# Lighter Vehicles Produce Higher Injury Insurance Claims



## Coley (Jul 26, 2007)

Gee, didn't we hear all of this about the time that the Ford Falcon, Chevy's Corvair and the rest of the small cars came out in the 1960s???

How about the Crosley, King Midget and the Metropolitan??

How much money was wasted in the research this time.....?


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## Evan (Feb 20, 2008)

Coley said:


> Gee, didn't we hear all of this about the time that the Ford Falcon, Chevy's Corvair and the rest of the small cars came out in the 1960s???
> 
> How about the Crosley, King Midget and the Metropolitan??
> 
> How much money was wasted in the research this time.....?


The Corvair was just a badly designed car. I don't know about the Falcon but as I see it design of cars has changed over the last almost 50 years. The logic used to be build a solid heavy car like a tank to avoid being crushed in an accident. We now know that you want some parts of a car to be crushed so the energy can go into the doing the crushing and not into the object being collided with or the passengers. Light cars can be safe too it is just about car companies doing proper design work. Why don't we have 4 or 5 point restrain systems. They are inherently safer as you can't slide to the side in a crash among other reasons. It took laws to get seat belts, airbags and steering columns that don't impale people. Eventually we will require increased safety and decreased weight. We need a government push to use more composites in design. Why don't we have more people using ceramic disk breaks, composite or light aluminum for the hood or trunk. There are other examples but basically a typical normal car is very badly designed in my opinion.

f=ma
People will still accelerate the same because they will always drive the same basic way. You want force to go down because it reduces the energy required by the car to simply move, this increases performance by increasing efficiency no matter what kind of energy source you have. So decrease the mass. That way in a crash you have less energy to deal with. 
People only feel safer in larger heavier cars but it is not entirely true.


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## david85 (Nov 12, 2007)

The problem with energy absorbing structures is that they often went too far and used it as an excuse to skimp on the structure of the vehicle. I think cruse zones can save lives, but if the passenger compartment also collapses around you than it won't do you much good. Even cars built in the era of the corvair could some times fly apart or collapse on the occupants in a collision.

I drive an older vehicle that has no ABS or air bags or crush zones, but it will collapse in the engine bay during a high speed frontal collision because I've seen other ford pickups in accidents and the ford rarely looses (same for the passengers in the ford). If I had to choose between getting whiplash or having a leg amputated below the knee because the crush zone went too far, I'll take my chances with a heavier vehicle.

I also have a problem with the crash testing speed being only 30-40 MPH. Thats not where people get killed. If anything the testing speed should be higher and that would require a stiffer structure.

Composite, and aluminum are great materials. Best of all their strength doesn't rust away over the years. Steel is garbage this day in age. Just the amount of trouble needed to protect it from the elements is ridiculous. But for impact, compression strength and energy dissipation, composite is very hard to beat. Only problem with that is the kind of junk that was used on older cars that used "composites". The blow in fiberglass was heavy weak and unreliable and unfortunately many think of that when they think of composites. Reducing weight also reduces the amount of kinetic energy that needs to be dissipated on impact (the car is less vulnerable to it's own weight).


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## Evan (Feb 20, 2008)

When I say lighter cars I mean cars that have everything but the safety cage made to crumple correctly. Look at the smart car. Small and light with a proper extremely hardened safety cage. A lot of that car, relative to most American cars, is plastic. The passenger area is very solid but the front and rear are two short to have what I would consider proper crumple zones. I don't know why everyone invokes the Corvar and it's time in this discussion. The Corvar was a bad design. It wasn't that it was light it was that it was a death trap. Unsafe at any speed. I live in Massachusetts where the state will vote democrat no matter what so electorally I feel safe voting for Nader.

As for it being a choice between loosing a leg and getting whiplash I have been hit very badly in a car accident by a woman in a large SUV. I was in a Saturn. The Saturn looked like a piece of tin foil some kid had crumpled. Her car didn't crumple even in the crush zones and she was really beet up. The safety cage in my car warped to the point where the doors didn't open correctly but I walked away with a bad case of whiplash. If we made all vehicles lighter we would all be safer. Our use of steel in unnecessary places has lead to cars that are way to heavy.

People can get killed at any speed collision if the car isn't designed right. Accidents average 35 MPH. Look at Volvo they have it right. Multiple levels of crush zones for increasing speeds. I don't have the exact figures but I imagine it goes something like bumper 0-15MPH, first zones 15-35, second 35 to 40. Look at the F1 racing cars in crashes the whole car can get blown apart but that spreads the energy of the crash out over time. F1 also has a carbon fiber safety cage.

Fiberglass got better over the years. It was also misused. We have now decades of knowledge of how to work with steel. We only have the last 20 years of time with fiberglass and only the last 10 were spent seriously looking at it. The Solectria sunrise was mostly fiberglass as I understand it and passed inspection.
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0EIN/is_1995_Nov_22/ai_17767562


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## david85 (Nov 12, 2007)

Sunrise, tesla roadster, and Mclaren F1 are all mostly composite/carbon fiber and all do very well in standard collision testing. But its real composite instead of the cosmetic fiberglass that was used for minivan doors and body fairings. The sunrise was more glass fiber with reinforcing around high stress areas, and the roadster has a bonded aluminum monocoh chassis, but the mcleran relies completely on carbon fiber for its strength.

Staged levels of crush zones make sense to me, but I still see a lack of attention given to highway speeds. And thats why crush zones make me nervous. What may prevent injury at ~35 MPH could kill you at higher speed. The smart car has almost no crush zone because theres just not as much room. Instead of crumpling it tends to bounce off of objects and remain more or less in tact in a collision. Seems to me a strong structure can be made safe. The main back bone of the smart is steel. The plastic is only cosmetic.


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## Evan (Feb 20, 2008)

I was not arguing that the fiberglass in the Saturn protected me I know it is not used for anything but cosmetics in the design. My point was that they had made the car much lighter while the SUV that hit me was comparatively heavier.

I know the plastic in the smart is only cosmetic but look at how much of it is just that cosmetic. Think about how much it would weigh if it were all replaced with steal. As for bouncing off things that is not entirely sound. Bouncing means that you have a lot of left over energy from the collision that should have been absorbed. Bouncing just jars the passengers more. At high speeds bouncing is required as no crumple zone can handle unlimited speed collisions any more than a hardened safety cage. You need both. Plus even in a speed where the crumple zone is past its designed peek effectiveness it will still help absorb some of the force. I know the idea of a car that is designed to crumple seems unsafe but really all I am talking about is shifting the reinforcement of the car from the outer body to the safety cage so it only has to protect the passengers. It takes less material to reinforce a smaller area. I have seen some crash tests of modern cars at high speed against very hard very sharp things like the end of jersey barriers. The whole hood of the car folds up but the safety cage is generally all in one piece. They need to work on the front leg area because in many cars it can bow inward but that is a problem for many cars regardless of size and weight due to bad design. I know I need numbers to quantify this. The safety systems are designed to protect the most people from the most threats not the statistical outliers like say +90MPH collisions. Those outliers are considered but not the main focus. I guess that is the right way to do it. I would like to see more math proving this.

Keep in mind we are all writing about a 14% increase in injury claims. It doesn't actually provide statistics on the actual injurys. I am going to hold out for more numbers from actual medical studies.


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## Coley (Jul 26, 2007)

My entire point, was that this has been hashed over so many times over the past 40 years.

Should it really be touted as news AGAIN!!!!!

It is like a study that says men and women are different!!!

Common sense would tell you what to believe.......

But I guess it is in short supply.....


