If you haven't already seen it

http://www.engadget.com/2010/02/22/the-bloom-box-a-power-plant-for-the-home-video/

Side note, I almost couldn't finish the video with that idiot old hag doing the interview. Good riddance to the old media.

Wow, a full-length commercial in there? Weak sauce! And did she say "bazillions"?! WTF?!!! Also, the whole "solar" cutaway in this video was bullshit. You can't just "use solar," there's more to it.

So what we've got here is a more efficient fuel cell that is cheaper than what's available now? Awesome! It's cool that he's got a hit product and was able to raise a shitload of money for it too. I wonder what the emissions are here... most fuel cells produce CO2. Maybe that's why they all seem to be installed outside. And that old bitch seemed pretty insistent that these would be installed in basements... maybe she thinks she can breath CO2?!

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no fat chicks

Quote by skeezer65134

Wow, a full-length commercial in there? Weak sauce! And did she say "bazillions"?! WTF?!!! Also, the whole "solar" cutaway in this video was bullshit. You can't just "use solar," there's more to it. So what we've got here is a more efficient fuel cell that is cheaper than what's available now? Awesome! It's cool that he's got a hit product and was able to raise a shitload of money for it too. I wonder what the emissions are here... most fuel cells produce CO2. Maybe that's why they all seem to be installed outside. And that old bitch seemed pretty insistent that these would be installed in basements... maybe she thinks she can breath CO2?!

Yeah, the interview was pretty terrible to anyone with a brain. Then again its 60 minutes, so their audience probably thought it was great.

Considering they already have some units installed, that's a pretty big step for fuel cells beyond anything I've heard. If they're getting this to work with cheaper materials, this could be for real. Most homes are plumbed for natural gas, and we've got a lot of it in North America. I've always believed the future of power generation is distributed sources, maybe even down to the level of your own basement. The biggest problem with electricity now is the grid, its inefficient, its fragile, and its expensive.

Also, there is no future in electric cars unless there is a big breakthrough in power generation and distribution. (and a breakthrough in battery tech, but thats a whole other thing)

I read a good article somewhere (I'll look for it) recently about nuclear power research outside the US. It seemed more promising than fuel cells. India and China were leading it because their demand requires it. (The US isn't because of the damn hippies) Much smaller nuclear plants that could be located easily on a city block, much less waste, no huge water use. You could basically just mass produce these reactors and drop them where ever you wanted.

I'll half agree with the liberals on one thing, energy will be the next huge technological revolution, and the US needs to be the leader. And that doesn't mean subsidizing worthless "green" energy like wind and solar and mandating obnoxious light bulbs. If you can significantly drop the price of electricity (too cheap to meter), that will enable huge advancements in everything from computing to manufacturing to transportation and really raise the standard of living. We need to stop figuring out how to conserve energy and start generating more of it more cheaply.

This is the article

http://www.wired.com/magazine/2009/12/ff_new_nukes/all/1

Quote by stevo

We need to stop figuring out how to conserve energy and start generating more of it more cheaply.

Probably going to take some amount of conservation until we figure out cheaper production, but yeah, you're right. I know there was a company (and I'm thinking it was Toyota, but that may be wrong) that was looking to install small nuclear reactors in every home. The thing I don't particularly care for with this tech is that it still leaves us dependent on fossil fuels. Granted, it's a source we have a lot of and the infrastructure is already there and it would be a huge step forward in the short term, but it's still finite. The thing I really liked about this tech (assuming it's not the greatest hoax ever) was that it was not only more efficient, but that it didn't NEED "natural gas" to work. I liked the idea of powering it from gas collected at dumps; we've got no shortage of trash after all and it could potentially be a great source of added revenue for cities that still operate their own dumps.

I also agree that power should be brought to the home instead of having a central producer, assuming, of course, that it's affordable for people to generate their own power. The problem with solar and wind and everything else is that, right now, it's not feasible for people to install them themselves due to the costs involved. If the installation was at least cheap, the efficiency wouldn't matter much though; ie. if current solar cells, with their 15% efficiency or whatever it is, were like $10 for a 4'x2' panel, they'd be everywhere and we wouldn't really have a power problem. I think it's improper to rule out any one tech just because it's what the hippies like, but it's absolutely proper to rule it out because it doesn't make sense (currently, that includes damn near every move so far, from solar to wind to ethanol... though I think there's promise in bio-diesel).

