that every one of scenarios of electricity supply for various geographies STARTS with a 40% reduction in total energy consumption even as population grows and even if the locale being modeled is currently in "energy poverty."
His handwaving explanation is that the current fossil fuel industry consumes a huge amount of energy in exploration, production, refining, and transportation and that inefficiencies of thermal power generation would disappear when we move to sources that more directly produce electricity.
It's absurd to argue that a Jacobson-modeled system could supply growing power demand.
To SmithSF -- finally - a question - which I will answer.
I will send you the validating professional laboratory test results / US Patent / and college level textbook documentation - specifically:
--- 5 pages of "text / spread-sheets / and visual graphs on "Resonance" an electrical condition that is no longer taught in college / and is treated as a "nuisance" - "to be avoided" at college.
First - I'm a graduate of both the US Navy Class "A" "ET" Electronics School and Class "A" Radar School - with over 60+ years of researching / designing / developing / and US Patenting the Tesla based POD MOD technology -- I'm not a rank beginner.
In ET School, Tesla's work was a good part of the curriculum - because in the early 1960s when I went through it: everything "electronic" was vacuum power tube powered - which if not controlled - at full power "resonance" - could self-destruct.
"Negative feedback circuitry kept that from happening.
While in ET school - I had an instructor that helped me after class with some experiments I was conducting - using resonance - that started to constantly produced output power levels that Conventional Theory just couldn't answer.
Long story short - I went through both schools / joined the fleet aboard the USS MIDWAY, CVA / got severely injured / was honorably - medically discharged / - and in 1975 - while "scratching my 'Tesla-resonance- itch' " by researching his US Patents:
--- I uncovered that facts that besides discovering (1882)/ developing and US Patenting the multi-phase AC power - used around the World today;
--- between 1890 and 1894 - using resonance - he had discovered (using "resonance", which he included (unclaimed) in his US Patent for his Electric Generator):
--- all of the information (some unclaimed) needed to "electronically develop) all of the clean electricity the world would ever need:
--- and he incapsulated that information in his 1900 US Patent application for the radio.
That information and circuitry is in the "radio station to radio station tuning circuitry" - which is named a "Tank Circuit".
When a tank circuit is "tuned" to the specific broadcast frequency of a radio station you want to listen to -- it "resonates" at that specific frequency.
That produces two separate and simultaneous electric power conditions:
1.) the resonating tank circuit ALWAYS "electrically reduces" the input power level "connected to it" - to it's:
--- "...absolute minimum power level..." while, at the same time, "within" that resonating tank circuit -the tank circuit ALWAYS "electronically develops" it's
--- "absolute maximum power level...".
This "developed power level" to "connected input power level" ratio - is ALWAYS "more than '1' " -with "1" signifying "unity".
Any resonating tank circuit ALWAYS produces more output power than input power -- because the input power level is ALWAYS reduced to a lower power level.
Electrically - a resonant tank circuit is more commonly known as a "band-pass filter".
I had not found any textbook discussion concerning the "power ratios - until I found "Electricity One - Seven" edited by Mr. Harry Mileaf / copyrighted in 1966.
The "reduction" of the input power level - is due to the "maximum impedance to input power" developed by any resonating tank circuit - while simultaneously / "internally" / any resonating tank circuit develops it's "minimum impedance to developed power" impedance level.
It's "over-unity power production - without coming close to breaking or violating anything.
I feel the reason that "we just never looked at the tank circuit as a 'power source' " -- is because the Science of Classic Physics stated it's position on what a power supply couldn't do well before Tesla began his work on AC power.
It stated that:
--- "...no power supply can produce more output power than input power... inferring that 'over-unity power production' was impossible -- and based on what they were observing at the time (real world / above the atomic level) - they were correct.
"Electricity" changed that statement - because:
--- they got the "substance" of the position correct - but the chosen "verbiage" was totally incorrect - which I proved with "big power levels (in 1984) not "internal radio signal strength power levels .
Had the statement been:
--- "...no power supply can produce more power than it is physically and electrically capable of producing..." - both the position and the statement would have been correct.
I was granted US Patent 5,146,395 / A POWER SUPPLY INCLUDING TWO TANK CIRCUITS / with "regenerative feedback" / all 16 claims / no changes or redactions requested / Sept. 8th. 1992.
--- "over Unity" was specifically no claimed - because it was well kn own that either the US/DOE or US/DOD would have the application rejected.
--- however -- careful reading of the Patent ABSTRACT clearly describes a small portion of the "electronically developed" output power being routed "back to the source" as "regenerative feedback" - which causes two simultaneous circuitry changes:
1.) the on-board "start-up" power source (2 standard sized "rechargeable" 9 VDC batteries) is "electrically" shut-off, and
2.) the "regenerative feedback" power continues to power the circuitry while it continuously / "electronically develops it's clean / "over-unity " / electric power to it's dedicated load.
The maximum continuous / "selective" / output power level of the POD MOD can both match every major AC power system in used in the world today - because it is up to and including:
--- 480 VDC or VAC / 480 Amps - which equals:
--- 230,400 Watts; 230.4 kW; or .2304 MW - in a 2.5 cu. ft. / 30 lb. / less than $2000 per unit / modular / "stand-alone power supply
--- and continuously supply 400 VDC / 480 Amps - or 192 kW -continuous power for all vehicular power:
--- that's a continuous / 1.9 times the output power / that the 100 kW / Li-Ion batteries in the TESLA Model S Plaid - produce - for a very short time at full power.
The developed amperage increases in the POD MOD design come from using three sets of 400 + strand of Litz Wire / which has almost no internal resistance in short lengths - but 160 Amp amperage capability.
I used it a lot in the Navy.
The voltage increases are produced using "series-resonance" circuitry - which always produce a higher output voltage level than the connected input voltage level.
"Resonance" and it's electrical increases capabilities - have been available since 1894 - when it was included in Tesla's Patent 511,916 / Electric Generator / Jan.2nd. 1894.
