[brian eiland]

Did anyone happen to see this story on 60 Minutes this past Sunday?

http://www.mediaite.com/tv/bloom-box...energy-source/


http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?...in;cbsCarousel

They plan on a big coming out party this coming week. This could be extremely exciting, and very far reaching.

[NYCAP123]

Originally Posted by brian eiland

Did anyone happen to see this story on 60 Minutes this past Sunday?

http://www.mediaite.com/tv/bloom-box...energy-source/


http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?...in;cbsCarousel

They plan on a big coming out party this coming week. This could be extremely exciting, and very far reaching.

Amazing if true.

[Grecko]

There's a whole lot more to fuel cells than just the stack. The 60 min article doesn't talk a bit about what else is going on in the box, but the real issue is cost. If they can make a unit that lasts for 20 years for less than $500/kw, then they may have something. Running for 18 months for $750k and they didn't tell you how many KW they were making for that outlay makes me wonder if it is economically viable.

Having been involved in the design of a supercharged fuel cell I can tell you that there are lots of issues, but if you could make an inexpensive, reliable and robust stack you have gone a long way to finding a solution.

The idea of cheap energy is very attractive. Remeber the stock price of Capstone shot up just after they went public to almost $100/share, now the share price is just over $1.00, oh, and they just came back to the well for another $38mill public offering.

Ok, so now these guys are announcing that they have a product in pilot use, but if they had the cost issue under control they would be announcing the product at a reasonable price. Be very careful, VC guys are in it for the quick hit, the've sunk $400m into this and now they are going to want to cash out with a big payday. With a splash on 60 minutes can an IPO be very far off?

[ScotL]

Originally Posted by Grecko

The idea of cheap energy is very attractive. Remeber the stock price of Capstone shot up just after they went public to almost $100/share, now the share price is just over $1.00, oh, and they just came back to the well for another $38mill public offering.

Ok, so now these guys are announcing that they have a product in pilot use, but if they had the cost issue under control they would be announcing the product at a reasonable price. Be very careful, VC guys are in it for the quick hit, the've sunk $400m into this and now they are going to want to cash out with a big payday. With a splash on 60 minutes can an IPO be very far off?

I happen to be a big proponent of nuclear power, however, this could be a much better solution if viable. At least for electricity. But, what about those that use natural gas for heating, cooking, etc? Electricity is not the only problem.

I understand what you are saying about the VC boys too. I also believe they will do anything they can to avoid another Segway debacle on their books.

I guess the big question is, what did 60 minutes NOT tell us?

[NYCAP123]

Originally Posted by ScotL

I happen to be a big proponent of nuclear power, however, this could be a much better solution if viable. At least for electricity. But, what about those that use natural gas for heating, cooking, etc? Electricity is not the only problem.

I understand what you are saying about the VC boys too. I also believe they will do anything they can to avoid another Segway debacle on their books.

I guess the big question is, what did 60 minutes NOT tell us?

Edward R. Morrow rolled in his grave when CBS caved to big tobacco and hasn't stopped. This was puff news. Still it's interesting.

[ScotL]

Originally Posted by NYCAP123

Edward R. Morrow rolled in his grave when CBS caved to big tobacco and hasn't stopped. This was puff news. Still it's interesting.

I couldn't agree more. Interesting indeed.

[catmando]

Originally Posted by ScotL

I happen to be a big proponent of nuclear power, however, this could be a much better solution if viable. At least for electricity. But, what about those that use natural gas for heating, cooking, etc? Electricity is not the only problem.

I understand what you are saying about the VC boys too. I also believe they will do anything they can to avoid another Segway debacle on their books.

I guess the big question is, what did 60 minutes NOT tell us?

Nuclear energy belongs in stars, not on Earth. I break out in cold sweats every time I think about the Comanche Peak plant just southwest of Ft. Worth. If something happens, all 6,000,000 people in the DFW Metroplex would be in danger.

Blowing up a nuclear plant is a terrorist's wet dream.

[ScotL]

Originally Posted by catmando

Nuclear energy belongs in stars, not on Earth. I break out in cold sweats every time I think about the Comanche Peak plant just southwest of Ft. Worth. If something happens, all 6,000,000 people in the DFW Metroplex would be in danger.

