Every once in a while, you come across an article that seems like one thing but is actually another thing entirely. The NPR story of how “The U.S. made a breakthrough battery discovery — then gave the technology to China“, is one such article.
Several people sent this to us for opinion and review; however, the background of the article reveals something quite different. Then again, perhaps that’s exactly why NPR wrote it.
[READ THE STORY HERE]
It is important to read the story as presented by NPR, because it is oddly written as if someone is trying to use the outlet to get out ahead of something else.
The issue surrounds a new product technology called a vanadium redox flow battery. Essentially the U.S. government funded scientists to develop an advanced battery that could store energy without degrading. After success, the technology was then sent to China for manufacturing. China then invested heavily in the product and used the technology to mass manufacture the battery for the global market. The United States is now behind in the product development and manufacture.
As the story is told in NPR, “the Chinese company didn’t steal this technology. It was given to them — by the U.S. Department of Energy. First in 2017, as part of a sublicense, and later, in 2021, as part of a license transfer.” Except that’s not what happened at all. There is some major ‘ass-covering’ in that false narrative.
The lead scientist working on the vanadium redox flow battery project was a man named Gary Yang. Mr. Yang was born in China and emigrated to the U.S. becoming a U.S. citizen. Yang worked with U.S. scientists to develop the technology and was funded by a multi-million research grant from the Dept of Energy.
After their initial success, according to NPR, “in 2012, Yang applied to the Department of Energy for a license to manufacture and sell the batteries.” The Dept of Energy license was granted, and Yang launched UniEnergy Technologies as the parent company to develop the commercial application of the product.
It’s 2012 and Gary Yang was now looking for investors and manufacturing in the commercial sector to produce the battery.
Here’s where it gets interesting…. According to Yang, “he couldn’t persuade any U.S. investors to come aboard. “I talked to almost all major investment banks; none of them (wanted to) invest in batteries,” Yang said in an interview, adding that the banks wanted a return on their investments faster than the batteries would turn a profit.” This is Yang’s justification for what he did next.
After he couldn’t find U.S. investors (which I will say up front seems like an excuse), Yang then took the technology to China to have them manufacture the product.
The Chinese embraced the technology, created entire manufacturing eco-systems around it and now corner the market on the technology behind vanadium batteries. However, giving the technology to China for manufacturing and development is a violation of the license Chang was given.
Yang even admits he knew it was not allowed. “Yang’s original license requires him to sell a certain number of batteries in the U.S., and it says those batteries must be “substantially manufactured” here. In an interview, Yang acknowledged that he did not do that.” Now we start to look a little more skeptically at the claims by Gary Yang, because a whole bunch of stuff just doesn’t add up.
As noted by NPR, five years after getting the license from the Dept of Energy, “in 2017, Yang formalized the relationship and granted Dalian Rongke Power Co. Ltd. an official sublicense, allowing the company to make the batteries in China.”
After China had fully developed the technology, they obviously no longer needed Gary Yang to go global with the product. As a result of what can only be considered as ‘getting cut out’, Yang -still holding the original DoE license- then turned to Europe.
Gary Yang not only sublicensed Chinese manufacturing, supposedly without DoE notification, in 2021 he sold the license to the Netherlands.
“In 2021, Yang transferred the battery license to a European company based in the Netherlands. The company, Vanadis Power, told NPR it initially planned to continue making the batteries in China and then would set up a factory in Germany, eventually hoping to manufacture in the U.S., said Roelof Platenkamp, the company’s founding partner.
Vanadis Power needed to manufacture batteries in Europe because the European Union has strict rules about where companies manufacture products, Platenkamp said. “I have to be a European company, certainly a non-Chinese company, in Europe,” Platenkamp said in an interview with NPR.”
Before moving on, let me recap because things are going to start making sense about why this story has some major ramifications. Also, don’t overlook the timing of events and keep in the back of your mind what you know about Hunter Biden (remember, ‘energy sector’ with no experience) and Biden’s deals with China being made in/around this same timeframe.
♦ 2006 – Pacific Northwest National Laboratory original grant. “It took six years and more than 15 million taxpayer dollars for the scientists to uncover what they believed was the perfect vanadium battery recipe.“
♦ 2012 – The lead scientist, Gary Yang, asks the Dept of Energy for a license. He then creates UniEnergy Tech.
♦ 2013/2014 – Unable to find investors in the U.S., Gary Yang enters a manufacturing and development agreement with China.
♦ 2017 – Gary Yang officially grants a sublicense to Dalian Rongke Power Co. Ltd in China.
♦ 2021 – Gary Yang then sells his license to Vanadis Power in the Netherlands.
Tell me again how this NPR sentence makes sense: “the Chinese company didn’t steal this technology. It was given to them — by the U.S. Department of Energy. First in 2017, as part of a sublicense, and later, in 2021, as part of a license transfer.”
Do you see anywhere in this reformatted outline where the U.S. Dept of Energy gave the technology to anyone, except Gary Yang?
The only entity responsible for transferring the technology to China was Gary Yang.
Now, with all that in mind, check out the date on the picture that NPR uses in their article:
2015
Keep the guy on the left, Imre Gyuk, in mind as we move forward. Note the date of “2015” with Imre Gyuk and Gary Yang. They are standing together.
Remember in the NPR article, the baseline for why Yang took the technology to China was that he couldn’t find investors to manufacture in the United States.
The vanadium battery license in question would have come from Imre Gyuk’s office. Now, in addition to being the Director of Energy Storage Research in the Office of Electricity, of the Dept of Energy, Gyuk also held another role: “As part of the program he also supervises the $185M ARRA stimulus funding for Grid Scale Energy Storage
Demonstrations” {Citation}
The ARRA funds referenced were the Obama-era stimulus funds; the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funds; the shovel ready jobs funds. Yet, Gary Yang cannot find investors?
Citation from 2014: “It’s not a given that lithium-ion batteries are the best batteries for electric cars, or for electrical grid storage. Other types of batteries today show promise, most of which you’ve never heard of: vanadium redox flow, zinc-based, sodium-aqueous and liquid-metal. Businesses looking to invest in batteries are deciding between these technologies and more. Market players will weigh the different technologies’ cost of manufacture, durability, usefulness.” {Citation} But Gary Yang couldn’t find U.S. investors?
Citation from 2014: “The forever battery.” A Silicon Valley startup run by old-school technologists has invented an energy storage device that could take an entire neighborhood off the grid. This magic box is called a Vanadium redox flow battery. {Citation} But Gary Yang couldn’t find U.S. investors.
Citation from 2016: “Cost-effective, reliable, and longer-lived energy storage is necessary to truly modernize the grid,” said Dr. Imre Gyuk, energy storage program manager for DOE’s Office of Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability, of UET’s system. “As third-generation vanadium flow batteries gain market share, it is essential to increase our understanding of storage value and optimization to accelerate adoption of integrated storage and renewable energy solutions among utilities.” {Citation} But Gary Yang couldn’t find U.S. investors. {Here’s another Citation}
Citation from 2018: “On January 23, 2018, the Chinese Academy of Sciences hosted a meeting on energy storage with distinguished guests Dr. Imre Gyuk, director of energy storage research at the United States Department of Energy, and Dr. Gary Yang, CEO of UniEnergy Technologies. Dr. Gyuk and Dr. Yang were met by China Energy Storage Alliance Chairman and the Chinese Academy of Sciences Institute of Engineering Thermophysics Deputy Director Chen Haisheng, China Energy Storage Alliance Deputy Chairman and Beijing Puneng General Manager Huang Mianyan, and CNESA Standing Council Representative and general manager of State Grid Electric Vehicle Service Company Wang Mingcai.” (image below)
[SOURCE]
This meeting is important because Imre Gyuk and Gary Yang are together, in China in 2018. The year after the Dept of Energy license given to Gary Yang was unlawfully sublicensed to the Chinese.
