Interesting overview on leccy plane developments from Air & Space Magazine Aug 2018
https://www.airspacemag.com/flight-today/electricity-in-the-air-180969510/
https://www.airspacemag.com/flight-today/electricity-in-the-air-180969510/
Is Green Aviation Really Coming?
- Thread starter Wicky
- Start date
Weight is such a killer for pure electric planes that I can only see it for very low passenger numbers on short trips. Dual power hybrids might become more practical to enable relative silence over densely occupied areas but conventional power elsewhere.
I'd rather see the effort going into the various forms of high speed trains, far better environmentally, safer and more practical for shifting large numbers of people and urgent perishable freight.
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I'd rather see the effort going into the various forms of high speed trains, far better environmentally, safer and more practical for shifting large numbers of people and urgent perishable freight.
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Some time ago I heard a radio programme that suggested that because of the congestion at airports, national flights might be banned, followed by international ones just leaving inter continental flights, such is the demand for inter continental travel and coupled with the growing(slowly) availability of national and international high speed trains.
Also, I doubt that we should call electric transport 'Green'
My ebike is partially nuclear powered.
Also, I doubt that we should call electric transport 'Green'
My ebike is partially nuclear powered.
TrTrai Might work between London and Paris , and trains Aberdeen to Newquay, but not so good between London Dublin
From a UK perspective yes, but I suppose they were thinking on a European wide view.
Or just London centric!!!
Compared with fossil fuels, nuclear is green and could become very green. That's why we are replacing the fossil fuel stations with nuclear.
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Maybe time to revive the old Boat-Train option for such locations, train - fast ferry - train, except Dublin would hardly need the inbound second train!
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Flecc, The trouble is when it goes wrong,,, it goes very wrong,,,, Very Very Very Wrong! The second problem is profit and corperate hunger for more and more profit, yet that more will never be enough so ways are then sought to do things the cheapest way possible. Unless they fully find a way to use the energy that is left until it is totaly depleted then the problem of stroage is going to be a problem.
100% agree
The danger is high
And also the nuclear waste
You can only dig so many holes in the ground what you going to do with it then
I thought the UK was dumping the waste in the Irish sea? They tried off the coast of Spain and France but that didn't go down well with the locals...100% agree
The danger is high
And also the nuclear waste
You can only dig so many holes in the ground what you going to do with it then
It's not a problem, it's a benefit if we far sighted enough. We have around 60 years of current nuclear, after which with no sign of fusion being realised, we can switch to fast breeder reactors which use the nuclear waste. That includes all the cold war waste which is in fact the majority.
As for going wrong, that was a first generation problem, no different from all new technologies.
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Unless you use Dunlaohgri (Don't know how to spell it but is pronounced Done Leery) The train from there to Dublin is the DART and very good.
I think it's perhaps a fashionable thing to say that little problems like Chernobyl, Jaslovské Bohunice, Three Mile Island, Fukushima were just "first generation problems" in the assumption that,, we can do better next try.
Man in his infinite learning retains the ability to assume that it will be better next time.
However 24,000 years it a long time to be nursing something in a barrel just for it to reach 1/2 of former potential with maybe another 200,000 years to go for it to be considered safe,, sounds like a lot of responsibility to be placed on anyone.
Do we put the next batch of minor catastrophes down to Second Generation Problems in the style of Apple Macintosh. Will someone publicly apologise and say that engineers are currently looking at the situation and we are going to take steps to see that something like this never happens again: Which seems to be the fashionable phrasing used when something goes wrong today.
A friends father who was a physicist thought there would be much value in turning to Thorium with the short half life and the ability to keep using the spent Thorium until it posed little potential for harm to anyone.
Man in his infinite learning retains the ability to assume that it will be better next time.
However 24,000 years it a long time to be nursing something in a barrel just for it to reach 1/2 of former potential with maybe another 200,000 years to go for it to be considered safe,, sounds like a lot of responsibility to be placed on anyone.
Do we put the next batch of minor catastrophes down to Second Generation Problems in the style of Apple Macintosh. Will someone publicly apologise and say that engineers are currently looking at the situation and we are going to take steps to see that something like this never happens again: Which seems to be the fashionable phrasing used when something goes wrong today.
A friends father who was a physicist thought there would be much value in turning to Thorium with the short half life and the ability to keep using the spent Thorium until it posed little potential for harm to anyone.
The boat and train option never went away you know, and is still the most economical way to get from Dublin to London,or major UK cities. .when cost of buses to and from airports are included, a bit slower, well a fair bit slower, than flights.
..yes the DART is a lovely service,however you will be waiting a long time to get the boat from DunLaogaire ,that service is discontinued and the boats go directly into Dublin port. The coastal run from Greystones in the south up to Howth on the North of Dublin Bay is a lovely railway route
..For those if you with an historical bent, the harbour at DunLaogaire,owes its existence to a certain Capt. Blight famous for Bounty Bars.
Actually the first generation of nuclear reactors were extremely safe and over engineered.. as they would be with names like Fermi associated with them,and cost was no object. It was the third generation , when people were trying to engineer value into them that things became sticky.
What is sometimes forgotten is that the choice of uranium as the fuel for reactors was the desire to create an amount of fissionable materials for more bombs . Had Thorium technology been developed,and there are prospects, that it may yet be, smaller non explodable reactors are feasible.
..on the transom?I wonder where Capt. Blight first discovered the Bounty Bar
Haven't I just made clear that we will be using it, not keeping it? In far less than a single thousand years time there won't be any left and we'll struggling to find next power option. We won't be able to leave an energy source like nuclear waste used.
There will always be some final high energy waste of course, but as I observed recently, that's easily got rid of safely and permanently through using tectonic plate subversion.
Your comment of the threat of the non-existent second generation problems shows you are prebiased to be negative without any known foundation, so it's not worth arguing about. The case is won, we are having nuclear as the only practical backup for unreliable renewables. Hinckley Point is the start, to be followed by the agreed chain of smaller coastal stations replacing our existing fleet.
About 60 to 80 years later they'll be scrapped at end of life, probably replaced by fast breeders.
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That is not the language of nuclear power. The three nuclear accidents of Windscale, Three Mile Island and Chernobyl all concerned first generation nuclear power stations. They were built long before a third generation was designed.
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