Concentrated solar thermal
May 31, 2011
June 14, 2011
In many parts of the world, men and women are gathering and protesting. They lament over employment, the collapse of pensions, and their miserable wages.
It brings to mind May '68, except that back then the economy was doing fairly well, compared to today. Now, things are different. It's really bad. So these men and women are wondering what to do. They don't have a program—or multiple programs. And we understand. It's the global society that needs to be completely transformed.
We've let everything develop unchecked: the race for profit, corruption, neo-colonialism, liberalism, the "Bretagne to the Urals" alliance. The beautiful Europe, Giscard d'Estaing's Euro-Africa, which gave us a splendid European constitution where "law enforcement is authorized to open fire if a demonstration turns into an insurrection."
It all depends on interpretation.
I'll reproduce a text read by a journalist on France Inter. Quite interesting.
The Spanish indignados, by Cécile de Kervasdoué
Excerpt from her daily 7:20 commentary on France-Culture
Here is the transcript of this text, from May 24, 2011:
The End of the European Dream, or a Slow-Motion Accident
It's a bit like watching in slow motion on a screen... your own car speeding toward your own accident.
The viewer has 10/10 vision in each eye... he sees perfectly well what's about to happen—but that doesn't prevent the accident from occurring... it doesn't reduce the pain.
This is the image the British Guardian chose this morning to open its editorial. An image meant to illustrate what international press finally grasps this morning, after more than eight days of something very important happening in Spain...
It's not just a series of demonstrations... not just a mere social outburst against austerity measures... writes the Guardian... it's much broader than that... what's happening in Spain must not be ignored: the May 15 movement, the indignados, or real democracy, permanently reflects disillusionment, disenchantment, as well as rejection of how politics is conducted in our Western democracies...
Because today, politics is no longer made in parliaments, warns the Guardian... it's now being made elsewhere... on the web or in public squares... to ignore this is to head toward catastrophe... toward an accident.
Thus, Spain would be a kaleidoscope of what Western democracies are experiencing, suggests the Guardian... and this view is echoed today by numerous European newspapers.
For example, Criticatac in Romania considers it's not discontent toward a particular party or anger against austerity measures that is driving Spaniards of all ages into the streets... and ultimately, it has nothing to do with this weekend's elections... or with the economic situation... the Romanian newspaper says this election is merely the spark... because the true demand of the indignados is for a different model of society... a different political model too... far from the traditional two-party system... and against a model that treats its citizens cynically.
Change, says Italy's Stampa... all citizens with even a bit of common sense are demanding it this year... it was true in Italy this winter before this Spanish spring... and it's incredible that European politicians pretend not to see or feel it!
Because this movement exists everywhere in Europe, continues Tijd in Belgium... in Spain, Italy, Greece, Ireland, soon Portugal... it's a movement against social injustice, with demands exactly like those of the revolutionaries in Egypt or Tunisia... a movement from the south, while in the wealthy northern half of Europe... a selfish movement has already developed, undermining cohesion and solidarity... but the rich north must not delude itself, writes the Belgian newspaper... the population will flood our squares too, when inequalities grow and social cohesion disappears.
Hence today's drawing by Chapatte in the columns of Le Temps in Switzerland... we see a medieval tower, heavily armed and surrounded by revolutionaries trying to break in... inside the tower, bearing the EU flag... out of sight of all... demonstrations brandish the same banners: revolution!
And one of the police officers says: "Not where it went in?"
So are we witnessing an Arab Spring in Spain?
Probably yes, writes the Al Jazeera website... this wave of protest originating in Arab countries is globalizing via the internet, catching European experts completely off guard... it's an Arab Spring in Europe, also considers the Independent in the UK.
And the situation is no longer about young people demonstrating, writes Germany's Spiegel... the government of José Luis Zapatero refuses to call for early national elections... despite pressure from the right-wing opposition, which won the local elections this Sunday... and meanwhile, the anger and determination of the streets show no sign of weakening.
But what do they want?... this question keeps coming up in European editorials, as if journalists were waking up this morning to discover what's happening in Spain, and it's Le Temps in Switzerland that answers via an interview with historian Benoît Pellistrandi, an expert on contemporary Spain.
