I think that the reason they are devolping this one is because trash is cheap. Its about as cheap as you can get. I can walk up to your house and take your trash and you wouldn't really care. So if you can turn that trash (that is free) into oil I see nothing wrong with it...

I believe this is a great idea, as long at the United States government stays out of this alternative energy program. Our national government has a long history of picking loser technologies including using corn to provide alternate fools.

There is plenty of money in the private sector to support winning technologies, provided the idea is viable. Alternate fuels are no exception to this. Save the taxpayers money and hope for the best.

The problems here come from the fact that burning fuel - any fuel - still produces carbon dioxide and many other greenhouse gases. Whilst it may solve the problem of diminishing fuel supplies (as indeed do those enterprising individuals' vegetable oil-based diesel engine fuels) they don't solve the longer term problem of global warming through increased production of greenhouse gases.

There is a danger with these alternative fuels that people may develop a false belief that they are environmentally friendly. The same goes for electric cars - certainly in the UK, where only some 2% of electricity comes from renewable sources; the rest comes from burning fossil fuels and (a small number of) nuclear power plants - these aren't environmentally friendly either.

These ideas are good in the short term, certainly if they are instead of fossil fuels, but in the longer term we need solutions that don't endanger our planet.

This, of course, presumes that you believe that global warming is being caused by these emissions, and that you believe it's an inherently bad thing even if it is--which remains utterly unproven.

In the meantime, I would say that anything that allows us to reduce the amount of garbage piling up in landfills, and using it in productive ways, would be a good thing, wouldn't you?

By the way, nuclear power is the most environmentally friendly energy technology mankind has ever invented. It's a genuine shame the so-called "Greens" are such anti-technology reactionaries that they can't acknowledge that. It was the process about learning about nuclear power that alienated me from them pretty much forever--because it proved to me once and for all that their claim to care about the planet is a sham.

To those who say that Governments should stay out of the issue of development of alternative energy sources, I ask this: is electricity (or fuel for vehicles; whatever) a right or a privilege?

Do you wake up every morning and feel privileged that there is electricity to power your lights and toast your bread and heat your kettle for coffee, or do you consider it a right that you'd be pissed off about if you were without?

If you think it is something that you should have as a basic right (along with running water and heating in winter etc.) then it stands to reason that it should be something your elected government should have a hand in providing.

To look at the other side of the coin, that of letting private investors take charge of it; I can't understand why anyone would want something that can be described as a basic service to be provided by a body whose primary raison d'être is to make a profit. One only has to look at a certain energy company to know that these aims are often quite contradictory.

I seem to remember reading about something called brown-outs in California; regular powercuts resulting from an infrastructure unable to cope with the power demands placed upon it. Cleary the companies supplying power in the state have underinvested in their infrastructure, with services suffering as a result. But what is being done about it? If government disinvolvement with the issue of power provision is something you want, then clearly it's none of their business if it goes wrong, right?

And Dean:

nuclear power is the most environmentally friendly energy technology mankind has ever invented

How is this more environmentally friendly than hydroelectric or windfarm power? I always understood that the byproducts of nuclear power had to be stored in deep underground bunkers? I could be wrong though, I admit I've not read into nuclear power since I was in school.

Does this remind anyone else of the Mr. Fusion from the Back to the Future movies?

I find your question interesting, Ben, since it seems based on the sort of assumptions most Europeans work under, but which a lot of us Yanks don't work under.

To whit: Electricity is neither a right nor a privilege. It is a commodity, and should be treated exactly like any other commodity.

And by the way: the California brownouts were caused entirely by government bungling, mostly at government-owned facilities and by government regulators. There was a half-assed "deregulation" which didn't privatize much of anything, and was a real joke.

As for nuclear power: Hydroelectric requires dams,and dams cause enormous ecological damage.

Wind farms are pretty much a joke as far as providing much energy, and to make much use them on a large scale, you have to use batteries--which entail a great deal of chemical waste.

It's the same problem with solar, which produces more destructive waste due to the chemicals involved than nuclear ever has.

Except for the minor use of windmills here and there to provide supplemental energy for homes out in the country, windmills are pretty much a joke.

I could write volumes about nuclear power and the horrors that the "greens" have played a part in aggravating due to their luddite attitude about nuclear power--and the damage a pliant, science-ignorant press has done in helping them do it.

