Tesla Motors opens up it's patents for all automakers to use

[General Zod]

The only problem is being able to afford making these parts and batteries... so you're looking at big companies... which aren't going to particularly want innovation because a.) it's expensive and b.) they don't have a monopoly on the patents because it's open-source and therefore everybody can offer more or less the same thing if they all use the same patents.

Is it a good thing? Sure, but it'll probably take a while before we see anything really happen from this.

Wrong idea. It's basically opening up the industry to them all. Any other company that's got a mind to can basically use the open source patents as a baseline for ideas. As opposed to just using the patents. Whether any of them will be smart enough to...that's another question.

Here's another way to look at it. Pretty much every auto maker in the world uses some sort of variant on the internal combustion engine, nobody has a monopoly on it. But they still make mad profits by distinguishing their engines from their competitors with superior quality and design, or features their competitors don't offer.

[Borgholio]

But they still make mad profits by distinguishing their engines from their competitors with superior quality and design, or features their competitors don't offer.

Or by a historic number of recalls too *cough* GM *cough*.

[mr friendly guy]

Actually he is not talking crap with this. This is well known. ...As for the source try scientific American.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/artic ... ear-waste/

That source actually disproves his claim. Its not the uranium and its not hundreds of kgs per year. Its the sum of TENORM in the ash emishions that makes the total radiation higher than nuclear.
But what's worse is that the radiation from a nuclear disasters are orders of magnitude higher so his conclusion is wrong as well.

1. I was referring to his request about coal plants emitting uranium. I didn't realise he accepted that, but was querying the amount spewed into the air.

2. So the coal plants also spew up thorium in the mix to make it have higher radiation than nuclear plants. Again this seems a nitpick to the main point that coal plants themselves are more radioactive than background radiation, which in turn is worse than nuclear.

3. That depends on how well the disaster is contained doesn't it? For example a power failure would be potentially dangerous in a old style plant as it can't get water to cool the fuel rods. This is not a problem for the newer designs, so the disaster that is a power failure can be dealt with.

[mr friendly guy]

Too late to edit, but my second point may be interpreted that I think background radiation is higher than nuclear. What I meant to say is that coal plants pemit more than background radiation and coal plants emit more than nuclear.

[Spoonist]

@friendly, I covered most of this in my wall of text upstream. Would have been nice if you hadn't repeated what was already covered.

1. I was referring to his request about coal plants emitting uranium. I didn't realise he accepted that, but was querying the amount spewed into the air.

If so you were reading stuff into what he said that wasn't there, this is what he said:
"Failure at nuclear plant has less impact than normal function of coal plant. Even if we include radioactivity, radioactive elements are naturally present in fossil fuels, with each coal plant emitting hundreds of kilograms of uranium into atmosphere each year."
That is BS in a bucket.
Every single claim except for "radioactive elements are naturally present in fossil fuels" is wrong. But most importantly the narrative itself is wrong.
He is taking lots of things out of context to try at a narrative that doesn't add up. So its easy to see that his so called sources are journalist hype articles, I've seen similar articles and they are bunk. Hence why we are asking him for sources.
Your link for instance completely debunks all of what he claims in that quote (except the fossil fuel part). For you to say that your source backs him up means you need to re-read what he claimed.
Failure at nuclear plants (of which we have only had a handful so far) is many many many orders of magnitude larger in radiation than ordinary running of the worst coal plants.

2. So the coal plants also spew up thorium in the mix to make it have higher radiation than nuclear plants. Again this seems a nitpick to the main point that coal plants themselves are more radioactive than background radiation, which in turn is worse than nuclear.
(ghetto edit What I meant to say is that coal plants pemit more than background radiation and coal plants emit more than nuclear.)

Nope. Its
average background radiation > average coal plant > average nuclear plant
Google for radiation chart and you will see what I mean.
If we include all radiation sources then it should be lots more than a couple hundred kg per year, but that is also irrelevant. Smoking also gives you a radiation dose, do you think that is relevant when talking about the hazards of smoking? Nah, this whole narrative is just as irrelevant as that. Living/working at a coal plant will kill you in hundreds of other ways before radiation even becomes an issue, that is why there is lots of politics in coal right now. There is no need to bring out the klaxons for coal radiation. In the EU the average coal miner gets more radiation than coal plant workers.