There's a fundamental demand from a youth that's overqualified and no longer earns even a thousand euros a month, as they did a few years ago... now they earn less than 300 euros a month for full-time work, and this for over thirty years... there are criticisms of economic austerity measures.
But above all, the historian believes... the real problem is that the Spanish left is orphaned... it no longer recognizes itself in the PSOE, the ruling party, which blindly followed EU and IMF directives and has now fallen victim to the crisis... and Le Temps concludes... this is therefore a vote of indignation and despair.
No, it's much less simple than that! responds a Spanish columnist in the Guardian's pages. In Madrid's Puerta del Sol square, absolutely everything is debated... everything... what's happening in Spain is that the population is inventing something new... people are discussing the end of nuclear power, the abolition of bullfighting, the establishment of a secular state... these are very well-informed, very realistic people leading a genuine fundamental revolution.
And indeed, one must read El País these days to understand this. More than mere complaints about the economic crisis... it's an ethical, moral, political movement, considers El País... a deep movement, an anti-system movement in the Icelandic style, since it draws inspiration from the one that brought down the Reykjavik government in 2009... the anger of the Icelandic people, who refused to bail out banks caught in the financial storm... is reflected in the anger of the Icelandic earth, which has spread volcanic ash across all of Europe... and El País delights in publishing this drawing: a giant middle finger made of smoke from the Icelandic volcano, accompanied by a slogan from a Spanish indignado: "When we grow up, we'll be Icelandic!"
Because only democracy can save democracy, adds the blog of Lluís Basset, also in El País's pages, which asserts that if this revolution currently lacks a precise object... it has a meaning... it is politics in its purest form... even if it's labeled anti-politics... the task now is to find representatives for it... here in Spain, but also in many other European countries where this cloud of anger will spread... as we all know... simply because the Spanish revolution is a kaleidoscope, repeats El País.
And this same kaleidoscope image appears in the American pages of the International Herald Tribune... but concerning the Strauss-Kahn affair... a complex kaleidoscope, writes the American daily, which ultimately reveals more than any other image: the deep crisis of the European dream... because the Strauss-Kahn affair is the story of the monumental fall of a globalized elite, synthesizing the traditional left-right divide, and perceived precisely for this reason as the only solution to the rise of far-right populism...
But this synthesis, with its arrogance, its shameless wealth, and opportunistic proposals, no longer convinces in Europe... because these eurocrats are caricatures of a European aristocracy exercising its privilege at every turn, without ever caring about the fate of the weakest... let alone the fate of the most vulnerable women.
To fail to realize this is, once again, to slowly drive toward the accident.
Every day, populations see described in their favorite newspapers the lives of the wealthy, football players, or overpaid showbiz stars. How many times have you read "the ten best-paid people in the world"? You could replace the "ten" with almost anything: footballers, politicians, CEOs, prostitutes.
Fascinating. But what does this have to do with concentrated solar thermal energy?
Patience.
It's like Jacques Prévert's poem "Inventory." This world is dreadfully boring, terribly lacking in epic spirit, in the march toward the stars. For the nth time, we're going to do some shopping at the nearby supermarket. A glance at our favorite intellectual magazines: L'Express, Le Point, and so on. The circus continues. Everywhere, the dejected face of DSK, "caught with his hand in his pants." It's so boring that one day I treated this affair humorously.
What else could I do, without a world that's spiraling out of control every day a little more?
I don't understand how such a vulgar story could receive so much attention. You'll notice that while our journalists from the Big Press delight in digging into the murky past of this other little man, none of them draw attention to a video worth its weight in Turkish delight:
Strauss-Kahn in autumn 2010, in Tunis -
As president of the IMF, I'd like to congratulate Tunisian President Ben Ali on the rigor of his management.
&&&
Shortly after this "Tunisian Spring," my wife and I were in Egypt, in a tiny village near Luxor, hosted by a friend working at a nearby archaeological site. Not far from the tomb of Queen Hatshepsut, where a group of religious fanatics had, a few years earlier, murdered around forty tourists—French and Swiss—first with AK-47s, then with knives when they ran out of ammunition.
Suddenly, the Egyptian Spring begins.
- Mubarak, get out!
The crowd gathers in Tahrir Square, waiting for a miracle, a sign from heaven.