Talking to physicists and nuclear engineers, not to mention reading a great deal written by such people, has been a real eye-opener.

No single political source has caused more environmental damage than that caused by the widespread ignorance and deplorable luddism of nuclear power opponents.

Ben,
I pretty much agree with Dean other than I am far more skeptical about the nuclear issue than he. I used to support nuclear plants, but then I lived near Oak Ridge - someday I may post about the experience, but I am a lot more skeptical about nuclear plants than I used to be...

But the end of the Discovery article directly addressed your question about releasing carbon into the air. I'll paste that part of it below.

Cheers,

Admiral Quixote

---begin paste-----
Can Thermal Depolymerization Slow Global Warming?

If the thermal depolymerization process WORKS AS Claimed, it will clean up waste and generate new sources of energy. But its backers contend it could also stem global warming, which sounds iffy. After all, burning oil creates global warming, doesn't it?
Carbon is the major chemical constituent of most organic matter—plants take it in; animals eat plants, die, and decompose; and plants take it back in, ad infinitum. Since the industrial revolution, human beings burning fossil fuels have boosted concentrations of atmospheric carbon more than 30 percent, disrupting the ancient cycle. According to global-warming theory, as carbon in the form of carbon dioxide accumulates in the atmosphere, it traps solar radiation, which warms the atmosphere—and, some say, disrupts the planet's ecosystems.
But if there were a global shift to thermal depolymerization technologies, belowground carbon would remain there. The accoutrements of the civilized world—domestic animals and plants, buildings, artificial objects of all kinds—would then be regarded as temporary carbon sinks. At the end of their useful lives, they would be converted in thermal depolymerization machines into short-chain fuels, fertilizers, and industrial raw materials, ready for plants or people to convert them back into long chains again. So the only carbon used would be that which already existed above the surface; it could no longer dangerously accumulate in the atmosphere. "Suddenly, the whole built world just becomes a temporary carbon sink," says Paul Baskis, inventor of the thermal depolymerization process. "We would be honoring the balance of nature."
— B.L.

All of the damage that you refer to appears to be involved in the acts of constructing said facilities rather than the operation thereof. I meant specifically the daily byproducts of these facilities when I draw comparison between them, but it goes without saying that a nuclear power plant has to be built too.

Certainly there will be environmental implications of building hydroelectric or windfarm plants, but these need not necessarily be disastrously damaging. Regarding the use of batteries in windfarms - I can only therfore guess you would want the production of the millions (if not billions) of batteries sold, used then thrown away every year using these chemicals reduced?

As for labelling those who oppose nuclear power "luddites" - I can't think of a more ridiculously inappropriate thing to say. To be afraid of a technology which has killed many, many people in nuclear accidents, and continues to cut short the lives of people around Chernobyl is not irrational or even difficult to understand.

I personally am not 100% opposed to the use of nuclear power, but I do think that all avenues should be explored, including so-called alternative power sources. I also wouldn't want to live anywhere near a nuclear power plant.

One last aside; last year I read about a power plant that I think is being planned in Australia which would effectively be one giant greenhouse; a huge tower which would be the largest structure on the planet, and visible from space. Since all it would be doing is heating water with the sun, there are no chemicals involved in its daily running that aren't involved in any other turbine-based generator. Such technologies as these are well worth pursuing.

Ben...you say:
"I can't understand why anyone would want something that can be described as a basic service to be provided by a body whose primary raison d'être is to make a profit."

How about food? It is produced by individual or corporate farmers whose objective is to make a profit. It's transported by truckers and railroads whose objective (at least in the U.S., in the case of rail) is to make a profit. It's sold in stores whose objective is to make a profit. Are you advocating the nationalization of all these things?

Certainly there will be environmental implications of building hydroelectric or windfarm plants, but these need not necessarily be disastrously damaging.

All hydroelectric plants, to date, have wreaked all sorts of ecological devastation.

Without exception.

If there's some new way of doing it without said enormous environmental damage, I'd like to know what it is.

To be afraid of a technology which has killed many, many people in nuclear accidents, and continues to cut short the lives of people around Chernobyl is not irrational or even difficult to understand.

