Comments by "David Elliott" (@davidelliott5843) on "Undecided with Matt Ferrell" channel.

  1. Recycling solar panels should be easy. The silicon is cheap. But the trace elements and rare earths are a higher concentration than virgin mined materials.
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  2. North facing roofs would be installed with normal shingles/slates. South facing with solar slates. They might look different from your personal drone but you can never see both sides from the ground so would anyone care?
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  3. Why is new nuclear ignored? We have technology which can use the irradiated waste fuel to feed their reactors. They solve the long term storage issue and they get 20x as much power per kg of fuel as the original plants were able to take. The resultant waste has a short half life. These plants are intrinsically safe so why don’t we have them?
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  4. The Moltex fast reactor is fuelled by tubes containing the fissile materials as salts diluted by chloride (common salt). It’s cooled with the same salt species minus the fuel. There is no molten metal, no moderator and no pressure in the core. They are fuelled by the nuclear waste we otherwise struggle to deal with. The issues are entirely regulatory. USA regs are built for PWR. Anything else literally can’t tick the boxes so can’t get certified. U.K. regs are deliberately opaque and slow so nothing gets done. Canada is working with Moltex hoping to be on the grid by 2030. It will be fuelled with fuel waste taken from a nearby CANDU plant. There is a long list of reasons why this system should be encouraged but (as ever) nobody wants to talk about nuclear.
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  5. It’s such a shame that nuclear technologies are ignored. Yes the existing plant is big, expensive and needs costly active systems to keep it safe. We now have fully engineered designs ready to go. The hold up is the incredibly slow regulatory system. I’m thinking about Moltex and Elysium who have waste burning plants that use up the stored waste nuclear fuel we have at every existing plant. They are not even expensive. Removing the stuff that can potentially overheat or leak or explode pushes down the cost. Moltex has already been costed below the price of a gas fired plant. Fuel costs are negative because they are taking away high level nuclear waste.
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  6. What happens when you capture too much carbon? Will it send us into the next ice age? The only viable carbon capture plant pumped the gas into an oil well specifically so they could get MORE OIL out of the well. When the oil pice tanked they stopped capturing CO2. Molten salt nuclear fuelled by stored used fuel is the way forward. Zero CO2 at source. Equally important, it burns down the high level nuclear waste. The stuff with a 30,000 year half life ends up at just 30 years. In the process it extracts 24 times more power than the original PWR extracted. When the regulatory process allows these will be cheap enough to put coal out of business and will eat into the market for methane gas.
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  7. Sewerage treatment works in UK already use anaerobic digesters as part of the treatment process. The gas generated gets used in the plant to power generators and heaters. The resultant sludge is sterilised and used as land fertiliser.
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  8. The British company Moltex Energy are building a new plant in New Bruswick Canada. it is a fast spectrum reactor that will burn the waste fuel from a legacy nuke power plant next door. It will extract the 96% energy left unused by the old reactor and reduce the 1/2 life from 30,000 years to 30 years. It will naturally follow the load demand so is ideal for supporting renewable generators which have a variable output. They use a simple chemical process to make their fuel salt from irradiated waste fuel pellets. The fuel salt is contained in zirconium plated stainless steel tubes. The fuel tubes are vented to allow gasses like Xenon to escape and sit in a bath of the same species of salt. Byproducts like Iodine 131 and Caesium 137 will themselves form salts so can never escape as dangerous gases. There are no pumps moving radioactive salt. Heat is transferred to the heat exchangers by convection. There is no pressure inside the reactor core. A third salt takes the heat away to power generators. Corrosion is controlled by keeping the salt reducing. Heat exchanger plating is prevented by keeping the fuel in 10mm fuel rods. The reactor tank is molten salt for transferring heat. There is no salt plug and dump tank but there is also no fuel salt pump. These are all huge regulatory issues, so Moltex thought the best component is no component at all. The reactor is intrinsically safe, because it has a highly negative thermal power coefficient. If the operating temperature rises slightly, the power generated falls. It naturally follows the load demand. It can potentially sit with settings at full power (control rods pulled out) AND the cooling circuits disconnected with zero hazard. Truly walk away safe to the extent that boron control rods are only there to keep the regulators happy. The burnt Moltex fuel will have a 1/2 life of 30 years against 30,000 years for the old legacy fuel stuff. Also there is no carbon core to need replacing. That's another source of waste it wont have. Moltex have designs for new uranium fuel and even a thorium breeder. The issues are are not technical just that regulatory approval takes many years. The first version is the easiest to get approved and should be on line by 2028.
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  9. Cobalt is used to reduce battery cell volatility. Iron based cells do not have this problem. They are a little less energy dense but can be used 0% to 100% without degradation. More dense LFPs would be low cost yet maintain their low environmental impact.
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  10. Batteries have a flat line discharge curve with rapid drop-off at the end. Capacitors have a straight line curve. From 100% to 0% over time. The bulk of capacitor energy is stuck in the bottom few percent.