We bond. A vision of a police vehicle speeding away at high speed, killing a few passersby in the process.
The calm of this small village, where time seems to have stopped. I draw everything around me, sketch portraits of my neighbors. In the evenings, I play guitar among the young people, who are delighted.
Our host has left, on orders, to join the French embassy. Fear settles in, comfortably. Anything could happen.
One night, gunfire. The peasants have rifles. They stand guard, watching over their meager possessions. Those who receive a salary often wait months before it arrives. One sleeps with his animals, his goats, his donkey, his chickens, afraid that a jackal, just a hundred meters from his home, might come and attack them.
I say gunfire. The region is swarming with police, in worn uniforms, casually gathered at checkpoints along a road leading to an archaeological site. They "control" traffic—and more often, they extort money to supplement their miserable salaries. The locals are used to it and ignore them more than they interact with them. I imagine a France where, if you're stopped by a gendarme by the roadside, a bill slipped into their hand would solve any problem.
Our bakchish-men drive with bald tires, broken headlights. In front of their police station, a corrugated iron shelter has a thick glass window, once struck by a bullet, never replaced. Last night, the villagers suddenly saw a 4x4 trying to escape, lights off. They fired shots into the air, stopping the vehicle.
Inside, four police officers in civilian clothes, leaving their post—perhaps to reinforce Mubarak's thugs in Tahrir Square. We'll never know. That night, the region emptied of its dozens of police officers. Was there fear of something? No. They could have easily barricaded themselves in their quarters. They were fleeing, deserting their posts.
Calm returns to the village. I continue drawing. We eat with the peasants, sitting on the ground. During the day, my wife joins the other women to make flatbreads, which dry in the sun before being turned into pancakes on a heated griddle.
The television runs nonstop. Our neighbors don't speak a word of French, and we don't speak a word of Arabic. Drawing and guitar serve as a bridge, just as in the past, when I took clients on safari to Kenya and Tanzania and met Maasai tribespeople.
On screen, Tahrir Square, still. The crowd, stones thrown, some gunfire. At prayer time, thousands of backs turn toward the sky. Allah is great, it says. Since the internet is cut off, we're left to question the stars.
Allah has answers to everything. I learn on site that the Quran is supplemented by the Hadith, the sayings of the Prophet, compiled in thick volumes. He must have been quite talkative—over 400,000 statements attributed to him. Over time, exegetes have made selections, keeping only what they consider authentic. A few tens of thousands of key statements remain. With that, you have answers to all questions, generating both a thing and its opposite. In Cairo, twice, I found copies of Mein Kampf sold on a sidewalk in Arabic.
A few months ago, I approached Calman Lévy, the publisher reissuing my 2009 initiative, asking for permission to feature on my website the book "Voices of Israel" by Amos Oz. Read it—it's not sad. It's worth as much as an Arabic Mein Kampf. I couldn't reach the author, Amos Oz, a "leftist," co-founder of the "Peace Now" movement. In this book, he recounts what was said in Israel in 1982. But it's not that old. I had started
commenting on these writings
a year ago. No response. We'll never know who "T" is.
Fortunately, we have our Western civilization, with its sacred books. Magazines with beautiful colors, capable of giving meaning to our lives. Take, for example, this one:
Excerpt from the March 2011 issue of VSD
At the top: the sultry Ruby taking her first steps into Viennese high society, arm in arm with billionaire Richard Lugner.
On the spine, I read:
Bel: €2.90, CH: $8, A: €3.60, D: €3.70, ESP: €3.20, ITA: €3.20, LUX: €2.90, NL: €3.20,
Morocco: 30 DH, Tunisia: 4.20 TND,
CFA zone: 3200 CFA, etc.
This rag sells visibly. There are others. Stupidity is globalizing. But don't go telling these women they're just prostitutes. They're "escort girls"—a nuance.
We could just as easily graft Strauss-Kahn's head onto the billionaire from Vienna, who's getting his remaining cock sucked by the woman he's showing off.
Quickly, find me the way to the nearest synagogue or mosque. A rabbi or an imam will tell me how to live, minute by minute. What other solution is there in an era when we find a political figure revealing, through repeated slips, elements that may not have been unrelated to the course of his career?
