Can Puerto Rico become a power source production country? Can this deliver

[El_Jibaro]

Originally posted by Leticia_g
This article is not a fallacy of the independent movement. This was actually on a special shown in Television. It was shown as a positive avenue and a sign of progress for our Island. We are capable of doing a lot for ourselves. Many like yourself think we can't. That is very sad, because if we all think like you, many things in this world would not have occurred. Many progresses would not have been achieved.

We have to stop crippling ourselves. Whether statehood or independence comes about for our Island, time will tell. What we should focus is on many other things that we can do to improve our economic limbo. Nothing to fear but fear itself!


Much regards and respect to you both!

[i]Leticia:

I hope all is well with you and your loved ones.

Concerning your responses to my posting let me clear up a couple of things.

You said:

"This was actually on a special shown in Television."

Well, one thing that can be produced in Puerto Rico, and with all the bells and whistles, is video-journalism. In fact, when I was a teenager in the 1970's they made one titled "Platillos Voladores Sobre Puerto Rico". It was so impressive in its style and content that for many years I and my generation believed the entire report. Now that I look back I realize that Orson Wells was the creator of this type of media journalism, taking a sci-fi novel and turning it into a plausible broadcast.

Now, I am not saying that the technology is not feasible, it IS feasible, and my professors in the Colegio de Agricultura y Artes Mecánicas de Mayagüez did discuss this and many other bio-fuel technologies as possible sources of electricity. However, that a technology is technically feasible does not mean that it is feasible as a project, particularly if it is not ECONOMICAL (it is similar to buying a house, you have to buy the biggest house you can afford: and there is a point when the cost of the mortgage could be as high as the monthly salary of the family which then dictates that the desired house is not affordable).

For example, I was telling a fellow independentista of yours that to make a bridge between Maunabo an Vieques

(8-plus miles long) is technically feasible, since in Japan they made the Seto Ohahsi Bridge, which covers 7 plus miles, but the cost of such a bridge would be MONUMENTALLY PROHIBITIVE, on a scale of tens of billions of dollars, with no foreseeable Return-On-Investment (particularly for a small town with less than ten thousand residents).

Technical Feasibility is not the same as Project Feasibility, particularly when to make a Vieques Bridge most of the money would have to be paid by the Federal Government: and if you care to read any aerospace magazine, the Federal Government is even too cash strapped to build a decent version of the International Space Station...

The same applies to Using sugar cane refuse for bio-fuel: what would be the cost per electrical watt of using it?

If with the current Sugar Cane acreage in Puerto Rico electricity can be produced with 0 to 10% over the Present Cost, then it could be deemed as a Feasible Technical Project. Beyond 10% extra cost, the Project becomes less attractive economically. There is a price ceiling where to embark on such projects becomes prohibitive. Look at Cuba, they have to produce electricity with Chernobyl type of nuclear reactors and they also get free oil from Venezuela, they must know something we don't about sugar cane refuse as a source of electricity, otherwise they would have done it before...

Leti, only YOU say that I said that it is technically impossible for Puerto Ricans to use sugar cane refuse as an electricity source, yet I did not say that.

As far as technical possibilities for us: hey, Puerto Rico has all the homegrown and thoroughly trained engineers it needs even to send men to the moon. But where do we get all the money necessary to pay for making a Puerto Rican rocket to the moon?

Leti, this does not apply to you, but one thing that I learned from all those years at the Mayagüez college was that money cannot be made "ex-nihilo", which apparently some of the more strident political sloganeers in this forum seem to think... But then again, when they speak with so much anger about those who have earned lots of money (whether legal or not)[b], they betray their envy .