And here is the "kick to the stomach".
In 1897, British Physicist J. J. Thomson discovered the "electron" - along with the fact that the electron had a natural negative magnetic field.
Conventional 'Current-Flow" Theory - which I was taught in school, and used until I realized that my Tesla based circuitry - "had to be" both incorrect and backwards:
--- because it was centered around the "idea" of a "positive charge" moving from "positive-to-negative" in a circuit.
I researched it - and that "idea" goes back to Greece / 600 BCE / "Thales of Miletus" who observed that "dust was attracted to a piece of amber that had been vigorously rubbed with a piece of fur" -- and "sparked" when the "charged amber was placed close to something or someone that was not charged.
Classic Physics calls that "static electricity" / it "doesn't do any work" / and is still the basis for "Conventional Theory".
It is now acknowledged "in the field" - that:
--- it is "the difference of electron-volt potential (voltage) influenced- (magnetically negative) valence electrons:
--- moving "negative to positive" in a circuit;
--- that causes the "heat" / "light" / and "developed magnetic field in motors and power generators - that we pay for.
IF you send me an email address - I will send you the validating documentation for the above statements.
Yeah I don't want to read all that crap. Just tell us what is the source of the energy the MOD POD produces. Resonance is not a source of energy. All the wireless battery chargers use resonance but they are only about 70% efficient.
Elon Musk would be in a frenzy to put wireless chargers in everywhere if he could get energy gain somehow. That would be worth $trillions. And his company is named Tesla, after your supposed inventor. And he has the best resources, capital and talent to make it happen. Give Musk a comment on Twitter and tell him about your MOD POD. Tell us what his reply is.
To SmithSF -- You sure know how to demonstrate that you don't know anything about electricity and how it can be produced.
You obviously haven't got clue as to what happens electrically in the tuning circuitry of AM or FM radio when a specific radio station is tuned in.
Oh-yeah - I forgot - your still in your cave.
Come out of your cave and figure out that Microsoft's money right now is on AI, and Gates' money is into mini Fusion - which the POD MOD technology makes totally redundant.
Dah!!
Blackrock -- wouldn't touch it with a ten foot pole -- because it doesn't give a damn about doing anything except make more money.
Go back to beating on your hollow tree trunk with your stick - you just might figure out how to do that -- because you don't know anything else except throwing verbal nothings at anything that you don't know anything about.
I don't get it. Your MOD POD is great and profitable but BlackRock don't want it because all they want is to make more money.
I still can't figure out what the source of all this energy your MOD POD extracts. Dark Energy? Dark Matter? Virtual Particles or Vacuum Energy? Or are you claiming Energy & Momentum conservation is invalid? Prove that and you got yourself a Nobel Prize, son.
China has about two dozen nuclear generators under construction, and many more on the drawing board. They build up-sized 1,400 GWe versions of the Westinghouse AP1000 recently built at Vogtle, and have a 1,700 GWe design under development. Big nuclear generators require less fissionable fuel and less stuff per watt of power, but small ones can be sited more easily. Small ones could conceivably be built in factories at lower cost than big ones built on site. The obvious choice is big shipyards with their decades of experience in modular projects. But they won't touch nuclear reactor construction because NRC noses would gum up the works every five minutes.
He points out that the NRC blocks any NPP restart until Microsoft, partnered up with BlackRock, wants to build a giant Data Center in the region. A partnership to develop A.I. Data Centers worth $100B.
If you want to restart a NPP in order to supply reliable, low cost power to us lowly serfs, NRC/EPA will put up all kinds of roadblocks. No company will invest in such a dubious scheme, due to the regulatory roadblocks.
Same thing for Climate Change Mitigation, which they "claim" to care so much about. But BlackRock/Microsoft wants GW's of electricity, for AI centers, those roadblocks mysteriously disappear.
One correction, the nuclear blockade began before the TMI-2 meltdown, forty planned nuclear power plants already had been canceled before the TMI "accident" (more likely deliberate sabotage). Funny how after the massive Gulf destroying Oil rig explosion, which unlike TMI, actually killed people, oil drilling just continued as usual. And the Kleen energy NG power plant explosion that killed six workers, business-as-usual.
While Nuclear got stuck with an onerous regulator that blatantly opposed Nuclear energy, Big Oil had a regulator that had drug & sex parties together, pregnancies included. The regulator's official plan for any oil rig spill or disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, included "save the Walruses in the Gulf of Mexico" and contact long deceased scientists.
TMI-2 was almost certainly sabotage, which the NRC refused to investigate:
"Galen Winsor makes a startling statement; he claims that the Three Mile Island event was no accident. He states that the GE three of Gregory C. Minor, Richard B. Hubbard, and Dale G. Bridenbaugh wrote the script. This would sound incredibly far fetched without the almost impossibly coincidental timing of "The China Syndrome" still playing in movie theaters at the time of the accident, the unbelievable coincidence of a line in the movie about contaminating an area the size of Pennsylvania (the same state where TMI is located), and the still troubling unknown regarding how the feed pump isolation valves on the back-up feed water pump just happened to be shut (supposedly due to a "maintenance error") when the primary pump tripped off line."
some very interesting discussion in the comments. i.e.:
"Rich Lentz says: August 1, 2013 at 12:07 PM Other coincidences:
Date/Time of initial criticality of TMI-II – March 28, 1978 @ 04:00:00
Date/time of accident (on plant computer) March 28, 1979 @ 04:00:00.037 (Note: the plant computer has a 3 millisecond cycle time to scan all points)
The main story in the Paxton Herald paper (A free paper that was mostly adds and a classified listing that you picked up to find/sell stuff but VERY anti-nuclear) that week and released before the accident, was about the major accident that was going to happen at TMI in the very near future..."
