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Office Thug posted:I think it's because the plants are getting old and they'll be looking to retire some of the older ones around 2035 regardless. The entire fleet will reach its end-of-life point around mid 2045. But it sounds like they want to avoid re-licensing and retire them faster, with half the fleet going offline by 2026. It can all be summed up as political policy guiding energy policy which guides economic policy which guides environmental policy, which was ostensibly the thing guiding political policy, but thanks to unintended consequences Green-type parties end up being the largest contributors of global warming and a further destroyed environment. When your "renewable plan" only works if you ignore growing lignite coal usage and burn half your nation's forests, your plan sucks. And if you then claim it's because you're an environmentalist, you should be either be given a dictionary pointing to the word environmentalist, or taken out back and shot.
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Sep 25, 2013 20:56
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Pander posted:When your "renewable plan" only works if you ignore growing lignite coal usage and burn half your nation's forests, your plan sucks. You see when you burn wood or corn you're putting carbon into the air that was already in the carbon cycle instead of putting carbon into the air that had previously been trapped in the earth in the form of hydrocarbons.
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Sep 25, 2013 21:13
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hobbesmaster posted:You see when you burn wood or corn you're putting carbon into the air that was already in the carbon cycle instead of putting carbon into the air that had previously been trapped in the earth in the form of hydrocarbons.
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Sep 25, 2013 21:23
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Pander posted:It can all be summed up as political policy guiding energy policy which guides economic policy which guides environmental policy, which was ostensibly the thing guiding political policy, but thanks to unintended consequences Green-type parties end up being the largest contributors of global warming and a further destroyed environment. I wouldn't blame people for not intrinsically understanding incredibly complex machinery and processes that require graduate studies to truly understand. Instead I would blame the proponents of nuclear energy who, like those in this thread, seem to have abandoned public education in favor of just calling environmentalists stupid and deriding anyone who so much as asks about safety. In fact nuclear supporters in this thread remind me of nothing so much as BlackBerry fans. Both are boosters of failed technology that no one wants, both can't fathom why everyone isn't using their failed technology that no one wants, and both have decided against trying to find out what went wrong and instead have decided that the world must be wrong.
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Sep 25, 2013 21:40
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There is a place for both renewables and nuclear power, in the case of France, the question I think is far more open since they rely so much of nuclear power. If you take hydro and nuclear together it is quite possible to produce most of a base load with wind and other renewables on top if you had a grid that could manage that energy which France as a very centralized medium sized country could.
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Sep 25, 2013 22:02
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It doesn't take a graduate degree to understand "more people have died in windfarm related accidents than nuclear power plant accidents".
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Sep 25, 2013 22:11
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Whats a good book to force nuclear haters to read? I get to pick a book for my book club and since i'm the sole supporter of nuclear technology i've decided to educate everyone but i need a book thats accessible that will hopefully allow them to stop screaming about !RADIATION!.
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Sep 25, 2013 22:12
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Pander posted:I want to punch you in the face over and over again. This is legitimately the actual argument from actual people in the business for why burning trees, excuse me, biomass counts as renewable.
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Sep 25, 2013 23:08
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Jeffrey posted:It doesn't take a graduate degree to understand "more people have died in windfarm related accidents than nuclear power plant accidents". That's not what I'm talking about, allow me to try again. Every human over the age of three understands "fire hot", it's almost as intrinsic to our species as using that fire to burn things is. However most adults, even those with college educations, don't really understand controlled nuclear fission; it's just not something that exists in our day to day lives.
