That doesn't sound right. The track laying train may not be easily accessible by truck. I worked for the railroad and there were plenty of places you had a hard time getting a vehicle to and fully loaded semitruck would have been a bear. I expect they are using trucks to get the ties to a spot by the road and the train transports the ties the rest of the way.
I don't get why tractor trailers would be needed at all. The tie delivery can be on the rail that is being constructed. How do you think the rails get there? They make rails in lengths you can't transport by truck. But you can put together a train that is a mile long if you want.
Right... but you can't grow the train length indefinitely by just adding cars to the tail end. If you do, you end up with a situation where the gantry has to move too far back and forth along the train, to be able to bring a fresh set of ties up to the front before the previous set is all laid down. It looks to me as if any interruption in the supply of ties would require that the train be stopped, and then restarted again.
You'd either need to have multiple gantries, moving the batches of ties in a series of shorter hops (so that there's more than one set moving forwards at a time), or you need to take some of the empty cars off of the train periodically so that the "current stockpike car to track-laying car isn't too great".
Also, I'm not sure whether it's possible to (safely) attach and detach sets of cars when the train is in motion.
My guess is that they simply looked at the whole problem, and said "What's the least-expensive method to use, to keep the installer system running at the optimal rate?"
Offhand, the reduction potential of 2 NH3 3 H2 + N2 is nearly 0V (I forget what exactly). Which has some implications regarding a number of kinds of chemistry in ammonia, like electrochemistry, catalysis, and speculations on exotic life.
Ammonia is pretty darn stable on its own, but this suggests there are some catalysts, and conditions, under which it spontaneously breaks down, no oxidizer required.
(The analogous reaction, with water, is the famous 1.24V or so.)
You are not seeing the picture. I'm talking about delivering the supplies, not the NTC equipment that puts it all in place. When they invented ribbon rail, they made it in longer and longer lengths because that is more efficient, right? So they would bring a long train of rails to the work site. At some point they found the rail was so long that it would separate from the ties from thermal expansion. So they started adding expansion joints. So they stopped making rails in ever longer pieces.
The train that is building the track doesn't go back to the factory for supplies, it stays on the construction site and is supplied by truck. Just as the trucks do, a train could bring rails and ties and set them off along the right of way to be loaded onto the NTC supply cars.
The video shows cars loaded by conventional heavy equipment. I just don't get why they couldn't bring the ties to the site by train.
No, the train is stopped to attach cars. It requires someone to complete the connection by coupling break hoses. The video shows them reconnecting supply cars so I have to assume they move the cars to be loaded.
Yeah, I think that is pretty clear. The question is what did they see that we are missing?
Thorium is the way to go IMHO. It can be done safely, efficiently, and with a tiny fraction of the waste of today's nuclear reactors.
I think I read somewhere that one of the earliest nuclear reactor designs was an efficient thorium based system. But it was abandoned because it did not have the side-effect of producing plutonium.
I don't know how accurate that is. It may well be true if it happened in the late 40's or early 50's when only the government was making reactors. They were definitely in the plutonium business. Thorium was considered by the AEC at Oak Ridge TN. I understand they built a reactor like one that would be used with thorium, but it was fueled by uranium. Otherwise no one has done much research on thorium reactors until recently as I understand the Chinese are moving forward with them.
I don't like sounding like a conspiracy nutj ob, but the nuclear industry in the western world has a vested interest in the status quo, namely refueling uranium reactors (not so many reactors are being built these days). Thorium doesn't require the large processing effort and the refueling business would be greatly reduced if thorium were used. I just hate to think the Chinese will get a large jump in the technology solely because we don't even give it a consideration.
"I think I read somewhere" was not intended as a claim of authority :-)
My understanding is that there has been a good deal of research, but it is mostly theoretical - there has been little progress on actually making a thorium reactor. But if the Chinese have started building one, that would be great.
I agree - there are many good reasons for this, without invoking conspiracy theories. There are also bad reasons, such as politicians, media and public misunderstandings and fears about nuclear power.
Well, of course. Personally, I think Norway should be leading the field. We have quite a number of experts in nuclear technology, but they mostly work in helping the Russians so that their old facilities next to our northern borders don't blow up. If the Norwegian state decided to work on the reactors, you can be sure that money would be provided to do it /right/ - there would be no commercial interests trying to earn a bit more by skimping on the design, and money would be set aside to cover maintenance and decommissioning. We currently have an abundance of oil industry experts who are out of work due to low oil prices - these are folks who are trained in being totally anal about everything safety related. And we have plenty of thorium lying around.
However, for the good of the planet, I'd rather the Chinese built thorium reactors than /nobody/ built them.