Trying to keep it short. The loss of feed was the initiating event at TMI causing the reactor trip on low steam generator levels. The real damaging event was uncovering the core, that the operators missed/didn't understand. The loss of feed caused an upward excursion of Tc, in turn causing pressurizer level to increase. The rate of level change caused a pressure increase that eventually opened the PORVs. PORVs are notorious in plants that initially used coordinated phosphate Ph control, that caused a buildup of hardened material on the PORV valve stems. This in turn could cause the PORV to stick partially open. The operators were most concerned about the pressurizer going water solid, causing a huge pressure transient to the RCS. If the operators could identify this condition (partially stuck open valve) the PORV block valves could be closed to isolate it. When this happened at TMI the PORV(s) stuck open, but the closed indication was illuminated. The operators fully aware of the PORV issues, checked tailpipe temperatures on the relief lines to the relief tank that were only a few hundred degrees. They were expecting them to be at a much higher temperature IF the PORV was stuck even partially open. What they did NOT understand was that throttling is a constant enthalpy process and the pressurizer relief tank pressure would determine the temperature (saturation temp for that pressure) seen on the relief line temps that were downstream of the PORVs. This is what they saw and concluded the PORV was shut. Meanwhile the pressurizer was constantly venting, and actual levels in the pressurizer and then the reactor itself began to drop. IIRC the oncoming shift operators figured it out and shut the block, isolating the leak, but the damage was done at that point. The core was uncovered and the relatively high RCS pressure minimized the injection rate of the high pressure safety injection system. It's been nearly 30 years since I studied this during a refresher training module, that examined the accident in great detail, so I might be slightly off on the order of events. Bottom line was the operators misunderstood the involved heat transfer condition. This part of the accident would have been impossible to sabotage, leaving only the feed system suspect, but that too was too complex to sabotage as well. It would be irrational to conclude there was any sabotage at TMI, due to the complexity of the involved events.
Well, that's one man's POV. I've heard the opposite from others familiar with the incident, including Galen Winsor, mentioned above.
It is "Impossible" that the reactor trip was at the exact same time one year later from the reactor startup. The probability of that is almost zero. Proper thing would be to have a debate of both positions from people familiar with the event and in that discussion the reader could develop a well informed position.
TMI was almost certainly not sabotage, but could more easily be chalked up to incompetence than bad luck. Details and more in my book "Where Will We Get Our Energy?" A comprehensive end-to-end life-cycle system-engineering analysis of the entire energy landscape. Everything quantified. No vague handwaving. 350 bibliographic citations so you can verify I didn't just make up stuff.
Galen Winsor was close to a lot of the nuclear engineers involved in those days. You can't outright dismiss his claims. And you got some serious explaining to do covering the many "coincidences" listed in the Atomic Insights article & comments.
That's all I have to go on, plus I have a lot of knowledge about the skullduggery that permeates energy politics. For the gullible: No the big energy companies do not believe in competing fairly and freely in the Free Market, make the best product at the best price, and let their energy consumers choose their favorite energy source based upon who has the best product at the best price. It's more like "All's Fair in Energy & War". Corruption is endemic, and only a fool believes the big Nuclear shutdown in the late 1970's was not deliberately created by vested interests.
Fossil interests continue to lobby to shut down safe well-maintained nuclear power plants. Many articles at the GreenNUKE Substack at https://greennuke.substack.com/ focus on PacifiCorp's efforts to shut down Diablo Canyon Power Plant. PacifiCorp is a Berkshire Hathaway Energy subsidiary. PacifiCorp operates about 6,000 MW of coal-fired generation in and near Wyoming.
Excellent review. Symbolism is very important. The use of images of solar panels and windmills has become the mantra of clean energy. We need a better symbol for nuclear than the cooling tower.
Why haven't you been on the phone to BlackRock & Microsoft to sell them your POD MOD electricity from the air scheme instead? I'm sure they would be happy to get those GWs from the air rather than uranium.
"Nuclear waste" is an invented problem and an intentionally pejorative term. As SmithFS remarked below, the right thing to do is to separate fission products from unused fuel and convert the fuel to electricity and fission products. 9.26% of fission products (caesium and strontium) need custody for 300 years. Half the rest are innocuous before thirty years, and the remainder aren't even radioactive. An all-electric all-nuclear American economy with 1,700 GWe appetite would produce nine cement-mixer loads of caesium and strontium per year. We can handle that.
Details and more in my book "Where Will We Get Our Energy?" A comprehensive end-to-end life-cycle system-engineering analysis of the entire energy landscape. Everything quantified. No vague handwaving. 350 bibliographic citations so you can verify I didn't just make up stuff.
I have found myself very surprised by the waste issue. It turns out after 600 years the material can be handled with bare hands and there's only one element (uranium itself) that can travel via water seepage
The remaining worry is that water will carry uranium and somewhat concentrate it in a groundwater area downhill. Although this would have a lower dose effect than moving to Colorado unfortunately it is a problem with Yucca Mountain. It's above the water table. Either they would have to really engineer it costing more or find another site
One proposal that seems popular is borehole disposal. With horizontal drilling it's now quite easy to go much deeper than a repository on the nuclear plant sites and store the spent fuel on site far below the water table
No the only sensible thing to do with spent nuclear fuel is to reprocess it. With molten salt or pyroprocessing. New SMR companies are hungry to get that waste plutonium because it is excellent startup fuel for thorium MSRs. More valuable than gold. And many of the hot isotopes are valuable also. Incredibly stupid to bury that precious resource.
Meltdown and toxic spent fuel are the two major fears of nuclear. Pebble bed reactors (PBR) are meltdown-proof. Breeder reactors (BR) greatly reduce toxicity of spent fuel. How about placing both PBR and BR in a single secure nuclear power complex with fuel being rotated between the two until it is no longer BR-suitable, at which time it can be safely disposed of? Local recycling of spent fuel also mitigates the threat of spent fuel being hijacked in transit by terrorists -- the third fear of nuclear. Has anyone considered such a dual reactor installation to mitigate all the major fears of nuclear?