3. That depends on how well the disaster is contained doesn't it? For example a power failure would be potentially dangerous in a old style plant as it can't get water to cool the fuel rods. This is not a problem for the newer designs, so the disaster that is a power failure can be dealt with.

Which I covered in my wall-of-text above. Which has nothing to do with what Irbis claimed.

Like I said above is that the only part of that narrative that is true is that per GW produced during normal operations coal plants will emit more radiation than nuclear. But during normal operations neither of those are dangerous enough to warrant any radiation alarmism at all, since they are both well below safe levels. So bringing that up is giving the tinfoil brigade ideas that they shouldn't have.

[Steel]

@friendly, I covered most of this in my wall of text upstream. Would have been nice if you hadn't repeated what was already covered.

1. I was referring to his request about coal plants emitting uranium. I didn't realise he accepted that, but was querying the amount spewed into the air.

If so you were reading stuff into what he said that wasn't there, this is what he said:
"Failure at nuclear plant has less impact than normal function of coal plant. Even if we include radioactivity, radioactive elements are naturally present in fossil fuels, with each coal plant emitting hundreds of kilograms of uranium into atmosphere each year."
That is BS in a bucket.

If you had bothered to get any numbers rather than just mindlessly screeching you would look a lot less foolish.

Molecular mass of coal is around 200-500g/mol[1 pg22], while uranium is about 240g/mol.

Coal has a concentration of between 1 and 4 parts per million of Uranium[2]. This means for every 1000 tonnes of coal you burn you release at least 0.5kg of Uranium. (Potentially up to 4kg)

Coal has an energy density of approx 30MJ/kg[3]

A 1GW coal plant will produce about 30,000TJ per year.

At 100% efficiency that requires 1 million tonnes of coal per year (cf this one that produces up to 4GW and consumed 9.1 million tonnes in 2011).

This means the plant releases in excess of 500kg of Uranium per year in the waste.

The radiation released in the uranium and thorium pales in comparison to the radon release however...

[Spoonist]

@friendly, I covered most of this in my wall of text upstream. Would have been nice if you hadn't repeated what was already covered.

1. I was referring to his request about coal plants emitting uranium. I didn't realise he accepted that, but was querying the amount spewed into the air.

If so you were reading stuff into what he said that wasn't there, this is what he said:
"Failure at nuclear plant has less impact than normal function of coal plant. Even if we include radioactivity, radioactive elements are naturally present in fossil fuels, with each coal plant emitting hundreds of kilograms of uranium into atmosphere each year."
That is BS in a bucket.

If you had bothered to get any numbers rather than just mindlessly screeching you would look a lot less foolish.

Molecular mass of coal is around 200-500g/mol[1 pg22], while uranium is about 240g/mol.

Coal has a concentration of between 1 and 4 parts per million of Uranium[2]. This means for every 1000 tonnes of coal you burn you release at least 0.5kg of Uranium. (Potentially up to 4kg)

Coal has an energy density of approx 30MJ/kg[3]

A 1GW coal plant will produce about 30,000TJ per year.

At 100% efficiency that requires 1 million tonnes of coal per year (cf this one that produces up to 4GW and consumed 9.1 million tonnes in 2011).

This means the plant releases in excess of 500kg of Uranium per year in the waste.

The radiation released in the uranium and thorium pales in comparison to the radon release however...

For fucks sake that was useless, why did you even bother.
Waste != released into atmosphere

[Steel]

For fucks sake that was useless, why did you even bother.
Waste != released into atmosphere

Because prior to regulation 100% of that ash was released into the atmosphere. Now in an efficient first world coal plant it is more like 1%, and so for the plant I linked above that is between 45 and 360kg a year depending on the exact type of coal they use. Countries that do not have the regulations will have far dirtier plants.