And what about Jean-François Kahn, who calls DSK's lapses "ancillary fumblings"? He was right to retire from journalism. When you say something so idiotic, you've truly run out of things to say.
What does this have to do with concentrated solar thermal energy?
There must be a connection. I'll find it. But everything often mixes in our heads at dawn, you know, in a world where we feel like waking up every morning with a hangover.
Images pass by. Tahrir Square, on the television screen. I think, "Poor people. They have no direction to turn to, no program to debate. We discover that Ben Ali's closets were full of gold bars. Mubarak isn't much better. These are just the pyramidions of pyramids of corruption nested within one another. How to get these countries out of the rut, with whom, how?
Others aren't much better. Education? We'd need to know how to read first? My neighbor in this village has worked with French people for thirty years and doesn't know three words of my language. And reading—what? VSD?
In the village, children receive traditional education in the morning and attend Quranic school in the evening. As a result, they learn theorems like they learn verses.
- Any body submerged in water receives, if God wills, an upward thrust...
A ticket home, finally. The airport deserted. No police, just airline employees extorting small bribes. A ticket here, a ticket there. Everything always ends up being sorted out in Bakchish-city.
Next week I'll be in Biarritz, from June 6 to 9, for a conference on Z-machines. The DZP (dense Z-pinches) conference. At 8:30 a.m. on Monday, my old friend Malcolm Haines will speak, and we'll see if any Americans rise to contradict him. It's easier to criticize a man in the corridors of conferences. Harder face to face.
I won't miss this session. Science journalists should come. It'll be worth the trip.
But it's the swan song. In Brighton, I discovered the childlike joy of Americans involved in black programs (UFOs and secret American weapons, now become... collector's items. Search for it on eBay). In Vilnius and Korea, I discovered that new scientific breakthroughs were already being redirected toward new weapons.
Tiring...
Apart from our MHD research, civilian and deliberately violating God's eleventh commandment—"you shall not study what is round!"—I'll now turn toward energy production fields using 19th-century methods.
Concentrated solar thermal energy—here we are. You see that everything comes full circle, and there was no reason to worry.
Even Areva is getting involved.
They're anticipating a possible disaster. Who knows? Caradarche could make a superb solar power plant, with its 1680 hectares. Install mirrors, turbines, alternators, systems for storing heat in molten salts. We could produce 1689 megawatts. At least it would serve a purpose. And we'd have everything on hand: offices, workshops.
My friend Jacques Juan suggests renaming ITER:
Institute for Thermal Energy Research
That way, we keep the signs.
It seems a high-ranking official at DGA, the General Delegation for Armaments, recently burst into a study office.
-
Say, solar energy—could there be military applications?
-
Indeed!
-
Ah, you reassure me. Tell me.
-
Well, it's under study. Imagine, with powerful mirrors, we could set fire to enemy ships' sails from a distance.
-
But our navy doesn't sail anymore!
-
You're behind the times, General. The French Navy and DCNS are studying stealthy wooden cruisers, completely undetectable. From a distance, their radar cross-section doesn't exceed that of a football.
-
Good, but what about weapons?
-
Thanks to stealth, we can approach the enemy at close range and execute them at point-blank range with crossbows.
-
And cannons?
-
No, with cannonballs and carriages, we'd lose stealth.
-
Well, keep me informed...
I've built large files on ITER and especially as a commentary on the excellent "Complément d'Enquête" broadcast. It took a lot of work, truly. But it was worth it. These people did their job well. This leads us to revisit the segment where NKM (it sounds like a ball bearing brand, but nowadays, without a proper name, we make an acronym), alias Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet, answered journalist Benoît Duquesne about how her government mistreated those poor souls who, believing the lies of that liar Sarkozy, invested in photovoltaics.
- France decides to invest in photovoltaics, long-term, sustained.
Video clip
(Would you buy a used car from a guy like that?)
Benoît Duquesne questions NKM. Her response:
Duquesne and Madame Kosciusko-Morizet, not quite at ease with butter.
Minister of Ecology, Sustainable Development, Transport, and Housing
Video clip (2 minutes)
June 14, 2011:
A text by A. Dutreix
"To put an end to such lies!