I think at the very least we should be getting every neighborhood or even every block run independently. For example, if we were buying our power on the cheap from the local Walmart, grocery store or whatever happened to be the closest source on our block (even just a large building from a company ONLY selling power), that would be a huge step forward (and would drive prices way the fuck down given all the competing suppliers).

EDIT: I was right, it WAS Toyota! Let's just hope they sort out their car problems before pushing something like this into production though, heh.

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O my God did you say nuclear are you crazy? It will kill us all just like Three Mile Island. Millions are dead and many years of 15 fingered children. I hate how people say nuclear is so really bad for us. Trust me I feel sorry for every in Oak Creek that has been inhaling coal ash all there lives. But you have lights on like 95% of all your street it makes up for it some how. I would love to live next to a nuclear plant more then I would like to live next to a coal plant which is only five miles from my house as the ash flies.

Give me some numbers on this BB! How many kWh's per therm of NG do you get? So WE Energies cost us about $.91 per therm and about $.12 per kWh so the CEO at Ebay says it saved $100,000 in electric costs so far. How much did cost for the gas? I know they are using land fill gas but what if it was NG how much would it cost. "Yes we saved $100,000 in are electric but are gas cost went up $95,000." I love how he compared it to the solar panels on the roof. "It makes five times more energy then the solar panels." Again really the BB are running 24/7 and the panels are only running when it sunny and this guy is a CEO?

Yes this would be great to use the BB's at every land fill instead of seeing those huge flames burning wasting energy heating the planet but putting one in every home? Again going back to the numbers NG vs kWh output cost.

Sorry I dont think I have ever seen "60 minutes" in my life but its really really bad. When he was explaining the gases they can use and he says NG, landfill, and bio and she said solar? Really? Solar Gas? Is that what the Nuclear Sun gives off solar gas?

I am up on the air on this unit I agree with stevo "We need to stop figuring out how to conserve energy and start generating more of it more cheaply." No matter how many times you tell people to turn the lights off there are still going to leave them on. If this is one of those new more efficient ways to use fossil fuels then more power to them.

I do believe some day we all will make are power from home but till that day I am all for green power like wind, solar, hydro and the likes but also for more efficient ways to use fossil fuel and right now that should be what we should look at.

PS I am not a "Global Warming crazy person" like Al Gore I am just a really really big winter guy and love the cold so anything I can do to stop "Global Warming" I am all for. Sorry their has to be at least one crazy person that likes winter out there and that me. As Phil says "Six more weeks of winter" bring it on!!!

PS PS This came from a NASA project just a FYI. For all you NASA haters out there.

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STS-128 RTFM!!!

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For all you NASA haters out there.

Who hates NASA? NASA's cool.

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Do it for the Lobster

Quote by Chops

Quote For all you NASA haters out there. Who hates NASA? NASA's cool.

Yeah, NASA does some amazing research! Now, actually launching things into space... they're a bit lacking. But that's another story.

Quote by drail

Sorry I dont think I have ever seen "60 minutes" in my life but its really really bad. When he was explaining the gases they can use and he says NG, landfill, and bio and she said solar? Really? Solar Gas? Is that what the Nuclear Sun gives off solar gas?

Heh, nice. I didn't even realize that was the point that she said solar... what a stupid fucking cunt. Ugh.... America .

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Quote by Chops

Quote For all you NASA haters out there. Who hates NASA? NASA's cool.

Sorry probably the wrong group of people to say that to. Their are a few people that I know that think NASA is a huge way of tax pays money. "At $17.7 Billion a year its a waste." And my first come back is oh and $60 Billion a year Medicare Fraud is not! After that I email them all the things NASA made or got people thinking about like this BB.

