An artist's depiction of an Extended Unit Death
I don't know why you're so confident about the design despite not being any sort of engineer. If Mazda's the only one researching it, they'll be the only one benefiting from it, and if it's as good as you'll claim, their engines will overtake the competition. I don't see a problem here, either way.
I'm confident from a mathematical standpoint, and from watching almost all common technology improve exponentially over time. I'm questioning the abandonment of it and whether it really was the best move, while Toyota (as you like to reference) has just accepted the fact that the rotary engine being inferior is truth. After Aristotle made the claim that objects fall at different rates depending on their weight, it was accepted to be true until nearly 1800 years later when Copernicus actually questioned it. Toyota, in this case, is Aristotle, and Mazda is potentially Copernicus. The problem lies in Toyota's mindset; with this mindset, technologies can be unnecessarily delayed.
Didn't read those. But... what, you think if Toyota could take Mazda out of the business, they wouldn't?
I didn't really expect you to read all of them (I only skimmed through them myself). You sounded like you were quite fond of the patent system, claiming it was made to "encourage corporations and individuals to bring their inventions to the market," but our current system is actually doing the opposite in some cases. Some developers are actually
withdrawing their products from the market in fear of getting sued from existing patents (of course, this example is more of a software/intellectual property issue; I picked it because it's the most recent example I've seen).
If a coal plant produces 3 tons of fly ash and a nuclear plant produces 3 lbs of nuclear waste, of COURSE the coal plant would put more radioactivity into the environment. You need to compare them by mass, and though the citation claims "ounce for ounce", this is after the nuclear waste has been properly shielded. Complete bullshit.
You're right, that snippet was misleading. However, I think comparing by mass isn't the best method, considering nuclear power produces significantly less waste than coal.
A typical 1000 MWe light water reactor will generate (directly and indirectly) 200-350 m3 low- and intermediate-level waste per year. It will also discharge about 20 m3 (27 tonnes) of used fuel per year, which corresponds to a 75 m3 disposal volume following encapsulation if it is treated as waste. Where that used fuel is reprocessed, only 3 m3 of vitrified waste (glass) is produced, which is equivalent to a 28 m3 disposal volume following placement in a disposal canister.
This compares with an average 400,000 tonnes of ash produced from a coal-fired plant of the same power capacity. Today, volume reduction techniques and abatement technologies as well as continuing good practice within the work force all contribute to continuing minimisation of waste produced, a key principle of waste management policy in the nuclear industry. Whilst the volumes of nuclear wastes produced are very small, the most important issue for the nuclear industry is managing their toxic nature in a way that is environmentally sound and presents no hazard to both workers and the general public.
If I'm reading that correctly, nuclear waste from a 1000MWe plant will produce around 150 tonnes of waste from a year's worth of power (assuming no reprocessing), versus a coal plant that produces 400,000 tonnes of waste to generate the same amount of power. This seemed like an unreasonable discrepancy, so I checked for another source.
A 1,000 MWe coal power plant uses 10,000 metric tonnes/day of coal, an oil fired power plant uses 44,000 barrels/day, but a nuclear power plant uses just 10 lbs of U235/day. Such a 1,000 MWe nuclear power plant generates no more than 2-3m3/year of high level waste compared with 1,000 metric tonnes/day of ash from a coal power plant of the same power, in addition to its SOX, NOX, COX, mercury and even radioactive emissions that, because of their large volumes, are disposed of through the process of dilution in the environment.
I do find it hilarious that it uses metric tonnes and switches to pounds when talking about nuclear energy. This source only mentioned high-level waste for nuclear waste, which obscures the actual amount that is produced. This source seems to state that 10% of coal put into a power plant comes out as waste, but due to the obvious nuclear bias and hiding of facts, I was skeptical of this data as well. On to source three and four:
Waste created by a typical 500-megawatt coal plant includes more than 125,000 tons of ash and 193,000 tons of sludge from the smokestack scrubber each year. Nationally, more than 75% of this waste is disposed of in unlined, unmonitored onsite landfills and surface impoundments.
The vitrified waste from the operation of a 1000 MWe reactor for one year would fill about twelve canisters, each 1.3m high and 0.4m diameter and holding 400 kg of glass. Commercial vitrification plants in Europe produce about 1000 tonnes per year of such vitrified waste (2500 canisters) and some have been operating for more than 20 years.
So it seems like people are just throwing numbers around. However, it appears that for a coal power plant to produce as much energy as a nuclear power plant, it creates at least one hundred times the amount of waste.
Vrael, wind and solar power are unfortunately not practical enough to replace other power sources. They can alleviate some of the pressure as it were but it's doubtful that we'll see cars in general use that are, say, entirely solar powered.
I agree its unlikely they'd be used to replace everything else with current battery technology. However, people are working on improvements for solar, wind, and battery efficiency, and with these new technologies it might be completely feasible. Imagine having a car that you plug into your house at night, which charges from the solar panels on your roof, and if you don't use more than the energy from your solar panels you won't have an electric bill, and then you don't have to pay for gas for your car, we wouldn't have to worry about fossil fuel emissions or nuclear waste, it really is the best solution. Of course as you noted right now its not really practical enough, because installation has a very large up front cost, there aren't government subsidies to make it worthwhile (at least in the U.S.), and they take about a decade to pay for themselves. Wind turbines can also be very loud. If we could half the cost or double the output, I think solar and wind would really start to catch on in a big way.
How would this affect electric companies? Would they start renting out solar panels in order to keep the monthly charge they currently get? If we can survive off of our own personal solar energy, these companies would be doomed.
I would also like to see more hydroelectric alternatives, too. I consider it the Yang to solar power's Yin, in that we can
use our moon to generate power.