The PDF
The U.S. White Paper on Solar Energy (2006)
Recommended reading for Madame Kosciusko-Morizet (PDF)
A Belgian story:
http://www.batiactu.com/edito/un-tunnel-solaire-alimente-les-trains-en-belgique--29298.php
A solar tunnel powers trains in Belgium
A first "green train" departed from the city of Antwerp toward the north and the Dutch border on Monday morning, running on electricity produced locally by the 16,000 photovoltaic panels of the "Sun Tunnel." A world first in the railway world.
These are photovoltaic sensors, without energy storage. But the same concept could be applied using well-designed concentrated solar thermal energy, storing heat in molten salts, for nighttime and cloudy-day operation. Do the math. Imagine covering France's railway lines and highways. Take an 800 km TGV line and assume a 30-meter-wide roof. That's 2,400 hectares. Assume 0.1 MW per hectare of concentrated solar thermal. We get 240 MW. Enough to power TGVs abundantly.
It wasn't on the roofs of trains that sensors should have been placed, but on top of the tracks.
Of course!
Imagine equipping all French and Navarrese highways with "solar roofs," properly oriented. With power stations every few kilometers, using the concentrated solar thermal solution, storing heat in molten salts.
All vehicles could run on electricity.
As a bonus, nearby towns would be supplied with power.
It wasn't in car batteries that we should have placed batteries charged by nuclear-generated electricity, but on the roofs of solar tunnels.
It took Belgians to point this out to us.
These are "Great Works," certainly, but it would be worth leaving to our descendants a livable country. You can easily imagine the "hybrid" formula. Under this roof, capturing solar energy, a mesh roof identical to those on bumper car rides.
You enter these circuits with a car equipped with a conventional internal combustion engine and electric motors built into the wheels. At the toll booth, you extend your "pole" to connect. And off I go, at constant, regulated speed, in safe mode. No more car accidents, no more paraplegics, no more death lists. The system even pilots your car. You can read your newspaper, work, or sleep. You program your route, and fifteen minutes before your exit, you receive the message: "Restart your internal combustion engine. You'll be diverted to exit number 15, which you chose, in fifteen minutes. Press the reception button to confirm you've received this message."
Why not put people with imagination, visionaries, at the head of the country—or countries—instead of soulless schemers with no dreams at all?
- Hearing him, one gets the impression that solar energy is reduced to photovoltaics, and that the government had to halt massive imports of Asian-made cells, disrupting our balance of payments.
Benoît Duquesne doesn't respond to him, "But isn't there more than just this way of managing solar energy?"
He doesn't, because he doesn't know. And Madame Kosciusko-Morizet doesn't either. She should consult... AREVA. Yes, there exists a "very clear-cut" sector, to use the phrase of this "fourth-ranking official in Sarkozy's government," which requires no import of rare and expensive materials. All it takes is installing mirrors made of plain silvered steel, like at Andasol and other locations in Spain.
Ah, quite a few interesting things in this month's (May 2011) issue of Science et Vie.
The Andasol site in Andalusia: 50 megawatts (more than double with Andasol II)
The mirrors at Andasol
Such an installation is not "experimental" but fully operational, feeding the nearby grid. Its mirrors produce a fluid at 400°C, powering a steam turbine-alternator assembly, identical in all respects to those powering a nuclear reactor's core.
Go online. Explore. Try:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concentrated_solar_power
The French version, more concise.
You'll find "linear parabolic" systems:
Even in countries with moderate sunshine, high-pressure steam at 400°C can be produced.
Just extend the length of the mirrors...
Video Siemens
AREVA, "at the forefront of progress," opts for rotating Fresnel mirrors.
At the top, at the focus, the solar energy concentrator.
For a domestic version of the Fresnel mirror system, see my article in the May-June issue of Nexus.
Another variant: parabolic dishes focusing energy onto Stirling generators.
Elsewhere, a "solar tower" toward which mirrors automatically concentrate energy.
Endless images.
I must hurry. The hour is advancing. I leave it to you to discover this already vast field where we are practically absent. But you get the idea. We abandon nuclear boilers, but recover everything downstream—the heat exchangers, turbines, alternators, all the know-how surrounding them—and couple this with large-scale, high-power "solar boilers." We store energy in molten salts at 400°C. It's already operational.
