Member postings for Roger B

I think there are two main reasons why the cooling fins are machined in place on model IC engines:

The first is trying to achieve a prototypical look if the model is based on a full size engine.

The second is mechanical considerations. The cylinder barrels are usually fixed to the crankcase and the cylinder head is then fixed to the cylinder barrel. The barrel needs to be able to take these loads so the depths of the fins are often adjusted in these areas to allow for the fixings. There are some designs where the head fixing bolts go down into the crankcase which would remove this constraint.

Excellent There are many examples of the petrol engine around but very few locomotives.

Dave, I agree that the American Thinker has it's own agenda, but they will post pictures of abandoned wind turbines which the pro renewables sites tend not to due to their own agendas. You have to gather information wherever possible and try to determine it's validity.

Best regards

Roger

Phil,

I believe the wind turbines were abandoned when the subsidies stopped as it was no longer economical to maintain them. When the gearboxes failed there was no sense in replacing them. You made more money building new turbines and starting with another 20 years of subsidy. I expect the same will happen in other places as the turbines start to age.

I don’t think the German model is a good example. The have decided on political not technical grounds to shut down their nuclear power plants, they have invested Billions in wind power, have one of the highest electricity costs in the world and have failed to reduce their CO2 emissions which was the reason behind the Energiewende.

Most of the nuclear decommissioning work in the UK is linked to military usage. The first two piles at Sellafield/Windscale were solely for the production of military grade plutonium. Britain’s fleet of Magnox reactors were designed with a low energy density and online refuelling again to allow the production of weapons grade plutonium. The low energy density means that the cores are much larger and hence there is more active material to deal with at decommissioning. The low burn up required for the plutonium manufacture results in significantly more material being reprocessed and hence more waste. 5% burn up will produce ten times more waste than 50% burn up. Most of the costs of decommissioning are directly related to the military requirement for plutonium during the cold war period and as ever with the military the taxpayer pays for them to make the mess and then pays to clear it up afterwards.

No I don’t work in the nuclear industry but I do like to find the facts not follow the dogma.

Best regards

Roger

This facility was shut down in 2016, I haven't found any explanation, and a methane production facility is apparently being built on the site. Link (in German).

**LINK**

I think that one of the major barriers to developing thorium technology is that currently uranium is too cheap and abundant. It is possible to burn thorium in current generation reactors but how you breed it to fissile U233 has some challenges. Ideally you want to avoid external reprocessing so a lot of shuffling of fuel rods would be required.

The other options of the various next generation reactors have some other challenges. The travelling wave system is quite interesting but is currently being developed for the in situ breeding of U238 to Pu239 which is subsequently burnt rather than Th232 to U233.

The molten salt systems have significant materials challenges although Terrestrial Energy is hopping to apply for a construction permit for a prototype by the end of next year.

On a lighter note the German Police stopped this 'convoy'. I think he will find one of these new blades harder to transport

Larry,

Which experts are which? There are some who actually know what they are talking about and some scaremongers who just make things up.

George Monbiot who is deep Green Left discovered for himself that the ‘luminaries’ of the anti-nuclear movement are just making most of it up and can offer no evidence for their claims. These are his experiences with Chris Busby and Helen Caldicott:

http://www.monbiot.com/2011/11/22/how-the-greens-were-misled/

http://www.monbiot.com/2011/04/13/why-this-matters/

**LINK**

Busby started out with good intentions investigating the childhood leukaemia cluster at Windscale/Sellafield but when he found the radiation levels were not sufficient to be the cause he left the scientific way and started making things up to back up his beliefs. If Sellafield/radiation was the cause the leukaemia cluster would still be there, it isn’t.

Others are now starting to take on this scaremongering, one example is Mothers for Nuclear

**LINK**

They also realised that most of the anti –nuclear information was rubbish and have started trying to add some reality.

Best regards

Roger

John Gibbs’ link has some useful figures. The capital cost for offshore wind is around £3000/kw. If we would like to install an equivalent to Hinkley Point C power station with an output of 3.2Gw the capital cost would be £9.6 Billion. Looks better than ~£30 Billion for Hinkley point but the load factor for offshore wind is around 1/3 so we need 3 times as many turbines which puts the cost up to £28.8 Billion. Still not bad but the wind turbines have an anticipated life span of 20 years and Hinkley Point C has an anticipated life of 60 years. To produce 3.2Gw for 60 years using offshore wind would require a capital investment of £86 Billion rather than around £30 Billion for nuclear. This does not take into account the cost of alternative generation or storage systems for when the wind doesn’t blow. Where would I put my money?

