Kinder Morgan lawsuit to stop Burnaby Mountain pipeline protesters gets underway

Oh, come on! This is the alternative to the Northern Gateway pipeline. And it's just twinning an existing pipeline. What's the environmental impact for building a second pipeline where one exists already?

No more pipelines anywhere. The UN says we have to wean ourselves off carbon fuels by 2100, it's time we got started on that.

lol with cheap oil everyone is going to run out and buy a Tesla.

Environment is good; and there are things we can do. Cold turkey on oil? No.

What we can do:
Government money to develop gallium-indium-nitride photovoltaic cells. With 8 junctions (layers), they convert 70% of sunlight to electricity. Once working, sell rights to that technology to a photovoltaic manufacturer. Recover government money with royalties. Once 100% of all government money is recovered, including any interest it has to pay for loans, then make it "public domain".
Develop a device that fits in a shed to take canola grain directly from the combine harvester, process to vegetable oil. In the same device, take some canola straw and ferment to make methanol. And take more straw, burn as fuel to distil the methanol. Then take ashes from burnt straw, and percolate water through like a drip coffee maker, to make lye. This same device would automatically use these ingredients to make biodiesel. Equipment will take some electricity, so add a solar panel to the shed roof, and a car battery. There: 100% off grid. This makes a farm 100% independent for vehicle fuel. Develop at a government lab, sell to a manufacturer, recover government money via royalties.
Convert used cooking oil from fast food restaurants into biodiesel. But using dirty oil is more involved; don't expect a device in a shed will be good enough. And don't expect to get a lot of fuel. Some, but not fuel for farmers.
Case IH already sells combines and tractors that use 100% biodiesel. No need to develop. Manitoba Hydro already uses a combination of biodiesel with petroleum diesel for their maintenance vehicles. More petroleum in winter, less in summer. There's your customer for biodiesel from cooking oil.
Have Ontario sign a deal to purchase electricity from Manitoba. Have Manitoba Hydro take out bank loans to build all the dams they have plans for. So this won't cost Ontario anything; they pay only when power starts to flow. As long as they don't cancel. Ontario has a bad habit of cancelling power projects. The cancellation clause would have to say Ontario has to pay for Manitoba's dams. Manitoba keeps the dams, but Ontario pays. If they don't like it, then don't cancel. Again, Ontario won't pay anything for construction or infrastructure as long as they don't cancel.
Ontario and Manitoba argued over who pays for the power lines through northwest Ontario. Paul Martin offered federal money for that. I would modify that: federal pay to build the power line, but once power starts to flow, charge back to power utilities on a lease-to-buy plan. So taxpayers don't pay a cent. Once all federal money is recovered (including loan interest), then hand over ownership to the power grid utility.
Carbon nanofibre power transmission lines. Less electrical resistance than copper, which has less than aluminum. Current lines are aluminum. Less resistance means less power loss. And carbon nanofibre can carry 1,000 times as much current as aluminum, for a cable of the same diameter. That allows for a thinner cable, reducing cost. Don't replace existing power lines, but use this for new ones; including the Manitoba to Toronto line. For this, give a business loan to a private company for development. A loan, not a grant.
Build a recycling facility that uses thermal depolymerization to break down plastic collected for recycling. That process converts plastic into oil and natural gas. 85% conversion, the rest is lost. That's what powers the process. But anyone currently thinking about this wants to sell the products as fuel. I think that's wrong. Convert that oil and natural gas into plastic pellets that can be sold in bulk. Using the same process to make plastic from oil. It may consume some of the natural gas to make plastic; but so be it. All in one building: recycled plastic in one end, new plastic out the other.

Oh, I think we're a ways from carbon nanofibre, aren't we? One day though.

I think Andy is right; the imbroglio over Kinder Morgan has more to do with onchoate concerns that the federal and provicnial governments are beholden to energy interests, than to any specific threat. Also, recall that Kinder Morgan has had two or three serious spill sin the region in the last 20 years.

I don't even know what onchoate means, tho I do know what inchoate is, so I'm not sure I'm right after all.

What I did mean is that the protesters themselves are already sucking off the current KM pipe to fuel their cars, etc. We have more and more people flooding the region, and are told how wonderful immigration is - they all want to suck on that pipe too. It's just a lot of very confused people who think they can continue with their current standard of living but also stop all carbon fuel projects. And windmills too, cause they kill the birdies. No hydro cause it floods farmland and the transmission lines give you cancer. No energy projects anywhere, but lets keep living the life we love. Crazy man.

