From: John De Armond
Newsgroups: sci.electronics.design,alt.energy.homepower
Subject: Re: OT Hydrogen economy, not?
Date: Thu, 17 Jul 2008 22:19:16 -0400
Message-ID: <ttsv74dij5uor4htrfk69f0qvi24c281sc@4ax.com>

On Thu, 17 Jul 2008 14:00:11 -0500, "Tim Williams" <tmoranwms@charter.net>
wrote:

>"Neon John" <no@never.com> wrote in message
>news:r8ku749rr9f2n39b3t79jrib5qkbh3echk@4ax.com...
>> Here's the deal.  Recycle the fuel to recover the ~97% of the uranium that
>> was NOT burned.  Extract the very valuable noble and other stable metals
>> plus the economically valuable isotopes like Cs-137 and Kr-85 from what is
>> left and sell them to pay for the rest of the process.  Concentrate what's
>> left and vitrify it in a ceramic matrix.
>
>It's a nice idea, but sadly, fuel reprocessing is VERY energy intensive.  By
>reprocessing fuel, you only about triple -- nowhere near 32-fold -- the
>energy you can get out of the stuff.  And it's expensive.  Might as well
>just dump the shit and mine more new fuel, which we have plenty of (because
>we aren't using much nuclear power) and it's still cheap.

Do you have any factual basis to back up that assertion which is silly on its
face?  There is certainly no modern data in this country to base your
assertion on simply because recycling has been done since the 60s.  Using
information that old would be like declaring CGI to be impractical based on a
working knowledge of a 60s vintage IBM mainframe.

If I understand your claim, a spent core that produced 10 gigawatt-years of
energy would require 3 gigawatt-years to recycle it.  Absurd.

Recycling during that era ignored the economic value of the stable metal
isotopes that fetch high market prices.  It also ignored the economic value of
the decay heat from the fission products.  That made sense when electricity
was a penny a kWh but it sure doesn't now.  Finally, the burnup levels were
far smaller than they are today.  As much as twice the energy is extracted
from the same amount of fuel as it was in the 60s.

I'd certainly love to see your energy balance calculation that might back up
your allegation.  I can't imagine one but I'm open-minded.

As much as I hate to turn to them for anything, the French are the only ones
doing recycling.  They seem to think that it works just fine and makes great
economic sense.

The only problem that I see in developing an economy around decay heat is that
power reactors make so little waste.  There certainly would not be enough to
go around.  Of course, that means that every little bit of high level "waste"
would be spoken for and used.  Voila, the solution to the mythical nuclear
"waste" (sic) problem.

There's a nice parallel to this in history.  At one time gasoline was just a
pesky and hazardous waste byproduct of the refining of petroleum to make
kerosene for lighting.  A very undesirable waste in that it made the refining
process much more hazardous than it was with non-gasoline-bearing petroleum.
Then someone found a use for that waste and as they say, the rest is history.

A substance is only waste when people are too ignorant or too
straight-jacketed in their thinking that they think of it as such.  Take the
humble landfill, for instance.

The chic and trendy opinion is that a landfill is a horrid thing.  That's the
ignorant, if prevailing view, though some enlightenment is happening.  Some
folks are making a lot of money generating electricity from the methane the
landfill produces.

But look at it another way.  Companies dig large holes in the ground called
mines and extract minerals that contain concentrations of the desired element
sometimes measured in a few parts per million.  Usually that mineral contains
only one or a very few desired elements.

Now consider a landfill.  Where else can one find that concentration of
virtually every element on the periodic table.  At least every element in
commercial use.  Why, there's steel and aluminum and gold and silver and
platinum and everything else.  In relative abundance too.

At some entrepreneur will realize this and set up a landfill mining company to
process the contents just as a mill processes the out put of a mine.  He'll be
rich and suddenly people will be searching for old landfills like they did
uranium in the 50s.

Again, there is a parallel in history.  Back about 30 years ago there was mass
hysteria in some quarters about the worthlessness of old cars because of the
difficulty of dismantling them and separating out the various metals and
plastics.  Car makers were going to have to be forced by the government to
design cars for ease of dismantlement.  Then something interesting happened.