When space is lacking (Japan), we install it on barges, coupling with wind and hydro power (my article in Nexus, May-June 2011). We transport the electricity via high-voltage direct current (operational for ages). In Japan or elsewhere, we equip the slopes of mountains, exposed to sunlight. Work, jobs for tens of millions of people. Technologies accessible to all countries. A global economy revived by "Great Works."
It's this—or a third world war. You choose.
Ah, I forgot the best one. Iceland, financially sinking, strangled by its "debt," is the Saudi Arabia of geothermal energy, paradise for hydropower (Icelanders don't know drought). All it lacks is a continuous high-voltage undersea power line to supply Europe. And Iceland might be less unstable than Libya (ah, that image of Bernard-Henri Lévy playing Malraux there, and addressing Sarkozy by his first name. BHL, the inventor of disposable thinking).
Jeremy Rifkin responds to Sarkozy
Rifkin is right: nuclear energy is outdated, dangerous, producing only 6% of the planet's consumed energy. For this deadly technology to play a role in "reducing greenhouse gas emissions," we'd need to build 1,500 more reactors in the next 24 years, adding to the current 450.
That would mean a Chernobyl every month, statistically.
That's not bad, what Rifkin says. But in terms of energy, he imagines a mesh network like the internet. It reminds one of Mao's village foundries. But I doubt we'll ever power a foundry with solar panels from nearby villages.
Every time, each person holds up a piece of the puzzle, unaware of the existence of the others. Rifkin lacks the concept of high-voltage direct current electrical energy transmission (3% loss per thousand kilometers). But he has excuses. A few months ago, I myself still didn't know about such technology...
A minister is supposed to know more than the average person, in principle. Re-listen to Koziusko-Morizet—synthesis of ignorance and incompetence—advocating the "clarity of the nuclear supply chain."
Pathetic...
I can't find online a summary table with flags showing the major achievements of solar thermal energy by country. Spain is well positioned. The US, somewhat.
There are installations with hundreds of megawatts.
France, absent...
June 2, 2011:
France tentatively returns to solar thermal energy
AREVA installs solar thermal systems in Australia. Why not in France?
The United Arab Emirates are also getting involved (2010), with Total's collaboration:
http://www.total.com/fr/groupe/actualites/actualites-820005.html&idActu=2394&textsize=1
But... in France???
June 3, 2011:
I know the village of Les Mées, near Sisteron well. It has a rather astonishing history, which I’ll tell you one day. It features an 117-meter cliff made of "poudingue," a remnant of one of the Durance River’s moraines when it was a massive glacier. This moraine is a mixture of soil and pebbles (from "pudding," hence the French term). Impossible to climb.
Go see it—well worth the visit. At 80 meters above ground, there's a Saint Andrew’s cross embedded in a cave, made of two 4-meter-long wooden beams. It has been up there since the 15th century. Who put it there? Mystery. While rappelling down, I approached it and even touched it. A complicated, adventurous story. Perhaps up there, a tomb accessible via a hidden gallery.
Indiana Jones near your doorstep.
Above, a vast plateau. The people of Les Mées have installed 36 hectares of photovoltaic panels, planning to expand to... 200 hectares. Nobody is bothered. It’s invisible unless you fly over the area in a glider.
36 hectares of photovoltaics on the plateau of Les Mées. Total project: 200 hectares.
One hectare equals 10,000 square meters. There, each square meter receives one kilowatt of solar energy. That makes ten megawatts of solar power per hectare. Assuming a 10% efficiency (actually higher), that yields one megawatt of solar energy per hectare. With the full installation, at least 200 megawatts. That starts to add up. And all this in a remote, unattractive region with no tourism value. France certainly isn't short on plateaus.
What a bore dealing with these nuclear fanatics!
June 15, 2011:
A solar tower near Seville. Its boiler reaches 900°C. Thermal storage in molten salts allows nighttime operation. Supplies electricity to 25,000 households.
And in France?
Projects for solar development in Morocco
To be followed...
An answer to the questions raised by various protest movements emerging here and there like bubbles:
We are governed by self-proclaimed "elites" combining incompetence with stupidity.
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