NPR is correct in that U.S. taxpayers funded six years of research and development for vanadium redox flow batteries (2006-2012), and once the product was successful the technology was transferred to China (2014-2017) as part of the commercial manufacture. However, it was Gary Yang who gave it to them, and by all appearances he did so unlawfully.
There is going to be much more to this story…. Much more. We have only just begun to dig.
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I call Bullshite. Once again, those in our trust gave the Red Chinese technology that should never have left the US.
I will not use the Lord’s name in vain, but I pray that He will bring down His righteous justice upon them all.
Amen!
It’s easy to steal technology nowadays. Patents and enforcement is the only recourse for US companies. China doesn’t give 2 runny sh!ts about patents. If they want something they will get it. Same with the Russians.
Sounds to me like the Russians and CCP has figured out the cheapest way to get ANY technology is give Hunter Biden a 30 day marathon of crack and women to “figure it out” for them. He seems to ALWAYS a come up with the right answer. Curious that it always ends up being just a few million for him and the Big Guy.
And all of Washington DC pretends everything is fine. This is not the USA I sacrificed for!
As Sundance says, there is morevto this story, much more.
Many are displaying how easily they can be manipulated, by having their emotional buttons pushed.
The “two week rule” (wait at least 2 weeks, before forming positions re: a new story,…for this story may be considerably longer.
Calm down, don’t panic, and wait.
Any technology that can be weaponized is stolen during the patent process. For more info check out this website.
https://americans4innovation.blogspot.com/2021/
ATTORNEY-BANKERS ARE THE DEMONIC JACKBOOTS OF HISTORY WHO USE PATENT THEFT AND MONOPOLY TO FUEL SOCIALISM, DEBT SLAVERY* AND EUGENICS
* exploiting white, black, brown, red and yellow ethnicities alike
They hire actors, including fake terrorists and virologists, to stage false flags to divert attention from their great sins
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“Mr. Yang was born in China and emigrated to the U.S. becoming a U.S. citizen. Yang worked with U.S. scientists to develop the technology and was funded by a multi-million research grant from the Dept of Energy.”
China thinks it’s fair:
U.S. contributed funds; China contributed the brains. Who contributed more?
China college undergrad, then U. Connecticut and Carnegie Mellon Ph.D.
How/why is this guy a U.S. citizen? He’s Chinese. This infiltration has to stop.
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Yang skimmed the college profs and researchers.
How much is really his innovation and how much he “borrowed” is hard to tell in the distance of time.
I think that Sundance is implying that the tech was given to China. If I infer correctly from Sundance then this tech was allowed to go to China.
The lead engineer is never the guy who looks for investors. You have entire teams trained to to do this. It is never one guy, especially since the tech was hyped in articles as the optimal solutions to existing and near future problems. The investors are there and, once the tech is developed, other people in the organization run to the ready investors for immediate brain storming, manufacturing, etc., which is exactly what China did.
We are giving them tech and somebody, some American, is allowing transferral for their own profit/America’s loss.
Oh yeah, sue the hell out them because the patents are ours. Block the Chinese usage in our country by court order injunctions. We can stop them in their tracks….years ago.
Again, nobody lifted a finger. Why?
Don’t blame the stupidity and corruption of our financial system on China!
No investment banker, PE or VC fund manager in the U.S. today understands manufacturing and technology (they rely on Fortune 500 to tell them what is good or bad – go figure).
They are risk averse career executives with mostly shit-tier minds and a huge conflict of interest on their hands.
This is not a conspiracy. The rot is systemic and intentional.
It is unclear how economic this development is.
It could be great for low cost Chinese labor and vanadium for CCP military sites…
we just seeded and funded the missionary technology
You have missed the point entirely that Sundance has exposed.
It does not matter how rotten the investment / VC industry may well be. This project never got that far. It’s a lie used as the excuse to take the tech to China.
There was plenty of money available in the Porkulus sending bill (ARRA) passed under Ozero to get this technology off the ground and into manufacturing. This was certainly a “shovel-ready” project.
SD has uncovered yet another scandal in our government – this time within the DOE. Forget the banks and VC; they were likely never presented with a valid request.
It’s a possibility. But believe me when I’m telling you that U.S. investment banks, PE and VC funds are the worst scam artists you can find.
They never invest in anything if it involves even the smallest degree of risk.
I have no experience with which to disagree.
The point that Sundance raises is the tech transfer occurred for **other reasons** and motivations; yet to be specifically determined.
Sure pal… another media cover story for deliberate malfeasance. Or internal treachery. These contemptible scum need to be gone.
The Rosenbergs come to mind.
Make Executing Traitors Great Again!
^^^^^ THIS ^^^^
I strongly suspect that was made up cover story from top to bottom, including the supposed trial/execution, to hide the intentional transfer.
A fig leaf, frying real traitors but minor players in the off Broadway shows
Wanna bet crooked FJB and Scum Hunter Biden were not involved in this corrupt deal? Obama as well.
Jay Inslee, the communist governor for the state of WA in the picture. What’s his role in this?
Jay is all about cutting deals while pretending that he is “saving the world”…he is a shyster with significant delusions of grandeur! If he’s in the mix, it’s dirty…no if, ands, or buts! But sadly, he is TOTALLY protected by the sycophantic media in the Seattle area so we’ll never get the whole story unless a conservative reporter decides to go after it!
There is not a bigger China sympathizer, WEF puppet than that pathetic enunch waste of breath fairy governor of Washington
Perfect description !!
I never could stand stand Inslee….something about him. My female instinct tells me he has no integrity.
@sundance, let’s not also forget that Xi made his first stop to see his old buddy and pal visited Komrade Inslee here in Washington State on September 22-24, 2015. If Snake Inslee is involved you best be looking at the underbelly of the snake because there will NEVER be anything good coming out of that deal. Oh yea PNNL (Pacific Northwest National Labs) is where…SE Washington State near the Hanford Reservation.
PNNL is in my back yard. Drove past every day on my way to work.
I’m right there with you!
Exactly, start looking at the billions of black hole “cleanup” costs dumped into Hanford
Kinda sad. The Hanford site or HEW Hanford Engineering Works , when from bare ground to three reactors ,three processing plants and sixty four waste tanks in eighteen months.
well, safe clean up of high level waste and ruins is tougher and slower than slapped together war constructions.
Although I agree Hanford is a major boondoggle
Or the never ending construction project that is the VIT plant. Going on twenty years now. I wouldn’t call it safe clean up. The open air demo of the Plutonium Finishing Plant, spread contamination all over the site.
And you need a cross dressing dog boy handler to manage it, and none were available at the time…
What she said!!
Enter Jason Rantz
Yep – he does great work but no one in the media will carry his stories other than FOX and MyNorthwest.com
He has broken numerous important stories but most never get the coverage that would actually wake up the LaLaLiberals in Seattle!
Jay is what I call max IQ. Meaning dumber than a box of rocks. Who else when govener of a major fruit exporting state, Take maggot infested apples from Thurston county a apple maggot Quarantine area, to eastern Washington a non-quarantine area, home of the states largest orchards.
The research was handled by Pacific Northwest National Laboratories. Their main research center is in Richland, Washington near the Hanford DOE site.
Could just be a photo op. Senator Graham likes to show up at Savannah River National Lab near New Ellenton, SC once or twice a year. Get some face time with the science and engineering demographic in SC.
It’s never just a photo op with Jay. He has his dirty greasy paw somewhere in the mix.
I’ve heard he’s involved in leaning on WA landowners to sell to Gates.
Well given the fact that his daughter works for the Gates Foundation…that wouldn’t surprise me one bit. “Nice piece of land you have there, shame if something were to happen to it”
That makes scents.
Seems China pays good bribes for the U.S. to function as their R&D lab for developing their manufacturing and technology. The U.S. gets to eat the R&D costs for new goods, tech, etc. without selling much based on that IP and China can make it cheaper as they never had to cover the efforts to actually design, and test it.