Liquid Metal Fast Reactors or Sodium Fast reactors and Molten Salt reactors are also meltdown proof. Transferring Spent Nuclear Fuel from a NPP to a reprocessing plant is not an issue, easily done.
The problem is moving the extracted Plutonium for which the false claim is always made that it is primary weapons material. So yes indeed teaming a pyroprocessing plant up with local NPPs to immediately consume that MOX fuel is a good plan. That was the original idea of the Integral Fast Reactor program, until it was cancelled by Climate Czar and Climate Hypocrite John Kerry.
USA alone has 100,000 tonnes of 5% used fuel and 900,000 tonnes of depleted uranium. Each tonne of spent fuel contains about 12 kg of higher actinides, including plutonium, perfectly good for starting uranium breeders too., Activists insist an all-electric USA would have appetite for 1,700 GWe. Fissioning one tonne of heavy metal produces about 1 GWe-yr of electricity, so one million tonnes of heavy metal would last for more than 500 years, without mining, milling, refining, enriching, or importing one new gram of uranium. Thorium is four times more abundant than uranium, but the breeding rate for non-fissionable Th-232 to fissionable U-233 is only 1% per year, while uranium breeders produce fissionable transuranics at the rate of 5% per year. Thorium can wait.
Two of the not-hot fission products, rhodium and palladium, are extremely valuable -- up to $500 per gram. Why bury them?
"ThorCon is a hybrid thorium/uranium liquid fuel fission power plant. "
And of course India has plans to switch to all Thorium based fuel, using LSFRs & PHWRs, mainly due to the idiotic fuel boycotts it gets from the Energy Hegemonists trying to kneecap India's domestic Nuclear power industry.
Dr. Yoon Il Chang, now-retired acting director of Argonne National Laboratory, deputy chief engineer for EBR-II, and author with Charles E. Till of "Plentiful Energy: The IFR Story," confirmed the relative breeding rates for uranium and thorium, when I asked him whether the late George Stanford's statement to me that uranium-238 breeds plutonium-239 at the rate of 5% more per year more than the consumed fissionables, while Th-232 breeds U-233 at the rate of 1% more per year then the consumed fissionables. USA has a million tonnes of present or future fuel in the form of 5%-used "spent" fuel and depleted uranium -- enough to power an all-electric all-nuclear economy for more than 500 years.
USA has about 900 tonnes of fissionables in spent fuel, and about 225 tonnes in decommissioned weapons. This could start 110-140 GWe of capacity, depending upon reactor size (big reactors need less per watt). If that new fleet could be simultaneously built in, say, twenty years, to go with our existing 90 GWe nuclear capapcity, sufficient capacity could be built to power an all-nuclear all-electric 1,700 GWe American economy starting from our existing inventory of fissionables (spent fuel plus decommissioned weapons) with uranium reactors breeding plutonium at 105% (14 year doubling time), 1,700 GWe capacity could be in place in about sixty years without mining, milling, refining, enriching, or importing one gram of new uranium. Then it would take about 500 years to destroy existing stocks of spent fuel plus depleted uranium.
For USA, thorium can wait.
India has enormous thorium deposits, and not much spent fuel or depleted uranium. Thorium instead of uranium makes more sense for them than for USA.
I believe it's more complicated than that. I've read about it somewhere but I can't recall. There is something about Thorium in a thermal breeder that will work whereas a similar Uranium design won't work. Watch the Copenhagen Atomics videos, maybe they explain it in there. They have no need to use thorium, but they are because it is necessary to make their reactor work properly. Similarly for the ANEEL CANDU fuel, some reason they are using Thorium/HALEU fuel, again I can't recall what that is. I don't think they have some religious cause to burn thorium rather than uranium, as you are right, there is plenty of uranium at present, no need to use thorium.
One added factor is the U-233 that is extracted from the molten salt is contaminated with U-232 making it unsuitable for weapons, which could be a significant issue.
And the Thorium fuel isotope mix is much more valuable. Much more Pu-238 than Pu-239/240. The Pu-238 is an extremely valuable isotope. Short supply forced NASA to use inferior solar power on the upcoming Europa mission. The EU's Rosetta comet lander failed because it landed in a shaded area that could not supply its solar power. They couldn't source Pu-238 for a thermoelectric generator. Which also warms the instruments.
In fact an engineer working on a new thorium MSR remarked that they expect to make a substantial profit selling isotopes.
There is still an uphill battle to engage in. That of course is education of the public in a topic that they have little or no interest in, beyond the endless platitudes of the renewable fanatics. As a society with the current cultural norms, there is a general belief that renewables are the key to the castle of de-carbonization. The real fanatics will quickly point to TMI (as much as it still lingers with an older demographic), Chernobyl and Fukushima, as proof of the dead-end of nuclear power. Especially Chernobyl as it has received the Lion's Share of reporting and analysis, yet no more compares to our current state of the art designs for small modular reactors, that employ post-shutdown cooling systems independent of onsite power availability. Coming from nearly 25-years in the nuclear power business, it has always been frustrating that the industry never seriously tried to engage the public in the pros and cons of the business. Too often, in public when learning that someone is in the business, the big laugh is always 'Do you glow at night?' or some such dig. Beyond the foolish chuckle, they have no interest in listening to even a slight bit of defense for the business. Truly, in order to move forward with nuclear (IMO- the only real option for grid growth), the industry MUST engage the public somehow to show enough interest in learning a big picture of our grid and the challenges it faces. I would also point out the computing capacity for crypto currency mining is another huge, continuous load.
Ted — why do you state so firmly that you can’t do steady load with renewables and batteries? As you say electricity is not the constraining cost—why can’t you just build the battery big enough that you can be sure of local resources? Is it because you think you can’t get the cooling in places that are really sunny?
It's called "winter".
Ted - Excellent article. (I knew we would continue to agree on most topics.)
