Ammonia!

[Webstral]

Ever have one of those “Doh!” moments when you realize you’ve been looking at something for years and not seeing what’s there? Yeah. Having one right now.

According to Howling Wilderness, Colorado has a functioning nuclear power plant. The facility at Platteville is working at 8% of capacity. While electrolyzing water for hydrogen for ammonia is not as efficient as getting hydrogen from hydrocarbons, it certainly can be done. Ammonia is one of the most important soil additives in modern agriculture. As an added bonus, ammonia can be used in place of fossil fuels with minimal adjustments to the engine.

Y’all see where I’m going with this, right? With an operating nuke plant, Milgov can create ammonia for agriculture, moving the ammonia to the fields, and driving modified tractors and combines. The release of population for other important activities, like mining, fighting, and working machines, would be stupendous. The basis of the Colorado economy, with its 3 million inhabitants, might resemble a pre-war economy in a passing way.

Seeing the relationship between electricity and ammonia in this way changes absolutely everything. If ammonia can be synthesized without fossil fuels or organic energy, and if ammonia can both power farm machinery and double, treble, or quintuple crop yields, then anyone with a functioning nuke plant is a superpower. Heck with running the lights or even powering industrial machinery. Having fertilizer and transportation in your hands changes the entire post-Exchange equation.

Seeing this (and knowing that this knowledge must be pretty darned widespread) makes me reconsider the priority of putting nuke plants back on-line. It also makes me think that finding and recovering the people with the knowledge to run hydroelectric plants (also a good source of abundant electricity) would be a very high priority. If I can figure out a way to get ammonia produced in SAMAD, the fuel problem would be solved. I’m not sure if the labor picture would be changed all that much, since the most limiting factor in Samadi agriculture is water, which is applied by hand.

Unfortunately, the New Americans in west central Florida also have a real basis of power with their electrical plants. With ammonia for fertilizer and fuel, the New Americans will be even more powerful than they have been made out to be in Urban Guerilla.

[Tegyrius]

Holy crop yield, Batman. That completely changes the "incipient collapse of industrial agriculture" issue for the 2013 Czech Republic setting, too, thanks to the similarly functional plant at Temelin. And it makes the region even more of a treasure/target than it was before. Thanks, Web!

- C.

[ArmySGT.]

That makes the EBR-1 and the Idaho National Laboratory valuable again outside Butte, Idaho.

Pretty nice ranges. The Dept of Energy sure takes a supposedly closed site seriously.

[ArmySGT.]

Are you factoring in the U.S. Navy Oil Shale reserves on the Western Slope?

There is significant coal in Colorado too. It is mostly drift mined so strip mining for coal in Wyoming and Montana is cheaper.

Don't forget that Wyoming and Montana have their own Oil refineries. If those are able to be brought online.

As far as MilGov goes who did the Denver Mint side with? What about the Federal Center on the West Side of Lakewood, CO. The National Institute of Science and Technology (Boulder, CO).

In the 90s the Rocky Flats Depot was open with nuclear warheads processing.

[Webstral]

Originally Posted by ArmySGT.

Are you factoring in the U.S. Navy Oil Shale reserves on the Western Slope?

There is significant coal in Colorado too. It is mostly drift mined so strip mining for coal in Wyoming and Montana is cheaper.

Don't forget that Wyoming and Montana have their own Oil refineries. If those are able to be brought online.

Certainly, Milgov is going to avail itself of each and every energy resource. I expect the oil, coal, and natural gas available in Colorado and Wyoming to be utilized to the max. Ammonia produced by electricity from the Ft. St. Vrain nuclear plant at Platteville offers Milgov an important opportunity to diversify, not replace. When one considers the idea that ammonia produced near the nuke plant using water and air (!) doesn’t require feedstock to be moved from the fields where oil, natural gas, and coal are being extracted to a processing facility of some sort, then to the point of use. If ammonia only gets used in the fields and in the engines of farming machinery (because the tanks of ammonia are going to the farms anyway), both ammonia and the nuke plant have an enormous role to play in Colorado and the recovery of the nation.