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Sep 25, 2013 23:10
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There was an awesome article published in early 1994 (I'm thinking Konrad Lorenz, but the original author was also an engineer and physicist..) that looked at France's Nuclear infrastructure to determine exactly where the electricity that was being generated was being used for, and looked at the total inefficiencies of the entire system, from Uranium mining, to transportation, refining, plant maintenance and repair, line loss, transformer loss to the end user, and then transportation, conversion, and long-term storage of the reactor waste material. Further, he also examined the price of electricity and how that had an effect on the increase in the installation of base heating - namely, heating airspaces using baseboard or other resistance-based heating. The findings were interesting - the construction of another nuclear plant, without adding extra measures to increase space heating efficiencies, or energy conservation - resulted in the use of more nuclear power being used to heat homes and lodgings. The total carbon offset calculated was almost as high if low-efficiency gas furnaces were used to heat individual living spaces. He then made a great argument about what, exactly, electricity needs to be used for: Unless you have a high-efficiency geothermal system heating your house, heating by electricity is deleterious as you are taking a high-quality energy source (Nuclear energy) and then converting it back into a low quality use (space heating). In contract, natural gas is a low quality power source - when burned in a high-efficiency point-of-use home gas furnace it can obtain much more optimal heating capacity than, say, if it is burned in a gas power plant to generate electricity that then goes to heat living spaces with baseboard heating. In essence, his solution was not to build more nuclear / power plants in general, but focus on what kinds of energy sources are available, and put them towards the best possible use. Furthermore, local municipalities and communities needed to enact legislation in order to reduce or restrict the waste of high quality energy into simple heating purposes, and how updated local building codes could go a long way to help solve electricity woes. Electricity => Motors, electronics, orbital plasma cannon batteries, lighting and transportation. Fossil fuels (wood / gas / oil) => Space heating. It makes you cringe at how much of oil's total potential as a low-quality power source is wasted on the sheer inefficiency of the internal combustion engine. Guigui fucked around with this message at 23:58 on Sep 25, 2013 |
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Sep 25, 2013 23:56
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Guigui posted:There was an awesome article published in early 1994 (I'm thinking Konrad Lorenz, but the original author was also an engineer and physicist..) that looked at France's Nuclear infrastructure to determine exactly where the electricity that was being generated was being used for, and looked at the total inefficiencies of the entire system, from Uranium mining, to transportation, refining, plant maintenance and repair, line loss, transformer loss to the end user, and then transportation, conversion, and long-term storage of the reactor waste material. Numbers are hard. Explaining the scale of energy takes more time and nuance compared to absorbing the notion that RADIATION IS BAD. Even Rachel Maddow, talking about nuclear power, said "any radiation is bad", as though background radiation weren't a thing that exists. It seems around the world that the tens of thousands of died from the Sendai tsunami have been rendered less noteworthy than the nuclear plant crisis that has killed nobody (well, minus a worker who fell to his death). It's like trying to reconcile how violent crime is far down in America compared to decades ago with the popular perception that violence is out of control. I explain it to everyone I can. My g/f was anti-nuclear before I talked with her and explained what nuclear power is, how plants work, what the scale of stuff released has been, what scale waste is produced, the emergencies thus far, everything she wants to know and feared about. She didn't really know much about it beyond a vague fear and certainty of its danger. She liked what I said even more when I explained the radioactive output of coal, the difficulty of implementing and paying for wind/solar everywhere, the deteriorating German solution. She's now in the "why hasn't anyone explained this to people" camp.  I'm hoping Pandora's Promise is good and accessible. It'd be nice to see it on Netflix streaming ASAP, since I doubt it'll get wide theatrical release. Pander fucked around with this message at 04:14 on Sep 26, 2013 |
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Sep 26, 2013 04:06
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QUILT_MONSTER_420 fucked around with this message at 19:49 on Nov 28, 2013 |
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Sep 26, 2013 04:41
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Arghy posted:Whats a good book to force nuclear haters to read? I get to pick a book for my book club and since i'm the sole supporter of nuclear technology i've decided to educate everyone but i need a book thats accessible that will hopefully allow them to stop screaming about !RADIATION!. It's this book (free) http://www.withouthotair.com/reviews.html Maybe just the nuclear chapter, but the whole thing is pretty fascinating.
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Sep 26, 2013 04:51
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Hasters posted:That's not what I'm talking about, allow me to try again. Every human over the age of three understands "fire hot", it's almost as intrinsic to our species as using that fire to burn things is. However most adults, even those with college educations, don't really understand controlled nuclear fission; it's just not something that exists in our day to day lives. People could understand fission, fuel cycles, how waste occurs and how to make bombs (and thus strengthen nuclear designs against proliferation) with gruesome detail. And yet I am almost 100% certain their anti-nuclear poeition would not change. It's because they can't rationalize in terms of comparison. If I really wanted to educate people about nuclear, I'd first need to learn how to educate people to think critically. How can I convince people that there's a better solution, based on comparisons and relativity, when the very concept of what makes something a more desirable approach is totally alien to them?
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Sep 26, 2013 18:03
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That's why infographics like the one comparing the amount of uranium dispersed when consuming coal to the amount needed to generate the same amount of power as that coal are so useful.