One aspect of Jacobson's modeling work that is rarely mentioned, by either acolytes or critics, is the fact that every one of scenarios of electricity supply for various geographies STARTS with a 40% reduction in total energy consumption even as population grows and even if the locale being modeled is currently in "energy poverty."
His handwaving explanation is that the current fossil fuel industry consumes a huge amount of energy in exploration, production, refining, and transportation and that inefficiencies of thermal power generation would disappear when we move to sources that more directly produce electricity.
It's absurd to argue that a Jacobson-modeled system could supply growing power demand.
To SmithSF -- finally - a question - which I will answer.
I will send you the validating professional laboratory test results / US Patent / and college level textbook documentation - specifically:
--- 5 pages of "text / spread-sheets / and visual graphs on "Resonance" an electrical condition that is no longer taught in college / and is treated as a "nuisance" - "to be avoided" at college.
First - I'm a graduate of both the US Navy Class "A" "ET" Electronics School and Class "A" Radar School - with over 60+ years of researching / designing / developing / and US Patenting the Tesla based POD MOD technology -- I'm not a rank beginner.
In ET School, Tesla's work was a good part of the curriculum - because in the early 1960s when I went through it: everything "electronic" was vacuum power tube powered - which if not controlled - at full power "resonance" - could self-destruct.
"Negative feedback circuitry kept that from happening.
While in ET school - I had an instructor that helped me after class with some experiments I was conducting - using resonance - that started to constantly produced output power levels that Conventional Theory just couldn't answer.
Long story short - I went through both schools / joined the fleet aboard the USS MIDWAY, CVA / got severely injured / was honorably - medically discharged / - and in 1975 - while "scratching my 'Tesla-resonance- itch' " by researching his US Patents:
--- I uncovered that facts that besides discovering (1882)/ developing and US Patenting the multi-phase AC power - used around the World today;
--- between 1890 and 1894 - using resonance - he had discovered (using "resonance", which he included (unclaimed) in his US Patent for his Electric Generator):
--- all of the information (some unclaimed) needed to "electronically develop) all of the clean electricity the world would ever need:
--- and he incapsulated that information in his 1900 US Patent application for the radio.
That information and circuitry is in the "radio station to radio station tuning circuitry" - which is named a "Tank Circuit".
When a tank circuit is "tuned" to the specific broadcast frequency of a radio station you want to listen to -- it "resonates" at that specific frequency.
That produces two separate and simultaneous electric power conditions:
1.) the resonating tank circuit ALWAYS "electrically reduces" the input power level "connected to it" - to it's:
--- "...absolute minimum power level..." while, at the same time, "within" that resonating tank circuit -the tank circuit ALWAYS "electronically develops" it's
--- "absolute maximum power level...".
This "developed power level" to "connected input power level" ratio - is ALWAYS "more than '1' " -with "1" signifying "unity".
Any resonating tank circuit ALWAYS produces more output power than input power -- because the input power level is ALWAYS reduced to a lower power level.
Electrically - a resonant tank circuit is more commonly known as a "band-pass filter".
I had not found any textbook discussion concerning the "power ratios - until I found "Electricity One - Seven" edited by Mr. Harry Mileaf / copyrighted in 1966.
The "reduction" of the input power level - is due to the "maximum impedance to input power" developed by any resonating tank circuit - while simultaneously / "internally" / any resonating tank circuit develops it's "minimum impedance to developed power" impedance level.
It's "over-unity power production - without coming close to breaking or violating anything.
I feel the reason that "we just never looked at the tank circuit as a 'power source' " -- is because the Science of Classic Physics stated it's position on what a power supply couldn't do well before Tesla began his work on AC power.
It stated that:
--- "...no power supply can produce more output power than input power... inferring that 'over-unity power production' was impossible -- and based on what they were observing at the time (real world / above the atomic level) - they were correct.
"Electricity" changed that statement - because:
--- they got the "substance" of the position correct - but the chosen "verbiage" was totally incorrect - which I proved with "big power levels (in 1984) not "internal radio signal strength power levels .
Had the statement been:
--- "...no power supply can produce more power than it is physically and electrically capable of producing..." - both the position and the statement would have been correct.
I was granted US Patent 5,146,395 / A POWER SUPPLY INCLUDING TWO TANK CIRCUITS / with "regenerative feedback" / all 16 claims / no changes or redactions requested / Sept. 8th. 1992.
--- "over Unity" was specifically no claimed - because it was well kn own that either the US/DOE or US/DOD would have the application rejected.
--- however -- careful reading of the Patent ABSTRACT clearly describes a small portion of the "electronically developed" output power being routed "back to the source" as "regenerative feedback" - which causes two simultaneous circuitry changes:
1.) the on-board "start-up" power source (2 standard sized "rechargeable" 9 VDC batteries) is "electrically" shut-off, and
2.) the "regenerative feedback" power continues to power the circuitry while it continuously / "electronically develops it's clean / "over-unity " / electric power to it's dedicated load.
The maximum continuous / "selective" / output power level of the POD MOD can both match every major AC power system in used in the world today - because it is up to and including:
--- 480 VDC or VAC / 480 Amps - which equals:
--- 230,400 Watts; 230.4 kW; or .2304 MW - in a 2.5 cu. ft. / 30 lb. / less than $2000 per unit / modular / "stand-alone power supply
--- and continuously supply 400 VDC / 480 Amps - or 192 kW -continuous power for all vehicular power:
--- that's a continuous / 1.9 times the output power / that the 100 kW / Li-Ion batteries in the TESLA Model S Plaid - produce - for a very short time at full power.
The developed amperage increases in the POD MOD design come from using three sets of 400 + strand of Litz Wire / which has almost no internal resistance in short lengths - but 160 Amp amperage capability.
I used it a lot in the Navy.
The voltage increases are produced using "series-resonance" circuitry - which always produce a higher output voltage level than the connected input voltage level.