I think ammonia is the solution I have been looking for regarding fuel for the military vehicles of SAMAD. I never have been happy with fueling trucks and AFV with alcohol or biodiesel. Fuels based on food reverse the ideal flow of types of energy from inorganic-organic to organic-inorganic. Using people food to power machinery is an act of desperation. Twilight: 2000 is a desperate time, so I don’t have an issue with its happening. However, smart people are going to power their machines with energy that can’t go into people’s stomachs whenever possible. Ideally, inorganic energy will get turned into organic energy. Using electricity from nuclear power, solar, wind, etc. to create ammonia, which in turn creates more food and powers the farm implements turns the desperation of Twilight: 2000 back to a more pre-war norm. Now I have to put some numbers to my little scheme for Samadi ammonia.

[WallShadow]

Originally Posted by Webstral

Ever have one of those “Doh!” moments when you realize you’ve been looking at something for years and not seeing what’s there? Yeah. Having one right now.

According to Howling Wilderness, Colorado has a functioning nuclear power plant. The facility at Platteville is working at 8% of capacity. While electrolyzing water for hydrogen for ammonia is not as efficient as getting hydrogen from hydrocarbons, it certainly can be done. Ammonia is one of the most important soil additives in modern agriculture. As an added bonus, ammonia can be used in place of fossil fuels with minimal adjustments to the engine.

<SNIP>
Seeing this (and knowing that this knowledge must be pretty darned widespread) makes me reconsider the priority of putting nuke plants back on-line. It also makes me think that finding and recovering the people with the knowledge to run hydroelectric plants (also a good source of abundant electricity) would be a very high priority. If I can figure out a way to get ammonia produced in SAMAD, the fuel problem would be solved. I’m not sure if the labor picture would be changed all that much, since the most limiting factor in Samadi agriculture is water, which is applied by hand. [/I].

Uh, Webstral, what is SAMAD, or any enclave of civilization doing with the liquid component of its sewage? Lots of ready-made ammonia waiting for harvesting right there, useable with minimal processing.

[Webstral]

Originally Posted by WallShadow

Uh, Webstral, what is SAMAD, or any enclave of civilization doing with the liquid component of its sewage? Lots of ready-made ammonia waiting for harvesting right there, useable with minimal processing.

Certainly, research shows that urine can be an effective fertilizer. There are some potential long-term issues with salts, but in the years immediately following the Exchange few are going to be concerned about that. For intensive gardening, where the source of urine and the plants to be fertilized are closely co-located, urine might compete well with ammonia fertilizer. For larger-scale farming, though, gathering and applying urine might be a difficult exercise. Still, it would be interesting to see the results of a concerted effort to gather urine (and urine only) for spraying on fields as a fertilizer. The survivors of the nuclear exchange should be amenable to having their habits changed if anyone is.

Ammonia also has the advantage of being useful as fuel. As the scale of agriculture expands from garden plots to something resembling modern American agriculture, you have to pull the plow and the combines somehow. Modern machinery has the advantage of minimizing labor, provided you can fuel the machines. You can use horses, but they need a portion of the food being grown. Turning electricity into fertilizer and fuel for the farm machines enables a handful of people to do the job relative to the huge numbers of folks involved in subsistence agriculture throughout much of the US in 2000. People freed from the farms can do other jobs, like fight or make things.

So while urine certainly can do the job of fertilizing, it seems to lend itself more to intensive gardening than large-scale agriculture when compared to industrially-produced ammonia. Provided yields are in any way comparable, the practitioners of large-scale agriculture are going to have an edge over the intensive gardeners because the large-scale folks will be able to commit more manpower to doing things beside growing food.

[WallShadow]

Webstral, your line on ammonia has another benefit in the scheme of food production--feeding ammonia-treated low quality silages (straw and other sub-optimum feed) to milch cattle improves milk production and muscle weight. This allows cattle to be fed on less-desirable materials with the same result as higher-quality feeds--more cattle can be fed with the normal amount of regular feed. Also, this process works best on low-quality silages--better quality feedstocks are only minimally affected.

For some reason this clicked in my head when I was remembering that hominy is maize treated with lye....

[mikeo80]

This topic made me pause and think for a moment.

Here in NC, we have Sharon Harris Nuke Plant near Raleigh/Durham. According to V1.0 and V2.2, this area does not catch a "present". And, this area also joins "CivGov".

NC does not have the advantage of coal, however, there is a HUGE turkey and hog farming subsector of the economy.

These factors should help the local (i.e. Southern Va, NC, SC) economy start on the way back to something "normal".