A smart fellow invented the modern shredder.   The machine that tears cars and
other discarded items into a coarse aggregate and then separates out the
various valuables from the waste.  Iron comes out one conveyer.  Light metals
out another.  Lead out yet another.  Plastics out still another.  The liquids
such as oil, antifreeze and battery acid are collected, separated and reused.
Oil and antifreeze as fuel and battery acid is recycled into pure sulfuric
acid.

Suddenly all that yowling about designed-in irreconcilability became just so
much whining.  Scrap cars became a valuable feedstock.  One need only stand at
the gate of a scrap metal yard to see that happening.  Cars are being dragged
in from out of fields and from under collapsed barns, not to mention the front
yards of much of the country's trailer trash.  There are bare naked blocks in
front yards everywhere :-)

I just hope that the economic value of nuclear waste is recognized soon.  I'd
love to be able to pull the plug, so to speak, on the utility company.  I've
refined my lifestyle so that food and utilities are about my only recurring
bills.  A little capsule planted behind my cabin that supplied all my energy
needs would be sooooo nice.

John

From: John De Armond
Newsgroups: sci.electronics.design,alt.energy.homepower
Subject: Re: OT Hydrogen economy, not?
Date: Fri, 18 Jul 2008 14:06:33 -0400
Message-ID: <llm1841se2uf62kvpvfsp3854o55k9i5tk@4ax.com>

On Fri, 18 Jul 2008 02:47:07 +0000 (UTC), danny burstein <dannyb@panix.com>
wrote:

>In <ttsv74dij5uor4htrfk69f0qvi24c281sc@4ax.com> Neon John <no@never.com> writes:
> [snip]
>>As much as I hate to turn to them for anything, the French are the only ones
>>doing recycling.
>
>
>The folk in Japan, Windscale/Sellafield [UK], and the Russkies might
>take exception to that. Oh, and the Indians, too.

Sellafield is a military site, isn't it?  I partition military and civilian
nuclear activities for obvious reasons.  I was under the impression that the
japs slowed or stopped their recycling after that criticality accident a few
years ago.  Don't know anything about the Russkies.

In any event, the french are certainly doing it on the largest scale, probably
by an order of magnitude or two.

>
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_reprocessing

Hmmm, I'll have to read that and see if it is up to the normal Wiki standards.
That is a crap-shoot.

John

From: John De Armond
Newsgroups: sci.electronics.design,alt.energy.homepower
Subject: Re: OT Hydrogen economy, not?
Date: Sat, 19 Jul 2008 18:25:15 -0400
Message-ID: <ivp484lh5mb8f0rq0s0oc9cne2n3asnj36@4ax.com>

On Fri, 18 Jul 2008 14:16:01 -0700, Jeff Liebermann <jeffl@cruzio.com> wrote:

>>> Now consider a landfill.  Where else can one find that concentration
>>> of virtually every element on the periodic table.  At least every
>>> element in commercial use.  Why, there's steel and aluminum and gold
>>> and silver and platinum and everything else.  In relative abundance
>>> too.
>
>Yep.  With the added bonus of toxic chemicals.

Ah yes, "toxic".  A most fascinating word. Usually used when someone really
means "I don't know anything about it but I'm scared of it anyway".  Anyhow,
one man's "toxic" is another man's resource.

>Also, many landfill
>sites have been landscaped and used for development.  Some also lack
>the space to install a full size recycling machinery (shredder) and
>will require trucking the waste to a plant.  It can be done, but it's
>not easy or NIMBY proof.

Not at all.  A bailer that can reduce a car to a yard square cube every 10
minutes is available that fits on the back of a roll-back dumpster truck.  It
is hauled to the disposal site by said truck.  A companion module, the
shredder, consists of another similar module.  The separator/sorter module is
a third.  If there is room to sit three tractor trailers in a line then there
is room for this setup.  All three modules are self powered by diesel engines,
though electric motors are optional.

I happen to be intimately familiar with this setup, as I've spent the last
couple of months modifying one for higher performance.  I have the cycle time
down to under 2 minutes.

Landfill mining is going to be a huge business.  I just wish I had a crystal
ball to tell me when to invest.  Equipment manufacturers seem to think that
it's going to be soon, judging by all the activity in the sector.

