Cal Abel

A coal mining nuclear engineer playing with synthetic fuels working to end energy poverty.

[Cal Abel @cal_abel]

@Mining_Atoms asked me to write a little thread on why thermal energy storage is better than battery storage for the grid.

The problem is energy storage wasn't a problem I was trying to solve.

A 🧵.

[B.F. Randall ⚛ ⛏ ⚡ @Mining_Atoms]

One of the most astonishingly novel features of the Natruim reactor is the de-coupling of the reactor (licensed nuclear island) and the only purpose of the reactor - its heat (non-licensed space) through heat storage tanks: "Grid-Level Storage." In heat.

[Cal Abel @cal_abel]

Where are you buddy? We’re gonna need you!

[Dean Buchan @DeanBuchan]

Atlanta snow plow.

[Cal Abel @cal_abel]

@wil_da_beast630 An R44 https://t.co/ketv7CAZLE

[Cal Abel @cal_abel]

@PsychedelicBart Two days after leg days.

[Cal Abel @cal_abel]

@adrianeaux Go pack go! So the Pope is a FIB….

It all depends on which side of the border you were born on I guess!

[Cal Abel @cal_abel]

@nuclearzak Better nothing at all

[Cal Abel @cal_abel]

@nuclearzak And massively messed up the already dysfunctional medical industry. Lots and lots more administrators adding to the overhead of health care because the incentives it created.

[Cal Abel @cal_abel]

@Rothmus Then don’t mention Unit 731

https://t.co/TmJcGOmjN5

[Cal Abel @cal_abel]

@skylabnz @GTJacketTrader1 The heat.

[Cal Abel @cal_abel]

Learning to coal.

This was cooked to 820°C with steam. Mass is 65% of the original lump with an external volume 30% larger and is about as difficult to break apart as the original coal.

[Cal Abel @cal_abel]

@GTJacketTrader1 The raw coal FSI is 3-4. So the coal will roughly swell 30% during devolatization.

[Cal Abel @cal_abel]

@elonmusk @shellenberger They need dispatchable energy, fossil or nuclear.

[Cal Abel @cal_abel]

@Sargon_of_Akkad You Brits kill me. Seriously what is wrong with actually having red in the red meat?!

[Cal Abel @cal_abel]

@misfitpatriot_ Not to mention the Christian’s that are being purged (aka genocide) from Syria. Nobody gives a shit.

[Andrew Côté @Andercot]

You know your civilization messed up big time when the hardest part of doing anything is getting permission to do it.

We should be fighting nature, physical law, entropy, etc, not government rules and bureaucracy.

[Cal Abel @cal_abel]

I don’t think you appreciate how centralized funding of science has destroyed and perverted the scientific endeavor. While certainly some good work is being done, the vast majority is crap.

The Science™️ originated with Vannevar Bush’s report “Science the Endless Frontier”. It advocated for what Hayek cautioned against in Road to Serfdom, a continuation of wartime command and control of investment, here in the sciences.

I got to see this first hand when I did my PhD at Georgia Tech. Watching what my advisor had to go through for funding the push for publications with little or no new content just to justify grant documentation and the time spent on grant writing was unreal. There is no diverging from the mainstream if you do you loose your funding which means the university looses its funding (obscene “overhead” charges) and you loose your job. The time of professors especially in STEM is spent on their grants not on teaching.

It is for these reasons that I did not join the academy. I still do research and publish, but it is for my own ends on my own dime and my own benefit. The fact I share it is because of the debt that I owe to those who came before me and to those who will come after. This was the norm of science before it became the Science™️.

IMO, the best thing to regain scientific progress is to burn down the federal funding system. Those projects that have actual value will find funding those that don’t and have no value, e.g. string theory and fusion, will die. [fusion does have some value but more for space propulsion and nuclear weapons]

[Michael Munger 🏖️🔪👨‍🍳 @mungowitz]

This one has only gotten more and more accurate. LP keeps topping itself. When you think, "They can't top THAT," they just blow right through the old record.

[The Babylon Bee @TheBabylonBee]

CNN: Behind Closed Doors, Pope Is Still Focused, Sharp, And Energetic https://t.co/YBvTNYRatn

[Cal Abel @cal_abel]

@AlexNowrasteh Defund the government. It is the availability and use/control of money that is where the primary method of control is.

[Cal Abel @cal_abel]

@TuurDemeester I’m having a hard time trimming down my position. Every time I reduce by x% I have the same amount of ETH.