My $0.02

Mike

[Tegyrius]

I will reluctantly point out that "intact" doesn't necessarily mean "functional" where a nuke plant is concerned. I suspect a lot of them were shut down when the first nuclear strike warnings went out because of the danger of EMP doing something unpleasant to the control systems. Even those which survived physically (and electronically) intact would need to be brought back online, and trained personnel are going to be rare and hard to find by 7/2000 (or later). Look at the Navy's difficulty in scrounging up nuclear power plant operators for City of Corpus Christi.

Needless to say, that sort of recruiting project is tailor-made for PCs...

- C.

[Targan]

Originally Posted by mikeo80

Here in NC, we have Sharon Harris Nuke Plant near Raleigh/Durham. According to V1.0 and V2.2, this area does not catch a "present". And, this area also joins "CivGov".

I'll mention a point often made by others on this forum (that bears repeating): just because it's not on the game's published nuke target lists doesn't definitively mean it wasn't nuked. It just means it wasn't hit by a warhead 500kt or larger. Now, I'm not suggesting that the Sharon Harris Nuke Plant WAS nuked (to be honest I don't have an opinion one way or the other), I'm just saying that we often forget that the published target lists were listing only half megaton strikes and larger. Any given site on the entire planet NOT mentioned in the published lists could still have been nuked, with a low-yield warhead, a cruise missile nuke, nuclear artillery, a small air-delivered nuke or even a backpack nuke. Or a big conventional strike. Or a chem strike. Or nothing at all.

[mikeo80]

Originally Posted by Targan

I'll mention a point often made by others on this forum (that bears repeating): just because it's not on the game's published nuke target lists doesn't definitively mean it wasn't nuked. It just means it wasn't hit by a warhead 500kt or larger. Now, I'm not suggesting that the Sharon Harris Nuke Plant WAS nuked (to be honest I don't have an opinion one way or the other), I'm just saying that we often forget that the published target lists were listing only half megaton strikes and larger. Any given site on the entire planet NOT mentioned in the published lists could still have been nuked, with a low-yield warhead, a cruise missile nuke, nuclear artillery, a small air-delivered nuke or even a backpack nuke. Or a big conventional strike. Or a chem strike. Or nothing at all.

Targan,

I get your point.

I've always thought that the "suitcase nuke" scenario was an excellent way of taking a particularly choice piece of real estate away from PC's.

I brought up Sharon Harris the same way others in this thread have brought up other nuke plants not mentioned in v1.0 or v2.2. Any and all of these could have been targeted. Hell, Spetznaz teams could have been inserted into the USA to hit some of these targets. The lack of adequate border survailance is an on going political minefield. As is the fact of a 4500 MILE border with Canada. Going through some of the most remote parts of the US and Canada.

I can easily see a Spetznaz vs. Ranger battle happening right here in North Carolina over the control or destruction of Sharon Harris.

My $0.02

Mike

[Webstral]

I mention the Ft. St. Vrain facility only because Howling Wilderness specifically mentions it. While I don't buy into the drought, I'm more inclined to go with the rarity of functioning nuke plants. For instance, there are none in New England. Bummer, because a nuke plant producing 20 MW of electricity in New England could put ammonia fuel into the Coast Guard's ships.

I agree that a nuke plant in decent shape anywhere in the country makes the basis of an interesting adventure as the players try to find experts and materials to bring it back on-line.

[mikeo80]

Originally Posted by Webstral

I agree that a nuke plant in decent shape anywhere in the country makes the basis of an interesting adventure as the players try to find experts and materials to bring it back on-line.

I agree. The other little gems in the Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill area are called University of North Carolina, North Carolina State, Duke University, Wake Forest University. As well as the Research Triangle Park. One of the most densely populated high tech areas outside of Silicon Valley.

Also a not so well known fact, NC State has its' own nuclear reactor as part of its' nuclear engeneering program.

There are three other reactors here in NC. Brunswick Nuclear Generating Station, McGuire Nuclear Station, South River Nuclear Plant.

I would think that with the first exchange between USSR and CHina, these reactors would be shut down. Now IF the state of NC is intellegent, (Yeah, I know, politicians = intellegent?????) The Govenor should make a grab for as many techs as he/she can get. Use the National Guard, State Police, WHATEVER to secure the areas around the plants.

OK

Time for me to get off of my soap box

My $0.02

Mike

[Tombot]

Originally Posted by Tegyrius

Holy crop yield, Batman.

- C.