John

From: John De Armond
Newsgroups: sci.electronics.design,alt.energy.homepower
Subject: Re: OT Hydrogen economy, not?
Date: Sun, 20 Jul 2008 01:57:26 -0400
Message-ID: <2ni584hb5i022eareho1ulr371r29hr56c@4ax.com>

On Sat, 19 Jul 2008 18:30:29 -0700, Jeff Liebermann <jeffl@cruzio.com> wrote:


>Sorry.  I meant hazardous, which is even more vague.  Here's a survey
>of some 10 year old epidemiology research on the subject:
><http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/picrender.fcgi?artid=1637771&blobtype=pdf>
>I guess if there's nothing dangerous, we can just dispense with the
>Super Fund.
><http://www.epa.gov/superfund/>
>Punch "landfill" into the search box for 6000+ hits.

I'm not going to even get started on that one other than to say that if you
take the "fund" out of it, most of the rest magically goes away.

>
>As for NIMBY, this is fairly typical for any industrial operation:
><http://www.news-leader.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2008805170345>
>    Butler said the city received complaints about loud noise coming
>    from the facility. A few times, he said, empty propane tanks were
>    hidden in cars, and as those cars were crushed or shredded,
>    explosions occurred.
>I'm wondering how one hides a big propane tank inside a vehicle that's
>suppose to be cleared of anything hazardous before shredding.

Yes, they do make a racket.  I've been working on a bailer when one popped.
It's usually a 20 lb tank that someone discarded because it didn't have an OPD
valve.

For the really big booms, one must crush a high pressure cylinder, say, an
oxygen cylinder.  The main ram on this thing is too large for me to reach my
arms around and has 2500psi of hydraulic pressure behind it.  It barely pulls
2000psi baling a car, even when crushing the block.  The time I was present
when a cylinder got baled, I heard the diesel engine bog down.  Never head
that before.  The machine strained for a minute, then the ram started moving
again and KABOOM!  The cylinder ruptured, shaking the whole machine, though it
didn't stop it.  Had I been any closer I'd have probably had to do an
undie-check :-)

As for clearing of anything hazardous, ahem, not a chance.  In busy yards, the
cars frequently get picked up off of whatever brought 'em in and dropped
directly into the bailer.  The bailer is set up to capture any liquids that
come out.  That's the only real concern.  Given the thickness of the metal
involved, I doubt that several sticks of dynamite would do anything to the
bailer other than spray dirt around.

>
>>Not at all.  A bailer that can reduce a car to a yard square cube every 10
>>minutes is available that fits on the back of a roll-back dumpster truck.  It
>>is hauled to the disposal site by said truck.  A companion module, the
>>shredder, consists of another similar module.  The separator/sorter module is
>>a third.  If there is room to sit three tractor trailers in a line then there
>>is room for this setup.  All three modules are self powered by diesel engines,
>>though electric motors are optional.
>
>Nice.  I wasn't aware that it had become portable and that small.  The
>one I saw on TV was huge.  It was powered by a very large marine or
>locomotive diesel engine.

I've seen that clip.  TV's not reality.  I'm sure that the producers searched
far and wide to find the one unit in the world that large.  Meanwhile
hundreds, perhaps thousands of smaller units actually get the work done.

>
>However, that's a car shredder, not a landfill mining machine.

Actually, it's a baler/shredder, not specific to cars.  With the fairly
widespread deployment of bailer/shredder/separators, scrap metal yards have
started buying what is known simply as "shred".  This is anything that is
mostly metal.  Cars, refrigerators, air conditioners, tractors, lawn mowers,
wrought iron railing, etc.  It all goes in one big pile and gets fed to the
bailer.

There is actually somewhat of an art to it.  If the bulk of a charge of shred
in the bailer is small stuff then the track hoe operator will try to put a
piece of sheet metal such as metal roofing on top so that when baled, it will
hold the stuff together long enough for handling.

>The
>mining machines and tunnel excavators I've seen on TV are very very
>very long and operate like a conveyerized factory.  I just don't see
>one of those operating in a former landfill.  My guess(tm) is
>something more like an open pit mine, with lots of roads, piles for
>tailings, dust, and noise.