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Sorry probably the wrong group of people to say that to. Their are a few people that I know that think NASA is a huge way of tax pays money. "At $17.7 Billion a year its a waste." And my first come back is oh and $60 Billion a year Medicare Fraud is not! After that I email them all the things NASA made or got people thinking about like this BB.

We're getting a little off-topic, but I think NASA should be as much a government program as healthcare - which is to say "not at all". But as far as government programs go, I find NASA one of the least offensive, and not nearly the same financial blackhole as healthcare and it's variants. But like I said, that's getting way off topic.

NASA as an exploration organization is cool by me.

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Do it for the Lobster

BTW, if you haven't heard, you don't have to do anything to stop global warming because it's not happening.

Global warming is a bit of a misnomer. It's hard to argue that there's hasn't been a lot of change happening, especially very recently. Just take a look at the records tied or broken in the last year or so in the US alone.



I think it's wrong to blame any *one* thing for any change that may be occurring though. And you probably saw this coming, but I also believe it's wrong to trust politicians on this matter, or any others really .

The trend is interesting though. For example, look at the precipitation records; most of them seem to be isolated in the south-eastern states. Wisconsin has seen some record precipitation this year though, as I'm sure you're all painfully aware of up there...

Chops is right though, the topic is spiraling out of control pretty quickly here...

EDIT: I just realized I don't think I commented on the wired article you linked to stevo. Interesting read, especially if you make it down in to the comments. Thanks for posting it. The idea of a reactor design that will actually stop itself if it begins spiraling out of control sounds pretty appealing to me. It doesn't seem too clear about the potential for weapon's grade waste though reading through the comments. That seems to be the biggest opponent Thorium reactors face though; some people think it produces pure weapon's grace waste, others think the waste produced is too dirty and wouldn't be feasible to refine.

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no fat chicks

Quote by skeezer65134

EDIT: I just realized I don't think I commented on the wired article you linked to stevo. Interesting read, especially if you make it down in to the comments. Thanks for posting it. The idea of a reactor design that will actually stop itself if it begins spiraling out of control sounds pretty appealing to me. It doesn't seem too clear about the potential for weapon's grade waste though reading through the comments. That seems to be the biggest opponent Thorium reactors face though; some people think it produces pure weapon's grace waste, others think the waste produced is too dirty and wouldn't be feasible to refine.

I think the key was the Thorium waste was so much less than using uranium, it would be much easier to safely transport and store. The fact that the feds chose to build uranium reactors after the war *because* the waste could be refined for weapons tells me the Thorium would be safer.

Quote by stevo

I think the key was the Thorium waste was so much less than using uranium, it would be much easier to safely transport and store. The fact that the feds chose to build uranium reactors after the war *because* the waste could be refined for weapons tells me the Thorium would be safer.

Yeah, and that was the counter-argument from the pro-Thorium guys; that yes you CAN get weapon's grade waste from the plants, but it wouldn't be cost-effective to do so since there are far better sources to score it from.

My thinking is that the Uranium argument makes sense, but I suspect there's more to it. In other words, I suspect there's more that has to happen to actually make use of that waste, otherwise officials would have fought like hell to stop other countries from building the plants. But you're right, the waste produced by the Thorium plants IS supposed to be both less in quantity and less in terms of radioactivity and half-life.

Read the first few comments on the article though, it's pretty interesting to see the arguments on both sides. I'm still of the mindset that Throium reactors are probably far cheaperto operate than Uranium is. But that don't mean shit if nobody's got the capital to build them, or the power to say "fuck you" to the hippies stopping them from building them in the first place. Maybe once India and China is running off them we'll be allowed to do some research in the states... in fact, we can probably just buy them from China straight up. It is, after all, the American way. Sigh.

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news update about the Toshiba mini nuclear reactors

Apparently Bill Gates owns a company TerraPower based in Washington that is partnering with Toshiba

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20100323/ts_afp/japannuclearusgatescompanytoshiba_20100323053821

All the billions the feds spend on energy research and the next-gen of power generation could come from Bill Gates' personal wealth?? That'd be quite an accomplishment.