[M-Type]

Originally Posted by Webstral

For instance, there are none in New England

I don't know a lot about the subject honestly, but we got this here in good 'ol Massachusetts. My friend's dad works there. With some alt-history twisting, you could work something out I'm sure.

But, as mentioned, I don't know much about the subject, so I don't know if it'd help at all.

[Graebarde]

Very interesting indeed. I had not thought of ammonia production as such, much less as a fuel. I will definately have to do more reading on this.

A couple of comments I have on this subject. First on urine which IS high in ammonia. It has been used for millenia in the tanning industry. Urine would have to be collected seperate from fecal matter. In sewage it's all run together of course. Running the sewage through a methane digester removes methane for use as fuel, leaving a nitrogen rich sludge that can be used for fertilizer. Now, in current plants the sludge is often contaminated with heavy metals, however on a smaller scale where industrial waste is not fed into the sewage system I think this problem would be mininmal. To my thinking this is a better use for the urine than a straight application which is a 'hot' mix and could 'burn' crops.. the same to be said for anhydrous ammonia.

The second comment has to do with the 'confinement' hog and poultry industry as well as the large confinement dairy operations. Come the day of destruction, when power is lost, those plants, and they are more plants than farms no matter what might be thought, they will implode. Feeding, ventalation, water, and cleaning of those places is based on ELECTRICITY. (Cleaning perhaps not so much.) With non-family labor on most of the places, labor fails to show up... management perhaps is not the owner, fails to show up... hence the place shuts down.. within a week animals are dying, which causes a problem.. You think they smell NOW.. imagine 1000 dead hogs decomposing. or 100000 chickens or turkeys.. There will be a massive waste of edible resources with the modern mega agriplants acoss the food belt. Sure some will be salvaged by those with something on the ball. IF they can react in time to 'farm out' the livestock to small holdings. But there is still the matter of foodstock for the animals. Much of the foodstock is human edible and will work it's way directly to people than the critters.

As a souce of fetilizer however the agriplants are abundant in that catagory. In tune with the methane digester, there are hog operations and dairies that have their own digesters to run generators. Common sense and helps with the waste disposal problems. But they are far and few between.

Anyways, my two cents of rambling.
Grae

[Webstral]

There are several nuke plants operating in New England at the time of the Exchange. EMP damages the electronics managing the reactors. Emergency shutdowns go into effect. By the time the dust clears, qualified personnel are hard to find. In places that suffer the most from the breakdown in order, like New England, qualified personnel are extremely hard to find. Specialized parts and equipment also are hard to come by from 1998 onward. Where there are multiple nuke plants and/or where civil disorder is relatively light, it may be possible to consolidate personnel and fabricate replacement equipment. Thus Colorado has a functioning nuke plant. New England got hammered by the breakdown in social order. I’m an optimist, and I only have 30% of the pre-war population of about 12 million still living. Howling Wilderness puts that number even lower (one has to infer).

Referring to my own work (as always), one of the plot twists I have considered for Poseidon’s Rifles is the idea that a number of nuke plant engineers and technicians from Vermont Yankee are alive and well in southern Vermont. With them, First District (USCG) probably could restart Maine Yankee in Wiscasset. Unfortunately for First District, the engineers in question are residing in the United Communities of Southern Vermont (UCSV), which is under the protection of the Black Watch. The Black Watch is a group of pre-Exchange survivalists who hold grudges. They have a grudge with the 43rd MP Brigade, the State of Vermont, the State of New Hampshire, and Milgov. There are some folks in upstate New York they don’t like much, either. They actually like the United Brotherhood of Fishermen, who infrequently but regularly come up the Connecticut River to trade fish and manufactured goods for greenhouse products, maple sugar, and cottage crafts produced in the UCSV. The odds that the Black Watch would cooperate with First District, whom they would consider agents of Milgov, are long. PCs could have an interesting time getting the required personnel from southern Vermont to coastal Maine.

If First District could bring the 900 MW Maine Yankee reactor back online at even 20% capacity (180 MW), it would be a game changer. Fertilizers and fuel could flow out of First District in considerable quantities. It might be enough to change the relationship between First District and Milgov. Nitrates for ammunition also would be an important product.

Of course, none of the above is canon.