Again, TV isn't reality.  I've never seen them in action (yet) but from the
equipment I see advertised in the trade magazines, I'd expect a more typical
landfill "mining" operation to be some track hoes, perhaps an earth mover or
two and a package unit shredder/sorter/separate.

>>I happen to be intimately familiar with this setup, as I've spent the last
>>couple of months modifying one for higher performance.  I have the cycle time
>>down to under 2 minutes.
>
>If you can make it operational while mobile, you might have a new
>product for dealing with parking violations.  Park illegally and have
>your vehicle shredded on the spot.

The bailer that I've been working on would certainly run while still on the
back of a roll-back dumpster hauler.  One model even comes with a built-on
loading crane.  Pull up beside the target, reach down with the crane, pick the
car up, bail it, spit the cube out the back end and leave it in the parking
place :-) The bailer comes with a radio remote control so it could be operated
from the truck cab.

>>Landfill mining is going to be a huge business.  I just wish I had a crystal
>>ball to tell me when to invest.  Equipment manufacturers seem to think that
>>it's going to be soon, judging by all the activity in the sector.
>
>It probably will be, but not until we're sufficiently desperate.  I
>don't think that the economic benifits will balance well against the
>noise and potential pollution issues.  Patience.

Oh, it won't take desperation.  If metal prices stay where they've been all
summer, look for landfill mining to become common.  People are already going
to extra effort to recover old metal, including removing overburden from old
buried junk yards.  The yard where I worked on the bailer is getting a lot of
that stuff.

I figure that once this gets rolling, someone will figure out how to take all
the fluff (plastic, paper, etc), lightly process it and make it into heating
fuel.  Who knows?  One might heat with landfill pellets instead of wood or
corn.

The sad part is, classic cars are streaming in in great numbers.  Cars that
should be at the restorer.  Some still running.  This is a greater debacle
than when CA was paying a bounty on old cars a decade or so ago.  On several
occasions I just stood there and drooled.  Here's just one

http://www.neon-john.com/Car/Blue_Ford_Truck.htm

All that truck needs to be a show truck is a coat of paint and some cleanup. I
literally snatched it out of the jaws of destruction.

John

From: John De Armond
Newsgroups: sci.electronics.design,alt.energy.homepower
Subject: Re: OT Hydrogen economy, not?
Date: Sun, 20 Jul 2008 16:58:12 -0400
Message-ID: <si97841ud9m9r8aaklh69hndcer2vtrak7@4ax.com>

On Sun, 20 Jul 2008 10:28:53 +0200, Trygve Lillefosse
<news@lillefosse.NOSPAM.org> wrote:

>On Sat, 19 Jul 2008 18:25:15 -0400, Neon John <no@never.com> wrote:
>
>>On Fri, 18 Jul 2008 14:16:01 -0700, Jeff Liebermann <jeffl@cruzio.com> wrote:
>
>>Landfill mining is going to be a huge business.  I just wish I had a crystal
>>ball to tell me when to invest.  Equipment manufacturers seem to think that
>>it's going to be soon, judging by all the activity in the sector.
>
>Strange that recycling isnt a bigger buisness.
>
>At least for some materials, the utility should realy pay the user for
>delivering it to them.

In the case of scrap materials, they do.  Here's the price sheet for a nearby
yard

http://www.buffsalvage.com/

"shreddable" is what I call "shred".  11 cents a pound for anything that has
at least a little metal in it.  It makes a lot more sense to haul your old
refrigerator to the scrap metal yard and get 11 cents a pound for it than have
to pay to dispose of it in the landfill.

John

From: John De Armond
Newsgroups: sci.electronics.design,alt.energy.homepower
Subject: Re: OT Hydrogen economy, not?
Date: Sun, 20 Jul 2008 22:40:30 -0400
Message-ID: <get784hq0lr7mq3ge2v86rgpb6nmna8i0l@4ax.com>

On Sun, 20 Jul 2008 17:12:40 -0400, "Michael A. Terrell"
<mike.terrell@earthlink.net> wrote:

>
>Neon John wrote:

>> "shreddable" is what I call "shred".  11 cents a pound for anything that has
>> at least a little metal in it.  It makes a lot more sense to haul your old
>> refrigerator to the scrap metal yard and get 11 cents a pound for it than have
>> to pay to dispose of it in the landfill.
>
>
>   You don't have to pay aroud here. The county transfer stations &
>landfill all accept scrap metal for free. Tthe landfill acccepts propane
>and other pressurized tanks. They have a contract with a local scrapyard
>who stopped buying steel, unless you have over 500 pounds. No matter
>what is on your truck or trailer, they glance at it and tell you that
>there isn't 500 pounds, so they won't weigh it. "But since you're
>already here, you can just dump it over there!!!"