"Resonance" and it's electrical increases capabilities - have been available since 1894 - when it was included in Tesla's Patent 511,916 / Electric Generator / Jan.2nd. 1894.
And here is the "kick to the stomach".
In 1897, British Physicist J. J. Thomson discovered the "electron" - along with the fact that the electron had a natural negative magnetic field.
Conventional 'Current-Flow" Theory - which I was taught in school, and used until I realized that my Tesla based circuitry - "had to be" both incorrect and backwards:
--- because it was centered around the "idea" of a "positive charge" moving from "positive-to-negative" in a circuit.
I researched it - and that "idea" goes back to Greece / 600 BCE / "Thales of Miletus" who observed that "dust was attracted to a piece of amber that had been vigorously rubbed with a piece of fur" -- and "sparked" when the "charged amber was placed close to something or someone that was not charged.
Classic Physics calls that "static electricity" / it "doesn't do any work" / and is still the basis for "Conventional Theory".
It is now acknowledged "in the field" - that:
--- it is "the difference of electron-volt potential (voltage) influenced- (magnetically negative) valence electrons:
--- moving "negative to positive" in a circuit;
--- that causes the "heat" / "light" / and "developed magnetic field in motors and power generators - that we pay for.
IF you send me an email address - I will send you the validating documentation for the above statements.
Scott McKie / The POD MOD Project
scotsman7@comcast.net
MOD POD seems like a perpetual motion machine. Resonant systems require energy input to overcome system losses.
Yeah I don't want to read all that crap. Just tell us what is the source of the energy the MOD POD produces. Resonance is not a source of energy. All the wireless battery chargers use resonance but they are only about 70% efficient.
Elon Musk would be in a frenzy to put wireless chargers in everywhere if he could get energy gain somehow. That would be worth $trillions. And his company is named Tesla, after your supposed inventor. And he has the best resources, capital and talent to make it happen. Give Musk a comment on Twitter and tell him about your MOD POD. Tell us what his reply is.
To SmithSF -- You sure know how to demonstrate that you don't know anything about electricity and how it can be produced.
You obviously haven't got clue as to what happens electrically in the tuning circuitry of AM or FM radio when a specific radio station is tuned in.
Oh-yeah - I forgot - your still in your cave.
Come out of your cave and figure out that Microsoft's money right now is on AI, and Gates' money is into mini Fusion - which the POD MOD technology makes totally redundant.
Dah!!
Blackrock -- wouldn't touch it with a ten foot pole -- because it doesn't give a damn about doing anything except make more money.
Go back to beating on your hollow tree trunk with your stick - you just might figure out how to do that -- because you don't know anything else except throwing verbal nothings at anything that you don't know anything about.
.
I don't get it. Your MOD POD is great and profitable but BlackRock don't want it because all they want is to make more money.
I still can't figure out what the source of all this energy your MOD POD extracts. Dark Energy? Dark Matter? Virtual Particles or Vacuum Energy? Or are you claiming Energy & Momentum conservation is invalid? Prove that and you got yourself a Nobel Prize, son.
China has about two dozen nuclear generators under construction, and many more on the drawing board. They build up-sized 1,400 GWe versions of the Westinghouse AP1000 recently built at Vogtle, and have a 1,700 GWe design under development. Big nuclear generators require less fissionable fuel and less stuff per watt of power, but small ones can be sited more easily. Small ones could conceivably be built in factories at lower cost than big ones built on site. The obvious choice is big shipyards with their decades of experience in modular projects. But they won't touch nuclear reactor construction because NRC noses would gum up the works every five minutes.
Chris Martenson is asking some interesting questions about why this incredible, money-no-object push to build all these giant data centers:
Why the Explosive Rush To Build Data Centers? - Peak Prosperity:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XNtKA0KRlr4
He points out that the NRC blocks any NPP restart until Microsoft, partnered up with BlackRock, wants to build a giant Data Center in the region. A partnership to develop A.I. Data Centers worth $100B.
If you want to restart a NPP in order to supply reliable, low cost power to us lowly serfs, NRC/EPA will put up all kinds of roadblocks. No company will invest in such a dubious scheme, due to the regulatory roadblocks.
Same thing for Climate Change Mitigation, which they "claim" to care so much about. But BlackRock/Microsoft wants GW's of electricity, for AI centers, those roadblocks mysteriously disappear.
One correction, the nuclear blockade began before the TMI-2 meltdown, forty planned nuclear power plants already had been canceled before the TMI "accident" (more likely deliberate sabotage). Funny how after the massive Gulf destroying Oil rig explosion, which unlike TMI, actually killed people, oil drilling just continued as usual. And the Kleen energy NG power plant explosion that killed six workers, business-as-usual.
While Nuclear got stuck with an onerous regulator that blatantly opposed Nuclear energy, Big Oil had a regulator that had drug & sex parties together, pregnancies included. The regulator's official plan for any oil rig spill or disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, included "save the Walruses in the Gulf of Mexico" and contact long deceased scientists.
TMI-2 was almost certainly sabotage, which the NRC refused to investigate:
Was TMI a movie script? Galen Winsor:
youtube.com/watch?v=q5uXzM_azWI
"Galen Winsor makes a startling statement; he claims that the Three Mile Island event was no accident. He states that the GE three of Gregory C. Minor, Richard B. Hubbard, and Dale G. Bridenbaugh wrote the script. This would sound incredibly far fetched without the almost impossibly coincidental timing of "The China Syndrome" still playing in movie theaters at the time of the accident, the unbelievable coincidence of a line in the movie about contaminating an area the size of Pennsylvania (the same state where TMI is located), and the still troubling unknown regarding how the feed pump isolation valves on the back-up feed water pump just happened to be shut (supposedly due to a "maintenance error") when the primary pump tripped off line."
atomicinsights.com/was-three-mile-island-an-accident/
some very interesting discussion in the comments. i.e.:
"Rich Lentz says: August 1, 2013 at 12:07 PM Other coincidences:
Date/Time of initial criticality of TMI-II – March 28, 1978 @ 04:00:00
Date/time of accident (on plant computer) March 28, 1979 @ 04:00:00.037 (Note: the plant computer has a 3 millisecond cycle time to scan all points)
The main story in the Paxton Herald paper (A free paper that was mostly adds and a classified listing that you picked up to find/sell stuff but VERY anti-nuclear) that week and released before the accident, was about the major accident that was going to happen at TMI in the very near future..."