Read Major Jordan’s diary from 1963. You would not believe what he saw in 1942 and beyond.
Same old saw for the State Department.
Not like the State Department was not infested with Communists for many decades.
Old boss meets the new boss.
PS…involves our US Patent Office handing over all sorts of patents to the Soviet Union. Nothing is new.
You are correct sir. I witnessed this 1st hand where I worked back in the Obama days. We had a unique tech product with lots of military applications and it was covered by ITAR. I was informed that manufacturing was moving to China and they wanted me to go to Shenzhen and train the people there for some unknown period of time. I refused. They did not push me any more. Someone else was to go. Just before they were to transfer it to China the DOD stepped in and said we could not manufacture in China. My desk was in the engineering area and I witnessed the marketeers desperately trying to get the engineers to think up a way to make the China move possible. Their stressed voices made it sound like their jobs depended on it. I always just assumed that there was a lot more money that just the manufacturing savings involved. Manufacturing costs were not that big. Labor was like $100 each on a $100k product. The product never went to China but almost all our other products did. Lot of unemployed people. OF course I don’t know there was anything shady going on, but I am the paranoid type. Oh, one more thing. We were not allowed to even sell the product to China. ITAR and all that.
Thorium reactors.. been around for decades.. would be super useful about now… we don’t use them… why? Politics.. Don’t care about batteries, but to your point.. Ya, they’re bad.. but slaves are going to slave…
Take it from a nuke…no thorium reactors are not some magical solution to anything. There’s nothing wrong with old fashioned u235 fission reactors with 70-odd years of lessons learned and generational design. Yes, Thorium is something that could and should be looked into, but I still have no idea why there is this meme on the internet that Thorium is a magical energy pill. It’s ridiculous.
I’ve operated nuclear reactors, I understand the Thorium cycle, and I just don’t think it’s needed or really a great idea outside of “we have no more uranium” or something. It’s silly. And no, there haven’t “been thorium reactors for decades”. To date there are no operational thorium reactors. They aren’t “safer” (in fact there is a product of them that is worse than anything you can find in a traditional U235 reactor), they aren’t anti-proliferation (the initial design intended to make weapons material), and there is nothing “better” about them compared to u235 PWRs.
When I see someone talk about Thorium as a big great thing, I say to myself “now there’s a guy that has never even touched a nuclear reactor”. Sorry, it’s not a magic bullet.
I know nothing about nuclear, but quite a bit about propaganda. Thorium gets its cachet because Bill Gates has been flogging it for some years now. First to build in China, now Wyoming, but always with lots of government money to subsidize his ego. Best internet PR money can buy.
If Bill Gates has been flogging it that makes it suspect automatically. That might also explain why anyone even knows what Thorium is outside of nerds that know that stuff. At the same time, while it isn’t magical, it certainly isn’t bad either. It’s just not necessary. It’s like reinventing the wheel or the mousetrap. You have to give a clear reason why before proposing it. Thorium requires a breeder reactor design, and at least in the old days that that was considered pretty taboo. Because breeder reactors are expressly used to create fissile materials for nuclear weapons. And yes, the Thorium cycle does do that, albeit at a lesser scale than Uranium-based breeders.
From an old nuke’s perspective, I’m not “against” Thorium per se, I just don’t see a good reason to chuck out over half a century of operational experience with Uranium just to have a “new way” of doing an old thing. From a safety perspective, new isn’t “better”.
Gates had a different small reactor
I understand India is completing a commercial scale thorium breeder reactor.
I believe it might make sense for them as they have significant thorium reserves.
You’re referring to the Kalpakkam Nuclear Energy site operated under India’s NPCIL. They currently operate 2 PHWRs using natural uranium there, similar to CAND-U.
They initially planned a Thorium fast-breeder for 2015. Then in 2017, planned it to begin operation in 2028. Now…who knows? That is a hot political potato. Meanwhile, India’s NPCIL uses plenty of Uranium reactors and sees that as fine.
Thank you for your informed and knowledgeable posts on this subject!
Love our nerds!
It’s only a fertile material. The light water breeder reactors as used by the Navy and demonstrated at Shippingsport, can’t remember the spelling, would constitute a serious upgrade to existing plwr’s and could be retrofitted.
I know there a good people here being a bit misled by certain people in our sphere of influence that fusion is at hand. It is not.
Commercially viable Fusion is just 50 years away.
It has been 50 years away for about the last 40 years.
You must have been at the same. Wattec seminar I was.
You must have been at the same Wattec seminar I was.
Not everyone is committed to the freaky Star in a Bottle approach:
https://generalfusion.com/
https://hb11.energy/
Seriously, it’s always 20 years away. Not 50! That would be like telling the future. Just say 20 and you will always be correct. Even 50 years from now.
50 years away for the last 70 years in my neighborhood.
Fusion is always 20 years away, as they say. Yes I know it requires a breeder for the Thorium fuel cycle. I didn’t really want to get into the full discussion of how Thorium works as a reactor material because it would cause massive glazing-over of eyeballs if I did. Suffice to say you get both an extremely radioactive isotope of Uranium out of it as waste, and an isotope of Plutonium to make weapons out of if you are willing to deal with said isotope of nasty Uranium to get it seperated out. It’s not a magic pill. Fusion is. But fusion is….”20 Years Away”™
Fusion was just 20 years away in the 1960’s. I don’t remember it ever being 50 year away.
So Brillion Energy is a fraud? https://brillouinenergy.com/
If it isn’t a fraud, it looks like Low Energy Nuclear Fusion may be very viable in a few years, if not sooner.
Getting ~ 120Watts out for 44.5Watts in (2.7 times more heat out than electrical power in) sounds pretty promising to me.
https://brillouinenergy.com/test-results
We measure power plants by the amount output as electricity.
Here is a useful comparison of energy efficiencies.
The Efficiency of Power Plants of Different Types – Bright Hub Engineering
Note how poor Nuclear is. That is going to be what a real fission reactor needs. It will need hundreds times more nuclear energy than it outputs as electrical energy.
As I put together the claims of these cold fusion junkies with the real efficiencies, they have just about achieved a miracle. Before long, they will be able to:
Get more electricity out than they put in. (38% conversion thermal to electric would make that happen)
Have no radiation produced whatsoever.
All while manufacturing helium, solving the world’s helium shortage.
And no radioactive waste whatsoever.
But instead of all that, buy their hot water heater. (/sarc)
BTW. Honeywell sells hydrogen fuel cells that are mountable on drones (quite small). That output much more power than that. Electric power. No fusion needed.
Fuel Cells (honeywell.com)
Yes.
Nothing magical about it.. Simply stating that they would be super useful about now.. politics decides if something is safe even when it is not… Politics decides what is best and what will not even be tried.. even when options are limited and resources scarce. When choices become limited you don’t have a whole lot of options. But politics is all the justification one needs apparently…
That is a clear point you have there. Maybe use “thorium!” as a bit of a red herring to allow idiots to simply accept nuclear. But still, regular nuclear is fine, it’s just got a political problem. I suspect that thorium would gain the same problem as soon as politicos realize it is an equally viable solution to the political problems they don’t want a solution for.
What scares me about them.
‘It’s like the embers in a barbecue pit.’ Nuclear reactions are smoldering again at Chernobyl
I didn’t think anything scared Sir Francis Bacon.
But yeah the idea that Thorium has to be operated as a molten salt does give me a bit of the heebeejeebees. That’s really, really hot. Usually you don’t want your nuclear fuel to melt, but with Thorium LFTRs, you actually want it to be molten. Crazy stuff. It’s probably safe though. Probably. Maybe…
My question in this is where does Elon Musk fit in? His EV business thrives on better battery tech, so why isn’t he using them? Or creating his own? He’s many contracts with China, yet somehow he knows nothing about this new technology? I highly doubt that.
