Ionic air cleaners

SyntaxVorlon · Post by **SyntaxVorlon** » 2003-08-01 01:13am

Chernobyl happened because they used the wrong kind of uranium to save money. 3 mile island sprung a coolant leak.

Frank Hipper · Post by **Frank Hipper** » 2003-08-01 01:22am

I thought that Chernobyl was caused by malfunctions during a test?

Traceroute · Post by **Traceroute** » 2003-08-01 02:52am

This has some good quick info on the Chernobyl accident.

The Duchess of Zeon · Post by **The Duchess of Zeon** » 2003-08-01 06:09am

Traceroute wrote:This has some good quick info on the Chernobyl accident.

It wasn't a design fault in the reactor so much that graphite reactors in general were poor, and worse yet, this was one designed in the 50s, basically. It was good for its era. Chernobyl was basically some idiots running a test they shouldn't have on a reactor that couldn't do that.

phongn · Post by **phongn** » 2003-08-01 09:04am

Traceroute wrote:Solar can be viable to supplement other forms, it's not completely worthless. That, and once demand is high enough, it will be MUCH more cost effective than at present.

Well, yes, if it goes into mass production. However, the cost of photovoltic cells is still too high to be competitive with other forms of power. Plus, production has all sorts of nasty byproducts.

Personally, I like the idea of using solar cells as shade in huge parking lots. Can you imagine how much juice you'd get out of a major sports arena with solar cell panels over ALL of the parking spaces? That, and your car wouldn't be 140 deg. F. when you got out.

It'd take years for the thing to even pay itself off! SUre, you get some power, but not enough to make it really worthwhile.

aerius · Post by **aerius** » 2003-08-01 04:54pm

Solar power just doesn't provide all that much power. For example, one of those solar powered race cars only makes enough power to operate a hairdryer, and they use exotic gallium-arsenide cells which cost a few million bucks per car. The UofT solar car team for example budgeted 7 million bucks for their solar cells. Traditional silicon based solar cells are only about half as efficient as the GaAs ones.

Let's be generous and assume that covering each parking with solar cells generates 1000W. A stadium parking lot has let's say 50,000 parking spaces to be generous, giving a peak power output of 50MW. Sound like a lot of power but about a month ago the province of Ontario was using something like 26GW, and Quebec has a generating capacity of about 37GW or so. 50MW isn't even enough to keep the lights on at any of the major downtown bank buildings in Toronto. Sure every little bit helps, but we're literally talking about drops in a bucket.