A fly in the nuclear ointment

As I posted the other day the new policy on about Obama wanting to take all the weapons grade nuclear material thereby taking it out of the hands of terrorists. This would be a great and admirable undertaking had it not been for a couple of things. You will note the pretty mountain photo above. That would be Yucca mountain about 90 miles from Las Vegas. This was the designated place where we were going to store all these nasties. Locations were studied and in 1987 this was the chosen location. Twenty one years and $9 billion later Yucca is at present off the table or maybe just in limbo. First it was Nevadans who had fought the project from the get go saying that since there were no nuclear plants in their state why should they be the dumping ground. What they failed to remember was that Yucca mountain is located right near the place where there were some 900 atomic tests in the 40s and 50s. Obama announced last year that Yucca would not be used and with Harry Reid the Nevada senator having fought against the project as well all is stopped. Or is it? Two things have happened since. First Obama gave his recent speech about wanting the worlds' weapons grade nuclear waste which is something of a puzzle when you stop to consider that we have no repository now. There was no back up plan to Yucca that I can find. The other issue is that Washington state was wanting a permanent place to store its' weapons grade waste Hanford where they made the material in the 40s was never set up for permanent storage and is so contaminated it will take billions more just to contain what's there, so they are suing the feds. And now South Carolina with its' Savannah River nuclear weapons complex is also suing because they had the same idea.
There are at present some 107 nuclear plants around the country with waste. They are at present storing that waste on site in large heavily reinforced casks.
There have been many delays including the studies and final method of transporting the waste safely from all over the country by rail and truck. They don't expect that Yucca can be operational until 2020 and to top that off we have no reprocessing facility. With all this money spent you question whether it's prudent to stop and change the whole method of energy production or continue with this very expensive proposition. Remember this stuff has to be stored safely for one million years. Now you understand why I'm against nuclear power.

This shows promise

This is a bloombox. No not a boombox. Those went out in the 90s. The bloombox is new type of fuel cell capable of providing all the power for your home. I had looked up fuel cells some years ago when they were in development. I thought they might have had promise until I got to see one in action at a fair from Ballard power systems. The 1000 watt unit at a price of $5000 would not fit the bill for most homeowners. The fact that they run on hydrogen didn't help either. You can't run down to your local hardware store for a tank.
The bloombox runs on natural gas and as a plus produces hydrogen as a byproduct. It can also be run on other gases like methane another plus. Now if they can collect the hydrogen and run that through another fuel cell the byproduct of that is water. So without burning any fuels you get electricity to power your home or car and you could get water. As an added bonus this would decentralize our power grid. Units could be installed at substations eliminating the need for more ugly and dangerous high power transmission lines. They believe they can get the price down to $3000.

More info: Bloombox

Keeping out the...cold?

As I mentioned before I took a weatherization course and thought I'd share some of the gray matter goodness. I know it's almost 60 degrees here so now is a good time to do these jobs.
There's so many things a homeowner can do to cut heating and energy usage. You may have heard of a lot of them in public service announcements from your electric or gas company but there is so much more that can be done that with not much money can save you a ton of money. And who doesn't like to save money in this economy. Okay I know the only one using less energy than Billy is a hermit living in a cave so he doesn't count. But for the rest of us it's a different story.

Windows and doors - These are one of the biggest sources of heat loss. A 1/4 inch gap around a window or door is like having a four inch square hole in the wall leaking your heat and money to heat the city where you live. With a $4 tube of caulk you can easily do two or three windows with some left over. If the gap is larger use spray foam first then caulk over it. A can of foam is about $5 most places. And a good piece of advice is to have all the areas you plan to foam ready for foam before you start. Foam will harden in the tube after a certain time and they don't sell extra tubes. There's also the areas under the sink where the pipes go through the wall that usually aren't sealed. The pipe behind the washer or any pipe that goes through a wall to the outside.
Then there's the question of which caulk to use. Simple - do you plan to paint over where you just caulked? Yes - laytex or painters caulk is what you want. No - silicone which will not accept paint.
The trick to using caulk is to cut the tube end at a 45 degree angle, draw the gun towards you in a smooth even pace. Using a cup of warm water wet your finger and smooth out the caulk working it into the gap. Wipe off any excess on a rag. Oh and don't seal the small slots at the bottom of the frame. They're weep holes to let condensation escape.
With foam there are two basic types - open cell and closed cell. Open cell foam comes in those spray cans with the tube. You shake well and spray. Yes there are light medium and heavy types in the spray can and some non expanding (which is used around windows because it doesn't expand causing the window frame to warp). Closed cell foams come in two tank units that flow through long hoses and mix at the tip. They're used for large jobs. Closed cell foams are also better insulators because no air gets through the material after it has set. The draw backs with closed cell is that they are expensive and must be used up in six months. A unit can cost $150 or more so unless you have large areas they're not worth the price.
So that's today's installment on saving money tips of weatherization. More later.