Musk has his own battery manufacturing as well as development. I’m sure if this form of battery was the cat’s meow, he’d be using it. I would require a long explanation using chemistry to explain why Vanadium Redux batteries actually kind of suck, and I am sure you and most people aren’t that interested in such a level of detail (basically low energy density), but suffice to say it’s not really all it is cracked up to be in the realm of mass production and solving energy problems or using in cars.
With that said, what Musk uses in cars is not the best and he has said as much. There is a rather promising design for batteries based on research (AMAZING research) as recently published as a few months ago, but that means probably 5 years-ish out from a viable product. Musk’s approach to all of this is to hope for better research and apply it in engineering to what he has with development. So still 5 years. It’s always 5 years.
I’m not a battey expert, but I have been dealing with batteries since my time in the navy on a submarine, and I currently work in emergency backup power as my job, so I have some interest in them. I even helped with testing a new type a couple months ago, but that was some hot garbage in my opinion (ZO2 fuel cells). Lithium Ion are currently the “best” for mass production and use in multiple applications.
We know from research that there are a lot of ways to make a battery much better, but it’s still a massive work in progress. Musk is keyed into it and has said as much.
Some of us here would be happy to slog through long, “boring” discussions of Thorium reactor physics and battery chemistry.
I worked with a nuclear physicist, whom I considered brilliant, who was really big on Thorium reactors (modern designs), back when I was working on neutron in, gamma out bomb detection/imaging equipment. They worked great, but never went anywhere, because the big players, Smiths Industries, Rapidscan, etc. control the politicians/airport officials and ensure that only x-ray based systems are allowed in the market. Tried to get the CEO to sell the technology to Rapidscan to cash out, because it was clear we would never sell a system, but he instead drove the venture into the ground.
Just looking back at this conversation a week later and if you want the discussion, I’ll give it to you.
First Thorium. It’s actually a quick one really if you understand isotopes. how fission works, what a breeder reactor is, and decay daughters. If you don’t know what those terms are, simply look them up, then come back, but maybe I can simplify it so someone with a bit of a finger on the pulse of things can just pick up the crux of the argument without too much bother.
Basically, Thorium is a “fertile” isotope for fission, as someone above vaguely mentioned but didn’t expound on. What that means is it is a heavy element that is on the cusp of being fissile. OK, let me back up a skosh. There are three types of elemental isotopes of interest to nuclear physics. Fertile, Fissionable, and Fissile. That is in order of how ready they are to undergo a fission. “Fertile” means adding a neutron or two can make it turn into something Fissile. “Fissionable” means an element is heavy and unstable enough that a single neutron could possibly cause a fission, or it could not. Fissile means a single thermal neutron (thermal means slowed down) will be very likely to cause a fission and also cause the ejection of at least 1 thermalized neutron to continue fission if the situation is right.
So Thorium-232 is Fertile. No amount of neutrons, thermal or otherwise, are likely to maintain a fission chain-reaction. Instead, Thorium has to be used in what is called a “breeder reactor”. In other words, a reactor that already has fissile fuel in it that is constructed to provide the proper nuclear geometry to “breed” new fuel. In other words, to force neutrons to attach themselves to Thorium-232 and after pico-seconds spit out a beta (an electron) and turn a neutron into a proton so that Thorium-232 becomes Protactiunium-233 which is extremely unstable and spits out another Beta and jumps to Uranium-233 which is vaguely stable and fissile and now fuel. And you can run a light-water reactor on that.
The problems arise where “failed” reactions due to neutron capture events give you extremely nasty and useless things like Uranium-232 (which is literally too hot to handle) and transuranic rather weapons grade stuff like Pu-238, Pu-239, and Pu-242. Pu is Plutonium. And these particular isotopes are really great for weapons. The problem, and why the US government said “nah” to the Thorium cycle long ago is all of the U-232 contamination. Again…too hot to handle.
Which makes Thorium waste especially nasty. But if someone is willing to deal with it, they can get loads of weapons grade stuff from refining. It’s just all around bad. Thorium fans think the nastiness of the waste somehow makes it better for non-proliferation. But you have to deal with that waste, and no country hell-bent on getting weaponized plutonium is going to worry about dead workers to get it.
As for batteries, I’ll just keep it simple and say that many of these “new” ideas promise a lot of things but cannot deliver. In nearly every case, either (or both) there is a problem with catalyists where reactions happen quickly and basically destroy the cathode so there isn’t even a possible recharge cycle, or by fixing that problem the overall energy density of the new type of battery is less than a simple lead acid battery.
The good news on batteries is that it’s all simply a matter of finding the right chemistry. The problems with the Thorium fuel cycle are pretty much hard baked in and no way around it. Thorium might eventually be necessary, but only if the world goes full nuclear, runs out of uranium deposits, and fusion energy doesn’t mature to usefuleness.
The problems of batteries is literally just finding the right chemistry. So, a ton of hope in that category.
Sorry for the edits, just my mind trying to keep up with my fingers. Or the other way around. I don’t know.
I hope that is in the weeds enough for your curiosity.
Funny story about batteries for our 2 man portable bomb detection system designed for use at checkpoints in Afghanistan: We got a new, high performance lithium ion battery pack custom made by a vendor, who assured us it was safe and could handle rapid charging (~ 2002 timeframe).
I set it up for a trickle charge well under the recommended maximum rate and finish voltage as I left for the day one night. Came back in to the lab the next morning, to find the pack had completely exploded, with probably the force of over a stick of dynamite, damaging part of the system. Part of battery case flew across the room and made a dent ~ 1inch deep in a 3 inch thick polyethylene neutron shield ( a hard hammer hit won’t even produce a visible dent).
Called the vendor later that day to ask why this happened.
He just kept saying over and over that there had been no explosion, because the batteries were vented to prevent explosions. He claimed that we had simply experienced a “rapid venting” of the battery, per its design.
We found a new vendor with a battery and a better controlled charger.
“Rapid venting”
Don’t know why, but I am picturing a really large paper bag to “contain” the rapid venting. 🙂
Any comments here on the Solid-state lithium battery design. Battery will yield an EV range up to 1000 miles on a single full charge. Can recharge to 80% capacity in 15 minutes. Still in development but first prototype should reach Volkswagen by end of this year. Commercial availability still 2/3 years away.
There is a rather promising design for batteries based on research (AMAZING research) as recently published as a few months ago,
No teasing! Link or search terms much appreciated!
Love this stuff, there’s so much going on out there, drives me crazy that the political default position regarding our future is hopelessness when there’s so much genuinely astounding and often promising things happening.
Hope Is Never Vain. We oughtn’t suicide ourselves over the schemes of power-mad morons.
The Shippingport LWR had a thorium load in the 1980s for a small commercial scale run.
The molten salt reactors do have a lot of sex appeal for potential development at higher temps (thermal efficiency), the broader burnup of high level, longer life waste nucleotides, and a low pressure main reactor.
We need someone like Musk to champion the whole enchilada – where Musk is doing with SpaceX what was obvious in 1972 (see Robert Poole, an MIT engineer and founder of Reason Foundation/magazine predicted and advocated exactly what Musk is delivering towards $10/kg to LEO).
This thread just bolsters the fact that there are far far more open source experts in the general public population than in the entirety of Leviathan worldwide, all willing to work for love or for free rather than submit to the bueauracracy. We The People must, and will, be our own saviours of Western Civ. Crowd sourced Truth. Magnificent!
There is far more technical expertise on this page than exist in the Biden cabinet.
So the WEF is manipulating governments to force us to buy electric cars and conveniently a battery that doesn’t degrade already exists and ready to ship out in China and possible Europe…..and low life Hunter Biden stands to make out like a bandit? There’s a piece missing. Something isn’t sitting right. And I trust NPR as much as I trust Mitch McConnell and Lindsey Graham.