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## Evan (Feb 20, 2008)

Coley, yes this has been hashed over a lot. The insurance industry obviously didn't understand it because back when SUVs were getting popular they gave discounts to their owners. The reasoning was that passengers in SUVs got less injouries than the rest of us. Once the number of SUV increased and we started to see more SUV on SUV collisions that statistic turned and the insurance companies reversed their decision. 

This is news again because the numbers are still open to some interpretation. The opinion above is my interpretation of those numbers and facts. Basic physics backs up some of it but that changes as cars are redesigned complicating the way safety is designed into vehicles. As for time being wasted on researching this I would have to disagree every few years technolagy moves forward we just saw the introduction of side curtain airbags. How did that change this number? Why aren't they standard? I contend that simply making cars heavy is not a long term solution to safety because it leads to an arms race were people to be safer buy heavier and heavier vehicles. 

I want to know if this is connected to an increased use of older small cars like the Geo Metro or newer small cars like the Smart for example. I know the Metro has seen a rebound in interest in the used market as gas has gone up in price.


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## xrotaryguy (Jul 26, 2007)

The only problem that I'm aware of with the Corvair regarding collisions is that the steering column was not a collapsing unit. The crumple zones worked well, but the occupants would be stabbed to death by the steering column. I don't need to worry about this with my Corvair because it's a truck and the column is bractically straight up and down. 

I don't really see small cars being more dangerous than large cars unless streets are clogged with large cars. That's pretty much what we have right now, but I'm sure this trend will disappear as gas prices continue to soar.


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## david85 (Nov 12, 2007)

I wasn't really trying to argue with you, Evan sorry if I seem a little short on the subject. I agree with many of your points. Maybe the only thing we might dissagree on is how strong the car should be. 

I've had this discussion on other forums and it can be interesting to look at statistics as I have done in the past. In one case I found some evidence to support my view that 30 MPH calibrated crumple zones do reduce serious injury, but can also cause an increased likelihood of fatal injury at higher speeds beyond the standard crash tests.

Crumple zones do save on the shock to the occupants, but what about on a side impact? There is simply no room to absorb that energy without risking direct collision to the occupant(s). And then it also gets pretty subjective because there are so many different cars out there these days and not all of them are designed well. Some, like volvo choose to go above and beyond the safety standards as required by law, but others only go as far as needed to "pass".

I guess my beef isn't really with crush zones in abstract, its how they are used and in some cases justified. You mentioned a very important flaw that many modern cars have, the failure of the "A" pillar in a frontal collision. This can cause a car to fold upward on collision possibly pinning the driver under the dash or steering column. A slight deflection of this nature is no reason to fail a vehicle if its minor in a standaed crash test, but what happens when the speed is increaced by 5 MPH? how about 10?

This is an example of one of the worst crash tests I have ever seen:
http://nl.youtube.com/watch?v=lB0araA0T_k
In reality, this is a frontal offset test and the truck was designed for a full frontal test. The testing methods changed during the course of the model production run and later tests reveal just how disasterous this truck could be in a collision. Older ford F series trucks had no real crumple zone to speak of and I feel that the 1997 F150 was a step back wards in terms of safety because of how ford chose to engineer the 1997 F150. The 2004 is one of the sturdiest trucks you will ever see even at increaced crash test speeds.

Sadly the 5 MPH crash tests are still a disaster on the ford pickups, like any other for that matter.


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## Evan (Feb 20, 2008)

There were other problems with the corvair car that I know of. I don't know about the truck but the car had many many problems. Starting with a tire pressure that lead to improper traction and ending with things as bad as a high center of gravity leading to more role overs.


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## Evan (Feb 20, 2008)

David85 I didn't think you were arguing with me. I have actually enjoyed exploring this topic. Too many of the people I know agree with me and it gets very boring. 

If anyone has been argumentative here it is Coley who just mentions the same fact repetitiously with out actually adding much to the debate. If he wants to act like the question is no longer valid why doesn't he do so by abstaining from the conversation?


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## david85 (Nov 12, 2007)

Evan said:


> David85 I didn't think you were arguing with me. I have actually enjoyed exploring this topic. Too many of the people I know agree with me and it gets very boring.


I enjoy the topic too, I always end up learning something new with these discussions

There are actually hundreds of videos on Utube showing crash testing, and I am even using that info when choosing a donor for electric conversion. I some times spend hours just watching how different vehicles perform. I wish there were more showing older ones (like what I drive for example).


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## Evan (Feb 20, 2008)

WoW what speed was that crash at? That is one badly designed truck. The safety cage should be able to take more stress. The front should have taken more time/energy to crush. I can't even imagine how much worse that would be if the truck actually had cargo in it of any significant weight.


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## Evan (Feb 20, 2008)

David85 that is one of the things that worries me. I know when the EV1, Sunrise and company were made they were designed with safety in mind but what about the converted cars? How would say a solectria force fair in a crash? Keep in mind when you replace the engine block, transmission with a motor and batteries you redistribute the weight. With batteries in the trunk area you increase load on the safety cage in front end crashes. I know solectria likely did some FEA work on this but I don't think most diy converters do or could even afford too.


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## david85 (Nov 12, 2007)

Evan said:


> WoW what speed was that crash at? That is one badly designed truck. The safety cage should be able to take more stress. The front should have taken more time/energy to crush. I can't even imagine how much worse that would be if the truck actually had cargo in it of any significant weight.


I know, and folks on the ford truck forums still swear by them even after I show them this footage. I guess some feel the need to defend their finantial desicions. Best selling truck in america!! The speed should be 30-35 MPH.

Cargo or significant weight is exactly what concerns me about crush zones in general because they are callibrated for an empty vehicle. What if its towing a trailer?

Heres the same truck in a full frontal collission:

http://nl.youtube.com/watch?v=5XW3u2LrXAM

They crash it into a wall at 0:20.

The weakness of the 1997 F150 frame plays a role here. It is boxed at the front and open channel starts about at the firewall. This makes the front fairly stiff (needed for A arm suspension), but also creates an uneven structure on the length of the vehicle, and makes it prone to collapse on under the floor of the cab. The safety cage is basically the chassis itself, if that fails, it all fails.

The later F150 is boxed on the whole length and that helps a lot, but the superduty isn't and it does even better almost being drivable after a full frontal crash (not able to find an offset crash yet) 

http://nl.youtube.com/watch?v=rYXsk8dsxrs

This is the closest example to what I drive and the video seems to be recent, so maybe there are others that better document how well older fords behave (might want to use mute button):

http://nl.youtube.com/watch?v=e0NOp0vdCmE&NR=1

check out what this old chrysler does at 1:30! old ford doensn't do too bad. I think the're showing the difference between barriers tha bend and barriers that are stiff.

http://nl.youtube.com/watch?v=Pat3xHMP_tE&feature=related

Carbon fiber in a crash:

http://nl.youtube.com/watch?v=mUPq760LC00

And just for good measure, one to scare the crap out of you!

http://nl.youtube.com/watch?v=D827IxEJVS4


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## Evan (Feb 20, 2008)

David85 the key part of that first sentence is the "ford forum". Of course they didn't like it. At some point these things stop being about interpreting facts and start being about a religious celebration. I worry when products start getting that kind of exultation. (Apple)

I have long thought that trailers should have break systems that can be connected onto what ever is towing them. I have no idea if that should be done electronically or with some kind of extra cylinder. What effect does having the towing package in a car have in a rear end collision?

http://nl.youtube.com/watch?v=D827IxEJVS4
What did they build that out of tin foil?!!

http://nl.youtube.com/watch?v=rYXsk8dsxrs
I like the way the cab starts to tilt up but it would be better if more of the front crushed. Why don't they make the rear area crunch in front of the axial?

http://nl.youtube.com/watch?v=e0NOp0vdCmE&NR=1
Why do people add music to car crashes? It is not swan lake. 

http://nl.youtube.com/watch?v=mUPq760LC00
That looks perfect until you add the question you have about +10MPH. 