Blowing up a nuclear plant is a terrorist's wet dream.

While true, nuclear power has proven to be extremely safe. How many accidents beyond Chernobyl and 3 mile island can you or the average person name. Off hand I can't think of any.

I know of plants that are "dirtier" than others, but nothing that poses a threat to anyone. I worked at a number of nuke plants in the mid nineties after I got out of the service.

terrorists wet dream, yes. It is just not as easy as flying a plane into a cooling tower or other structure.

But, has it happened? Anywhere? All a terrorist would need is a dirty bomb in Manhattan.

[PropBet]

Checking back with this thread, and Bloom in 12 months to see where they are.
It will be interesting to see how this (and other) technology develops. Bloom's however does look quite promising if cost is acceptable to a general marketplace.

[Emerson]

Here is what noted skeptic Dr. Steven Novella has to say about it

Originally Posted by Neurologica

I received numerous e-mails asking me to discuss the Bloom Box after it was featured on 60 Minutes this week. Energy production is a hot topic, which I think explains why this was such a big story. In reality, this is an interesting technology that will likely have useful applications – but it is not the green revolution.

The Bloom Box is essentially a generator – a type of fuel cell that is constructed of a stack of ceramic plates with different (secret) substances painted on either side. You feed fuel and oxygen in one end, and you get electricity out the other end.

I found it amusing how 60 Minutes tried to spin this into something more than it is – it’s a generator. The most likely fuel for the Bloom Box is natural gas, a fossil fuel. Natural gas is still somewhat abundant and cost effective, and there is already a distribution system for it. So in the end this is just another way to burn fossil fuels to generate electricity.

During the interview it was mentioned that you could also feed bio-gas from landfills into the Bloom Box, in which case it would be “carbon neutral.” Well – it is more accurate to say that the fuel source is carbon neutral – not the Bloom Box itself, which depends on whatever fuel you feed into it. It’s like saying a car is carbon neutral if you put biofuel in its tank – true, but this is not a feature of the car itself.

Biogas is a legitimate green technology – using microbes to make methane (primarily) from manure and waste. At present this represents a small fraction of our energy needs, but there is potential for significant expansion.

What I found very odd about the 60 Minutes interview is when Leslie Stahl asked the inventor of Bloom Box if one could feed “solar” energy into the Bloom Box, and he repeated, “solar” – as if confirming her statement, but this was followed by an abrupt edit. I get the sense he said something qualifying after that edit that we did not get to hear – especially since I don’t know what he could be possibly talking about. How can you feed solar energy (in what form?) into a generator that burns natural gas or some equivalent? It seemed like a desperate move to make this technology seem more “green” than it is.

Once again, when dealing with an energy technology, we have to put this into the proper perspective. The technology is not an energy source (so it will not solve our energy problems, as Stahl asked of Colin Powell – for some reason). It is not a means of storing energy. It is simply a means of converting fuel into electricity – in other words it is a generator or power plant.

There are already power plants that burn natural gas to run their generators. So this is nothing new.

The real promise this technology offers is portability, which could allow for small businesses and even homes to generate their electricity locally. This is actually a direction that energy production may be headed in, and it makes a lot of sense.

Back when electricity was first coming into existence as a major utility, the approach was distributed power production, with small local power plants. However, the state of the art in the 19th and early 20th centuries was coal burning (of course, still used today) which produces a great deal of pollution. In order to reduce the pollution in residential areas and big cities, power production was moved to remote locations and the grid was built to distribute electricity.

This system has some inefficiencies and vulnerabilities. Anyone who has lost power is familiar with one – power lines can go down, stations can break down, and then there is no electricity until the problem is fixed, which can take hours to days. There is also energy lost in transmitting electricity through wires over long distance (primarily from resistance) – these losses are estimated at 7.2%. That’s not bad, but still – it’s 7.2%.

Another inefficiency, however, is the heat that is wasted in production. Essentially, we waste heat in producing electricity from a fuel source, then transmit that electricity to a remote location where it is often used to generate heat (primarily in the Winter, but year round for hot water). Local energy production could use waste heat to heat air or water. Newer power plants do recover some of the waste heat to generate more electricity, making the power plant more efficient, but still this is not as efficient as using the heat where it is ultimately needed.