And by the way is not really clear if the membrane separates hydrogen atoms from the nitrogen atom, or the molecular hydroben is mixed in ammonia and the membrane let pass only hydrogen?
Indeed, and it has been found that the most cost effective way to transport water across the oceans is by towing icebergs, to the Arabian peninsula no less.
That doesn't make it a good idea to separate hydrogen from water for fuel. The point is transporting ammonia can be more cost effective than transporting hydrogen, but the proof of the pudding...
I didn't say it was. I'm trying to set the record straight (as much as I know). I watched one of those wack job youtube videos that was going to explain how to save the earth by some ridiculous technological means. Five minutes in the guy hadn't said anything ridiculous. Ten minutes in he has made a few clear and obviously correct claims. A half hour in I am amazed at the breadth and depth of his knowledge. At the end of the hour I had a pretty good understanding of why thorium could be an excellent nuclear fuel removing most of my concerns about the viability of the technology.
Certainly thorium is not ready for prime time. But this is not because of any technological shortcoming that we know about. It is only because we have not done the work to investigate the technology.
The practical is what I'm referring to. I'm not sure how much research you need to do on the blackboard that wasn't done in the 50's. The point is no one is calling for any development of thorium fueled technology in this country.
I did see a British show about Norway developing thorium reactors and the Russians invading because Norway cuts off the flow of oil and gas. (I didn't quite get that part as Russia sells a lot of oil and gas to Europe) Interesting show for the way it portrays the characters if nothing else. Otherwise I've only heard of China having an active research program.
Yeah, it's not so much a conspiracy theory as just SOP for business. There is very little business in thorium for the current nuclear fueling industry. So they are going to keep the focus off of it. The nuclear construction industry is pretty small in the US at this time. They aren't going to push for a bunch of change. The push will have to come from citizens pushing on the government to hopefully energize the industry. Most likely the feds will need to throw some money at it as much as I hate to say that. But I think the returns could be vast in the long run.
I have a hard time attaching details to names of people in these groups I haven't met. I forgot you were from Norway. So you likely have seen the program I watched. I think it was called "Occupied" or something similar. So was this show based on some reality of Norway having some interest in thorium research?
So what is holding Norway back?
Yes, I think thorium will be a good thing with many advantages over both carbon energy and present nuclear energy. As you say, better Chinese than not at all, but many countries have strong nationalistic tendencies. The US can be very much like that when politicians are involved. That's not to say the present nuclear industry is purely homegrown. The reactor to be built here at Lake Anna is a joint bid by GE-Hitachi. At one point the customer looked at going with another firm, Mitsubishi. So should I greatly care if it is built by Wang or ? I'd just like to see US industry getting out in front and actually leading for once.
snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com wrote on 6/8/2017 8:10 AM:
People have been talking of oxidation and other issues that aren't especially relevant. The real issue is energy content. Water is at a low energy state. To split off the hydrogen requires adding lots of energy. The web page about using ammonia is not so clear either, but ammonia is at a much higher energy level, so it will take a lot less energy at the far end of transportation to recover the hydrogen. In reality this is about energy transport, not really hydrogen. But it sounds good to be shipping hydrogen as it is considered to be a "clean" fuel.
I don't know for sure, but nitrogen is N2 where the nitrogen atoms are
*much* larger than H2. NH3 is not so much larger than N2 really. So I expect little will get through the filters other than H2 which is the goal really.
I don't know how practical this approach is. What has to be considered is the overall process with making ammonia in the Australian desert, shipping it to foreign ports and cracking the ammonia to H2 which in turn still has to be distributed to the end user. Or maybe they are talking about doing the H2 generation in rather smaller scales more locally like at filling stations? Or maybe only using the fuel at larger facilities. Don't know.
Most likely the company that generated this idea is looking for research money.
I think that is still a company, no? Still, there you go an organization that is looking for more funding! They used some odd language referring to separating the hydrogen from the ammonia as if it only needed to be filtered out. They also refer to the entire remainder of the required infrastructure as "existing" when the only thing that exists is the ability to transport large quantities of ammonia. They don't mention generating such large quantities of ammonia from a useful source of energy and that new infrastructure is needed to make the ammonia into H2 and get it into gas tanks. Hey! The term "gas tank" still applies, lol.
They are working on one small piece of the problem which may be where raw research is needed, but a lot of practical issues remain.
I suppose they don't want to burn NH3 in cars because it would produce various oxides of nitrogen which aren't so good. To get pretty much all the nitrogen as N2 requires a catalyst.
"Best" in a very limited sense. It still releases considerable CO2 which we need to avoid. The myth of natural gas being "cleaner" than coal is that it allows us to drive off the cliff with our foot not quite to the floor when we clearly need to be taking our foot OFF the gas and turning around.
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