[ExI] The Futurism of Elon Musk

[spike at rainier66.com]

-----Original Message-----
From: Anton Sherwood <bronto at pobox.com> 
Subject: Re: [ExI] The Futurism of Elon Musk

On 2020-9-07 13:09, spike jones via extropy-chat wrote:
> one of those hourglass-shaped cooling towers (like you see in Mr. 
> Burns’ nuke plant in Springfield)

>...It's a hyperboloid, if anyone asks.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperboloid
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperboloid_structure

>...I do not believe I have ever seen a hyperboloid hourglass...  Anton

Anton, hey, you are still ahead of me.  I have never even seen an hourglass.  We had already switched to clocks by the time I was born. 

But I have seen one of those hourglass-shaped towers, which are used to dump heat off of the condenser in a nuclear power plant.  Turns out... those things are great for any power plant, not just nuclear: they cause the operation to be very efficient.  Without that big scary looking tower emitting steam, the power generated is more expensive.  

Power from a small peaker plant is already expensive.  When the local citizenry rose up and blocked construction of the hyperboloid tower, insisting they would not have radioactive clouds wafting over the town (from a natural gas plant) then it proved impossible to convince the angry mobs that cooling towers work for any power plant, including coal (which is dirty) and natural gas (which is clean.)  They blocked it, even though it already had a permit.

Consequently... the plant went broke.

By the time all this took place, the state had incentivized the proletariat to install LED lighting, which reduced power consumption.  A lotta locals installed higher efficiency AC, again at great expense and switched to gas water heating and laundry (never mind for now that this emits CO2 (the proletariat is not known for our collective grasp of science.))

Eventually the state began to see the advantages of packing people closer (for closer packed people have the option of becoming still more clueless and dependent on they who would save us.)  An example is to give permits to high-density housing and to do permits for backyard "granny units" which are stand-alone small houses which can be rented.  Much to the shock and astonishment of local government... population density... rose!  Who could have seen THAT coming?  All we did was issue permits for thousands of high-density apartments!

Then... as a second shocking as astonishing discovery... people began to move into those new grannys and apartments.  In an unforeseen development: they have electrical devices too, as well as Teslae, resulting in... increased demand for power.

What a shock.

Now we are back to where we were 20 yrs ago: short of power once again, but this time with good old intermittent green energy we are relying on to carry the base load, even knowing that in general green power cannot carry the base load because of its inherently intermittent nature.

I can foresee the result.  Someone, perhaps Mr. Musk or his investors, are going to buy that peaker plant and use it in a way it was never designed to be used: as a baseline carrier.  Without a cooling tower, the power generated there will be pricy stuff.

spike