What to do now?

I could get my supervisors card in about two weeks and then go for an auditor course the month after but I really need to get back to work. I'm sure Billy (BBC) likes those monthly checks we provide him from Social Security. Plus I'll have taxes coming up in April. Nothing like trying to squeeze blood out of a turnip.

Now for some energy tips:
1. Change your incandesant bulbs with CFLs you'll cut your lighting costs by 2/3rds.
2. Change your shower heads to low flow. The older low flow heads were bad and didn't work well. New ones can use as little as 1.5 gallons of water per minute saving both water and the energy used to heat it. Note: You may need to increase the temp. of your water heater a bit to compensate for the flow because when the flow is lowered there's a slight heat loss.
3. Put a timer on the water heater. Figure out what time of day you use the most water and set the timer to come on about an hour before then. Water heaters are one of the biggest energy users as they must be on 24/7. Don't forget the maintenance. Drain any sludge from the bottom of the tank once a year and check the pressure release valve. If your tank is old and the fittings are corroded consider replacing it as those maintenance items may not be able to be preformed. This will all be part of the weatherization program and I do think there's a ton of money to be saved.

More later until then keep your drums upright.

Iraq robbery

Sometime in the years after the start of the Iraq war I recall reading the oil agreement that the interm government had drawn up with the U.S.(Yes I read obscure things like that because I like to know the truth.) Entirely written by the U.S. oil companies it was an obscene piece of work. I seem to remember (don't quote me on this) that the deal gave 90% of the money to the oil companies with but 10% going to the Iraqis. And I'm sure the oil companies could have taken most of the 10% with hidden fees and security costs.

The Plan
There was no real plan to rebuild Iraq. Most of that money was stolen anyway. But there sure was a plan to get the oil.
Even two years before the Iraq war started they (oil company execs and advisors) were planning this thing. This was nothing more than a home invasion robbery and a violent one at that. We cut the first line of defense. Had Dad running from the house to hid in a hole then took out his sons one by one so we could strike a deal with any remaining distant family members. For the largest asset the family had, oil. And now that we had the lions' share of the booty we leave the scraps to the rest of the world robbers waiting in the bushes.
So now we have what's left over after Haliburton got finished with the Iraqis The Scraps And the media makes it sound like these countries got most of the oil. Think again.

Solar panels... that work at night?

I thought I'd seen it all but some braniacs over in Idaho have come up with a way to tap infrared energy.

Nightime solar panals

Actually I was thinking about something similar this week. With all the ambient electromagnetic bouncing around would it be possible to capture it for reuse? Think of it as recycled energy. Reason I thought of this is because when I was a kid I had a tiny crystal radio. You powered it by putting two allegator clips on the harp of the nearest lamp hence using the power bleed from the lamp. It only received one station but you didn't need to buy batteries.

New lighting tecnology

Here's the next generation of efficient lighting after the CFLs. They are OLEDs and they look promising.

http://www.komonews.com/news/tech/20564364.html

Wanted to get this out asap as there's a scheduled outage of Eblogger any minute now. More on this later.

John Mcain nuclear genious

John McCain wants us to build 45 nuclear power plants. First off let me say "Hey John you wouldn't mind if we store the spent fuel rods in your backyard would ya?"
A little personnal insight into how these plants are built and later decomissioned. I know personnaly because the company I worked for demoed one just two years ago. First off these plants take massive amounts of materiels to build not to mention labor costs and fuel to transport all that material. The amount of concrete is amazing. They are built so that if a full sized jet liner were to fly into the side of the containment building the aircraft would disintigrate on impact. It takes years to build a plant and hundreds of millions dollars. They have a life span of around 25 years before they must be torn down and rebuilt. Again a process that takes years and runs millions of dollars. So with the construction operating and demolition costs so high they are really not an economic answer to the problem. But don't try telling McCain and his cohorts the truth, they don't want to hear it. If they had their way we'd all be studying about the flat earth being the center of the solar system.

Earth Day

In honor of earth day I've decided to design a new type of light. Consisting of LEDs I'm hoping to get it to work using only 3.5 watts and put out the light of a 75 watt bulb. I know that there are LEDs out there of similar properties but I hope to do it at a cost of under ten dollars. I think I can accomplish this. We'll see if I can get the right parts for this project.

So don't just sit there reading this get motivated and do something for your Mother (Earth that is). Plant a tree or a garden or a solar farm.