[Webstral]

I'm now thinking that fertilizers will be a secondary consideration for anyone who can make ammonia and does not have access to fossil fuels. The ability to transport troops and move AFV will be so important that the farmers might have to go without. I’ve been doing a little research on geothermal power and the synthesis of ammonia using electrolysis of water for hydrogen. Without getting too much into the details of converting MW into gallons of ammonia, a decent-sized geothermal plant like many of the plants in California and Nevada devoted entirely to ammonia production (at the expense of all of all other uses for electricity) can produce enough ammonia for fuel in a month to keep a modest fleet of trucks or a very modest fleet of AFV supplied. I’ll be happy to post my back-of-the-envelope calculations if anyone is interested. Otherwise, I’m definitely veering away from ammonia for fertilizers and towards ammonia for fuel.

Going a little further with my energy budget for SAMAD, energy from renewable sources like solar and wind needs to be stored in order to provide consistency. This is one of the biggest headaches in mainstreaming solar and wind. I’m now leaning towards dedicating all of the power from these sources to water electrolysis. The energy then gets stored in hydrogen and oxygen and can be inserted into an ammonia synthesis system whenever a batch is large enough.

This leads me to a modest but important re-write for Thunder Empire. In the interests of cutting back the reliance of the military on fossil fuels and bringing greater economy to military bases, the Pentagon in 1995 sets aside some money for geothermal. As real life fortune would have it, the San Pedro River Valley is a promising location for geothermal using technology available in the 1990’s. There is a well in the Huachucas that yields ground water >50 degrees Celsius. Following the thesis that momentum is real phenomenon in military politics, Fort Huachuca wrangles herself a modest geothermal plant that gets put down on unoccupied land separated from the main post by Highway 82. The rationale is that instead of buying electricity at commercial rates from Sulphur Springs, the post purchases electricity from the geothermal plant at a preferential rate similar to the scheme by which California photovoltaic array owners sell electricity during the day at day rates (good for the seller) and buy electricity during the night at night rates (good for the buyer). As an added bonus from a contingency standpoint, the geothermal plant is invulnerable to disruptions in the flow of fossil fuels. After the nukes strike, and after the damage to the electronics at the geothermal plant is repaired, someone at the University of Tucson observes that ammonia can be produced from electricity. It takes until late 1998 for an ammonia synthesis facility to be brought on-line near the geothermal plant, which is just about the time when the last conventional fuel for military uses is consumed.

Managing this grid will take a bit of work. However, if the solar and wind systems are only connected to an electrolysis facility, then the energy is converted to hydrogen as it becomes available. Machinery and other functions that require power all day long will draw their power from the geothermal plant, leaving a few MW for ammonia production. This is another reason why the Samadi don’t project lots of power beyond SAMAD; the fuel just isn’t there.

[pmulcahy11b]

Originally Posted by mikeo80

I've always thought that the "suitcase nuke" scenario was an excellent way of taking a particularly choice piece of real estate away from PC's.


Mike

Barring any super secret black programs, there are no real "suitcase" nukes. There are nukes designed to be humped, but they look like a shrunken 55-gallon drum (like maybe a 30-gallon drum) and weigh about 70 pounds. Might get it in a steamer trunk, but not a suitcase.

[TrailerParkJawa]

One problem with nuclear power plants has been highlighted by Fukishima. Lose total power for x amount of hours and it's meltdown city. If there was an EMP that cripple almost everything then many reactors around the US should have meltdown cause there was not enough time to cool them down or any way to get sufficient supplies of diesel to everylant for extended periods.

However it would seem reasonable that some plants were offline for maintenance or just as a precaution against such an event. So those plants possibl would be available to crank up for recovery.

As for ammonia I never gave it much thought. Just having fuel to run irrigation or tractors would be a god send compared to oxen and hand planting.

Wouldn't ammonia come in handy for some explosives?

[TrailerParkJawa]

Originally Posted by pmulcahy11b

Barring any super secret black programs, there are no real "suitcase" nukes. There are nukes designed to be humped, but they look like a shrunken 55-gallon drum (like maybe a 30-gallon drum) and weigh about 70 pounds. Might get it in a steamer trunk, but not a suitcase.

Yeah, ADMs weren't suitcase portable. Handtruck yes, pickup yes, gym bag no.

Davy Crockett rounds were pretty small to but I wouldn't be able to backpack that eithe

[Webstral]

Originally Posted by TrailerParkJawa

Wouldn't ammonia come in handy for some explosives?