Except that the alternative forms of electrical generation kill far more people every year. And do significantly more environmental damage.

Yes, that would including the damage done at Chernobyl.

I stand by my characterization: opposition to nuclear power is nothing but luddism and profound ignorance.

As for batteries: the fact is that the chemical waste from batteries does more damage to the environment than nuclear waste. Does that mean I want batteries done away with? No. I merely point out that, in terms of relative harm, solar power and windfarms would massively increase such chemical waste, the upshot being more environmental damage than greater use of nuclear power would cause.

Have I also mentioned that those windfarms are an eyesore, taking up a lot more acreage than any power plant? Or that these ugly things have never produced enough energy to be more than marginally useful?

Admiral Quixote: politics surrounding storage of nuclear waste make living near nuclear plants in this day and age an unnecessary hazard. It's too bad, really. If we'd stop our insane and stupid fear of nuclear waste, we could deal with it properly.

The problem is that the ignorance surrounding the issue is so deep and profound, sensible policies have become nearly impossible.

David: Food is not a service; it's a product. To try and compare it with the provision of electricity is absurd, especially when one can be obtained through a huge variety of sources (and if one is so inclined - as my parents are - grown by oneself) and the other is provided by a small number of much larger companies where the technological know-how and effort required for individuals to generate their own electricity makes it far less convenient, if not wholly impractical.

Dean:

every other form of electrical generation has killed far more people. Orders of magnitude more. Yes, including the damage done at Chernobyl.

Is that really surprising considering a.) how much longer non-nuclear forms of power plants have been in use, and b.) how small the percentage of power plants are that are nuclear? Taking these two factors into account, nuclear plants have been far more dangerous. And consider that even though the Chernobyl disaster happened nearly 17 years ago, the fallout from it it is still affecting the health of those in a wide area surrounding it.

It is luddism, and extreme ignorance to boot, to oppose nuclear power. And it's really quite sad.

Sad? Heh, that's a very logical argument. As I said I'm not directly opposed to nuclear power - I am very keen for development into it to continue so that one day we may have nuclear fusion plants that don't have the associated radioactive byproducts, but that doesn't mean I accept wholesale that nuclear power is the only possible answer. To provoke discussion of such an issue is only going to be for the benefit of all. Does that make someone who looks before they leap a luddite?

Ben, this is a very frustrating conversation. You simply do not know what you're talking about, but you think you do.

Take any nuclear power plant, built any time in the last 50 years.

Take any non-nuclear plant, built at the same time.

The non-nuclear plant will kill more people and cause more waste issues and ecological damage.

This is leaving out the fact that accidents like the one at Chernobyl are categorically impossible with current plant designs.

It is a fact--not a matter of opinion, not a political position--that nuclear power plants are safer, kill fewer people, and do less ecological damage than any other form of power generation man has ever invented to date. On a plant-by-plant basis.

You don't know enough about nuclear power to be having this argument. That's not surprising, since most people don't. That's why extreme ignorance is the the heart of the problem.

You need to educate yourself on this matter, Ben. I did, and it radically altered my views of a lot of things. And a lot of people.

>>It was the process about learning about nuclear power that alienated me from them (the Greens) pretty much forever--because it proved to me once and for all that their claim to care about the planet is a sham.

Dean,

The environmental lobby in Washington is very powerful indeed. Then about what do the Greens people care if not the environment?

This is Whole New World material for me. Does this imply that we can, say, build these plants next to existing landfills, dig up the landfills and put the materials through, and then carry on feeding them with whatever waste we generate? I'm seriously needing a little bring-down here. What's the downside?

When I die, I want to come back as 38 pounds of oil, 7 pounds of gas, 7 pounds of minerals, and 123 pounds of sterilized water. I ain't kidding.

Dean,
I'd agree with you that politics are responsible for most of the hazards related to nuclear power. And I would support changing these policies although I am personally quite doubtful that our culture would allow them to be significantly changed.

However, as I've gained experience I now consider the human element of all solutions, not just the engineering element. I do not believe the human problems (including politics) regarding nuclear power will be safely resolved in my lifetime barring the development of cold fusion.

Could the engineering problems regarding safe generation of nuclear power be resolved? Sure. Many such solutions were developed decades ago. But will they be safely implemented given human nature and our current culture? In my opinion, no.

