If you are using plastic waste to make fuel on-site for a system that otherwise would have required fuel to be trucked in... turning trash into fuel is a *good* thing carbon-wise. Perhaps the best approach from a global view would be to set up your giant old rebuilt trash-tanker near the equator, and turn scooped-up plastic partially into fuel to operate the system, but mostly into a factory producing one-meter-square panels of bright white biodegradable styrofoam. Crank them out by the millions, release onto the surface of the ocean. The albedo of the equatorial ocean changes drastically; from space the oceans go from "dark" to "bright," reflecting sunlight back into space, affecting the net planetary energy balance.
Another approach, and one bringing things sorta back on topic: use trash plastic to make sizable hybrid rocket motors. Plastic fuel, fiberwound plastic cases, plastic structures as much as possible. Build *big* sounding rocket capable of going, say, 50 miles up. Load them up with payloads of bright white dust of some kind, preferably plastic-based. Perhaps reflective mylar confetti. Launch as many as possible right at noon, once again reflecting sunlight back to space. Would this make economic and ecological sense? Probably not. But that's not the point of most laws and regulations regarding the environment, so, hell with it, go down with a bang.
My friend Jordin Kare worked at LLNL back in the 1980s and 90s and project Mockingbird use H2O2 oxidizer with RP1 fuel. Rocket Lab's VLM is very much like this imho.
Well attitudes change. In 1990 hyrogen peroxide and kerosene were considered non toxic, because the meaning of toxicity was quite different. Just as the toxicisty of Polonium 210 was quite different in 1960 than in 1990.
Everyone has 5% peroxide in their homes. At least in 1990 this was so. Everyone had kerosene or some variant in their cars.
Nobody was going to bathe in HTP or drink a cup of Kerosene. Everyone recognised that those who did that would get sick or even die. That did not make them toxic in the sense of the word in 1990. Because, HTP and RP1 if spilled into the environment would quickly disappate and not leave any long lasting effects. Not so with other hypergolics. Those things were nasty at a whole new level. They stuck around and very small quantities of them would still be nasty months and even years after the event requiring special hazmat teams to clean up the spill.
Ditto in 1950s thinking. Polonium 210 was easily made by bombarding Bismuth 209 with neutrons from any convenient neutron source. So, you fabricated a fancy heating element out of Bismuth, stuck it in the neutron oven for the prescirbed period and pulled out an operating heat source that stayed reasonably hot for three months or more. The 5 keV neutrons had far less energy than the 5 MeV alpha particles unleashed by the process. The end product was alpha particles aka helium-4 and Lead 206 which was useful as a gamma shield or lead acid battery plate. The heat source put out 147 Watts per GRAM! And the stuff was 9.1 g/cc!! So, thin coatings of the stuff on beads or sheets were easily formed into all manner and size of heaters to run steam engines or aeroengines.
Following Shell geophysicist Hubbert's 1954 prediction that the US would face an energy crisis in 1970 Ford committed itself to innovating an atomic car. The end result of this effort was the Seattlite XXI - powered by a 10 horsepower steam generator powered by Polonium 210. The car stored steam in a large set of tanks at the front of the vehicle. The tanks were insulated and the steam would build up over 12 hours and remain stable. There was a 1/8th horsepower condensing turbine that powered an alternator to provide cabin conditioning. That ran constantly. There was a 1000 horsepower condensing turbine that was the main drive train. Though at highway speeds it would use only 40 horsepower. Yet it could accelerate very rapidly. The car would go 400 miles and required to be parked overnight to be recharged. It gave the same performance as a Tesla. You would drive it up to 20,000 km a year. Drive urther and you need to add a second boiler. Long distance trucks would have several. Similar setup with a 20 horsepower alternator would provide combined heat and power to ahome. Just as an oil tank is filled every month or two your friendly Polonium man would come round and swap out heater coils.
Long distance travel would occur because Ford dealerships, and approved distributors across this great nation run Atomic Cafe's where you can get your heater coil swapped out. No more dificult than a fill up. You can top your tires and your steam tank while you enjoy fine dining at our cafe. The dealer has a compact nuclear power plant that supplied power to the dealership and surrounding stores and provides steam for refilling your steam tank. To continue your journey. Smaller less expensive short range steam only vehicles stop in for free fill ups too, just like super stations for Tesla.
Compact transportable nuclear power station. Equipped with a neutron source easily converts stored Bismuth into Polonium. Also powers a time of flight mass spectrometer that separates Polonium from Lead, and recoats the Polonium with fresh on to beads of a prescribed thickness, and plates the lead on a take up reel to send on to gamma shield makers.
Bendix MA-2 time of flight mass spectrometer.
In 1956 the USGS published a paper that computed the cost of various materials extracted from rocks using electron beams made with low cost energy. Recall Louis Strauss, AEC chair, when asked about the looming energy shortage predicted by Shell for the year 1970, famously replied, "By 1970 energy will be too cheap to meter" When asked how that could be, Strauss explained, well it costs $5 million to build a hydrogen bomb large enough to destroy New York City. With 5 million souls living there, that's $1 per person. The amount of energy is the same to supply a person with all their energy needs for a century. That's $0.01 per person per year for all their energy needs. Too cheap to meter. But can a bomb power a city instead of destroying it? Yes, its a matter of fuel cost and power cost. We can make things very powerful in very compact packages. Bombs are harder to make than generators for that reason.