Keep in mind though just because the safety cage in those collisions may survive we don't have the ability to measure the stresses on the passengers. I would love to see a dummy in one of these with some data logging. We are looking only at the first impact. The second (person hitting inside of car) and third (persons guts hitting bone) are not measurable. That having been said you are still on to something.

I have to wonder however how many crashes happen head on at higher speeds. Typically when I see cars crash on the highway they are not rear ending other people they are loosing control and hitting the side rail or flipping over. Did you see the BMW where the role bar has an explosive charge to blow it up from behind the passengers head and over where it welds in place? That is impressive.

I know we have had a quasi real time conversation here but I have to go now so my next response won't be for at least a few hours. Sorry.


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## david85 (Nov 12, 2007)

Yeah things can get out of hand when both are online at the same time Its happened before when we were taking about how to make a semi-marketable conversion, and I was up nearly until 2:00 AM a few nights. No worries, we all have real lives in our own little corner.

Do you have a link to that BMW? Never heard of that before.

The 06 F250 does have a strange way of crumpling, but if it were loaded with something in the box or even with a trailer, more crushing would probably happen at the front, but the way it folds is worrying.....

Rollover is only now starting to get the attention it deserves, bit rollover protection still has a ways to go.

You are right about the ford forum, but there were a few of us that drove older trucks and argued the other side. Even got the administrator in on the discussion, and this is a guy that was there to see a preview of ford's 09 F150 along with other members of the press (he naturally favored newer trucks as his job depended on it). It was a good discussion, but I had to know how far to push my point....


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## Evan (Feb 20, 2008)

1997 BMW 328i convertable
sorry no link

2006 BMW 3-Series coupe and convertible
http://consumerguideauto.howstuffworks.com/2006-bmw-3-series-coupe-and-convertible-2.htm
(I suspect just the convertible)

2007 Volvo C70
http://www.carseek.com/reviews/volvo/2007c70/

Mercedes-Benz CLK63 AMG
http://www.egmcartech.com/2007/09/2...s-benz-clk-63-amg-sometimes-bigger-is-better/

One thing I didn't consider that I know have on my mind is this.

"Hidden Roll Bar Protection Potential Hazard for Fire and Rescue?"
http://inclinometer.blogspot.com/2007/03/hidden-roll-bar-protection-potential.html

I am not sure if this car has it. I don't have much time to look for it. Apparently this has an "automatic expanding roll bar".
http://video.google.com/videoplay?d...jC7SOuzHIqGqwKyjeiOCA&q=hidden+roll+bar&vt=lf


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## oldtimer (Jul 30, 2008)

Old Adage: Figures lie; and Liars figure. - Of course the Insurance people will use figures slanted to their benefit. A more telling figure would be percentage of vehicles in each weight class that resulted in higher costs rather than gross numbers. Figures can be made to seemingly back up whatever point you wish to make. Just look at the politicians if you doubt that!


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## david85 (Nov 12, 2007)

I've also seen a car that had integrated roll protection in the back rest of the seats, don't know how well it worked. Rapid deploying safety systems are by nature hazardous though. Just like air bags, they can save lives or take them depending on how they are handled and designed.

For safety of a conversion, this is something that is worth examining in detail. That other thread I mentioned is where I first started examining the potential safety considerations for an EV conversion. They are after all called a "lead sled" for a reason. The favored car in that discussion was the corolla and is in fact my preferred donor (thinking older than 2003).

In some ways you could argue that the car would be at least as safe after a conversion. For one thing, there is no gas tank to rupture in a collision. Weight distribution can also be addressed. Removing the engine in the front allows for lots of room under the hood for batteries to replace that weight, so the crumple zone will still perform close to as intended. Weight in the rear can be a problem though. 

Placing the batteries in the truck of the car is convenient, because there's lots of room, but there are safety implications of doing this because all that weight in the rear of the car will transfer its kinetic energy through the structure of the car before it can be transfered to whatever the car hit. If the car cannot stand up to this added stress, it could crumple at the passenger compartment since thats what stands in the way of weight in the rear, and the object in front.

Now the good news is that batteries positioned in the front of the vehicle can actually supplement the forward crush zone because of the nature of their weight, and resistance to collapsing. This was first observed with ICE powered cars in crash tests. Flooded lead acid starting batteries caused slight improvements in crash performance when filled with water. Before this was known, batteries were emptied to make cleanup easier after a test.

Better news comes with lithium Iron phosphate batteries. Weight is the first advantage. But they are also spill proof, and have demonstrated acceptable performance in the event of being ruptured or crushed. Indeed if we are talking about building a car for the average range of say, 40-60 miles as is usually seen with lead acid batteries, using lithium instead could mean the vehicle is slightly LIGHTER after the conversion.

Add to that the possibility of some batteries in the rear to replace the lost weight of the fuel tank, and it may even improve the crash worthiness of the vehicle overall.


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## Evan (Feb 20, 2008)

The catch with lithium is that batteries made from it tend to degrade a lot more than say polarized NiMH (think Ovonic not Saft/Varta). Most of the NiMH we get now are membrane which are IMHO not as hard wearing. We have a *lot* more nickel in the planet and a lot more nickel we could recycle that has already been mined than we have lithium. Lithium is at the moment easy to mine because there are liquid brine pools of it under ground in some areas. However, that kind of concentrated purity is not a common as we would need to replace every gas tank on the planet plus all the ones China and India will want. A lot of it happens to be desolved in the ocean water like just about every other salt on the planet. I know by talking batteries I will likely invite a flame war to start up again around me but I really doubt lithium will pan out the way people hope. Even the best lithiums I have seen don't wear as well as lead acids or nimh. I know NiMH is heavy in comparison but think about how much farther the EV-1 say could go if it had the composites and more importantly the design tricks we have now for them to use. I know it would still likely be just short of the 300Mile range everyone wants but not that much farther than the range that say the Tesla gets. 

You are dead on about batteries in the trunk effecting the safety cage. My other concern about it would be steering. They move the center of gravity up (relative to the engine block) and back. 

When / If I finally get my conversion going I will likely buy some carbon fiber tubes to re-enforce the passenger compartment. I use linux and there are a number of fem/fea packages I have been fiddling with in it.


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## xrotaryguy (Jul 26, 2007)

Evan said:


> David85 I didn't think you were arguing with me. I have actually enjoyed exploring this topic. Too many of the people I know agree with me and it gets very boring.
> 
> If anyone has been argumentative here it is Coley who just mentions the same fact repetitiously with out actually adding much to the debate. If he wants to act like the question is no longer valid why doesn't he do so by abstaining from the conversation?


The problem that Ralph Nader cited most in his book related to the car's rear engine and swing axle rear suspension. The design is supposed to produce some spooky handling characteristics. I don't doubt that the handling of the Corvair was spooky, but then so was the handling of the Porsche 356. No body ever wrote a book about that car. In fact, swing axle was pretty a standard sports car suspension in the 60's. Mercedes, Triumph, Lotus and Porsche all used a swing axle rear end. 

Ralph Nader did not write Unsafe at Any Speed because the Corvair was more unsafe than other cars. he wrote the book because the US was allowing auto manufacturers to build cars that were unsafe in general. The Corvair was just the car that he focused on.