Something that I remember from my studies at the University was that those flow batteries still had at least one known fault that I was aware of at the time.
Charge density. Unless they’ve made substantial improvements, they are still a fraction of any Li-Ion or Li-Po battery already in wide scale use. The electrolyte chemistry is the limiting factor here.
I am thinking it would be more likely to be used for grid storage. Would be quite bulky to use that setup in a passenger car.
I wonder if the fires can be put out unlike lithium 🤔
Did you read the article? This is nothing to be dismissive about, it’s a game changer, and it was thrown to the wolves instead of setting us up to accomplish what our betters claim to want for us and the world.
Fifteen million dollars and six years to create their electrolyte mix obtaining significant performance gains.
I agree that this appears most ideal for a fixed installation, would love to have one for an off-grid site or to complement my hb-11 fusion reactor powered airship.
https://www.foreverenergy.com/
Have you seen the other comments on the relative scarcity of vanadium?
Those that mention specifically how much of world’s production is used in the production of steel alloys?
That wasn’t your protest in your original post, you cited difficulties you were once aware of that seem to have been addressed here, I thought they were significant and worth investigating before dismissing them.
Maybe I should have mentioned that scarcity was always going to be an issue with Vanadium from the start.
That’s a worthy concern, I appreciate knowing that, I wonder if there are other developments in that regard that have yet to come to light?
Seems like China might be involved in such with their New Silk Noose, perhaps in Africa?
Might be telling in how much of those elements absolutely critical for the manufacture of high-tech that China has a stranglehold of when it comes to known World Reserves.
How many of those are in Africa? Will have to research that some other time. I have to sign-off for now.
There is no battery that doesn’t degrade, that’s impossible…entropy is a law of physics and the way the Universe works…The vanadium battery is probably slower in degrading than what we have now, but it will have to be deployed before we find out what it really does under real world conditions….
Do I have it right? Please validate.
Why would they want to cut off coal use in the U.S. Could it be because they want to cut off the production of vanadium?
This stuff is contained in boiler slag from burning coal, which is a by product from coal burning plants.
Now, if this is true, then our use of vanadium in other products suggest as steel or batteries would be effected. The Chinese government has been undercutting our steel production for decades with a cheap low quality grade steel, and with vanadium we could compete in the global battery market.
Maybe it’s something simple like EV charging stations. Lots of global money and government subsidies involved.
I usually listen to John and Ken on KFI from 2-6. They were off so I tuned into Mark Levin. He spoke about this issue on Thursday. But it sounded like he was not blaming Yang.
Levin is a part of the swamp but for the most part tries to keep it hidden. He would not be blaming Yang,
Hmmm…suddenly everyone is on this particular story? Bigger suspicious cat…
I was told I was nuts about Tesla and Neutrinos…yet I will wait. Donald Trump’s uncle was authorized to read Tesla’s papers so we may just have to wait a bit longer.
With fission 50 years ahead, this segment might be ready earlier.
I have read a little about Tesla’s idea of using ground currents/Schuman resonance (which I believe provide the power for lightning) to produce inexpensive, ubiquitous electrical power worldwide. I think there might be something to it.
Haven’t heard what he wrote about Neutrinos.
Forgive this perhaps somewhat off-the-wall comment by a non-scientist.
My limited understanding of the Schuman resonance comes from a lifelong interest in energy/spiritual healing.
Several studies have shown that people capable of hands-on healing emit a steady 7.8 hertz from their hands even when not engaged in healing.
Similarly, Clinton Ober and his associates, in Earthing (Ober, Sinatra, and Zucker, 2014), describe how this same 7.8 frequency can be accessed for measurable health benefits.
This is God’s country. It is not ours to give away. His hand and inspiration are all over our founding documents, they are all over our history, and IMO, the daily life of the majority of Americans is still motivated by these deeply moral tenets. I do not believe it is “God’s will” that America fail. He has given us Donald Trump, and He will help us do what must be done in our day.
Despite being as old as sin and only the tip of the iceberg, this current scenario is providential, to borrow Steve Bannon’s word from a few days ago. It and others like it are about much more than light, heat, energy, commerce, and prosperity, good as they all are.
Of course he wasn’t, he’s part of the distraction team.
If NPR is tattling on something this momentous it’s to cover an even worse revelation to come, and I think Sundance is going to have his hands full with the digging involved.
Hope folks can up their donation game, if Sundance adds the tip jar at the end of an article I know it’s not for nothing.
here’s that donate link👇
https://www.paypal.com/donate/?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=RZ4BWXR87UTLW
Thanks for the donation link.
I donated with joy in my heart and a song in my voice (although I can’t carry a tune, not even a little).
Thanks to Sundance and all the admins, and God bless you all
Is that zuckerberg in right corner of conference table photo???
Sure looks like it before Zuckerberg adopted the Data from Star Trek look.
The transhuman look?
Excellent analysis, Sundance.
None dare call it treason …
Lets see — do I crawl in a hole in cry, scream or keep on fighting….
I think I will keep on even though it seems like crawling in a hole sounds easier.
As Laura Daigle’s song O’Lord say
I will stand my ground
where hope can be found
O’Lord, O’Lord I know You hear my cry
You’ll take all that is wrong and make it right
I will stand my ground
where hope can be found
I was never one to shy away from a fight or “crawl in a hole..” although I’ve been known to let out a rebel yell. Let’s DO this and face our problems head on, WITHOUT looking away.
Yes.
Now that you live closer, let’s meet on the SD/MN border! Would love to meet you, and encourage both of us to keep from crawling into a hole!
If he couldn’t find investors, how the hell did he find product buyers?
Why suddenly are a few people focusing on this story?
It’s looking as if more of Hunter’s sins are about to be revealed and it’s time to establish alternate storylines to obfuscate.
As Sundance notes, the NPR story doesn’t add up, something needs hidden in a splash of dark light.
Hmmm…if Sundance and Levin are both on this, something is indeed cooking. Normally, Levin is weeks away from Sundance.
Well, I dare say Sundance is digging to uncover, Levin is shoveling something to cover up.
Bien sur!!! Levin is always suspect! Controlled opposition? Oui!
There’s absolutely NO WAY that Elon Musk wouldn’t invest in, if not purchase the rights to outright and exclusively, the technology to manufacture a “forever battery’ that doesn’t degrade over time.
Had he been aware of it, which obviously nobody was made so at the time …
Who would anyone want to sell a forever battery if you can force everyone to purchase a new one yearly? Kind of like having a cure or maintaining a managed disease with drugs, no?
This is an industrial scale battery, capable of powering a home or a city, it would not be a disposable consumer item, et vraiment trop cher pour ca!
What it would have been is potentially an actual non-suicidal path to a genuine energy transition, what the regime claims to want, but inexplicably this same regime threw it away already . . .
Indeed, the same way computers went from room-sized to hand-held. All regimes want to throw away free energy for the masses, I suppose.
This is interesting, but Vanadium and Lithium are “resource limited” and cannot provide large scale / grid scale energy storage. Enough of either one is problematic.
90% of Vanadium is used in making steel. The entire World reserves of Vanadium is about 22 to 25 million tons.
https://pmarketresearch.com/statistics-of-global-vanadium-and-vanadium-ore-reserves-and-output/
World Lithium reserves: In 2021, the total estimated reserves of lithium worldwide amounted to 22 million metric tons.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1253739/lithium-reserves–worldwide
Yes, Vanadium is amazing as a redox flow battery. But there simply isn’t enough of it to make a difference at grid scale storage.
Lithium is amazing, as well, but there is a physical limit to how much exists.
People need to weigh the actual Steak and not the Sizzle vapors being sold. Neither of these materials exist in sufficient quantity to be relevant or sustainable.
You are correct of course. There is a multi-level head fake going on here.