So there are significant advantages to producing electricity on site, and even capturing any waste heat for local use. At present, the Bloom Box costs about $700,000 per unit, which can run a small business like a Starbucks. This is way too expensive for the home. Bloom Box hopes to get the cost of a basic unit below $3,000 over the next 5 years, which seems optimistic, but if they can do it then they might be viable. If such units can produce electricity more cheaply than buying electricity off the grid, then they may become popular.

As always, the details are what will determine the viability of the Bloom Box for the home: how much will they cost up front, what are the maintenance costs, how reliable and safe will they be, how long will it take for a unit to pay for itself with reduced electricity costs? Also – if they produce electricity more cheaply than the grid, can a consumer generate more than they need and sell it to the power company? Be the first on your block to have one of these generators, and make money providing electricity to all your neighbors.

Of course, power companies can buy the current $700k units and place them in neighborhoods to put electricity into the grid and sell to their customers. They could do this rather than build a huge centralized power plant (like the one that just exploded near my house in CT – which was a natural gas power plant). This technology can also be useful for remote areas where it is difficult to get power lines.

The next question is – do we have the supply of natural gas to start using it widely for electricity generation? For those homes that already have a natural gas supply this would be an easier install. Those without would need to first be put on the gas grid.

Also – we need to consider energy loss in the gas grid, which is estimated to be about 1-2%. This is better than the electrical grid (at 7.2%).

Conclusion

This technology is interesting, and it already is being used by large companies for local electricity generation. But it is not a “green revolution” nor a game changer. It is not a new source of energy. It may become an important method to move electricity generation to a more distributed local system, rather than the current centralized and grid distribution system. We need to learn more nitty-gritty details of the technology, and further it needs to be tested more for reliability, safety, and efficiency. We’ll know in 5-10 years, probably, what real role, if any, it will play in our energy future.

[Emerson]

Originally Posted by catmando

Nuclear energy belongs in stars, not on Earth. I break out in cold sweats every time I think about the Comanche Peak plant just southwest of Ft. Worth. If something happens, all 6,000,000 people in the DFW Metroplex would be in danger.

Blowing up a nuclear plant is a terrorist's wet dream.

And Brian Dunning of Skeptoid on nuclear power

Originally Posted by Skeptoid

Let's have a seat at Homer Simpson's control panel, chow down on some donuts, and nap away into oblivion while blinking lights and buzzers warn of impending doom and that glowing green bar of uranium that fell into our trousers. Today we're going to examine the popular notions about nuclear power. Specifically, if xenophobia had not killed nuclear power in the United States in the late 1970's, there's a good chance that we'd have all been driving electric cars for the past 20 years; and uncounted billions of tons of carbon dioxide would never been sucked out of the ground, burned in power plants, and exhausted into our atmosphere.

So let's state the obvious. The immediate reaction to that statement is "OK, that may be true, but look at all the new problems we'd have created with Chernobyl-type disasters and lethal nuclear waste." Fair enough, and important questions, to be sure. Let's start with a quick primer on the various types of nuclear reactors.

So-called Generation I reactors were the early prototypes developed by many nations, and actually placed into production in a few cases. Generation I reactors were characterized by fundamentally unsafe designs, and kludged layers of afterthought safety systems. When most nuclear nations began deploying commercial reactors, they were usually of Generation II design. Generation II reactors were significantly improved, but these changes were primarily evolutionary. Most of the commercial plants in operation in the United States are Generation II designs. A little over ten years ago, Generation III designs began appearing in some of the world's most advanced nuclear nations. Generation III reactors incorporate not only evolutionary improvements, but also revolutionary changes such as fuel cycles that result in much less nuclear waste; reduced capacity for the creation of weapons-grade plutonium; and passive safety designs wherein the reaction cannot be sustained in the event of a problem and the system effectively shuts itself down, by virtue of its basic design. The newest plants being designed for commercial use are called Generation III+, which incorporate all the newest knowledge from operating Generation III designs. If a new reactor was approved and built in the United States today, it would be a Generation III+ design. Even if every plant employee keeled over with a heart attack, neither a Chernobyl nor a Three Mile Island type accident would be possible; the systems are fundamentally redesigned so that the reaction cannot be sustained if things go outside the parameters.