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Sep 26, 2013 19:35
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Nevvy Z posted:That's why infographics like the one comparing the amount of uranium dispersed when consuming coal to the amount needed to generate the same amount of power as that coal are so useful. It's not just one pellet of uranium vs 1 ton of coal type comparisons. It needs to be a picture of train cars delivering coal. It needs to be mine collapses/explosions. It needs to be the massive volume of smoke, layers of soot, and failing dams of fly ash runoff. Or maybe about how coal contains uranium, which is burned up and distributed freely in the air rather than how waste is contained as in a nuclear plant. People don't really think about coal beyond the vague concept of global warming. It's like there's a confluence of two mindsets that, despite political impotence in nearly every other facet, currently drive energy policy: one is the 60s generation hippies who hate all things nuclear (largely due to nuclear weapons), and the millennial generation who have essentially been lied to by extreme environmentalists into believing that niche renewables can fuel everything. And the result of such extremism has been the ascendancy of natural gas and the continued survival of coal thanks to the wonderful invisible hand of the free market as renewables inch forward thanks to incredible subsidies. Education is the most powerful tool, but it is much goddamn harder than it should be for some reason when it comes to nuclear power. It'd take someone with both credibility from all sides and cross-generational appeal, and the only people who fit that bill off the top of my head are Bill Nye and Neil deGrasse Tyson. Tyson appreciates nuclear and points out how Fukushima was actually a triumph of strong engineering in the face of an unimaginable disaster, but pushes for solar instead, and Nye essentially ignores Gen IV designs and states we'll always have accidents with nuclear. So...I dunno. Neither really seem to address the problem of "people want power, people will get power, where will they get it from, realistically?"
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Sep 26, 2013 22:20
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Pander posted:and Nye essentially ignores Gen IV designs and states we'll always have accidents with nuclear. Do you want him to lie and say there will never be accidents at power plants? This is the problem with putting scientists and engineers in front of the media. Nothing is ever safe, nothing is ever certain. If you don't have to worry about facts you can be certain of everything.
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Sep 26, 2013 23:09
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hobbesmaster posted:Do you want him to lie and say there will never be accidents at power plants? Wasn't Nye a Mechanical Engineer? Its literally part of why he'd be scared of nuclear despite the obvious reasons to be pro-nuclear. To be fair, he isn't lying per se, no form of electricity generation is perfectly safe. But Nuclear goes a long way towards safety compared to Coal and Natural Gas, as well as being far more sustainable.
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Sep 26, 2013 23:12
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hobbesmaster posted:Do you want him to lie and say there will never be accidents at power plants? I didn't want him to lie, I just wanted a bit of perspective. A dam breaking has both a higher probability of occurrence and greater severity than a nuclear plant, well, 'accident'. In both Chernobyl and Fukushima the disaster surrounding the radioactive release killed far more people than the radiation released. I dislike the black and white PRO or ANTI nuclear debate, when it's far more productive to focus on the fact it, like everything else, exists in grays, and those grays are important. The pro does a lovely job laying out those grays in the context they need, and the anti side does everything in its power to wipe away the grays and focus on the black. Frustrating.
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Sep 26, 2013 23:25
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hobbesmaster posted:Do you want him to lie and say there will never be accidents at power plants? Key points:
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Sep 26, 2013 23:36
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GulMadred posted:Here's my favourite example: Carl Sagan discussing the (then-controversial) RTGs aboard the Galileo probe Carl Sagan was one of the few men I'd suspect capable of being able to carefully balance the argument like that. That is an excellent paper, thanks for linking it!
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Sep 26, 2013 23:49
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That Sagan article is beautiful, as always. Did this get much press in the US, if any? How's it looking? World's Largest Solar Thermal Energy Plant Opens in California http://inhabitat.com/ivanpah-worlds-largest-solar-thermal-energy-plant-starts-production-in-california
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Sep 27, 2013 00:54
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Hobo Erotica posted:That Sagan article is beautiful, as always. It generates nothing next to a gas, coal, or nuclear plant, and takes up about the same size if not more.
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Sep 27, 2013 01:09
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CommieGIR posted:It generates nothing next to a gas, coal, or nuclear plant, and takes up about the same size if not more. To demonstrate how insane the scale difference consider this. GE aviation produces versions of the turbofans that power airliners for stationary applications called turboshafts. A 747 can be powered by 4 CF6 engines. A turboshaft version of this is the LMS100. That 100 is for 100MW. This new powerplant at full capacity is 396MW.
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Sep 27, 2013 01:26
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hobbesmaster posted:To demonstrate how insane the scale difference consider this. GE aviation produces versions of the turbofans that power airliners for stationary applications called turboshafts. A 747 can be powered by 4 CF6 engines. A turboshaft version of this is the LMS100. That 100 is for 100MW. So....there is a 747 equivalent parked in the desert.
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Sep 27, 2013 01:35
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CommieGIR posted:So....there is a 747 equivalent parked in the desert. And it's only got a 3500 acre footprint. This is why we're so completely hosed with solar and wind.