I’ve got some background on the tech side to recognize that this development is just compelling enough to get the suckers on board with it. The ones who can understand some of the details behind it and yet cannot fathom more of the economic side of it.
Technically could work, just not plausible in practice for many reasons.
Like Solyndra?
Here’s a question…if the Chinese have this and it’s able to do what it is said to do then why are they so reliant on things like coal for electricity? You’d think they’d love this advantage over the west. Something is missing in this story.
Coal reserves are 1.07 Trillion tons. or, 48000 times as much coal as vanadium or lithium.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/265450/global-proved-reserves-of-coal/
Proven Natural Gas reserves are some 6.64 EE 15 cubic feet.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/281873/worldwide-reserves-of-natural-gas/
Storing electricity is much more expensive than making electricity.
If a cascaded fission reactor chain is created using Thorium, Uranium, and Mox fuels, there is enough resources to power the world for more than 50,000 years at 4% increase in usage per year. The technology exists. Reprocessing exists. What doesn’t exist is political will and widespread education on Facts, not Agendas.
Being ignorant is a choice, not a virtue. Let’s stop being ignorant.
Science. You can lie about it, but you can’t change it.
In some cases, you have to discover the science right under our noses. I believe that might be the case with the cold fusion projects that are underway. I don’t believe science have the theory to explain the apparent empirical results yet, but if this happens, there might be a revolution in cheap energy fairly rapidly.
.
Sounds to me like the Chinese were promised a market for a product that the seller(s) of the technology of that product ‘should have known’ could not live up to expectations . . .
Honor amongst thieves?
The Chinese or the CCP? Doubtful this is for the people.
Cowboy, cherry picking woeful sources is a joke. Nice to see you can copy things word by word.
Bold claims and accusations without resources. At least I quoted sources, JC, which you didn’t . Demonstrate how I’m wrong, with references, please.
Not sure it matters financially whether it’s legitimate or not. You only need to make it popular to get massive government subsidies.
Look at “gender equality” and the current studies that go with it:
It isn’t based on reality
It isn’t possible to put into play in the “real world”
It isn’t going to work in non-leftist societies
But I’d bet western counties have spent BILLIONS and a lot of people (and politicians) got filthy rich for nonsense.
Rinse and repeat for climate change, racism, guns, whatever.
Guarantee someone’s getting rich over this whether we’ll ever use it or not.
The DOE has been overrun with old scientists married to young Russian women for decades.
This is just another way for our corrupt government officials to sell taxpayers technology just like the batteries in this article.
Yrs ago there was a group investigating the DOE infiltration of Russians and were threatened by the Fan Belt Inspectors. Our country and tax payers technology has been sold for decades
Russians? It’s been old American men married to young ASIAN CCP women, at least since the Vietnam era.
It has been known for years that when dealing with China, when building a factory or using an existing manufacturing facility in China, the Chinese “demand” to be brought inside the entire system, the entire technology, the entire process of creation. After they get their noses inside they then take with them everything they have learned and transfer that information into their systems, imitating and then innovating (just like the Japanese do!).
Thus, is it any wonder that they are on the cutting edge? America, wake up, we invited this kind of “theft” in so many ways.
Our problem lies in our foreign policy perspectives, with the State Department, with the so called critical thinkers within our national government and with our elected representatives, including the president.
Don’t blame the Chinese for being so thirsty for knowledge and technologies, etc. Look what they have achieved in the last 50 years…they are one hard working sons of bitches!
The only difference is that WE used to have critical thinkers. China had none.
Now, we have few critical thinkers. Does that mean that China’s students who studied over in the US have less critical thinking skills, or were they just used to transport info without needing critical thinking skills?
Hard working thieves. Obviously without scruples. Incapable of thinking of the original idea. Yeah. China’s folks are top notch grifting POS’s advancing on the innovation of the Western world. Lack of creativity will spell their downfall.
As an aside, who invented the microprocessor, after all?
Well, it’s a good thing Vanadium Redux batteries are problematic to say the least. Let the Chinese have them I guess. There are a lot better advances on the battery front in the past couple of years.
With that said, yes this is just one example of a massive problem coming out of the complete corruption of our government.
Interesting that the events in 2017 and 2018 seem to be highlighted in the NPR article, as those are years when Donald Trump is President – is the muh, Russia about to become muh, China?
Trump’s pronunciation of “CHY-NA” to become super secret dog whistle in 3, 2…
Can we assume these batteries work as advertised? I’ve heard nothing about this technology. And it seems to me that if it was such a sure winner, solving what up to now has been an insuperable problem, American companies would have been throwing money at the technology.
So, color me very skeptical. Heck, it these batteries work and can store intermittent energy, the manufacturers will have solved one of the biggest obstacles to renewables.
Well, wouldn’t you need double the intermittent sources at least? The original amount used for existing intermittent power plus enough to fill the battery intermittently?
Damn…Just damn…Best I got.
No it isn’t, Thank you Sundance for doing the digging and explaining for all of us!!!
And many thanks to those that sent Sundance their findings! This Treehouse is amazing! 😉
Thank you for this archaeological breakthrough, SD. Please keep digging!
So which members of congress, ARENT CCP assets?
The federal government is a business enterprise. They take our money, invest in R&D then license it to commies then Congressional family members set up companies to handle distribution.
Let me know if you had enough and if you’ll man a rifle.
Yes – it seems to be just one big scam. Our govt needs us to produce the money that they take from us. All they know how to do is steal and pilfer and threaten while hobnobbing with others who do the same to their people. But you said it much better than I.
FJB.
Chinese battery story
Years ago, back in my US Customs days, I was tasked with giving a group of Chinese officials a tour of an ECCF (Express Consignment Courier Facility), these are better known as Fedex, UPS, etc. I’ll omit the name of the facility.
The Chinese are always interested in acquiring port facilities of any type. So their fact finding trip was no surprise.
We passed by the large secured cage stuffed full of cartons which I pointed out as merchandise seized or detained for being counterfeit or piratical.
They asked me what percentage was from China.
All of it, I replied.
A short distance away was several pallets of cartons, with Customs “do not release” warnings on them.
What about these?
Counterfeit batteries, I said.
We segregate them because they can catch fire.
It got quiet.
I have attempted to obtain a DOE exclusive technology transfer license from a certain national laboratory.
I have never seen a more corrupt process.
I had a clear application and partnership with a hundred year old US manufacturer to build and distribute the product.
All parties were highly credentialed and prototype testing vastly exceeded expectations. Yet the license was never processed. Lawyers and politicians couldn’t get the project moved.
As the DOE officials just declined to act on the application, they were caught in lies to the local media about the vaunted technology transfer program. To say the least, I engineered an untenable situation for them to force their hand.
They responded by ceasing the exclusive technology transfer license program, therefore making my project untenable. This was late 80’s. I know of no product ever having been sold with the technology.
I am completely identified by the comments herein to DOE.
I have not checked, but I have no knowledge of the technology transfer program ever again becoming non exclusive. I would be surprised if such a license could be sublet, but you could certainly contact manufacturing.
I have no doubt that these US applicants will never get a license, and the Chinese will never pay the royalty fee.
Just on more thing, these battery storage facilities are only good for short term back up power and leveling peak demand from central power stations. The power company has to be able to charge them at will. Otherwise, it’s the Texas freeze all over again.
I will point out that in the bulk electric forecasts I have seen/performed, short term power balancing (matching supply production & demand at a sub-minute timeframe) becomes an issue as we move into higher levels of (intermittent) renewable participation. Hybridizing the intermittent production with energy storage tech greatly increases the reliability value.
So, over the next 15-30 years, as the US government is hell-bent on converting our country to green energy by retiring fossil-based thermal, storage tech may be the only way we get there. So, he who controls the tech now has the potential to make lots of money as we roll into the regulated future.