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  11. Vacuum tubes have always had the problem of leaks. Supersonic speeds inside a tube have the further problem of uneven tracks and tube linings. Any bumps in the rail would be a serious problem.
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  12. Nuclear power has killed less than 100 people since 1954 when the industry began. That’s almost entirely down to Chernobyl. Three Mile Island and Fukushima killed nobody.
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  13. Large scale PWR reactors are really not big. But the concrete screening and containment is huge. Additionally there are huge costs for the active safety systems.
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  14. Check out Ed Pheil Elysium. He wants to use the dangerous high level nuke waste in a new type of reactor. The waste will be dangerous for 30,000 years but his plant makes power and uses up 99% of the waste dangerous elements. All done with no more mining and zero CO2.
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  15. Drop “Cyber” Tesla Truck is all it needs. The design has echos of the William Towns Hustler Huntsman and Highlander from 1980s. They were a steel space frame with large sliding glass doors and simple Infill panels.
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  16. People have died in house fires because their windows were all unbreakable. Vehicles need the side windows to be breakable. Otherwise how do emergency services extract accident victims? I can see the point for curved truck screens. However flat laminated glass is cheap and easily replaced. Really why would we want something silly money expensive when replacement is cheap?
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  17. Please do a video about the work by Ed Pheil and Ian Scott. They show that nuclear is not only the least costly it’s also the safest. Even better they will be using the existing high level waste as fuel.
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  18. In around 10 years time, Tesla cars with 500,000 mile batteries won’t be even 1/2 used but still have another 10 to 20 years useful life. That’s yet more market share that’s locked away from Big Auto.
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  19. The mains water supply is usually pressurised by pumps it’s therefore not free energy. Flowing water in streams and small rivers could be used to generate power. The Teign and Dart in Devon U.K. do have some Archimedes screw generators but the main flow is allowed to run so as to don’t damage the river. That said, U.K. has numerous small mills which just let the water flow by. A small turbine with flood bypass could easily be installed. Sadly they are almost always ignored.
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  20. Rectangular solar panels look horrible. Sorry but they just do. Not as bad as wind turbines but horrible all the same. Hopefully, solar tiles/slates/shingles can be made reliable. In UK we use tiles or slates, which are laid on pressure treated battens over a tough sarking felt. Slates are stone shingles about 16" long x 8" wide giving a 6" cover per course. Solar slates would need a connection at every slate with the solar area on the bottom half only. I can see how they could ever compete even with the most expensive natural state tiles (which already cost HOW MUCH!!!).
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  21. If Tesla battery day offers less than perfection there will be huge disappointment. It’s been way over hyped.
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  22. We also have much cheaper and much safer ways to use nuclear fission. These have been ignored but companies like Moltex and Thorcon are proving it can be done. Moltex is building a plant that will be fuelled with nuclear waste at a cost cheaper than natural gas. Grid connection expected before 2030. The designs are proven. The delays are purely regulatory.
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  23. The issue is cost per megawatt. If solar and wind power were not so expensive and intermittent there would be no market for battery or liquid air backup.
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  24. Unfortunately thorium, needs metal alloys that have no nuclear approval. That will take endless time. It also uses graphite that has to be replaced every 5 to 10 years becoming a significant nuclear waste issue. Then there’s the tritium created from the lithium fluoride salts. Technically no big deal. but gaining regulatory approval for all that has and is stopping it dead. Moltex and Elysium have fast spectrum reactors using chloride salts. All the advantages discussed. But - No special metals. No tritium issues. No carbon core to dispose and no military grade material ever. They burn nuclear waste and even depleted uranium. The fuel salt denatures the fuel so it can’t be used for bombs. They are far more likely to get approval so more likely to happen.
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  25. The problem with fuels like biodiesel is the impact of the crops displacing food crops. Europe hig the buffers on this. However, Jimmy Carter (who gets a bad rap) actually set up the aquatic species (biofuels) project. They used ponds containing brackish water to grow diatomic algae. These can be up to 50% fat so very high energy and the other 50% is used for everything from food to animal feed. The ponds were built on desert land using salty water so had no impact on agriculture. The hard part was managing production at an even slightly reasonable cost.
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  26. ATVs are deadly dangerous small accidents can kill you. Bikes are actually less dangerous. The leaning trikes that merge bikes and ATV are the best of all. Steer like a bike but stability and road holding of a car.
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  27. The one that costs £500 to fill the tank?
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  28. Passengers using a glorified hamster tube will feel no significant difference to what they had inside the people tubes we call airliners.
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  29. Gasoline mowers are more hassle but the cost and environmental issues are trivial. The best mower I had was a Two stroke Flymo Contractor. It was noisy but amazingly reliable. Petrol oil mix two pulls and WAAA it was going.
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  30. UK sewerage treatment plants have used anaerobic digestion for decades. The energy generated runs the plant and provides heat where needed. Newer designs are more efficient but the process is the same.
