(no subject)

[fivemack]

A Greenpeace article

http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/blog/climate/greenpeace-shuts-down-coal-fired-power-station-20071008

includes the line 'And it will only be 45 per cent efficient, in an age when power stations can reach 95 per cent efficiency'.

This is a coal-fired power station, so 45% efficiency in converting thermal to electrical energy is I think extremely good.

95% thermal efficiency implies, by the Carnot equation, that the heater is twenty times hotter in Kelvin than the heatsink and that there are no other thermal losses in the system. With a heatsink laid on an infinite icefield at zero centigrade, the heater has only to be hot enough to boil tungsten. I was unaware that gas-cored fission reactors were either in production, or this enthusiastically endorsed by Greenpeace.

Comments

[randwolf.livejournal.com]

But it's not a minor point; Greenpeace is quite right that the construction of new coal-fired plants is a very wrong-headed thing. I, too question their solution to energy problems, but surely the sensible thing to do is to work on better solutions, rather than protesting the protests; if you side with Gordon Brown, you will get nowhere. As for shooting protesters, be glad that your government at least is still somewhat responsive and in check; in the USA, these people might have already been killed.