Somebody wrote to the paper suggesting that KM shut down the current pipe for a few months, see how fast people change their minds.

Carbon nanofibre is ready. I can say one idea I had contributed. A little. Researchers were able to make carbon nanofibres, but only 1/3 of a millimetre long. I talked with one friend with a bachelor degree in chemistry. He suggested pulling the fibres to turn that into continuous extrusion. The theory was gravity limited fibre growth; they would grow so far, then weight of the fibre would prevent further growth. So my friend thought pulling on them would solve that. Since the fibres as so small, I was concerned about losing what little is made. So my idea was to use a Post-it Note; use the glue to grab a "forest" of fibres, and pull. The idea was a Post-it is designed to peal off without damage. I posted this idea on a couple internet forums. Then a lab that specializes in carbon nanofibre research tried it. He used a Post-it Note. Exactly the same brand that I said. That's why my assertion is he took my idea and did it. Well, my chemist friend said to pull the fibres in some unspecified way. My idea was to use a Post-it Note. This lab did it, and it worked.

The resulting fibre was not as strong as some theoretical chemists hoped. But it's stronger than steel, and stronger than graphite fibre. Individual fibrils are still only 1/3 mm long, but the resulting ribbon is a continuous extrusion. He then found a way to modify it to produce a thread, or weave threads for a cable. US military can now make ribbons, threads, cables, sheets, or whatever shape you want.

Reducing cost requires automation. Use factory workers, not researchers with Ph.Ds. They can already make cables as I describe. Again, not as strong as some people hoped, but stronger than steel. Good enough for a power transmission cable.

Solar power is useless without grid level energy storage, that's cheaper than building standby capacity. In fact it's past useless it's actively harmful because it distorts the market making peak demand power cost even more, if they can't spread out the cost of the power plant over the whole day.

Further having a high rate of conversion means very little if the cost of production is high. Land is relatively cheap, while solar PV are expensive.

Here is a nice video of a nuclear power (LFTR exactly) supporter, not to be rude but if you care about the environment rather than being green you should really watch it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUXmff5R_bI

The conversion of bio mass into fuel isn't viable. Taking land that is used to feed people to feed machines isn't sustainable. I have a solution to our liquid fuel needs that is functional today. A high temperature nuclear reactor to produce source hydrogen, with carbon extracted from the ocean to make a range of fuels. The US navy has a working off the self parts prototype that's producing fuel, and is estimated to scale up and cost between $3-$6 a gallon to make jet fuel that can be used in a multi fuel diesel engine.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YUUMz3U ... mThl18GrSg

Fuel is an energy requirement, and nuclear power is the most energy dense source of power we have.

Cooking oil conversion into biofuel is at most a waste treatment option not a fuel source.

The upgrades to the electrical system to allow small source generators like solar power is estimated at 10 trillion dollars for the US, and that doesn't make any more power, it just upgrades the system to let the small providers not fuck the grid up.

Carbon fiber would be more expensive than conventional wires for a limited gain in transmission loss. 3-7% per 1000km is the standard. By building many nuclear power plants (LFTRs) we can put them near their demand centers, and ship the fuel in a single passenger car load once a year. The rural demand is small enough to be unjustifiable in terms of grid upgrades.

Plastics are a tiny portion of the oil industry in terms of feed stock, and the waste made is rather small. Already our landfills are being used as source of natural gas. Recycling plastic is an economic loss, and not important to reduce carbon output. It's almost as bad as recycled paper which is at best slightly worse for the environment than new paper.

Good on you to get in and do something, but a conversion to nuclear power replacing all the coal and gas fired plants, AND producing all of our fuel carbon neutral is a better solution.

The majority of our carbon output is electrical, and transportation.

Oh and for the economics of solar and what it does to the grid:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zD0m_ci-oo

Note how you can use natural gas as a booster to the nuclear plant to meet peak demand. What's really cool is that with a 100% nuclear system, you can produce fuel with the off demand times of the reactors letting them all run at 100% of utility lowering the costs further. It wouldn't be unreasonable to have the reactor produce natural gas to act as the booster, as well as liquid fuels for transportation.

Again, nice to see someone that cares and want to make it better with a bit more sense than the greentard protesters.

