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Ardennes posted:SA is really not left wing man Have you ever bothered to hang around D&D during a recent election? An overwhelming number of posters openly mock conservatives and their positions. The old days of SA being a libertarian shithole are long over There's a thread exclusively for mocking freep, and a different thread for exlusively mocking conservapedia. I remember when a thread for mocking liberals existed, but it eventually fell off the forum because not enough people were posting there. Where there was an Obama thread, the overwhelming consensus opinion was that he's too conservative. I don't know how it is in Goons With Spoons or whatever, but D&D at least leans left wing
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Jul 8, 2014 19:48
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crazypenguin posted:Yeah, I think you're nuts with that last bit, but there's actually something good to talk about in the first bit here. The obstacles of load-following with nuclear power are surmountable: http://www.oecd-nea.org/ndd/reports/2011/load-following-npp.pdf quote:Modern nuclear plants with light water reactors are designed to have strong manoeuvring capabilities. Nuclear power plants in France and in Germany operate in load-following mode, i.e. they participate in the primary and secondary frequency control and some units follow a variable load programme with one or two large power changes per day.
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Jul 8, 2014 19:51
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Phanatic posted:The obstacles of load-following with nuclear power are surmountable: Excuse my clumsy language, but I didn't mean just capability, but also the cost effectiveness of it. If you have to build more plants, only to run them at 60% much of the time, that's a lot of money that might be more efficiently invested in grid battery capacity.
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Jul 8, 2014 20:07
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crazypenguin posted:Excuse my clumsy language, but I didn't mean just capability, but also the cost effectiveness of it. If you have to build more plants, only to run them at 60% much of the time, that's a lot of money that might be more efficiently invested in grid battery capacity. What makes a grid battery better than, say, molten salt or hydrogen storage? The batteries are most likely lead-acid, so maintenance would yield lots of scrap lead at the dimensions you imagine. The only advantage I see is that the actual storage would be mainly solid-state and simple, but not very dense and clean.
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Jul 8, 2014 20:23
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An alternative solution is to 'right-size' plants by going modular, ie. more smaller reactors vs. the past ideal of big-as-can-be reactors. Also helps since the only capability to forge large reactor pressure vessels rests in Japan and China. Instead of one giant $10B plant producing 1400 MWe, have about 6 $600M/per reactors producing 180 MWe each, add/move units as needed to meet changing demand.
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Jul 8, 2014 20:23
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Lurking Haro posted:What makes a grid battery better than, say, molten salt or hydrogen storage? The batteries are most likely lead-acid, so maintenance would yield lots of scrap lead at the dimensions you imagine. Just more clumsy language! I'm using "battery" to stand in for any means of storing and later releasing energy on the grid. I don't know if anyone has a good idea of what the right particular technology is. Molten salt was the cool ted talk I linked to earlier. I hope they actually put something into production, to find out if it works as well as its supposed to. Wikipedia says they plan to this year.
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Jul 8, 2014 20:27
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What are molten salt's advantages and disadvantages in a nutshell? I know I've studied them, but it was 4 years ago and fuzzy.
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Jul 8, 2014 20:30
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Pander posted:An alternative solution is to 'right-size' plants by going modular, ie. more smaller reactors vs. the past ideal of big-as-can-be reactors. Also helps since the only capability to forge large reactor pressure vessels rests in Japan and China. Instead of one giant $10B plant producing 1400 MWe, have about 6 $600M/per reactors producing 180 MWe each, add/move units as needed to meet changing demand. We could also use overcapacity to filter carbondioxide out of the air and sea, and make hydrocarbons once fossil fuels get expensive enough to make the process worth it.
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Jul 8, 2014 20:30
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crazypenguin posted:They really are cheaper. We do have to solve the grid batteries problem before that's actually provably true, as right now you can argue the other way because we haven't (as far as I know) got a good grid battery solution, but I think you might even have to solve this problem for a pure-nuclear approach. After all, building 10 nuclear plants to supply enough to meet peak demand is likely more expensive than 5 + a grid battery system that can meet the peaks. NASA is working on vacuum magnetic bearing flywheels which I think is pretty interesting. They don't require any toxic elements, are fairly long lasting, have decent storage density and good roundtrip efficiency. Failure modes involve explosions though. There's these guys who are building a 6MV test storage facility somewhere in England. The more outlandish idea I've seen involves hauling rail cars filled with rocks to the top of a hill and then generating electricity when you roll them back down. There's a lot of stuff going on in that field as a new market more or less created by renewables - it's pretty interesting to follow it.
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Jul 8, 2014 20:35
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Lurking Haro posted:We could also use overcapacity to filter carbondioxide out of the air and sea, and make hydrocarbons once fossil fuels get expensive enough to make the process worth it.