Trying to keep it short. The loss of feed was the initiating event at TMI causing the reactor trip on low steam generator levels. The real damaging event was uncovering the core, that the operators missed/didn't understand. The loss of feed caused an upward excursion of Tc, in turn causing pressurizer level to increase. The rate of level change caused a pressure increase that eventually opened the PORVs. PORVs are notorious in plants that initially used coordinated phosphate Ph control, that caused a buildup of hardened material on the PORV valve stems. This in turn could cause the PORV to stick partially open. The operators were most concerned about the pressurizer going water solid, causing a huge pressure transient to the RCS. If the operators could identify this condition (partially stuck open valve) the PORV block valves could be closed to isolate it. When this happened at TMI the PORV(s) stuck open, but the closed indication was illuminated. The operators fully aware of the PORV issues, checked tailpipe temperatures on the relief lines to the relief tank that were only a few hundred degrees. They were expecting them to be at a much higher temperature IF the PORV was stuck even partially open. What they did NOT understand was that throttling is a constant enthalpy process and the pressurizer relief tank pressure would determine the temperature (saturation temp for that pressure) seen on the relief line temps that were downstream of the PORVs. This is what they saw and concluded the PORV was shut. Meanwhile the pressurizer was constantly venting, and actual levels in the pressurizer and then the reactor itself began to drop. IIRC the oncoming shift operators figured it out and shut the block, isolating the leak, but the damage was done at that point. The core was uncovered and the relatively high RCS pressure minimized the injection rate of the high pressure safety injection system. It's been nearly 30 years since I studied this during a refresher training module, that examined the accident in great detail, so I might be slightly off on the order of events. Bottom line was the operators misunderstood the involved heat transfer condition. This part of the accident would have been impossible to sabotage, leaving only the feed system suspect, but that too was too complex to sabotage as well. It would be irrational to conclude there was any sabotage at TMI, due to the complexity of the involved events.
Well, that's one man's POV. I've heard the opposite from others familiar with the incident, including Galen Winsor, mentioned above.
It is "Impossible" that the reactor trip was at the exact same time one year later from the reactor startup. The probability of that is almost zero. Proper thing would be to have a debate of both positions from people familiar with the event and in that discussion the reader could develop a well informed position.
TMI was almost certainly not sabotage, but could more easily be chalked up to incompetence than bad luck. Details and more in my book "Where Will We Get Our Energy?" A comprehensive end-to-end life-cycle system-engineering analysis of the entire energy landscape. Everything quantified. No vague handwaving. 350 bibliographic citations so you can verify I didn't just make up stuff.
Galen Winsor was close to a lot of the nuclear engineers involved in those days. You can't outright dismiss his claims. And you got some serious explaining to do covering the many "coincidences" listed in the Atomic Insights article & comments.
That's all I have to go on, plus I have a lot of knowledge about the skullduggery that permeates energy politics. For the gullible: No the big energy companies do not believe in competing fairly and freely in the Free Market, make the best product at the best price, and let their energy consumers choose their favorite energy source based upon who has the best product at the best price. It's more like "All's Fair in Energy & War". Corruption is endemic, and only a fool believes the big Nuclear shutdown in the late 1970's was not deliberately created by vested interests.
Fossil interests continue to lobby to shut down safe well-maintained nuclear power plants. Many articles at the GreenNUKE Substack at https://greennuke.substack.com/ focus on PacifiCorp's efforts to shut down Diablo Canyon Power Plant. PacifiCorp is a Berkshire Hathaway Energy subsidiary. PacifiCorp operates about 6,000 MW of coal-fired generation in and near Wyoming.
Excellent review. Symbolism is very important. The use of images of solar panels and windmills has become the mantra of clean energy. We need a better symbol for nuclear than the cooling tower.
Hi Ted, As usual -- very well researched and written - based on your favorite premise -- that there is no other alternative.
Boy -- are one trick ponies like you and "breakthrough" in for a surprise in the near future.
Why haven't you been on the phone to BlackRock & Microsoft to sell them your POD MOD electricity from the air scheme instead? I'm sure they would be happy to get those GWs from the air rather than uranium.
Excellent overview, but wondering about how these companies are viewing the nuclear waste issue?
"Nuclear waste" is an invented problem and an intentionally pejorative term. As SmithFS remarked below, the right thing to do is to separate fission products from unused fuel and convert the fuel to electricity and fission products. 9.26% of fission products (caesium and strontium) need custody for 300 years. Half the rest are innocuous before thirty years, and the remainder aren't even radioactive. An all-electric all-nuclear American economy with 1,700 GWe appetite would produce nine cement-mixer loads of caesium and strontium per year. We can handle that.
Details and more in my book "Where Will We Get Our Energy?" A comprehensive end-to-end life-cycle system-engineering analysis of the entire energy landscape. Everything quantified. No vague handwaving. 350 bibliographic citations so you can verify I didn't just make up stuff.
I have found myself very surprised by the waste issue. It turns out after 600 years the material can be handled with bare hands and there's only one element (uranium itself) that can travel via water seepage
The remaining worry is that water will carry uranium and somewhat concentrate it in a groundwater area downhill. Although this would have a lower dose effect than moving to Colorado unfortunately it is a problem with Yucca Mountain. It's above the water table. Either they would have to really engineer it costing more or find another site
One proposal that seems popular is borehole disposal. With horizontal drilling it's now quite easy to go much deeper than a repository on the nuclear plant sites and store the spent fuel on site far below the water table
No the only sensible thing to do with spent nuclear fuel is to reprocess it. With molten salt or pyroprocessing. New SMR companies are hungry to get that waste plutonium because it is excellent startup fuel for thorium MSRs. More valuable than gold. And many of the hot isotopes are valuable also. Incredibly stupid to bury that precious resource.