At least one of the competitors to the company I worked for does that crap.
That "my" company doesn't and that they unload the customer's vehicle and pay
promptly is why they're driving the competitors out of business.  It's bad to
get driven out of business during boom times!

There is a LOT of money in scrap metal right now.  Maybe you ought to open a
"customer friendly" one in your area.  I couldn't believe how much money until
I took at look at their semi-automated bookkeeping system with an eye toward
totally automating it.  If I were 20 years younger and in a little better
health.....

John

From: John De Armond
Newsgroups: sci.electronics.design,alt.energy.homepower
Subject: Re: OT Hydrogen economy, not?
Date: Thu, 24 Jul 2008 09:58:30 -0400
Message-ID: <ak1h84ptuq4eiaebkr2rrsahgl0nc402nl@4ax.com>

On Wed, 23 Jul 2008 21:31:50 -0700, JosephKK <quiettechblue@yahoo.com> wrote:


>>There is a LOT of money in scrap metal right now.  Maybe you ought to open a
>>"customer friendly" one in your area.  I couldn't believe how much money until
>>I took at look at their semi-automated bookkeeping system with an eye toward
>>totally automating it.  If I were 20 years younger and in a little better
>>health.....
>
>
>Sure, but also use a search engine to look for copper theft.  It is
>plaguing many US state transportation organizations, several lesser
>governments and is occurring around the world.  People stealing copper
>wire in street lighting systems and such and selling it for recycle.
>Your local street lights might be next.  Backup available if you
>cannot be bothered to use a search engine, in the form of links.
>

<scratching my head>.  I can't figure out what the purpose of this reply is.
As someone who works with scrap metal yards, I'm vastly more familiar with the
problem than either you or google.  Maybe you were just feeling insecure and
had to do something to say "hey world, look at me!"?

All the yards that I work with have, since before I started working with them,
capture a xerox of each seller's driver's license, along with a listing of
items sold.  They have lists of prohibited items that they won't buy, such as
railroad-related steel from civilians.

I've just finished installing a new computer system in one yard to comply with
a new TN law that requires that each seller's driver's license and fingerprint
be captured for each transaction.  This system connects to each weigh scale.
It has two cameras, one to photograph the items being sold and another to
photograph the seller.  At the pay window, a scanner captures the DL image and
a fingerprint scanner captures his fingerprint.  It generates really purty
reports, including those that give cops orgasms.

Including my services, this system cost well over $50,000.  It will do nothing
to slow down metal theft.  The honest scrappers will pay for this useless
system in the form of slightly lower reimbursements.

Such "deterrents" are fixed and defined obstacles that are easy to work
around.  Already we've seen ingots of metal coming in where the seller has
smelted the copper and aluminum from its original form into ingots.  This is
trivial to do with some propane burners and a cast iron pot.  This brings them
a bit more money, as this is #1 prepared copper, the highest priced copper. It
also totally obliterates the original source of the copper.

It also lets them toss in less valuable yellow metals like brass and get paid
the higher copper price.  Occasionally the owner will shoot the ingot with his
$30,000 hand-held x-ray fluorescence analyzer just to keep 'em honest but most
yards don't have one of those.

See, this is the kind of stuff that you miss when you become a TV-educated
"expert".  Contrary to what your 12 second sound-bite-oriented brain might
think, there are no easy solutions to problems like these.  The most
successful solution, one that may take generations, is to improve the moral
character of society, to the point where it becomes "not OK" to steal, whether
it is from an individual or "that evil power company" or "that huge
corporation that can afford the loss."

Until then, it'll take more vigilance on the part of people who own the metals
(reflected in higher costs to you) and more attention to things that don't
look right by the public.  For instance, you won't EVER see a single utility
truck cutting down overhead wire.  If you see that situation, call the cops.

John