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  31. The British company Moltex has a fast spectrum (no graphite) molten salt reactor that burns high level nuclear waste. The original PWR and gas cooled reactors use just 4% of the fissile energy. Moltex reactors will burn down the remaining 96%. The resultant waste has a 1/2 life of 30 years against 30,000 years. Molten salts are self regulating they literally deliver only the power demanded by the load. They can’t overheat and can’t melt down. What’s not to like?
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  32. Excellent stuff really interesting thanks. Do have a look at what Ian Scott and Moltex are doing with super safe low cost nuclear power. They have molten salt thermal storage (as used in solar thermal power plants) to give peak loads of 3000MW from a continuously running 1000MW reactor. The reactor itself is much lower cost because the functional hazards of “normal” nuke operation have been designed out.
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  33. Molten salt nuclear operates at temperatures high enough to make ammonia without cracking natural gas. The core neutron flux within the reactor can crack water**. The high temperature can be used to create ammonia. Nuclear is already the safest energy system we have. However molten salt reactors are orders of magnitude safer and cheaper than PWR. MSRs don’t have intrinsic hazards (steam, hydrogen bubbles, forced cooling, etc) of PWR. MSRs fully burn the nuclear fuel leaving literally 1/1000 as much waste.
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  34. The Tesla self driving system needs a map to find its way. But it does not need 3D maps of everywhere it goes. The cameras and neural net keep the cars safe and going the right way.
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  35. Mercedes has never been an innovator. Solid build and at the top ends luxurious but ground breaking?
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  36. Those short close spaced panels at 15:28 will be a real struggle to maintain. Try walking between them without falling over.
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  37. How about fixing them to south facing walls? My house in UK has the roof ridge running north south with a shallow pitch. Roof is pretty useless for PV.
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  38. Nuclear fusion makes huge amounts of gamma rays. That will create tons of nuclear waste it’s also so difficult to contain the high pressures that there is no useful power remaining after the plant has fed its own needs. It’s nothing more than a means to extract government research money.
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  39. Messing about with tides and waves has unexpected effects. For example beaches don’t get rebuilt by the tides after storms wash them away.
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  40. Don’t forget human nature. A car that shares power with the grid will never be fully charged. That’s fine around town because it will be topped up (or taken by the grid) at every car park. Out of town, people will want to keep their range so are likely to switch off grid sharing. Even if they don’t need it they won’t be so happy to share. Incentives will be needed.
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  41. Plastics are made from oil. The most reliable way to recycle the stuff is to burn it and use the heat to make power. OMG what about the pollution? There would be none. All fuels need the appropriate boiler and shredded plastic is not different. It’s also very low carbon because the oil has already been used once so it’s us as fuel is displacing new fuel that would otherwise be needed.
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  42. The William Towns Hustler project of 1980s used a steel frame infilled with glass and fibreglass panels. The six wheel Highlander was an MPV but could have been a truck or van. Definitely from the same DNA.
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  43. Form over function. When the panels get dinked (as they will) it will just add to the rugged look.
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  44. It’s 21st Century design of form after function, against a current market of mid 20th Century designs that never seem to change. The looks and un breakable body put it into an entirely different category. The tough structure means depreciation should be low. Surface marks of normal use should add to its value. Suddenly every other truck is old hat.
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  45. It would make sense to have a solar radiometer to record actual sunshine day by day. This would give you a more accurate measure of panel performance.
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  46. Tesla’s use nickel-cobalt-aluminum (NCA). Great for cars but the alleged disadvantages of LiFePO4 (LFP) do not apply for static batteries. The big benefit is that LFP do not contain any cobalt or nickel.
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  47. James Dyson of UK put £2.5 Billion into an electric car. Soon after the Model 3 ramped up he cancelled the project. The two events must be related.
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  48. This morning the BBC local radio was going on about grit power shortages and range anxiety. Both are items at least 5 years out of date. However There are few electric car chargers where I live. Is this a connection (or not! I wonder. They followed that with David Attenborough saying Australia proves climate change is real.
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  49. Why are fusion engineers using a toriod shape chamber? If must be a nightmare to keep cool. How are we going to get enough tritium? It’s in seawater but at incredibly dilute ratios. Why do we insist on using fission reactors with a solid fuel and a pressurised core? That design works when you need irradiated fuel to build a nuclear bomb. It’s a curse when all you want is heat. It’s that curse which caused all of the accidents we have had to date. Alvin Weinburg designer of pressurised water reactors always said they were unsafe for scaling up. The accidents and ridiculous costs to mitigate the risks proved him right. Weinberg also invented the molten salt nuclear reactor. It has a core at atmospheric pressure, does not need powered emergency cooling and produces almost no radioactive waste. Proponents of fusion conveniently forget that fusion releases ionising radiation so it will also create some radioactive waste.
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  50.  @Muonium1  how do they solve the energy demands of simply keeping the plasma contained? In short they can’t and when the supercooled magnets shut down the whole thing has to stop.
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