Yea, well. I posted before my idea for an ideal house. I expect mass produced photovoltaic to cost about the same price per unit area as they do now, but the new one I just mentioned has already been demonstrated in a lab as 5 times as much power. And I'm getting that from a paper published in the fall of year 2000. This would drop the price per watt to 1/5 of current prices. And drop geothermal heat pumps to cost the same as a high efficiency furnace; again through mass production.

Photovoltaic roof; and I mean the entire roof. Small windmill in the back yard. Batteries in the basement. Geothermal heat pump. Good insulation such as an R2000 home. And some simple passive solar features such as large windows on the south side. It adds up to a house that never purchases power, only sells power to the grid. That avoids the demand peak demand problem.

Manitoba is almost entirely hydro, with a little power from two windmill farms. Hydro has two relatively small coal burning power plants, but the purpose (stated by politicians) of constructing the one small new hydro dam was to shut down those coal burning plants. This means Hydro can use water in Lake Winnipeg as the storage medium. Release more water through Jenpeg dam during high demand, less during less demand. And yes, the Manitoba government passed legislation in the 1970s allowing Manitoba Hydro to use Lake Winnipeg as a reservoir.

I'm sure any business would want to take advantage of this too. The system I describe only works with a large roof. So a shopping mall, or factory; any large, low building. It doesn't work with any sort of tower: apartment building or office tower. With a house, if the neighbourhood has small yards, then you will have to use a vertical ground loop. To ensure all houses get enough heat from the ground, the closer houses are packed, the deeper the ground loop. In the 1970s, companies trying to sell geothermal systems only talked about a horizontal ground loop. That requires a very large yard. A vertical ground loop works with a small yard, but the deeper the loop, the more expensive.

And if you feel all that isn't enough for your house: photovoltaic + active solar thermal + passive solar thermal + windmill + geothermal; then you could add a high efficiency wood stove. Or high efficiency wood fireplace. Using wood as backup is aesthetically pleasing as well as environmentally sound. Wood is biofuel, so carbon neutral. However, the reason cities changed to coal at the start of the industrial revolution was that forests could not provide enough wood to sustain even a small city, as long as wood was the primary fuel. But as a backup? Why not?

Nuclear is a good alternative. However, I've argued with nuclear people since I was in first year university; for me that's 1980/81. Yes, coal burning releases more radiation into the environment per kilowatt-hour than nuclear. And that's just radiation, it doesn't take into account chemical pollution. But try explaining that to a nuclear activist. To make matters worse, many companies that operate nuclear power plants want someone else to pay for nuclear waste disposal. I have tried using that argument with nuclear activists: told them to get government to force nuclear power plants to pay for their own waste. If nuclear activists really feel waste cannot be handled economically, then that would shut down the nuclear industry. But every activist I said that to said "no", they thought they would kill the nuclear industry just by campaigning. They didn't want to hear reason.

Of course one argument I have with hydro is that power from Manitoba Hydro is cheaper than building a new nuclear power plant in Ontario. Yes, there's limited power: only 5,000 megawatts. Yes, I did just say 5,000 megawatts. In 1999, Gary Doer campaigned on a platform to build all 14 hydro projects plus windmills to add up to 5,000 megawatts of additional power generation. That could be sold in various ways. The NDP then tried to get private business to pay for building the windmills, and offered a contract to guarantee purchase of power as the incentive. Only two businessmen went for it. They build most, but not all of the windmills. And only one hydro project was built, one of the small dams. And one other project, renovation of the oldest dam in Manitoba, is currently underway. So that leaves what, only 4,500 megawatts available for sale.

Batteries to store enough power for an overnight load would cost most than the PV part of the system, and pose a huge fire risk and safety risk. The problem is worse for Canada than the US due to being further north with shorter daylight hours in winter. Our peak use falls after the sun sets.

Are you aware of the requirement for cleaning solar PVs? If you block a portion of the cell you create a lower voltage spot that burns out the cells below the shaded area and causes damage to the whole cell. That's why desert locations are popular, so they can kill what few plants their are around the panels and have people constantly sweeping them clean. With 5 times the output your window to prevent damage would be much smaller if at all. I'm not sure having people climb on the roof every time a leaf blows onto a panel is a good idea from a public health point of view, not even taking into account the annoyance factor.

I said their is a risk from the batteries before and I'll expand on it. With our current system most electrical systems will trip at the breaker and shut off in case of a fire. With a basement full of batteries their is no safe way to shut off the power. Firefighters are already talking about the risk of homes with large solar arrays. Your house most likely would be refused fire service protection if it had a large solar array with a huge battery room in the basement.