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## xrotaryguy (Jul 26, 2007)

Evan said:


> The catch with lithium is that batteries made from it tend to degrade a lot more than say polarized NiMH (think Ovonic not Saft/Varta). Most of the NiMH we get now are membrane which are IMHO not as hard wearing. We have a *lot* more nickel in the planet and a lot more nickel we could recycle that has already been mined than we have lithium. Lithium is at the moment easy to mine because there are liquid brine pools of it under ground in some areas. However, that kind of concentrated purity is not a common as we would need to replace every gas tank on the planet plus all the ones China and India will want. A lot of it happens to be desolved in the ocean water like just about every other salt on the planet. I know by talking batteries I will likely invite a flame war to start up again around me but I really doubt lithium will pan out the way people hope. Even the best lithiums I have seen don't wear as well as lead acids or nimh. I know NiMH is heavy in comparison but think about how much farther the EV-1 say could go if it had the composites and more importantly the design tricks we have now for them to use. I know it would still likely be just short of the 300Mile range everyone wants but not that much farther than the range that say the Tesla gets.
> 
> You are dead on about batteries in the trunk effecting the safety cage. My other concern about it would be steering. They move the center of gravity up (relative to the engine block) and back.
> 
> When / If I finally get my conversion going I will likely buy some carbon fiber tubes to re-enforce the passenger compartment. I use linux and there are a number of fem/fea packages I have been fiddling with in it.


Not so according to some. 


> As lithium expert Keith Evans notes in his report – Lithium Abundance - World Lithium Reserve, “Concerns regarding lithium availability for hybrid or electric vehicle batteries or other foreseeable applications are unfounded.”


http://www.green-energy-news.com/arch/nrgs2008/20080029.html


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## david85 (Nov 12, 2007)

No one really knows how long the calender life of Lifepo4 batteries are because they are still new. The lithium (cobalt) ion cells that are used in the tesla roadster are expected to last 5 years with fewer than 1000 deep cycles. Later lithium polymer cells, like what we see with prismatic soft cells, are often rated for 1000-2000 cycles at 70% DOD depending on what the intended use is. Calender life has been observed as high as 10 years or more in some cases.

Cycle life is easy to prove because that can be done in a lab, but time is not so easy to replicate time in laboratory conditions so we can only guess how long they will last at this point. But lifepo cells will go to 3000 70% DOD cycles and still retain over 80% capacity (ratings vary by manufacturer but this is the general benchmark). Lack of explosive thermal runaway is also a plus. The other major advantage of lithium is the higher efficiency. NiMh cells are only around 60% efficient, lithium is in the upper 90s with lead acid being in the mid 90s (at very low C).

I don't have anything against nickel based batteries, but so far I think lithium has more advantages. The legal obstacles are also a problem in the case of NiMh batteries. There is probably more room to make the battery better once the patent expires. I also do not believe that any one single battery will reign supreme in the years ahead. lithium seems to hold promise for now, but there are others that can compete, and I'm sure other better batteries will come along eventually be they variations of lithium or completely new chemistries. The battery technology for the electric car is only now starting to be picked up where they lof off nearly a century ago.


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## Evan (Feb 20, 2008)

Oldtimer - You are likely on to something. It is funny how we can't see any hospital or government data to match the industries claims. 

Xrotaryguy - The Corvair might not have been the worst car on the road but it was not the best. That time in the 1960's is when many of the families I know became life long Volvo owners. My point still stands that using the Corvair and similar cars from that time as an example of the best a light small car can do for safety is bad. There are plenty of small simple things that automakers could do for safety and don't as I have mentioned. I do not understand why everyone has latched onto the Corvair so much in this discussion. 

We should fork this thread into three parts small light current cars, batteries and the Corvair.

Xrotaryguy - I am not arguing that we don't have the lithium to do it. As I said it is the 33 most abundant thing on the planet. It is just that we have much more nickel and it is easier to get our paws on. Also after we use up those brine pools, mostly in South America, we will be out of the easily accessible lithium. After that we have a lot of lithium in the ocean, but that requires very expensive processing of dubious ecological impact and mining of known bad impact. I know that like oil there are market speculators that would like to expand fears of some kind of lithium shortage. That is not what I am saying would happen. I think in the long run we would just end up changing battery chemistries after a while. NiMH research won't end because there are many areas where it is still known to be superior to lithium. Telco systems will still rely on it and lead acid for decades. The expert you quoted works for one of the companies that processes lithium and trades in that market. It is not what I would call impartial. Once more the math used was assuming a linear rate of use. If we were to seriously start making lithium cars which will likely start happening in the next 10 years it will no doubt start to grow exponentially at least in the beginning. Going back to the 1990's our lithium use was tiny compared to now because lithium pills were almost the only thing we made from the stuff. I might be wrong but I doubt it, at the very least I think we should devote more study to this before we have to make a change over.

David85 - Again we seem to agree more than we disagree. One of my hobbies is building small autonomous robots and to that end I have characterized some different battery chemistries in the smaller scale. People think they just age the way they do in the data sheet but it doesn't work that way when you make a battery pack out of them and have things like balancing and temperature variation to deal with. I would not be shocked if in another 10 years both battery types are replaced. I only named NiMH because it would be easy to do, and it is a known tech. Both are because it already was done. Lead acid started a long long time ago in cars, back in Tesla and Edison's day. Considering the amount of work just in advanced fabrication that has gone into SLA over the years I would be surprised if nothing could be done to improve that efficiency figure or their energy density. Actually work on things like thing films will likely advance energy density all around in the next 5 years. This is all most all my educated guess work though.


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## david85 (Nov 12, 2007)

I think you hit on one of the most important aspects of electric cars: There is no one battery solution.

Battery types will come and go and EVs can merely be upgraded to accomodate the new battery chemsitry when it happens. Be it Nickel based, lithium, zebra, or something else.

I think its quite possible that it would be completely viable to "trade up" the battery instead of the whole car. And unlike petroleum fuel, batteries can be recycled so supply shortages from nature will still play a role, but not as much as with oil.

Lithium has one of the highest theoretical energy density of any known electro-chemical device right now. Lithium sulfur is one example of that. Aluminum/air fuel cells also have very high energy density, but lithium is the focus of most of the research right now so it has the advantage over others. Not perfect by any means, but it is getting better from one year to the next, unlike lead acid for example.

I have a low end chinese made RC motor glider. Its powered by a simple NiMh battery and can be dump charged in the field right off of a car starting battery (with a resistor of course). That is still a major advantage over lithium efficient or not. Its also more durable. I honestly would consider NiMh batteries for an EV, but for legal reasons you just can't buy them in large format.


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## Evan (Feb 20, 2008)

David85 - No one solution will ever fit all needs. We will need to balance our energy sources too to power these cars. People will want to trade up batteries every few years anyway as they are the only part of the car I would imagine too really wear out. An induction AC motor is a very hard to break machine. The controllers IGBT's will likely outlast the battery too. Hopefully the government will set standards for the batteries though so we can accurately compare them. I miss the good old days of mil spec. You comment is only proven more right when you consider half the cost of the car will be the frame and the other half the battery. This is just the parts cost.

That is a neat glider. I don't like the charging scheme though. Where did you find that? 

I don't trust fuel cells for the most part. In places they work but people tend to forget that hydrogen costs a lot to make. The cell might have a fantastic energy density but the efficiency of the who system drops dramatically when you consider the losses imposed by making the hydrogen. That may change with some work on materials but I hope only after we start making more use of composites if only for efficiency and safety sake.

As for the legal implications as gas prices rise people will become more interested in them and as a result politicians will feel the heat. Hopefully they will call for a return to our good old antitrust laws.


