#fossil methane

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Photos of the nuclear explosive ― described as “nine inches in diameter, fifteen feet long, with an explosive power of forty thousand tons of TNT” ― built by Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory for Project Rulison.

This was one of three experiments (the other two being “Gasbuggy” and “Wagon Wheel”) in which nuclear explosives were used to fracture tight sandstone formations, in order to stimulate the production of fossil fuels (gas). The technique never saw routine use, partly because concerns over the production of tritium by thermonuclear reactions led to the use of pure-fission devices, which cost more per unit energy (although the difference is not huge below 100 kt or so). Even so, opponents made much of a prediction that, if it were widely employed, tritium levels in groundwater in the Mountain West might ultimately rise to three per cent of permissible levels for drinking water.

On the other hand, in the USSR, six nuclear explosives were used to put out five oil- and gas-well fires in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Hence, the total number of nuclear explosives used operationally for peacetime industrial purposes is at least three times that used in war.

See the complete film here.

The film-to-video transfer cost me $120.91, which was defrayed by a supporter. I have a number of additional reels awaiting transfer, and contributions in aid of that are much appreciated.

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Biden-backed ‘blue’ hydrogen may pollute more than coal, study finds

Infrastructure bill includes $8bn to develop ‘clean hydrogen’ but study found large emissions from production of ‘blue’ hydrogen

The plan here was clearly devised by the “Underwear Gnomes” from the cartoon South Park.

Extract fossil fuels from the ground

Convert fossil fuel to a mixture of hydrogen and carbon dioxide

???

Decarbonization!

Can hydrogen derived from fossil fuels ever be less carbon-intensive, as an energy carrier, than the fossil fuels themselves? Surprisingly, yes. If the conversion of hydrocarbon to hydrogen is done by steam reforming, and the energy used to make the steam is supplied from fission, then you can (depending on losses in processing and transport) get more energy from burning the product hydrogen than by simply burning the fossil fuel.

The water reactors which dominate nuclear power today cannot produce steam at the required temperatures, about 800 °C. High-temperature, helium-cooled reactors, such as Fort St Vrain or THTR (Hamm-Uentropp), can, but so far they have not been commercialized.

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'Huge' leak from gas plant kept secret from public in 'national scandal'

Documents reveal the scale of carbon pollution leaking from a Darwin LNG tank was like adding 8,300 new cars to the road every year. It is a

It is very unlikely that anything at all like this could happen at a nuclear–energy facility. Quite aside from the extensive regulatory reviews required before construction, which help to catch design flaws, even very small releases of radioactivity into the environment are extremely easy to detect and almost as easy to track back to their sources.

It is also, obviously enough, true that a leak of 184 kilograms per hour of liquefied methane is small compared to the capacity of a tank which holds over a quarter–million tonnes of the stuff. The sheer quantities of material required in nuclear work are a thousand to a million times less, which makes them vastly easier to handle.

[man-and-atom]

Massive Gas Outage Threatens Millions Of Americans’ Energy Supplies Amid Arctic Storm

Emergency shutdown at a natural gas storage facility in Washington state threatens mass blackouts.

The Jackson Prairie Underground Natural Gas Storage Facility in Lewis County, roughly two hours south of Seattle, suffered a complete outage, triggering an emergency on the 1,500-mile Northwest Pipeline that ships gas to power plants and heating networks across a region currently struck by arctic weather.

Gas furnaces have to be fed continuously. That includes those in electric power stations. Varying pressure in the pipelines can allow them to be used for a few hours’ worth of storage, but only if they’re being fed the whole time.

A fuel element in a nuclear power station, on the other hand, typically remains in place for three to five years, with refueling intervals of six, twelve, or eighteen months for LWRs ; and even for continously-fueled reactors such as CANDU, it’s easy to keep a stock on site sufficient for six months to a year.