This also doesn't touch on the issue of the batteries catching fire or exploding when the inverter goes 'off', as they say in the UK. Their are large battery systems in industrial locations but those are serviced and monitored as part of business. The standard of safety just can't be expected from homeowners.

These reasons are not deal breakers, but they should be part of the consideration.

What possible reasons do you have to have the price of a super solar cell to drop equal to the current PV cost? Current PV are as cheap as they are thanks to China's low wages, non existent environmental regulations and government subsidies. Economy of scale only goes so far, a complex process takes time and equipment. The PV that's currently being made is about as cheap as possible. Your system might be able to win in cost per watt, or in watt per m^3 but it's unlikely to do both.

A smaller more expensive PV panel has a higher risk factor than a larger cheaper one.

As for nuclear power, in the US and Canada nuclear operators have been paying a surcharge for waste management, and are required to set aside for decommissioning. I'm unsure how you came to believe nuclear power is trying to offload the cost onto the government. Also, I'm unsure why if we are being honest that reprocessing isn't the answer to the solid fuel uranium reactors.

That said LFTR bypass most of the waste material by using almost all of the fissile material rather than a PWR that's getting somewhat less than 1% burn up. A LFTR will produce a few grams of unwanted and unusable high level waste for a 1000MW electric output reactor.

Canada has a high amount of hydro and nuclear, but our possible hydro electric expansion is limited by geography and NIMBYers. We could not develop all our hydro and shut down all our fossil fuels and nuclear, our demand is too great already.

If we maxed our hydro we would still need other sources. The grid is expensive and inter connections are hugely costly to shift power around from remote hydro locations to their demand areas.

If our goal really is carbon reduction, without some as of yet unknown battery wonder tech, we still need liquid fuels. The most economical source is a high temperature reactor for cracking hydrogen that can be mixed to make a selection of liquid fuels. Once we have this operational it also puts a hard cap on the cost of fuel.

A level question, do you know about the differences and benefits offered by the LFTR over conventional PWR, either heavy or light water designs?

Oh and one last parting thought, you do know that most people are moving into homes with smaller roof areas to internal space? Or into condo's or apartments? Large homes with big roof areas are a trend that's passed for most people.

Woo hoo! Someone who actually knows what he's talking about! This is going to be fun.

Yes, reprocessing would answer a lot of nuclear problems. I have argued for reprocessing for a long time. I've been frustrated to see nuclear activists get any North American reprocessing plant killed before it's built. Especially considering reprocessing drastically reduces nuclear waste.

LFTR? Yes, wonderful. Ok. Could we use those please? Or any thorium fuelled breeder reactor, such as India's AHWR. Oh, wait; there's those activists again. And lobbyists from the oil and natural gas industries don't like competition.

Cleaning PV? Manufacturers have known for a long time that is solved by a simple diode. Each cell requires a diode to prevent current back-feed. More sophisticated panels use a rectifier between larger assemblies. You can get really fancy and use a switching power supply between panels. That deals with one panel being shaded by a tree, and not another. A good switching power supply is 95% efficient, so 5% power loss. It's better to just cut down any tree that would shade your roof. Diodes prevent burn-out, but cut off power from the lower power (shaded) cell.

Batteries a fire risk? You should tell that to anyone with a car. I could go on about fire proofing, but that was so the fire department wouldn't panic over windows that a thief can't break into.

To make the house efficient, built-in appliances and light fixtures should use DC current. AC is good for long distance power transmission, but not necessary for short distance such as within a house. And PV produces DC, so conversion to AC requires an inverter. Any inverter is inherently inefficient, so appliances become more efficient if they use DC directly. There's already RV appliances designed to operate on DC, so that shouldn't be hard. Power outlets would still be AC, but AC should be reserved for things not built-in.

When I started arguing with nuclear activists in the early 1980s, all costs for waste were offloaded. Now, not so much. But do you really believe the government doesn't help at all?

In your list, you forgot to mention environmental issues with electric cars. Electric cars work great in California, but really suck where we have winter. Battery efficiency drastically drops in winter cold. And lithium ion batteries just die at -20�C. And I don't mean lose charge, I mean die so you need new batteries. Tesla uses lithium-ion batteries to get the power density required. I'm highly sceptical they solved the problem with cold. Nickel metal hydride will survive cold, and has been tested in Thompson Manitoba, but lithium-ion gets 30% more charge for the same battery weight. And cars that burn fuel produce excess heat, used to heat the car interior. An electric car doesn't have that, so an interior heater drains the battery fast. Basically, you need fuel for a car in winter. Hybrid cars are far more fuel efficient, but solve the problem by burning fuel in winter.