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## david85 (Nov 12, 2007)

The plane came with a 3 hour AC charger, but I took a car charger from another plane (RIP) and swapped a resistor in it to push more current into the 8.4V battery (charger originally made for 7.2V battery). It can charge in about 15 minutes if the vehicle is off. Takes less time if I'm driving to the field since the alternator in the truck pushes the nominal voltage higher. I'm thinking of removing that other resistor to try and reduce the charging time even more. It would still have a huge ceramic resistor as well as a fuse in the connector socket of the charger. The charger itself is controlled by a simple mechanical timer, nothing fancy. Can be set for up to 20 minutes then shuts off by itself.

Using this same charger I have been able to charge 9 volt NiMh batteries in less than 5 minutes. Not left unattended though! It was neat to watch the voltage climb past 12V volts and observe how the temp in the cell began to rise as it reached full charge. Some small chargers intended for NiMh batteries are temperature activated and don't even monitor cell voltage. I still have a small 2 ch plane that uses a charger built into the controller that works that way. Good luck getting away with that using lithium!!

In reality the voltage in the 8.4V battery can go as high as 12V when its still fresh off the charger (voltage will bleed off when disconnected), so it isn't that big a stretch to charge strait off a 12V car battery. I measured the voltage from the AC charger that came with it, and it is over 12V with no load. High current is the main danger hence the large ceramic resistor that the charger has, but this trick has been done ever since high performance electric RC cars first became popular in the 80s (except with NiCads back then). 

I know that tests have been done with NiMh powered highway vehicles that could recharger in 15 minutes or less. And in that case as well, temperature of the battery was the main concern. Only now are lithium iron phosphate batteries starting to catch up over 10 years later. I still ponder the possibility of experimenting with a Lipo battery for the plane and I've seen others on Utube that have done it, but considering the fast recharge time its hard to justify the cost for whats basically a toy. As for a real car...well, my lithium sample battery should be sent out any time now

I am not a fan of hydrogen fuel cells. I'd be here all day if I mentioned my reasons, but they include everything you already stated. Aluminum air batteries have impressive energy density, but they are basically a primary battery and must be thrown away after use. Only practical application I know of is remote communications devices in the high arctic (old info mind you).

The multi solution point is important in this case because whatever happens in the next 10-100 years, I think its unlikely that any single energy device or fuel will have the same strangle hold on our economy as oil does right now. I feel there will always be a place for oil, maybe even as a fuel resource, but in the end energy diversity might be the shape of things to come. And thats not something I think would be all that bad compared to what we have.


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## Evan (Feb 20, 2008)

So it uses one of those 8.4V packs that most RC stuff uses now? I wonder if we will have standard sized battery packs for cars in the future. It might dictate too much of the design of the car since in an EV you build the car around the batteries typically. I wonder why those batteries hold up so well even though you are "bad boy" charging them. I guess those hobby packs are just well built.

Yea I don't understand why they don't build RC chargers with smarter electronics. Not that I never use ceramic resistors but linear power supplies on timers is hardly the best tech. Shame they put so much time into designing the plane and so little into the charger.

I think in the future most things will work of plain old electricity but the grid will be less centralized. People will think nothing of feeding onto the grid with solar roofs. We will eventually work out how to make multi-spectral panels using things other than silicon and gallium. Copper-Indium and the like. Silicon degrades badly and gallium is just to rare. I don't like the nano-solar thing because I don't think we have worked out how to make nano scale stuff safe. It has been a hot topic at the last few chemistry society meetings here in the US.


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## david85 (Nov 12, 2007)

The battery is basically a shrink wrapped set of 7 AAA sized cells (600mah). Like I said nothing fancy. Lipo chargers are much more sophisticated for hobby applications and the cost alone is enough to discourage me from trying lithium for a hobby sake. I really don't have much time to play with stuff like this any more so I'm happy just to steal 30 min on the weekend to toss the plane around a field and relax a little. Lots of power for a $65 plane.

I know of nanosolar, but didn't know there was any controversy with their idea. What have you heard about them?

I agree with you about decentralized power production. Its no small reason why my power company has fought tooth and nail against allowing customers to sell power back into the grid (some did it illegally for years). They will now allow "net metering" as they call it, but its way behind other utilities around the world. It certainly has dangerous implications for some of the larger power companies out there that could see lost profits as people no only start powering their own homes and cars but also make surplus power to send across the country. How cool would that be?

Since the cost of a battery bank for the house has just been eliminated, we may try and install some PV cells on our house. It would also work out well for any future EV prospect.


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## Evan (Feb 20, 2008)

Oh sorry I meant nano solar as in the solar projects involving nano scale materials not the company. The problem with nano scale materials is that there is a growing body of evidence to the effect that they can accumulate in human organs mainly lungs. This was already shown in fish and small mammals. Now there are some alarmists saying using things like carbon nanotubes could end up being the next asbestos which I think unlikely. However, it would likely not be good for you to breath in the stuff. Now minor amounts of that kind of thing are made in natural events like fires but nature has a way to break that down. If we continue to make nano coatings on things like say pants that just wash out we will have a problem. It is like GMO (genetically modified organisms) they were discovered and just kind of thrown onto the market assuming they are mostly the same as their natural counterparts. When many nano things are approved for safety they are only shown to be chemically similar to something of similar composition that works at a larger scale. The catch is that at the nano scale things behave differently thats why we bother doing it in the first place. 
http://www.sciencefriday.com/pages/2007/Aug/hour2_082407.html
(I am a big fan of Ira Flatow)

That isn't entirely a money thing on the part of the power company. It is the attitude of many people I know in the power industry that people shouldn't tamper with their hardware. I can't blame them when you are working on a 7200V line you want to know it is off not that some local idiot is putting power on the line. The thing is that is a system management problem. People are on occasion killed working on lines that are supposed to be off. There is no reason the power company couldn't create a standard box that connects everyones house using strong cryptography to their Scada system. Current scada hardware has minimal if any security. The problem then is knowing if they are being honest about how much power they are using from your house. A member of my family just had to fight them to replace a bad power meter. It would also counteract the effects of any future Enron like machinations. I still like the idea of having batteries for your house. Net metering is cool but most of our power plants are still not going to be able to ramp up at night and down in the day as effectively as I would like. Future power plants will likely be able to handle that but I don't think we will be building any new capacity for a long time. There are thermal pumps being used to even out the night to day balance but I have some ecological concerns about the effect of sticking that much heat in the ground. I am more a fan of what they did in Alaska.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/connected/main.jhtml?xml=/connected/2003/09/03/ecnalaska03.xml
It is a building sized stack of NiCads. 
Now all we have to do is rebuild the distribution grid which is aging.


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## david85 (Nov 12, 2007)

Whats ironic is that the main power strain on the system isn't during the night. Its in the late morning and mid afternoon. Those times are made more sever in places that get hot in the summer and air conditioning can put an even bigger strain on the grid. Thats one of the enduring ironies with the power crises that we saw in california and later in the US and canadian heartlands. All that free energy raining down on the cities and they are having a power crisis. The fact that power demand drops overnight is actually proof that EVs or plug in hybrids could be integrated into out current power network much easier than most would think.

Short term, net metering is a great first step because its cheaper to get into alternative energy. Its not really independent energy, but a battery bank can come later on as funds permit. Net metering allows the short term investment to be a little more manageable.

Distribution in canada is also a problem though not as bad as alaska it would seem. There is no significant network that can transmit electricity from hydro dam rich BC to ontario that relies heavily on coal fired power plants. Instead, BC hydro exports power south as far as southern california (yes even during that power crisis). Nothing wrong with exporting power, but there should still be a sound network within our own borders. Investment in power generation seems to be sadly lacking in our time. Most of the power plants and transmission lines are just so old. We have a hydro dam in my town that goes back to the WW2 era.