Yes, they are forcing grid availability to depend on the weather to a degree that was unacceptable just a few years ago. As has already started in California, we will be banned from providing our own back up power with gas, diesel, or natural gas generators. I don’t believe many people grasp that an intermittent grid is acceptable to the new regulators, or the implications for our lives.
And don’t consider the environmental and supply concerns of battery life cycles.
An error above, the programs I knew of remained non exclusive. I should fact check if DOE again issued exclusive licenses, but I really don’t care.
Re “As the story is told in NPR, “the Chinese company didn’t steal this technology. It was given to them — by the U.S. Department of Energy. First in 2017, as part of a sublicense…”
The year 2017 may be the key bit of information in this entire story… Who was president at the time? Why, ol’ OrangeManBad himself. So, is the intent therein to initiate the building a case claiming that TRUMP gave this battery technology to China?
It could be a ruse, yet as SD writes, Yang is solely responsible.
J6 is also a ruse but they’re still trying to use it to hang Trump…
I saw this story yesterday and BS flags were flying over my electrical engineering background vision like a bad case of monkey pox. There’s zero chance we just passed on a potentially game-changing battery technology, certainly not one that has a long lifetime. Even if low current, decades of lifetime for any battery would be amazingly valuable.
This is not new behavior. Take a good look at what happened when Westinghouse Electric Corporation (WEC) sold 2 of the extremely simplified and exceptionally safe, AP 1000 Nuclear Reactors to China. To get the purchase order and payment, WEC had to transfer the essential technology including a complete set of specifications and drawings. Key to the entire program was getting experience with the pre-construction of complex modules on a colossal version of plug-and-play, modular construction. Work started here at plants Summer in SC and Vogtle in GA. Vogtle is nearing completion and Summer was canceled. This was quickly followed by the 2 plants in China. Our incredibly expensive fabrication, logistics, construction and fit-up experience ($10-15 Billion) was given to the Chinese “nuclear utility” for free. I’m not sure how much WEC will eventually invoice and actually collect but I’m certain it is a hell of a lot less than Vogtle will cost. Ironically, even given the idiotic approach of our current energy administration, the power Vogtle will produce will still be less expensive and far more reliable than wind or solar even if subsidies are ignored. That’s a testament to the energy density of uranium. Guess who built the first proof-of-concept Small Modular Reactor for Bill Gates? Yep, China. It gets worse but I don’t like hijackers so I’ll stop.
When I worked on the design of the Great Wall Hotel, the Chinese stole the concrete at night from US factories provided them in China and built two hotels based on drawings for one provided by our company. The Chinese stole everything. Even if nailed down, the Chinese would steal it.
Treason isn’t what it used to be, now it’s business as usual. I wonder did the big guy get his 10%? Who else got a cut?
Instead of looking under gramma’s bed for J6 protesters maybe the Feds. should actually do their job and round up all the traitors that are selling us out.
30 pieces of silver ain’t shit compared to what these traitors are raking bin.
As far as I can tell they have been doing this for over 50yrs.
You ask who else got a cut…well, may I suggest that it could just be the 535 elected ones on Capitol Hill?
Vanadium: The metal we can’t do without and don’t produce
excerpts:
— high demand for alloying as a strengthening agent in steel, China has learned they can’t keep producing buildings that fall down
“As an example of how much steel will be required to build just one new Chinese city – Xiong’an, consider that the city will likely need 20 to 30 million tonnes of steel, which translates to 30,000 tonnes of vanadium – roughly a third of current annual production, albeit over 10 years. That means 3,000 additional tonnes of vanadium a year for the next decade, for just one city – an increase of 5 percent above current supply and demand.
Another thing going for vanadium is China’s reluctance to manufacture low-quality rebar used in building construction.
Recent earthquakes in China and Japan have shown the Chinese that using cheap rebar is penny wise and pound foolish.
“They’re increasing the amount of vanadium in the rebar by about 100 percent so that they can end up with structural specifications that are necessary to keep buildings standing for long periods of time. The rebar alone, that’s estimated to bring another 10,000 tonnes a year of vanadium demand,” said Priestner.
Insecurity of supply
With vanadium demand set to soar, it is a valid question as to where new vanadium supply will come from.
There are currently no North American reserves, a situation that is and should be deeply alarming to politicians on both sides of the 49th parallel.
Vanadium Mining and Deposit Types
Excellent link.
striking looking rock outcrop here in Quebec
VanadiumCorp drills to halfway point at Lac Doré
Not sure how we are making rebar, but the Chinese have been making faulty rebar AND concrete for decades. The architecture company I worked for back in 1980 had to create concrete factories to construct the Great Wall Hotel.
And the Chinese invented concrete. Just forgot how to make it? Maybe the Communists forgot.
The Communists always kill anyone that knows anything.
First order of business, always.
Oh my. Yes, so true! And then they steal everything they need to make up for!
Chinese may have invented Mud Huts but that doesnt count as concrete. Do they have toilets yet?
“Do they have toilets yet?”
Yes, but the effluent probably runs out on their streets.
“Chinese have been making faulty rebar … for decades”
looks like they’ve learned a lesson recently, from above:
“Recent earthquakes in China and Japan have shown the Chinese that using cheap rebar is penny wise and pound foolish.”
I did a quick dig on Vanadium reflow batteries. Methinks it’s a multi-million money laundering scam akin to Solyndra.
I could not find any data on C rate of charge. Think the Aquion salt water battery that was suppose to be the green non-toxic battery. Well that part was right. But it had a c rate (coulomb charge rate) of 50. So 50 hours to charge it. Basically you could only use once in a blue moon for back-up.
The energy density of Vanadium batteries is extremely low. So, they are heavy and take up a large amount of space.
And seeing you have to pump the liquid, methinks there would be problems achieving a good steady discharge rate. Think of a swimming pool. If you pump the equivalent of all the water in a pool through the pump lots of molecules make the trip multiple times, some one time, others not at all. You have to pump a pool like 7 times to make sure all the molecules pass through the filer. But instead of microbes you are trying to move electrons.
I might be wrong. But, there are obvious crucial technical data omissions on every site I checked for this technology.
What did flow was the money apparently.
Hydrogen is the direction. So why the open push for Battery Technology?
It seems Paul Pelosi Jr. and his mother along with Joe Manchin. See an opportunity for profit in the production of Hydrogen. Hydrogen of course requires large amounts of electricity to produce. I wonder, how West Virginia will look covered with nuclear power plants and where will the radioactive waste products will go. I suppose, down those closed coal mines.
https*//st2.depositphotos.com/5650304/9728/v/600/depositphotos_97285284-stock-video-piglets-trying-to-grasp-teats.jpg
The legislation invests in hydrogen, nuclear and renewable energy, fossil fuel and energy storage technologies, according to Manchin, who about two weeks ago scuttled a previous effort at passing climate-related legislation.
The bill will invest in domestic energy production and manufacturing and reduce carbon emissions by roughly 40% by 2030, according to a one-page summary released by Senate Democrats.
https*//www.utilitydive.com/news/manchin-backs-bill-climate-spending-hydrogen/628303/
————————————–
Paul Pelosi Jr. Skipped Seoul Meetings with His Mother During Asian Trip — Signed Major Business Deal with Korean Hydrogen Producer Months Ago
https*//www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/08/paul-pelosi-skipped-seoul-meetings-mother-asian-trip-signed-major-business-deal-korean-hydrogen-producer-months-ago/
————————————–
That process creates something called blue hydrogen, and in terms of carbon emissions, it’s not that clean compared to other methods. On top of that, Manchin has a lot of financial ties to coal and fossil fuel companies. Establishing a hydrogen hub in West Virginia to create blue hydrogen would likely increase those stocks. According to Recharge News, that could be a conflict of interest.
https*//www.motorbiscuit.com/joe-manchin-favors-hydrogen-vehicles-electric-cars-plans-west-virginia-hydrogen-plant/
Replace * with :
Pelosi took her son? And it’s all just fine I guess.