This, we think, is a good reason for building nuclear stations close to cities : it becomes easy (as at Beznau in Switzerland) to run a hot-water loop to heat at least the denser areas and large university, government, and business complexes. The result is a substantially diminished demand for heating fuel (even if that fuel is electricity to drive heat pumps), and a highly reliable heat supply for the places where people are likely to seek shelter if their homes lose heat and power. Of course, the shorter electrical transmission lines also mean less chance of a large-scale outage. Really, in an age when we are expecting increasingly frequent severe weather, it seems like a winning strategy all around.

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Cause determined: Gas leak blamed for explosion which destroyed one home, damaged 23 in Santa Maria

Four hurt in Wednesday afternoon explosion.

But we have to keep using fossil fuels, because nuclear is too dangerous!

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Several Injured In 'Catastrophic' Building Explosion in Maryland

Several people are hurt after a building exploded in Gaithersburg, Maryland Wednesday.

The best thing we can say about this is, it appears that nobody was killed. A similar event in Regina, Saskatchewan, over the weekend apparently didn’t even injure anybody, although it demolished one small apartment building, and damaged another nearby enough that it will have to be pulled down.

Somehow, people have no qualms about bringing gas into their homes, despite repeated occurrences of this kind ; but nuclear fission is held to an entirely different standard of safety.

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Finland’s Green Party endorses nuclear power - Alliance for Science

In a historic shift, Finland’s Green Party voted overwhelmingly to adopt a fully pro-nuclear stance at its national meeting. The party manifesto now states that nuclear is “sustainable energy” and demands the reform of current energy legislation to streamline the approval process for SMRs (small modular reactors). Finland’s is the first Green Party to adopt […]

The long-delayed startup of Olkiluoto 3, on 12 March of this year, has provided the Finns with a powerful object lesson in just what technologies are effective in displacing fossil fuels. Russia has now officially cut off deliveries of gas to Finland, but the Finns are far from worried. The abrupt, near-total elimination of gas-fired electric generation by the addition of this one 1600 MW unit (far and away the largest generator in the country) means that available supplies will have no difficulty meeting needs during the summer months.

What of winter, when fuel needs are much greater? Judging by the experience of the Greifswald and Budějovice hot-water pipelines, if permits can be issued on an emergency basis, it is very likely that Helsinki-area district-heating systems could be fed from Loviisa nuclear station beginning this year. An application by the owners to build another unit at Loviisa specifically for CHP was rejected in 2010, a decision which must now look very shortsighted ― especially since the Hanhiviki (Fennovoima) plant approved at that time, which was intended to proceed as soon as Olkiluoto 3 came on the line, was to use a Russian-supplied VVER-1200. For obvious reasons, that contract has now been cancelled.

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Gas stoves are a threat to health and have larger climate impact than previously known, study shows

The gas emitted from household stoves is dangerous to public health and has a much more significant impact on the climate crisis than previously thought, new research shows.

We admit to harbouring certain reservations about any kind of energy news emanating from Stanford, so long as they continue to support Mark Z Jacobson, a researcher so committed to academic integrity that he sued the National Academy of Sciences (as well as the actual authors) for publishing a paper which questioned his “100% renewable energy” claims.

And, likewise, we have questioned in the past whether people making policies banning the household use of gas really have even the vaguest understanding of the subject they are legislating about. Nor are we afraid to acknowledge the obvious fact that, in some circumstances, using fossil fuels can be very attractive. Otherwise why would they dominate the world energy picture?

Nobody, however, should think that we regard the widespread idea of fossil gas as some kind of “bridge fuel to a sustainable energy future” as anything better than meretricious equivocation. Fugitive methane emissions are certainly a component of the reason. And, while gas is certainly more tolerable in this respect than, say, coal, it stands to reason that releasing the products of combustion of any kind of fuel directly into the household air is not necessarily the best thing for health.

Overall, the main point of importance is this : the electrification of 40 million gas-burning kitchens is going to mean a large new demand for power. Not as large as, say, introducing tens of millions of electric automobiles, but still quite large. Where is this power to come from?