I think that a strong distribution network is critical to make things like wind and solar more viable on a large scale. Areas that have more wind or sunlight can support other regions of the country that may be having a lull in wind or sunlight. Weather is a variable after all. Hydro dams or other more conventional power plants could act as the storage battery for times when weather is not forth coming with energy. Research is also ongoing to develop "super conductors" as they are called to reduce transmission losses that are bound to happen with such great distances.


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## Evan (Feb 20, 2008)

The load dropping at night was proof that solar at least with net metering has a way to go. Of course that is the way the power company likely looks at it. I think it is more there problem than ours. 

Net metering is a good first step I don't dispute that I am just trying to picture the evolution of power distribution. 

I have no doubt that *anything* in Canada is better than in Alaska. The power to Alaska is a joke because it is sent, unless I am mistaken, from the US threw submarine cables. The US power grid up there is a mess. Yes I knew about BC hydro. Living in Massachusetts I am all to aware of the amount of power we get from Canada though over here it is mostly from nuclear. Around the time leading up to NAFTA a lot of new nuclear capacity was built in Canada because they new they could make mint selling it down here. No offense but the Canada nuclear system is kinda scary, not as scary as the US NRC but creepy enough. 
CDN
http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/12/12/2329216
NRC
http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/03/13/2129233

As for new investment not happening that is just in most of America. Goto Canada (well you are already there I gather) 
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/04/29/0714256
or goto California.
http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/08/17/1611242

You are right though the hydro plants are aging along with the grid. The thing is we just are not building things with the same quality we used to. So many public construction projects near me have turned into disasters. The highschool in my town has had a ton of problems and the big dig has become synonymous with bad project management and planing.

Superconductors are still likely a ways away. The cooling requirements are very prohibitive for everything but very short runs. I remember playing with the first test samples of super conducting ceramics they needed liquid nitrogen. They are closer to room temp now but it is still a little two impractical. There are superconducting lines being installed in New York city now but it is not a very long run, I suspect because it is still experimental but also due to cooling. They are also just now starting to work out fabrication methods too.


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## david85 (Nov 12, 2007)

Yeah, the chalk river reactor is a bit of a national embarrassment. 

I watched the government, opposition (former government) and the nuclear safety watch dog take turns throwing mud. Mostly landing on the government of course. The public safety minister claimed that no one had brought the matter to his attention until the shutdown had already happened. The technical problem is that there were supposed to be backup emergency cooling pumps on standby in case of an earthquake or other potential disaster when maintenance was carried out in case the main pumps failed for some reason. The backup pumps were dead and replacements were back ordered from Sweden I think. So the plant was ordered to shut down after several warnings regarding this safety violation. This in turn caused a world wide shortage of medical isotopes and an outcry from the international medical community, including here in Canada.

The fact that the reactor is now over 60 years old also raised a few eyebrows. The government figured that it was the lesser of two evils to over rule the safety watch dog's decision and order the reactor to re-open. It gets a little strange now, because some of the language that was used by the woman in charge of nuclear safety in Canada sounded more political grandstanding than anything else. There was an attempt to fire her, but I don't remember if it was successful.

More recently we found out that plans to replace the reactor in a few years have been scrapped because of technical problems with the new design. Tax payers still had to foot a steep bill for the research that went into trying to develop the replacement reactor.

Overal I'm not too impressed with nuclear power, even though canada does not set the best example. Just too many things to go wrong and it will always be a security liability no matter what world we live in.


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## Evan (Feb 20, 2008)

http://www.loe.org/shows/shows.htm?programID=03-P13-00024#feature5
you can get audio of that here http://www.loe.org/shows/shows.htm?programID=03-P13-00024

Hey at least you only have that one national embarrassment my country has taken it to a fine art. I would bother to list the things going wrong write now here but it likely wouldn't fit in the forums server. I know an earthquake seems unlikely but there are small designs (literally table top scale) for single hospital use to make nuclear medicine. One was actually done by Freeman Dyson. I wonder they couldn't make a few of them and distribute them as needed. We have done crazier things. We need to decentralize things like this too.

Most modern reactors use a breeder reaction which is more efficient but to reduce waste further they run at a super critical state. Jimmy Carter thought this unsafe and so we didn't build anything like that in the US. I am a big fan of Jimmy Carter too. I wish we had more engineers in political office or at least a more normal people and fewer lawyers. That having been said I despise it when scientist or engineers get political and when politicians try to direct science. Jimmy Carter was the only one I think who could change hats between careers and keep his credibility. Incidentally he personally payed to install solar panels on the white house. Ronald Regan tor them down.

The new tech in nuclear is now all pebble bed but there are issues there. A lot of people are not sure if it will really solve the run away problems the old designs had. More are questioning other gas containment/control issues. I think one of the reasons we have so much of this going into Africa now is out of fears they will go solar. I know people who have worked on nuclear projects. To some it becomes like a religion just like your ford truck forum.

If you like environmental news 
http://www.loe.org/index.htm
They do very careful fact checking. 
There is a show from Canada I really like called Deconstructing Dinner but it is kind of far to the left.


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## david85 (Nov 12, 2007)

The cry for nuclear power often comes hand in hand with climate change these days, strange bed fellows indeed. As we have seen in that case as well, it can be really hard to find the truth when two opposing sides are so convinced of themselves. Ontario is planning to upgrade its power grid with bigger nuclear power plants to replace aging coal fired plants (plans for carbon trading are also in the works as the provincial debt climbs). Assuming both work properly I guess nuclear power is a reasonable replacement for coal from an environmental standpoint, but personally I don't think I will ever be completely comfortable unless there is world peace or something. Things can go wrong even with proper regulation.

Now that I think about it, I can actually remember brief lessons in grade 8 or 9 science that led me to believe that nuclear was a good replacement for fossil fuels. Based on what I learned in that course I even made a brief essay on why nuclear is a good choice. Thinkng back its obvious now that the course was slanted in such a way as to give mainly favorable information regarding nuclear energy. The same course was also promoting the idea of hydrogen fuel cells because they're clean. Not that political agenda ever finds its way into our school curriculum!LOL

There was mention of 3 mile island and how the leak was "quickly contained" and the public was never at risk. Then went on to describe ho canada's wonderful CanDu reactor could use none weapons grade fuel and was "very safe" because of water being used instead of control rods (very old course). Oh and guess what? india is nuclear power because of canada's generosity in the past. A reactor was given to india decades ago as a good will gesture and plutonium from that plant was used to make their first bomb.


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## Evan (Feb 20, 2008)

I don't trust nuclear for safety reasons. The waste is starting to really pile up here. The plants are in some cases miss designed in the case of a number of ice condensing reactors Westinghouse built for the Tennessee Valley Authority. The plants have had many people including many well respected engineers and scientists from the nuclear labs here have said the plants should be changed. They still haven't. I know theoretically we could build a safe nuclear plant but I have never seen one that everyone could agree on as being totally safe. I have a friend who is in her 80's now. She worked at Bell Labs in the 50's and knows a lot about the design of these things. To her it was a religion she really believed in nuclear power until Chernobyl. She still believes the plants could be made safely but not that people can run them safely. It is human nature to get careless and business nature to try to cut costs. We have the same trouble only worse when it comes to managing the waste. I say you make it you store it on site. The nuclear plants are not suited to that because the power companies want to externalize the costs of doing that to us the tax payers. Granted we ultimately pay for it anyway as users but you know it is still deceptive. I see it as a way for them to basically cook the books.