It sure would. There's another competitor for a scarce resource. If you have ammonia for creating nitrates, you have the right stuff for making things that go bang. This would be a tremendous resource for anyone with the ability to produce anhydrous ammonia to trade to those without. One wonders at what exchange rate small arms ammunition (does smokeless powder require nitrates?), machine gun ammunition, and mortar rounds could be traded for food, even if the other party were a modest cantonment with 85% of its labor devoted to growing or acquiring food.

[manunancy]

As far as I know the most convenient nitration source for making explosives is nitric acid - if you can cook some, nitrocellulose is a quick and relatively easy step.

[Targan]

Originally Posted by TrailerParkJawa

Yeah, ADMs weren't suitcase portable. Handtruck yes, pickup yes, gym bag no.

Davy Crockett rounds were pretty small to but I wouldn't be able to backpack that either

The weapon the PCs recovered and later detonated in my last campaign was basically a slightly modernised M159 Mod 2 SADM (Special Atomic Demolition Munition); weighs 74.1kg with battery (any PRC type manpack battery will suffice); variable yield 1kt to 10kt; mechanical combination lock + PAL.

[mikeo80]

Originally Posted by pmulcahy11b

Barring any super secret black programs, there are no real "suitcase" nukes. There are nukes designed to be humped, but they look like a shrunken 55-gallon drum (like maybe a 30-gallon drum) and weigh about 70 pounds. Might get it in a steamer trunk, but not a suitcase.

You are correct, Paul. I was thinking about the nukes used in the tv show Jericho. That is the size you describe. I was using the "nom de guerre" given to small tac nukes.

My $0.02

Mike

[DocSavage45B10]

Fukishima specifically happened because the backup diesels were swept away or flooded out by a tsunami that was over the maximum planned height. Any plant whose diesels survive the exchange will be able to shutdown gracefuly assuming the operators do not panic.

Originally Posted by TrailerParkJawa

One problem with nuclear power plants has been highlighted by Fukishima. Lose total power for x amount of hours and it's meltdown city. If there was an EMP that cripple almost everything then many reactors around the US should have meltdown cause there was not enough time to cool them down or any way to get sufficient supplies of diesel to everylant for extended periods.

However it would seem reasonable that some plants were offline for maintenance or just as a precaution against such an event. So those plants possibl would be available to crank up for recovery.

As for ammonia I never gave it much thought. Just having fuel to run irrigation or tractors would be a god send compared to oxen and hand planting.

Wouldn't ammonia come in handy for some explosives?

[Legbreaker]

And I believe basic diesels don't need any electrical systems to keep running so shouldn't be greatly effected by EMP (provided they don't have an electrical starter).
But then I'm no mechanic, so....

[Graebarde]

Originally Posted by TrailerParkJawa

As for ammonia I never gave it much thought. Just having fuel to run irrigation or tractors would be a god send compared to oxen and hand planting.

Muscle powered agriculture will NOT be oxen or horses in general for at least FOUR years after the demise of the tractor. It takes that long to get an ox or horse mature enough and trained to do real work. IF you try too young, and the pleasure horse people are really bad about this, they have not developed their skeletal or muscles to handle the loads and you will either kill or maime them, and your back to YOUR muscles again. As for heavy horses, while their number and popularity are on the rise, their number nationally is very low. I fear most animals on farms would wind up as burgers for the ignorant starving mass of locust from the cities, as will seed grains etc..

But that is a different thread.

[Graebarde]

Originally Posted by Legbreaker

And I believe basic diesels don't need any electrical systems to keep running so shouldn't be greatly effected by EMP (provided they don't have an electrical starter).
But then I'm no mechanic, so....

Correct, but the modern diesels have electronic controlled injection system. IF you have a mechanical pumped engine it will run without electric. NOW the question is would EMP effect a battery? Or an electric motor (starter) that was not in operation when the EMP occured? You're REALLY going to have a problem getting diesel engines going without an electric starter. Gas engines were hand cranked relatively easy. SOME diesel engines CAN be hand started, but they are stationary with large flywheels (such as those Lister engines). NOW IF you have a long slope to park the tractor on before you shut it down, and do a good prestart prep (ie prime etc) you MIGHT roll it down and pop the clutch.. oops, most diesel tractors I've seen around lately have a form of automatic transmission system.. so that MIGHT not work either. Heck depending on the weather, the standard transmission diesel is not a sure thing. We've done it, but it sure isn't fun, then we've had to pull the dang thing around for five minutes trying to get it to fire up when it was cold and batteries were dead (farm tractor pulling other farm tractor)