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Sep 27, 2013 01:37
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hobbesmaster posted:And it's only got a 3500 acre footprint. Land is a concern, as there are numerous species that can be impacted by such a development (the article itself mentions an endangered species of tortoise). But it is nowhere near as disconcerting as the water intake required. They may not be as efficient, may be more expensive, but at least you can claim PV cells don't take so much water as CSP. Yeesh.
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Sep 27, 2013 02:04
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hobbesmaster posted:And it's only got a 3500 acre footprint. Which means the Mojave could fit nearly 9,000 of them, 3 times the existing power generation in the US. There's space. If* the costs can be brought down to be in line with other sources of generation, there's nothing wrong with solar thermal. It's not a reason to exclude nuclear, but why is the space thing such a big issue? Is the water usage that high compared to nuclear? *Big if, yes.
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Sep 27, 2013 02:07
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AreWeDrunkYet posted:Which means the Mojave could fit nearly 9,000 of them, 3 times the existing power generation in the US. There's space. And you don't see why demolishing an entire ecosystem and its native species might be a bad thing?
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Sep 27, 2013 02:08
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AreWeDrunkYet posted:Which means the Mojave could fit nearly 9,000 of them, 3 times the existing power generation in the US. There's space. I imagine both that water usage in desert environments is a contentious issue (even if you pump it in) and that the Mojave is not some magical wasteland where nothing lives and no ecosystems are disrupted by it.
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Sep 27, 2013 02:10
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I prefer to think of it as impressive that we can design a system of mirrors to heat a boiler to produce the same power as a Jumbo Jet. Enough power to make hundreds of tonnes of steel fly.
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Sep 27, 2013 02:16
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hobbesmaster posted:And it's only got a 3500 acre footprint. Because these technologies are never going to get any better and certainly not if we install a lot of them and get better at the process. Because its simply impossible for the solar technologies to get any better than what they are already.
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Sep 27, 2013 02:17
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Obviously nobody is going to put three times the power generation already in place in the entire country in one place - the point is that even though it is relatively space intensive, it could be expanded to provide power for everyone in that region and still only take a fraction of the available space if the price can be brought down. Animal habitats and other local environmental concerns should be heeded as much as possible, and carbon emissions are negligible after construction.
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Sep 27, 2013 02:18
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KennyTheFish posted:I prefer to think of it as impressive that we can design a system of mirrors to heat a boiler to produce the same power as a Jumbo Jet. Enough power to make hundreds of tonnes of steel fly. It's 5.5 square miles of mirrors so it's not really that impressive.
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Sep 27, 2013 02:19
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computer parts posted:It's 5.5 square miles of mirrors so it's not really that impressive. Overflight might be an issue.
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Sep 27, 2013 02:24
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Frogmanv2 posted:Because these technologies are never going to get any better and certainly not if we install a lot of them and get better at the process. Because its simply impossible for the solar technologies to get any better than what they are already. I get a bare minimum (100% efficiency) of 400 acres to generate 400MW based on an irradiance of 250W/m^2. Sure that's an order of magnitude, but uh, yeah.
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Sep 27, 2013 02:29
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CommieGIR posted:It generates nothing next to a gas, coal, or nuclear plant, and takes up about the same size if not more. We're talking about ~ 400 MW, which is a fair whack, and about half of one of the plants you mentioned, not really 'nearly nothing'. Are you including the land footprint of the mine etc in the comparison? Assuming we prefer not mining and burning fossil fuels, what's the biggest size differnce you'd tolerate to make it worth while?
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Sep 27, 2013 03:05
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Hobo Erotica posted:We're talking about ~ 400 MW, which is a fair whack, and about half of one of the plants you mentioned, not really 'nearly nothing'. Nobody is saying its a bad thing. But lets take a quick look: SEGS Solar Generating Plant: 1,600 Acres @ 398 MW Sequoyah Nuclear Generating Station: 525 Acres @ 2,333 MW So, for the acreage, I get 4.44 MW per Acre for nuclear, and 0.249 MW per acre for solar. In other words, for the 1,600 acres I could get 7,104 MW. And 130.725MW for equivalent acreage compared to the acreage that Sequoyah Nuclear Generating Plant. And that is an OLD 1980s era plant.
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Sep 27, 2013 03:16
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Also unfortunately these solar plants are going to require really long transmission lines and probably not be able to be operated by the same company if they can even be in the same state.
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Sep 27, 2013 03:21
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CommieGIR posted:Overflight might be an issue. Why would that matter? The sun isn't focused on some point up in the sky and temporarily blocking a solar thermal plant won't cause a drop in output. Install Windows posted:And you don't see why demolishing an entire ecosystem and its native species might be a bad thing? Which method of power generation has no environmental footprint?
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Sep 27, 2013 03:29
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