Meltdown and toxic spent fuel are the two major fears of nuclear. Pebble bed reactors (PBR) are meltdown-proof. Breeder reactors (BR) greatly reduce toxicity of spent fuel. How about placing both PBR and BR in a single secure nuclear power complex with fuel being rotated between the two until it is no longer BR-suitable, at which time it can be safely disposed of? Local recycling of spent fuel also mitigates the threat of spent fuel being hijacked in transit by terrorists -- the third fear of nuclear. Has anyone considered such a dual reactor installation to mitigate all the major fears of nuclear?
Liquid Metal Fast Reactors or Sodium Fast reactors and Molten Salt reactors are also meltdown proof. Transferring Spent Nuclear Fuel from a NPP to a reprocessing plant is not an issue, easily done.
The problem is moving the extracted Plutonium for which the false claim is always made that it is primary weapons material. So yes indeed teaming a pyroprocessing plant up with local NPPs to immediately consume that MOX fuel is a good plan. That was the original idea of the Integral Fast Reactor program, until it was cancelled by Climate Czar and Climate Hypocrite John Kerry.
USA alone has 100,000 tonnes of 5% used fuel and 900,000 tonnes of depleted uranium. Each tonne of spent fuel contains about 12 kg of higher actinides, including plutonium, perfectly good for starting uranium breeders too., Activists insist an all-electric USA would have appetite for 1,700 GWe. Fissioning one tonne of heavy metal produces about 1 GWe-yr of electricity, so one million tonnes of heavy metal would last for more than 500 years, without mining, milling, refining, enriching, or importing one new gram of uranium. Thorium is four times more abundant than uranium, but the breeding rate for non-fissionable Th-232 to fissionable U-233 is only 1% per year, while uranium breeders produce fissionable transuranics at the rate of 5% per year. Thorium can wait.
Two of the not-hot fission products, rhodium and palladium, are extremely valuable -- up to $500 per gram. Why bury them?
The neutronics of thermal thorium breeders are better than for uranium. So some companies want to use a portion of thorium in their fuel mix. i.e.
CANDU ANEEL fuel, HALUE/Thorium mix:
https://cleancore.energy/technology
Thorium Molten-Salt Reactor, Copenhagen Atomics Onion Core - Thomas Jam Pederson @ TEAC12
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QqxvBAJn_vc
https://thorconpower.com/faqs/
"ThorCon is a hybrid thorium/uranium liquid fuel fission power plant. "
And of course India has plans to switch to all Thorium based fuel, using LSFRs & PHWRs, mainly due to the idiotic fuel boycotts it gets from the Energy Hegemonists trying to kneecap India's domestic Nuclear power industry.
Dr. Yoon Il Chang, now-retired acting director of Argonne National Laboratory, deputy chief engineer for EBR-II, and author with Charles E. Till of "Plentiful Energy: The IFR Story," confirmed the relative breeding rates for uranium and thorium, when I asked him whether the late George Stanford's statement to me that uranium-238 breeds plutonium-239 at the rate of 5% more per year more than the consumed fissionables, while Th-232 breeds U-233 at the rate of 1% more per year then the consumed fissionables. USA has a million tonnes of present or future fuel in the form of 5%-used "spent" fuel and depleted uranium -- enough to power an all-electric all-nuclear economy for more than 500 years.
USA has about 900 tonnes of fissionables in spent fuel, and about 225 tonnes in decommissioned weapons. This could start 110-140 GWe of capacity, depending upon reactor size (big reactors need less per watt). If that new fleet could be simultaneously built in, say, twenty years, to go with our existing 90 GWe nuclear capapcity, sufficient capacity could be built to power an all-nuclear all-electric 1,700 GWe American economy starting from our existing inventory of fissionables (spent fuel plus decommissioned weapons) with uranium reactors breeding plutonium at 105% (14 year doubling time), 1,700 GWe capacity could be in place in about sixty years without mining, milling, refining, enriching, or importing one gram of new uranium. Then it would take about 500 years to destroy existing stocks of spent fuel plus depleted uranium.
For USA, thorium can wait.
India has enormous thorium deposits, and not much spent fuel or depleted uranium. Thorium instead of uranium makes more sense for them than for USA.
I believe it's more complicated than that. I've read about it somewhere but I can't recall. There is something about Thorium in a thermal breeder that will work whereas a similar Uranium design won't work. Watch the Copenhagen Atomics videos, maybe they explain it in there. They have no need to use thorium, but they are because it is necessary to make their reactor work properly. Similarly for the ANEEL CANDU fuel, some reason they are using Thorium/HALEU fuel, again I can't recall what that is. I don't think they have some religious cause to burn thorium rather than uranium, as you are right, there is plenty of uranium at present, no need to use thorium.
One added factor is the U-233 that is extracted from the molten salt is contaminated with U-232 making it unsuitable for weapons, which could be a significant issue.
And the Thorium fuel isotope mix is much more valuable. Much more Pu-238 than Pu-239/240. The Pu-238 is an extremely valuable isotope. Short supply forced NASA to use inferior solar power on the upcoming Europa mission. The EU's Rosetta comet lander failed because it landed in a shaded area that could not supply its solar power. They couldn't source Pu-238 for a thermoelectric generator. Which also warms the instruments.
In fact an engineer working on a new thorium MSR remarked that they expect to make a substantial profit selling isotopes.
Spot on. The symbolism is most important. From a pariah to a rescue mission from an inadequate substitute. A powerful symbol for future developments.