So you may consider me a luddite – even though I have worked in buildings containing nuclear reactors, and I am reasonably familiar with the damage done by conventional and nuclear power plants. However, given my beliefs on human nature, I would not support the creation of any new nuclear plants in my State (barring the successful implementation of cold fusion) until our culture is greatly changed. Not just our culture either – but fortunately terrorists have been fairly stupid in their attempts to really harm our country. Right now you views on nuclear power strike me as remarkably similar to Liberal views on communism. The reason why communism doesn’t work is that it is never been properly tried. Granted, but given human nature it will never by properly tried. Nuclear power could be done in a safe and effective manner. But given human nature, it will not happen IMO.

Personally, my hope for clean power in the future is based upon fuel cells. The same fuel cells that may someday power your car could also power your house. Assuming they run on hydrogen, their operation will be pollution free. Of course the generation of the hydrogen will cause more pollution, but that could be localized and contained.

Brian said "When I die, I want to come back as 38 pounds of oil, 7 pounds of gas, 7 pounds of minerals, and 123 pounds of sterilized water. I ain't kidding."

Not only is this a potential new market that will drive the undertakers nuts, it also has criminal implications.

"Hey Guido, let's dispose of the body at the recycling center. Frankie can use the oil and gas at his shop, we'll dump the minerals and water in the lake. Let the FBI try to find a body, heh."

Heh, Adm. I predict an uptick in police department calls to those Maytag Men of science, the forensic petrogeologists.

"You say your husband ran away to Cancun...how do you explain...*THIS???!!*"

Of course, my comedic stylings would be improved if I didn't include them in GT & LT...

Heh, Adm. I predict an uptick in police department calls to those Maytag Men of science, the forensic petrogeologists.

"You say your husband ran away to Cancun...how do you explain...*THIS???!!*"

(Prosecutor whips out a vial of patchouli oil that bears a striking resemblance to the late husband...)

Yes, Admiral, I'm afraid that on nuclear power I'll have to consider you a luddite. Because the human factors involved in nuclear power are no greater than the human hazards involved in the handling of any hazardous material--and are usually less hazardous than what's found in the handling of other hazardous materials.

Sorry man. But living near a nuke plant wouldn't make you an expert, either. :-(

We have rejected the safest, most cost-effective, and least environmentally harmful power generation technology in history, and now some are upset that we might continue using artificial oil? :-(

As for the criminal possibilities in this new technology: the mind boggles, doesn't it?

And yes, if this thing pans out, it will be "a whole new world." How do you get rid of sewage? Make oil out of it. Old food? Ditto. Old plastic? Ditto.

Massive savings both in terms of landfill and cheap power.

Oh, lordy, I just realized: when the next war starts in Europe, US intervention will be sneered at as a "war for garbage," won't it?

"Hey Guido, let's dispose of the body at the recycling center. Frankie can use the oil and gas at his shop, we'll dump the minerals and water in the lake. Let the FBI try to find a body, heh."

Heh, ever read 2000AD? In Judge Dredd's world there are recycling factories called Resyks that turn the bodies of recently dead and convert them down to their base elements which are then reused.

Life immitating art...

Personally, I would be more nervous living downstream from a dam, than I would be living within the deadly fallout range of a Nuclear power plant. That is, if I were the nervous type. I'm not.

OK, since I wasn't getting a lot of downsides here, I posted the article to lucianne. Here's an interesting point from a poster (I didn't check the math, myself):

Jestaminnit here...Unless I missed a decimal someplace, that reduces down to 6 tons of offal producing 40 barrels of oil, or 1 ton of offal producing just under 7 barrels of oil. According to my research (http://www.processassociates.com/process/basics/oil_vw.htm) 7 barrels is 2800 lbs.

This means you put in 1 ton of offal; you get back 1.3 tons of oil.

This, I would think, is a very neat trick indeed.

Doh!

Stupid zeros!

Dean,
I wrote a response to your reply, but it was way too long for your comment section. So I posted it at Solport

Cheers,

Don

Ben,
I haven't read it, but yes this is certainly a case of life imitating art. Shades of Soylent Green...