The second problem here is the anticipated service lives. Nuclear power plants have easily exceeded 40 years service life and continue to be granted life extensions. Wind power and especially offshore wind has a poor track record.

**LINK**

**LINK**

Best regards

Roger

Phil,

The estimated £70 Billion is to decommission the all the nuclear power stations and all the nuclear debris left over from bomb manufacture (not part of civil nuclear power). If you calculate the output of the civil nuclear power stations over their life span the decommissioning cost is around 4p/kwh.

Here are some abandoned wind turbines:

**LINK**

Best regards

Roger

Wind turbines do have significant maintenance and decommissioning costs. Up to now decommissioning has been simply ignored, when they break or are no longer profitable as the subsidies drop they are just left to decay.

The installers should be require to put the money up for removal back to a greenfield site. Bringing the big cranes back and removing the very large lump of concrete is not trivial in cost or environmental impact. This is very conveniently ignored.

There are already solutions for dealing with used nuclear fuel however they are in general not being implemented. Current nuclear power reactors are incremental developments of the reactors used to make plutonium for nuclear weapons. To produce the required quality they were designed for low burn up, in other words very little of the fuel is actually consumed. If the fuel is left in for a longer time different plutonium isotopes are produced that are not suitable for making bombs. Currently very little of the used fuel is reprocessed to recover the reusable fuel. There are also reactor designs with much higher burn up that can also use other materials from the spent fuel rods. Around 95% of what is generally called nuclear waste is actually a useful fuel.

I agree that used nuclear fuel is a very hazardous substance which requires specialized control and handling but the actual quantities are very small. A 1Gwe nuclear power plant will produce around 10 tonnes of used fuel per year. In view of the densities of the materials that is around 1m3.

An old work collegue of mine used to extrude relatively pure lead (mostly from cable sheaths) for making ammunition. If I remember correctly the barrel of the 'extruder' was around 30mm diameter and the finished rod was around 10mm diameter. The extrusion was done with a normal workshop hydraulic press and was carried out cold.

The extruder body and ram were steel, the die was just a hole.

Best regards

Roger

I have information for a 3mm (almost 1/8" broach giving 300kg force for ST50 which is a moderate carbon steel.

**LINK**

If you click on Percussive broaching tool for each size it gives the details.

As a 'left field' alternative I would suggest you look at the Proxxon PD 400

**LINK**

Best regards

Roger

Jason, do you know of any video clips or details of running rollers? I can find ones of the engine alone but not a complete on.

If I ever get my diesel to run I intend to build it into a tractor using similar dimensions and drive to the ETW roller.

Going back to the original question:

How big is the engine going to be? The one in the video is around 30mm bore and 38mm stroke. (it wasn't built by George Punter, but by W7CS. It's just liked on George's YouTube).

The horizontal valves suggest that the engine you want to build has a clearstory combustion chamber which should make things a little easier.

The injection pump on the engine in the video is ~4mm bore and ~2mm stroke. This seems rather big unless he is allowing for a lot of leakage. Injection pressure is ~80Bar which is the range I am trying to achieve.

If you go ahead with this I would suggest that you make a bar stock single cylinder version to learn and experiment on.

Best regards

Roger

This was one of the major problems with conventional steam locomotives. The various out of balance forces used to cause significant damage to the permanent way. The introduction of diesel and electric locomotives greatly reduced the damage and allowed greater axle weights and power outputs.

Howard, I felt that trying to produce a multi hole injector in this size would be extremely difficult and at a high risk of getting blocked. I am using a pintle type with a hole of 0.35mm which appears to give god atomisation at around 60 Bar. The other consideration is that the combustion chamber will be smaller so less penetration will be required. I doo have a concern that the fuel will just end up on top of the piston.

**LINK**

I am very slowly developing a high pressure injection system for cylinders of around 20-25cc. The injection pump bore is 2mm as is the maximum working stroke. The injector needle is 1.5mm diameter.

The system has operated on petrol as a manifold injection system and trials using alcohol (less smelly than petrol and diesel) have reached pressures of around 60 Bar.

The details are in a thread on MEM:

**LINK**

I believe that you need to be a member to see the pictures.

The area I would look at is the brake. If it is entirely mechanical no problem. If it is spring apply electric release it should be ok but probably wouldn't allow for variable speed/ramping.