Well both Hubbert and Strauss were demonised in the press after that and both lost their jobs as Congressman from Vermont, spawned the Red Scare and everyone forgot about all of this. Excepting JFK, who wanted to hold hearings. When Eisenhower had a blue ribbon commission on energy conclude that we had plenty of oil in the Middle East after the US ran out, JFK replied, it is fine if President Eisenhower wants to take advice from US oil executives about our energy needs, but will our enemies around the world do the same? What if Russia decides to advance the State of the Art of energy where does that leave the US in the future? The Russians will be powered by the energy sources of the future, while we're still burning oil! To which Eisenhower famously replied, there is no nation on Earth that can match US technological leadership let alone surpass it! That ended the story in September 1957!! Of course in October 1957 the Russians launched SPUTNIK to the consternation of Eisenhower, and to JFK's satisfaction. On the strength of this JFK rose to national prominence, and won the presidency against Vice President Nixon in 1960. When the Russian orbited Yuri Gagarin a few months into his presidency JFK committed the nation to landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to Earth before the decade of the 60s was out. With this activity and others like it, we will organise and galvanise the vast technological resources of the USA to meet the challenge of the 1970s. That challenge was energy. Atomic powered bases, subs, ships, airplanes, and rockets, would be operated by the US military giving us huge logistical advantages over others, and set the stage for US industry to bring out commercial products built around these core technologies while leading the world into the development of resources off world.
After JFKs assassination LBJ and McNamara sat down and cut the budget for nuclear space applications and focused JFK's man in space program to a more limited man on the moon program.
Compared to Plutonium Polonium is nearly an ideal fuel. A powerful alpha emitter, the alpha particles are sheilded by a sheet of paper. Yet, the material is so energetic if you get even a tiny amount in you you die a horrible death that looks a lot like lukemia. Polonium is absorbed like calcium and the alpha particles kill cells. For this reason it is a favoured poison used by intelligence agencies. A tiny amount coating a hat pin can kill you when pricked with it. Your death looks like lukemia. The pin can be used over and over again. You store it in the barrel of an ink pin and carry it invisibly around the world, because the alpha particles can't make it through the plastic barrel of the ink pin.
Widespread availability of such a device would be the favourite of spurned lovers I believe. Arsenic and Old Lace would be replaced on our library shelves with Polonium Pen Murders! lol.
Because of environmental alarmism promoted by the media since Rachel Carson's Silent Spring was written the public's ideas of toxicity combine with news stories about spies being poisoned by Polonium, to shape our view of the material in ways that are stupid in some respects, denying us the wonders of advanced tech of the retrofuture of 1959.
Well recall that Polonium puts out 147 Watts per gram. That's 147 kilowatts per kilogram. A direct lift device like the discopter lifts 2 kg per kilowatt ro 1 kg of Polonium lifts 294 kilograms of mass. The weight of a sports car. It puts that out continuously on a declining curve with a half life of 138 days.
Now the temperature of the stuff is determined by how much you have and how large a surface area you spread it over. So you control the thickness of it to a fine degree. You have a tube filled with tiny ball bearings and coated with polonium 210. You pass a gas through the tube and that supplies you with a hot gas source and runs a turbine continuously. Continuous operation actually can be quite reliable since temperature cycling and load cycling is no more. The bearings are cycled through the tube by a shaftless helical drive cycling every 35 days or so. The beads fall into a receiver that conducts them single file to the edge of two rotating discs that polish the ball bearings, removing their coating. The coating is heated to ionisation with an electron beam and Polonium is separated from lead. The lead is deposited on a film which is wound into a spool. Meanwhile a compact neutron source that consists of a tube of beryllium that converts alpha to neutrons and contains Bismuth particles that are also circulated through the turbe with its own tiny helica drive, convert Bismuth to Polonium. The areas are sized so that the Fresh polonium made equals the old Polonium that decays over 35 days. That fresh polonium is combined with recycled polonium and the polished beads are recoated. This device no bigger than a bread box is a wonder of mechanical skill. With it power output is continuous, and 10 kg of Bismuth costing a few hundred dollars, supply the continuous operation of the machine for 6 years. Similar systems work in homes operating twice that long using far less power. Cartridges containing Lead and Bismuth are swapped out every major service which occurs after 6 years. You can fly the ship a few months after the power cell empties out. But it is not recommended. The refill idiot light means what it says. haha. The world produces 16,000 tonnes of Bismuth a year. Humanity would need only 1/10th that to meet all its needs. Since the alpha particles released have 1000x more energy than the neutrons absorbed, like a mouse trip being set off, we can even dispense with fusion and fission reactors. Because Beryllium and Polonium make their own neutron source.
The big issue was making discopters silent! A helicopter constantly hovering over your home might make transport easy, but not be very nice. Having a helicopter hover some distance away automatically was not something people in 1950 thought reasonable. Encasing the blades and shaping them to quieten the discopter down, seemed more reasonable. That resulted in very quiet blowers. Those blowers can be seen in modern day Rolls Royce cars wich do not produce ANY sound even when the air conditioning is at full blast. The same technology was adapted by GE to create an atomic house that you brought in by discopter, and unfolded the floor and light weight walls and furnishings, and the walls and ceiling were blasts of air!! The house is self powered and insects and dust and rain and snow are kept outside -- and cleaning house was never simpler -- with a tornado at your disposal. Merely pick up loose items from around the home and press a button. Dusting and vacuuming is a thing of the past. For those who burn in the sun, no problem. Tiny particles are circulated in the air curtain to sheild you and provide automated drapes, in any colour or density desired. At the turn of a dial.
There were and still are, air curtain doors that extended from this era. They fell out of favour when the energy crisis hit America in 1971 and Nixon closed the gold window and created the petro dollar as energy prices skyrocketed.
Raleigh NC (SPX) May 12, 2020 - A new study from researchers at North Carolina State University suggests that a material consisting of a polymer compound embedded with bismuth trioxide particles holds tremendous potential for repl
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