Wanna hear an even weirder recycling possibility? While auditing the biochem class a roommate of mine once took, I stumbled upon an interesting fact due to the fact that I was reading the textbook in an extremely non-linear fashion. One of the main benzene type ring molecules used in plastic production, that's normally obtained from oil, is a significant component of human urine.

Doing the quick math comparing the usage versus excretion stats, you'd only have to capture and recycle a fraction of human urine to make most plastics. Of course you'd have to re-engineer the waste disposal systems, easier said than done I know, but not too hard if you're building something radical like an arcology.

Oh, a fairly late in the thread reaction to Ben's point about carbon dioxide production and green fuels.

The primary benefit on carbon dioxide from alcohol or other plant derived fuels is that the carbon dioxide emitted when they are burned was absorbed from the atmosphere by the plant.

You are in a sense recycling the CO2, keeping it in a closed cycle, instead of releasing CO2 that had been trapped in the ground.

Ben...you're arguing that core services (as opposed to products)should be government-owned--how far does this go--would you include telecommunications, for example? Railroads?

Jeeeezus. I was just gonna say: Nice Post. And thank you for pointing out ANY positive work done towards remedying our dependence on oil. Looks like anything this technology touches, turns to golden oil, and that's a good thing.
May I borrow this link for an addendum to my post on "War on ANWR"? This would be very good news, indeed, for the rest of us that are sick at the news that we will be drilling for oil in our crown jewel.

Why, certainly you can link it, Kate.

Although I am 100% disagreed with you on ANWR, you certainly have a right to link the material. ;-)

Can't stop thinking about this. It seems like a dream. Where's all the hype?

And to think, from reading the story, that the invention was the result of overcoming an old mental block (using the water instead of trying to drive it off.)

How many mental blocks are we all just accepting instead of making our lives better?

Not to beat a dead horse - but frankly I couldn't resist - Hans Blix is a big supporter of nuclear power (no surprise as he was the head of their UN Nuclear agency for 16 years). But that would almost be reason enough to oppose it ;-)

For a more serious reason, see this story.

Electricity is a product; it is produced by using one energy source (coal, water, wind, etc) to turn a generator to produce electricity. The DELIVERY of electricity is a service.

As for whether the gov't should be responsible for providing the delivery of electricity, I trust private enterprise which will be punished for charging too much or too little for the service than a gov't agency that gets rewarded for providing more jobs for its bureaucrats and is relatively immune to public opinion.

As for the environmental friendliness of hydroelectric and wind power generation, just remember that even some (many?) "environmentalists" are actively opposed to both. Against hydro because of its effects on fish populations (among many reasons). Against wind because it kills birds (among many reasons).

The Carbohydrate Econonmy is a PR gimmick hosted by no other than the big ag businesses like ADM and is subsidized and paid for by no other than the great ol' American taxpayer. It does not help Mom and Pop farmers and it is no more green than a fresg steaming heap of cow doo. Additionally, it will waste water, and exasperate the already serious problem of biodiversity loss.

That being said, the idea of thermal depolymerization process, or TDP to get rid of agricultural and other waste doesn't seem so bad though....although you will still have CO2 emissions. However, I am not so sure CO2 is a big an issue as some have claimed. Afterall, many within the science community were hyping global cooling in the 70's.

Admiral, are you related to John Quixote?

Believe it or not I am for RE and environmentally sensitive.

Mother Hen,
You may be right about it being a gimmick - the patent comments on one of Drew's newer posts certainly support that conclusion.

Hopefully not though - but either way, I don't want any government money going to this.

But mass produce farms (like the Turkey farms) are going to exist and something should be done to help turn their waste products into something viable. Whether it is this solution, nanotechnology (still a long way to go), fusion, or something I've never heard about, eventually we'll get there.

Thanks for asking, but I don't know John.

The difference between nuclear power and most other 'alternative' sources is concentration. A reactor core is a dangerous thing, but you don't need very many of them. For every 1GW reactor (a typical large one) you would require on the order of 1000 large wind generators (big ones can do a couple MW, but you would need redudant locations for low wind times) The real question is not what the impact of a wind turbine vs. a reactor is but what the impact of 1000 turbines is. There is some interesting research into using U238 as fuel (>99% of natural uranium is U238), allowing fuel rods to be used the life of the core, and ruducing very hot waste by an order of magitude, and reducing proliferation problems.