Until he signed the contract. They have a copy of the contract too.
I simply am gobsmacked by the blatant unmitigated piracy of the criminal regime
Then you may enjoy this, Pelosi purchased stock in Salesforce, which is connected to voter registration databases.
Enquiring minds want to know, does Madam Speaker get 10% like the Big Guy?
She’s way smarter than FJB. Probably gets 25-50%
“Hydrogen”
think I recall they had a little problem with that last century, something about a blimp …
That is the creepiest picture I’ve seen in a very long time.
Moving on, China is our enemy. Anyone doing business with China is also our enemy. We should not be doing business with them in any form, especially being dependent on them for any of our life sustaining products.
We should pass laws making it illegal for them to own any of our lands/farms/patents etc.
Why would any sane government allow their enemy inside the gates? The only answer is money.
What Yang did he did with someone’s approval. Who? I want to know, then I want them prosecuted for espionage. I know, we have no one in the US Mafia with the integrity to do a darn thing.
10% baby, 10%!!!
When in 2017? In early January? When in 2021? After January 20? I can’t find anything about Imre Gyuk before a BS from Fordham University.
Gary Yang got his Bachelors and Masters degrees from Jilin University, a top Chinese university. His doctorate is from the University of Connecticut, post-doctoral work at Carnegie Mellon. Wonder if he was known to be brilliant and sent to the US to finish his education and become a US citizen so he could work within the US system to steal research that he could pass to China? Hmmm…..
I believe that is the CCP’s standard “business model”. I suspect that the companies that I work with are filled with CCP technical spies, trained in US Universities. Many of them are not really even capable of carrying on a technical discussion in English.
Um, ok, so it’s a scam, wherein a whole lot of creepy, satanic people made oodles of money?
Color me shocked!
God will not be mocked!
Carry on.
Apparently giving or selling American technology to China is an old story.
“As president, Bill Clinton essentially wiped out any strategic advantage the U.S. had by selling advanced U.S. missile technology to our enemy, the People’s Republic of China.
That “administration’s voluntary release of all the secrets of America’s nuclear tests, combined with the systematic theft of the secrets that were left as a result of its lax security controls, effectively wiped out America’s technological edge,” David Horowitz writes in the recently published, The Black Book of the American Left Volume 7: The Left in Power: Clinton to Obama.”
Once the repubs take back the House we’re going to need a major investigation to see who all was involved and if Obama, FJB and others were involved and how deep. Maybe even a special counsel although Garland will still be USAG. Maybe at least an October surprise. I may be looking at this wrong but seems like a good opportunity for some scandal payback to the dems, and this does not sound like a hoax.
Uniparty will never let that happen mainly for that reason now. I know it sounds like a broken record but the elections really are rigged. Any election or race they want and they will to maintain power.
Back in the 1970s and 1980s China couldn’t shoot a Missile into the Air…. and Hit It !
Then Slick Willy Clinton came along and Gave the Communist Chinese
TOP SECRET US Guided Missile Technology for a HEFTY Donation to
The Clinton Crime Family Foundation.
It also Pizzzes me off that Bill Clinton (who was born 12 hours before me) wound up living in the Best Luxury Hotels in Moscow Russia….
(as a Draft Dodging Unemployed College Student) While I was on B-52 Bombing missions over North and South Vietnam back in the late 1960s !
Why is that Criminal Traitor and his Crooked wife, still stealing OUR Air ?
And breathing it
c2012 SoCal Edison, to name one, as well as other major utilities and IPPs were investigating multiple grid scale storage technologies which were the ‘latest new thing’ at that time in the power generation space. To be fair, it was a tough go at that time in the industry, but there was definitely US private capital available for energy storage. There was also a shit-ton of shenanigans going on with “chinese” investors looking for action in the US power market, so much so that i always suspected state level corruption but couldn’t connect dots and prove it.
Thank you Sundance this is the information we can find no where else and we all who hang on a branch in this tree say THANK YOU
R.D.
Hmm, it was exfiltrated to China while Obama was President. Moreover, we see Jay Inslee, a left (coast) governor who led a trade delegation to China in 2013 and who received Xi on a state visit in 2015 where Xi lauded Washington state as a “world-class center of innovation.” That is the same Jay Inslee who thought he might be in line for a Biden cabinet position (either EPA or DOE). You don’t think Obama and Inslee were naive to this technology, do tou?
Of course, we have to look at the involvement of the corrupt Biden family in sending this technology to China. But I wonder what involvement Obama and Inslee had in this technology exfiltration.
There are just too many corrupt players here to point the finger at just the Biden family. It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that others (including some RINOs) have had a hand as well.
So the Muller investigation, the impeachment charges and all the other false accusations, THE STONEWALLING AND TREASON OF OUR INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY AND MACHINATIONS BY MITCH MCCONNELL THE RINOS AND THE DEMS, against President Trump, were to shield and distract from the connections and money to be made by our government representatives and their treasonous dealings in FAVOR OF COMMUNIST CHINA. DO NOT LOOK AWAY!!
Oh yeah, add the Russia, Russia, Russia meme to all that. Eyes wide open.
I used to have secret clearance as a contractor for an Air Force base in El Segundo CA. Company I worked for was required to give us annual refresher training on matters related to espionage. All the examples they gave of us of real life incidents of espionage in the US were from Chinese spies in California. Fast forward to today and it appears the Chinese are in collusion with traitors within our government from the WH on down. They stole our ability to remove the cancer with the release of the manufactured covid hoax for the purpose of compromising our elections.
Sum Ting Wong
We had a vanadium flow battery vendor come to our company a few years ago about developing grid-scale storage. The technology was expensive compared to lithium ion at the time. The way it works is very different.
Instead of using solid lithium ion plus cobalt anodes to store energy in the size of a tractor trailer (2MWh/trailer), the flow battery used giant tanks of a liquid electrolyte. The key is, there’s no upper bound like lithium ion, it was all based on volume of fluid. Want to store more energy? Build more tanks.
This crap makes me sick to my stomach. While people (a word I use guardedly in this context) like Biden & Co., lived it up, I worked like a dog from the time I was 15 to get to a place where I could retire and not be a burden on society. But this low self-esteem, lying, traitorous POS and his pervert, drug-addled son have put the rest of my life at literal risk while they cover for their pathetic little non-egos with claims of things that wouldn’t matter if they were true (e.g., first-this and first-that). And they are enabled by people like Zeke Emanuel and Raggedy Ann who eagerly sell themselves to get their little “I matter and you don’t” lives. Sorry for the rant but that picture of the pResident and his oxygen thief son really grinds my gears…
I’d bet this is just one incidence in many.
Great sleuthing Sundance! I can see this story is going in a bigger direction! I’m going to see what I can dig up!
This kind of stuff needs to be prosecuted.
Unfortunately I can’t remember the exact details, but several months into the pandemic it was discovered that in Australia we had University academics who were on both the Aussie and Chinese payroll. There were quite a few, too. Maybe 1000 (??). So they were sharing knowledge.
These people MUST know that it’s a conflict of interest and I’m sure it must go against existing laws – therefore they must be prosecuted for it. Same with this guy Yang. There’s no way he doesn’t know he broke the law.
I did some digging and came up with this profile of the company circa 2015 https://web.archive.org/web/20160131020936/http://uetechnologies.com/management.htm
So it appears Dr Yang and his partner Dr Li who cofounded UET developed this technology while working PNNL. PNNL obtained the patent for the technology and licensed it for commercialization to Dr Yang and UET.
In the license agreement was there any prohibition against licensing the technology to an offshore company? Is Dr Yang and Dr Li’s name on the patent? It’s not unusual for leading scientists to have their name on a patent even though they were employee’s of an organization. If so who really owns the technology? Can this really be described as a case of China stealing US technology?
I will be interested in learning what Hunter’s involvement in this is.