The Idaho National Laboratory is the United States' primary advanced reactor research facility, and they've outlined six new reactor types to be developed for Generation IV. The designs take everything to a new level: Lower cost, safer designs, near-total elimination of nuclear waste, and reduced risk of nuclear weapons proliferation. There are also Generation V reactors in the ether, but these are primarily the domain of late-night rumination sessions at the lab, fueled by tequila and pot.

Then there's fusion power, which is everyone's ultimate goal. Fusion reactors have the profound advantages of using simple tritium or deuterium for fuel, producing no significant waste, and absolute safety since if anything goes even slightly off-kilter, the plasma disappears and you have no reaction. It's the ultimate in cheap, clean, safe, renewable energy, despite gross misunderstandings of the technology expressed by Greenpeace and other factions. The first operational tokamak fusion reactor for research is being built by the international ITER consortium in France and is expected to come online in 2016.

So you can probably guess that Three Mile Island was probably not the newest and safest design, and you'd be right. It was a Generation II design. It was the first and only significant nuclear accident in American history. A broken valve caused coolant to leak into a containment facility designed for that purpose, raising the temperature of the core and causing a partial meltdown. Despite significant confusion on the part of the operators (this being their first experience with an accident), and a somewhat lengthy chain of errors and misunderstandings, everything eventually worked out just as it should. There were no deaths or injuries, and despite 25,000 people living within five miles of the plant, nobody was exposed to any radiation worse than a single chest x-ray. All the studies predict zero cases of future cancer, despite ongoing lawsuits that the courts continue to find to be without merit. With proper perspective, Three Mile Island can (and should) be characterized as a shining example of how well the safety systems work, even in the face of human error and old-fashioned reactor design.

But that's not the way it was perceived. By an unfortunate coincidence, Jane Fonda's movie The China Syndrome about a nuclear accident came out only twelve days before Three Mile Island. The Cold War with Brezhnev was in full force and the words "nuclear accident" were simply too much for a scientifically uninformed public. Three Mile Island became the first nail in the coffin of American nuclear power.

Seven years later in 1986, things got much worse. Chernobyl was suffering from inadequate funding. Much basic maintenance had never been performed. It had only a skeleton crew, nearly all of whom were untrained workers from the local coal mine. The only manager with nuclear plant experience had been a worker installing small reactors on board Soviet submarines. Some genius decided to run a risky test of a type that no experienced nuclear engineer would ever gamble on. The test was to shut down the water pumps, which must run constantly in that type of reactor; and then find out whether the turbines, spinning on their momentum alone, had enough energy to restart and run the pumps during the forty-second delay before the backup diesel generators would kick in. The test was so risky that one faction within the plant deliberately disconnected some backup systems, trying to make the test too dangerous to attempt. The test was run anyway. It didn't work, the pumps couldn't keep up, the graphite core caught fire, the coal miners couldn't find any shovels so they didn't know what to do, and the reactor exploded. If you think I'm exaggerating this, there are extensive resources both online and in print, if you really want the hairy truth. In this short space I'm probably not even giving you ten percent of what a travesty this was — I'm tempted to call it a joke but it's so not funny. For example, they scheduled this right in the middle of a shift change, and the new workers coming in didn't even know what was going on.

Two people died that day, and some 30 to 60 people were dead within three months. Predictions of eventual cancer deaths caused by the radiation run from 1,000 to 4,000. And, of course, the damage to the local environment is extensive and difficult to estimate. The terror of a radiation cloud blowing across Europe was the second nail in the coffin of American nuclear power.

Not only was Chernobyl a monumental failure of the human element, the plant was a Generation I design, specifically an RBMK reactor, which is generally regarded as the least safe reactor type ever built. One design flaw is that the core used combustible graphite, and this distinction is the main reason that Chernobyl-type disasters are not possible in most reactors around the world. Only a very few Generation I designs are still in use, all in the former Soviet Union, and all have been retrofitted with improvements intended to prevent this type of accident. Other nations have long been lobbying for the closure of these reactors, and rightfully so.