As for global warming and nuclear power. Yes it emits no fumes when everything goes fine but there are major troubles when you consider the habits it we lead us too. With nuclear power you still have to dissipate a lot of heat. Down here that usually gets dumped into the nearest body of water. Now it is still a lot less than the effect of global warming but still it is messing up the local habitats and the world at large by changing migration patterns. Coal plants do much the same but still we need it to stop. Nuclear power even if made safe would lead us to a situation where we would forget about efficiency again and become totally dependent on it. I don't like solutions that breed a monoculture because when one fails they all fail in the process typically forming some kind of addiction on our part. It would also give the power company way way to much power over our lives. We would be using them for everything. 

3 mile island was nothing. It could have been so much worse. People think of nuclear accidents they only think of Chernobyl and 3 mile island. There have been many more accidents over the years. Some do to policy, some do to cost, some carelessness and some do to bad design. 3 Mile Island was IMHO badly designed. There was a hydrogen bubble in there that they had never even imagined could happen. The people from the NRC made math mistakes trying to figure out the problem. Everyone was just to panicked to think strait. Chernobyl was bad management and careless operators. The worse nuclear plant accidents in world history.
1. Chernobyl
2. Three Mile Island
3. Santa-Suzana Field Lab (they covered this up until a few years ago)
4. Windscale 
There have been so many fuel/waste accidents that I don't even know where to start. Consider though the human cost if we had another Chernobyl. The cleanup cost so many lives it was unbelievable, they had to put the bodies in lead coffins. The tomb they have built around the thing never fully contained the radiation and now they are building another one around it. That one is designed so that if we need to build another one over it in a few decades we will have an easier time doing that too. There are people in Mongolia that were no where near it who now have measurable amounts of radioactive material in them along with the health effects from it. I know it was a fictional version of events but watch K-19 Widow maker that was a real nuclear sub that was miss designed and miss constructed. It leaked radio active material as the fuel rods moved up and down. Basically over time everyone slowly died from radiation poisoning. There were quite a few who died on board rather graphically. NOVA did a show about the real story of events that was very good too. 

The American Experience did a very good show on 3 Mile Island.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/three/sfeature/index.html
You might be able to get it from a library or ahem "other" network.

There is a plant that leaked coolant in Japan. They used sodium instead of water because sodium doesn't have the hydrogen absorption issues (among others) that water does. The trouble is sodium is very very flammable. When they went to survey the damage a fire started. The reactor in was shutdown. They videoed the survey. An officiall from the government came forward and said the reactor was fine and nothing had happened. Later that same person said there was a problem but there was no video. Then he "jumped" out a window. Later they came clean after the video surfaced. That plant is now back online and has been switched to a more powerful fuel plutonium from it's old fuel uranium.
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/01/27/180239
"Suppresed Video of Japanese Reactor Sodium Leak"
Don't worry though we are still perusing this "safe" technology here in the states. If that video doesn't work there are other copies of it on wikileaks and other places.
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/01/20/1737203
"DOE Awards 265 Million Processor-Hours To Science Projects"
That last link is from January of this year. 

The using water to manage the reaction is not a sound idea. There have been more than a few cases at this point of it going wrong. The CanDu reactor is actually held up as a good design because of it's ability to reuse other reactors waste products.



All power corrupts, nuclear power corrupts atomically.


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## david85 (Nov 12, 2007)

Evan said:


> All power corrupts, nuclear power corrupts atomically.


Thats a good one. I'll have to remember it.

Seems to me nuclear power isn't all its cracked up to be even if all the rules are followed (regulation AND common sense). The numbers for upgrading the nuclear facilities in ontario are in the billions. I can't help but wonder how costly a windfarm on lake ontario would cost by contrast. The secrecy element just adds insult to injury. I hate it when information is kept from us. No good ever comes from it.

I haven't seen the movie K19, but I did see a documentary on it. The basic design of the reactor relied on a system of pulleys to actuate the control rods through the top of the reactor. Seals around the control rods were of course imperfect. This basic design was used even on the very first nuclear sub that russia commissioned; K2. Buy the were fair about it. The crew would have the ventelation system going to curculate the radio active material evenly though out the boat so no one got an unfair dose. or so the story goes at leas......

By comparison the american reactor design in nautilus was much safer and was completely sealed. Made possible by some out of the box thinking by an electric motor engineer. He came up with the idea of actuating the control rods via magnetic field through the case of the reactor. It was basically a linear electric motor that had the case take up the gap between the rotor and stator. So it was completely sealed.

Kind of neat to think about on paper, but it still scares the hell out of me to think that this stuff is being handled by our leaders and unscrupulous companies. Something tells me that a concerned citizen like myself probably would not be given access to the facility to see for myself if they are following proper procedures.


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## Evan (Feb 20, 2008)

Yea like I said they externalize the costs of everything they can. A nuclear plant can generate more power than a wind farm of the same size. I doubt however that would work out if the nuclear plant had to take into account the area of land the uranium is mined from or the area required to store it. On the other hand the theoretical perfect efficiency of a power plant is about 20%. We would need a lot more wind than we have to make it work. The good news for Canada is that you have a nice wind current to use. The bad news is that I don't think we can ever use all the wind because we will really mess up our global weather patterns. 

I really don't like government secrecy ether. I am a big fan of Bruce Schneier. Security threw diversity/openness not obscurity.

Yea I knew about the design of the subs reactors. They were both the first nuclear subs ever made. The motor was basically a long induction motor with a long worm gear drive.

Hey I live near Boston. We have a nuclear reactor that the navy and MIT built originally to train people sitting in the center of the city, there are fast food joints and stuff in front of it. Everyone knows about it but they still pretend it is a secret. The thing has been talked about online, in news papers, and etc. Yet we still pretend it is a secret. There was a kid that died there from radiation exposure he was many times over the safe limit. The whole thing is a farce. That reactor is over 60 years old and used for "research" operated by students. I always feel like I should be walking quickly when I pass it. 
http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/Congress/3428/Nuclear.html
"Cambridge MA Votes to Move MIT Nuclear Reactor Out of Residential Neighborhood: MIT Plans to Double Reactor Capacity"

http://media.www.dailyfreepress.com...Mit-Nuclear.Reactor.Scrutinized-1032799.shtml
"MIT nuclear reactor scrutinized"

http://www.boston.com/news/educatio...3/high_radiation_found_in_mit_nuclear_worker/
"High radiation found in MIT nuclear worker"
(I couldn't find the one for the guy who died)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIT_Nuclear_Reactor_Lab

http://www-tech.mit.edu/V105/N59/nucle.59n.html
"Cambridge evaluates MIT's nuclear reactor"

Whats worse in the MIT has very little respect for human life. They helped the government test radiation effects on disabled children. There was a book done on US government tests on civilians with radiation called the plutonium files.
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpa...e/Times Topics/Subjects/L/Law and Legislation
"2 Recall 1949 Radiation Tests on Them"


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## david85 (Nov 12, 2007)

I won't complain about canada's nuke problems anymore. The reactor is next to a busy main artery and they say that theres no security problem? Have they not seen the size of craters left behind after a truck bomb goes off in a terrorist attack? I see what you mean about religious about defending and upholding their ideas. Not confidence inspiring at all. I'm just glad there aren't any nuclear facilities in my part of the country.

This is one case where I will firmly hold to the "not in my back yard" philosophy. I think nuclear power can be made safe, but people are the variable. I would not trust myself to take the lives of others into my hands with such power, and I would not trust any other human to do the same either. I'd like to see the kind of terrorist that would try and place a truck bomb at a wind turbine or in the middle of a field of solar collectors.