Which raises another point: please STOP using natural gas for electric power generating stations. I need natural gas to heat my home in winter. I don't need some big, industrial operation consuming a limited resource and running up the price. I pay too much now; I don't need an industrial user driving natural gas prices up further. And from a resource point of view, replacing one non-renewable fossil fuel with another is just plain stupid. I would prefer coal gasification for power plants. Better is wind, hydro, tidal harness, solar, or nuclear. Fuel for nuclear is also non-renewable, but far better.

^^ Great discussion there!

A little more to add to it:



http://spectrum.ieee.org/nanoclast/semi ... en+Tech%29

The most insane part of the argument against reprocessing is that you can use the plutonium to make a bomb. However the plutonium coming out of a solid fuel PWR is a soup of isotopes that need to be separated to get the right amounts of the right isotopes. If you have isotopic separation, why not just make a uranium bomb and save the cost and time of a nuclear reactor?

It's sad that we are waiting on China to get their first LFTR online for 2020 to show the world it can be done.

~

Bypass diodes can miss small shaded areas that can overheat and die, leading to the whole cell to be cut out reducing the output. The loss of output of the panel over time due to radiation damage is far less than the damage due to burnouts. Swing by a PV forum and that's the main bitch of the owners is dealing with burnouts. It wouldn't be so bad but people are looking at 20-30 year returns on investment to break even. 30 years is a long time to care for a single device that's exposed to the elements.

I don't think you can sell people and chopping down all the trees near homes to protect solar panels. Or that it's a good idea, or the kind of city I'd want to live in. On the flip side, fuck cities that plant trees that drop leaves, why all the hate for evergreens?

~

The lower voltages and lack of other batteries in cars that are overloading damaged units is mostly why cars don't burn. Also when your car battery dies people replace them because the car doesn't work anymore.

With an aging battery in a big array the chance of damage due to the working units around it dumping power into a dying unit is the risk. Sure with proper caretaking most of this can be avoided but some people won't and it will cause fires. Does cause fires, reports from California are showing that battery fires are becoming a tackable statistic while 20 years it was near unheard of.

Take a look at any number of the laptop battery fire videos.

Not a deal breaker but something to consider. Also I can't for the life of me come up with a good work around for when an unrelated fire breaks out and the fire department wants to put out the fire, with the equal to a 1,000 pound HE bomb in the basement.

Rewiring a home to operate DC would be expensive to say the least. Having all new electronics and electrical using devices for people to buy would be massively expensive. I don't think outside of limited applications we will be seeing DC house wiring anytime soon.

The gains wouldn't be justifiable went put against the costs.

They help some but it's near to the other conventional power sources. Most of the cash the nuclear industry gets is in the form of R&D for nuclear reactors. By law the US has been putting aside IIRC $0.001 (1/10th of a cent) per kilowatt hour of generated electricity to deal with waste management.


http://budget.house.gov/news/documentsi ... tID=261226

I was putting that with the magic super battery also fixing the issue that an electric car is almost unusable in the cold of a Canadian winter.

Electric cars are at most toys for the wealthy. A normal fuel refinery is producing a massive amount of energy in the refined fuel it makes, we would need to at least double our electrical output to switch to electric cars.

Natural gas is used because it's reaction time is fast. When the grid spikes having the ability to add generation quickly is required so the stuff doesn't blow. Although the move to using natural gas as the main generator is a classic of short term thinking.

'Gas is cheap, build more natural gas plants because they are cheap to build and gas is easy to transport. OMG natural gas is expensive... uh... pass it on to the customer!'

Although, it could be argued that the use of natural gas in power plants has allowed the development of tech to extract more natural gas. It's not a great argument, but it's there if we are being honest.

I strongly believe that wind, solar and biomass are the wrong solutions to the general population's power needs. They have a place in some applications but they are not the civilization level solution. Only nuclear power, and by preference a high temperature design that uses a cheap plentiful fuel source is the right answer.

I once thought that solar was a good extra to have, but when you really take a good look at the demand and costs it's just not viable. The money spent on wind and solar could have had a working LFTR in place a decade ago.

Here's to China doing the right thing while everyone else screws around keeping the established system in place, or buying votes with terrible choices.

I can only hope we don't go do the path Germany did.