How do the dangers of nuclear energy compare to the dangers of fossil fuel energy? A report in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that some 50,000-100,000 Americans die each year from lung cancer caused by particulate air pollution, the biggest cause of which is coal-burning power plants in the midwest and east. Even taking the maximum predicted death toll from Chernobyl, we would need a Chernobyl-sized accident every three weeks to make nuclear power as deadly as coal and oil already is. Shall I repeat that? If the world was filled with Generation I reactors run by feuding coal miners, we would need a worst-case scenario every three weeks just to match the US death toll we've imposed upon ourselves by clinging to our current fossil fuel system. Next time you see a hippie cheering the defeat of nuclear power in the US, realize that a healthy environment and saving lives are clearly not their priorities.

Well, maybe to them it's more about the future of the planet than about saving lives today. Maybe they just don't want to see high-level nuclear waste created that's going to poison the planet for tens of thousands of years. I can see that. But here's the problem with that logic: The plants we're designing now produce less waste than ever. Some on the drawing board produce none at all. We've already created most of the waste that we ever will. It already exists. It's out there. Lobbying against future cleaner plants won't make the existing waste go away. It's out there now in temporary facilities in neighborhoods all across the country, way more vulnerable than it would be in proper permanent storage in Yucca Mountain.

Opponents say that Yucca Mountain is geologically unstable or otherwise too hazardous, so the waste might leak out. Well, trust me: The location of the Yucca Mountain site was one of the most lengthy and expensive decisions the government ever made. What do you think they were doing with all that time and money, picking their noses? Well, it was a government program, so a large part of the time and budget probably was spent on nose mining. Nevertheless, this was one of the most scrutinized decisions ever made. Environmentally speaking it's as good a site as we could hope for. If you're concerned about it, go to a neutral and reliable source and research it personally. From every scrap of reason I can muster, environmentalists should be Yucca Mountain's #1 fans. I can't imagine why they prefer to leave the waste out where it is now, unless they are driven more by ideology than by science. Who would have thought that?

There is a safe and clean solution to our energy crisis, gasoline prices, and global warming. It's the latest generation nuclear reactor.

Bullet point off that one is that we would need a Chernobyl every three weeks to hit our death toll from coal. This considering that Chernobyl was an extremely dangerous reactor type to begin with and most of the world refused to build and run them.

[NYCAP123]

Originally Posted by Emerson

And Brian Dunning of Skeptoid on nuclear power

Bullet point off that one is that we would need a Chernobyl every three weeks to hit our death toll from coal. This considering that Chernobyl was an extremely dangerous reactor type to begin with and most of the world refused to build and run them.

There are two problems I have with nuclear power. First, the waste. We need to find a way to destroy it or render it impotent. Shipping it to someone else's state or country is not the answer because eventually everybody will develop NIMBY (not in my back yard) syndrome. The second thing is honesty. When Shoreham (the death knell to nuclear energy in this country) was being constructed the cost mushroomed completely out of control due to greed and corruption. State a price and a completion date and do it on time and on budget (no excuses and no more money). The real killer came with the evacuation zone though. They said there was a 10 mile evacuation zone needed. When it was pointed out that the evacuation routes off the island were within 7 miles of the plant the geniuses declared that only a 5 mile evacuation zone would be needed. Had they just said at the start that the island would be basically cut in half it could have been dealt with, but they showed they couldn't be believed or trusted.

[ScotL]

Well,, we are going to get at least one more as the U.S. Government just promised 8 billion (8,000,000,000) of our tax dollars to build one in Georgia I believe it is. It will be good for another 1500 jobs in 5 - 10 years.

[AMG]

Originally Posted by ScotL

Well,, we are going to get at least one more as the U.S. Government just promised 8 billion (8,000,000,000) of our tax dollars to build one in Georgia I believe it is. It will be good for another 1500 jobs in 5 - 10 years.

Seems as you are now into nuclear powerstations and not the Bloom Box..?

[NYCAP123]

Originally Posted by ScotL

Well,, we are going to get at least one more as the U.S. Government just promised 8 billion (8,000,000,000) of our tax dollars to build one in Georgia I believe it is. It will be good for another 1500 jobs in 5 - 10 years.

Any bets on that $8B pricetag doubling or more (I believe SHoreham came in about 10x over budget without getting finished).