Nuclear is a very powerful energy resource, but I think its time to move on. Its my opinion that the world has in fact not become a better place since the first bomb was dropped or the first reactor came online. Not to mention the fact that its not renewable! Right now some wars are fought over oil, imagine if we start fighting over uranium?

If anyone else is following this thread, take a good look at this article and the photo in particular:
http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/Congress/3428/Nuclear.html

Scary isn't it?


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## Evan (Feb 20, 2008)

Yes. The world is coming apart and my government is tearing it further apart with it's own aimless conflicts, which allow every other fool to run amok. Meanwhile when it comes to the environment we sit back and watch building SUV's with hybrid technology so they can get 24mpg instead of 22. There is a line from a book I like about re-arranging the deck chairs on the titanic. Sorry but I am just a little irritated at hearing about this.
http://www.pbs.org/now/shows/435/index.html
Just scroll down to the part about Amy Goodman. She is a reporter who was covering the convention and the protests around it. They pre-emptively arrested her support staff (producer, etc) and then while actually covering a protest march they arrested her. Free speech is my religious hangup. Sorry.

As a US citizen talking to a person in another country I think I best that I don't speculate about the various attack scenarios. Need less to say that when I was taking a class on the homeland security I floated an idea to the teacher. It scared him. Insidentally he worked for the US in Afghanistan before the Taliban fell.

You are right about the not in my back yard thing only in the US we lost our right to know about where the waste goes on it's way. Which is just great as that means we won't get any evacuation route announcements before hand. So even if the plant isn't in my back yard the waste could be. Plus the feds tried to put a compressed liquid gas shipping center in my state last year over the almost unanimous objections of the people who would be living near it and obvious safety and terrorism concerns. I share you feeling about no human having the piece of mind, etc to operate a reactor. 

I know how you feel about the bomb. It wasn't a proud moment in our history. Then again my grandmother was in an "internment camp" and my grandfather was getting harassed after leaving Germany because he wanted to study engineering. I know there are plenty of other people here who would disagree. I think we are under the radar a little because everyone else has stopped reading this thread or we are so off topic they don't care.

That photo isn't all it could be. In front of the old reactor building there is a cafe and a set of two other small shops. It is literally the same building. The new reactor is the one you see there in the white dome. By the way chemicals of all kinds are transported by on the railroad. But we all take risks so MIT can save on their electric bills.

As for a war over uranium. Hmm... I don't know. I hope that never happens. Right now there is enough of it floating around Russia that I am more scared of a rouge with a bomb but I guess in the long term it could happen.

Incidentally I found this today.
http://www.hybridcars.com/compacts-sedans/honda-insight-overview.html
The thing is that compared to the original Insight it looks like a joke.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honda_Insight
The original had a great drag coefficient and a very light aluminum frame, all reminiscent of the EV-1 I might add. What happened? The new one looks like just another high drag sedan. I don't mean to be negative about this but why do I suspect this will just be another Prius. Don't get me wrong it will likely get the same if not better gas millage by some but think of what they could have done extending the old Insight design instead of just taking the name.


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## david85 (Nov 12, 2007)

Funny thing is I saw that recently and I thought it was more of a prius clone off than anything else, the curves are just too similar. I liked the original insight. Wasn't revolutionary by any stretch but was at least better than anything else by more than just 5 or 10 MPG (unlike the prius). And I think it looked a bit better too. If they will indeed sell them for $20 000 than that will be enough to compete with the prius. The hybrid premium has been brought up many times with the prius. I have mixed feelings about it, because on the one hand, cars have to be more fuel efficient, but on the other....they costs money (or so we are told!) and makes them less likely to be purchased.

What toyota, honda, and the rest are really doing, is leaving themselves some wiggle room with vehicle performance. All automakers do it and theres no sign of that changing anytime soon. Honda could probably reprogram the PCM to gain a few extra MPGs, but they don't so that when next year's model comes out, they have a reason to try and sell you another car. Cars are after all the ultimate use and throw away product.

As far as "the bomb" goes, it really doesn't matter what country did it. If it wouldn't have been the states, it would have been another country. I'm just glad it hasn't happened since WW2.

I'm with you on free speech. We have some restrictions on promoting hate in canada. Even laws that restrict freedom of information and speech can seem logical however they can often be twisted to the ambitions of who ever is in charge of upholding them. You can literally have a criminal record for saying some off color remarks public. I'm not saying its a good idea to say such things, but at the same time it seems like a slippery slope to set rules on what can or cannot be said no matter how good the intentions are.

Another example is something called a "publication ban". The first time I heard about this was a few years ago when a trial judge ordered the press not to publish any details to a criminal trial to protect one of the parties involved with the case. It was a bigger story than the trial itself, but none the less, it set a president. American press was also covering the trial and was posting information on their websites and including information in their normal reporting. The TV channels were blocked out as were the websites. More and more such decisions are made every year in canada to deny the public a chance to follow these trials that some times involve national security. Unfortunately, every single judge is appointed in canada. Not one is elected.


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## Evan (Feb 20, 2008)

Yea it does look to much like the prius. The original insight has a much nicer drag coefficient. I don't understand why they didn't just make a 4 seat version of that. 

I think you are right about their concealing the limits of what the car can do. The original insight could have done better if it had Ovonic batteries though. Instead of using them honda got stuck using the same chemistry only from a licensee (Panasonic). The battery is made from +5000 NiMH D cells like the ones used in flashlights. It comes prepackaged in a special holder with welded tabs. The battery would wear better and have lower internal resistance if it was using larger format cells.

I agree about the bomb thing.

I also agree on the hate speech thing. Free speech doesn't exist to protect what I want said it exists to protect what I don't want said. There is a book called "Who Controls the Internet" about how the net is being regulated via such situations. It opens with a person making hate speech on Yahoo from Holland being sued via an upset person in France under French law. After that failed the French government sued Yahoo to remove all of that persons hate speech. The sad thing (from the free speech point of view) is that they won. On a quasi unrelated note the world wild life federation was sued for using the copyrighted/trademarked name Jaguar for their save the jaguar website at Jaguar.org. They were used by the parent company of Jaguar the car company for infringment and guess what, the car company won. Apparently the car has more right to the name than the animal the car was named for @$*(@!
(After that WWF used the wresling people and won which was good because it allowed them to recover their lost legal fees from the first suet)

Here in America we also have publication bans only here we call them gag orders but they have been widely used for years. Here they date back to the second world war. It is a great story that outlines exactly why they should be illegal. It like habius corpus dates back to the Magnacarta. It is one of the reasons we fought the revolutionary war. I guess he is king bush not president..... The thing is that we don't observe other nations publication bans only our own. How did they ban you from reading news on the net? I didn't think Canada had a national proxy like china's great firewall. Did they just have the ISPs block it all? What about mirror sites and google cache? What about Tor and other onion routers? Boy did this thread get off topic. LOL

Judges should be appointed not elected. In places where judges are elected they make decisions that are popular. If we had that here things like gay marriage would still be illegal, right along with interracial marriage. Heck it was the courts that tried to stop my nations illegal "reservations" for Native Americans. An elected court system would not have done that. If you really hate your courts get elected officials that run on changing courts. This is a check/balance in the US. It adds hysteresis which reduced turn over in the courts. That is one of the reasons we are all so galvanized about this next presidential election here in the states, a lot of our supreme court is going to retire soon. Currently we have an unbalanced number of conservatives to liberals at the moment. This is funny as more decisions are may in lower courts but bush has been changing the people who get appointed there and to prosecuting positions. I share your frustration about tort reform but I don't know of a good way to do it.


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