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Jul 8, 2014 20:41
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Ardennes, you're from Portland too, right? Here, the majority of our electricity comes from hydroelectric dams, so we're in a unique position in this country in that most of our electric power comes from renewables already*. There are a handful of coal and gas plants, as well as a nuclear plant up near Hanford**, as well. There have been protests over Boardman and CGS, with calls for closing both of them. Boardman came online just before the passage of the Clean Air Act, and is one of the dirtiest coal plants in the nation. Protests over CGS don't seem to be going anywhere, but there has been a response from PGE at Boardman- they're in the process of converting it into a gas plant. From a climate change perspective, this isn't much of a success. I will say that Oregon used to have a good example of a nuclear plant that needed to have been shut down, in Trojan. It was sited along the Columbia River, north of Portland... and well within the Cascadia subduction zone. They should have put it somewhere much less earthquake-prone, or at least had better construction, but they didn't, and so it was decommissioned after only a decade and a half of service. It also crystallized anti-nuclear sentiment in the region, above what you would normally expect, which is really bad because a plant to take the place of Boardman would have been nice to have.  *: There's actually a law that requires that 25% or more of electricity produced by utilities in this state come from renewables. If I recall correctly, a lot of people were upset to find that the 25% was not defined to be independent of already-existing hydro. Which seems silly, because it's not like hydroelectricity is belching out carbon dioxide, right? It seems like a better law would have been to mandate >95% production from sources that don't produce more than trace amounts of greenhouse gases during operation, but I'm not an engineer, so... **: Hanford is a can of worms in its own right, although I would like to stress that its waste-disposal problems were a result of atomic bomb development, not from the power plant. edit: Lurking Haro posted:We could also use overcapacity to filter carbondioxide out of the air and sea, and make hydrocarbons once fossil fuels get expensive enough to make the process worth it. Have there been studies done on solar-powered industrial processes like this, where it would (hopefully) be perfectly okay to have it run only during certain times of day, and with varying intensity? Hedera Helix fucked around with this message at 20:46 on Jul 8, 2014 |
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Jul 8, 2014 20:41
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QuarkJets posted:Okay, you're going to have to produce some quotes to back this up. I don't even remember one poster that was anti-green/pro-nuclear, much less a trend of posters. I recall many pro-nuclear posters arguing against a 100% renewable strategy while promoting a portfolio strategy, which is not an anti-green position. I think that what's happening here is that you are reading someone listing off the downsides of a 100% renewable strategy and are then assuming that they are anti-green when in all likelihood they support an energy portfolio. There was a discussion on this page just a few posts above yours about the issue and there actually doesn't seem to be much firm proof about the "100% renewable" line of discussion. quote:That's not an anti-green position, it's an anti-100% renewable position. That argument supports a portfolio strategy. It very much is an anti-green position, because it is boxing in posters through a absurd example. No one suggested "only solar" as a solution yet Fishmech brought it up anyway. To be honest looking through the thread history I haven't seen this mysterious radical environmentalists you assume to exist, if anything it looks like some posters got steamrolled for crossing some invisible line. quote:It's not, and no one has made a base load argument against a mixed portfolio Depends on what you call "mixed", are renewables just on the fringe? As for the anti-democratic stuff there are plenty of examples just in the last few pages. quote:Have you ever bothered to hang around D&D during a recent election? An overwhelming number of posters openly mock conservatives and their positions. The old days of SA being a libertarian shithole are long over Yeah, the issue is that mocking freep doesn't make you left-wing and to be honest American liberals really aren't leftists. The age of LF is over, and D&D is more or less reflecting the American political perspective....which is a pretty big shift to the right. quote:Ardennes, you're from Portland too, right? Here, the majority of our electricity comes from hydroelectric dams, so we're in a unique position in this country in that most of our electric power comes from renewables already*. There are a handful of coal and gas plants, as well as a nuclear plant up near Hanford**, as well. My folks are in Portland and I spent a fair amount of time there. Yeah, I have heard about Boardman and it would be great if it was shutdown or at least converted. Oregon in general has a pretty strong amount of renewable use, although I do think Oregon imports electricity from outside the state. I would have to look into whether it would make sense to build a new nuclear plant at this point or not in Oregon, certainly public opinion would be a highly uphill battle and since so much of baseload does come from hydro, the necessity is a bit less. That said, gas is still carbon intensive and it isn't like fracking isn't pretty terrible, so there is an argument for nuclear still. Ultimately converting Boardman would be the first step and then see if public opinion may open up some from there either in Oregon or Washington. Wind Power is making great strides and certainly the Columbia Gorge is a prime location, close to the Portland Metro area with predictable strong wind patterns. If anything for the most part Oregon (and the rest of the NW) is a pretty good spot at the moment. Ardennes fucked around with this message at 21:07 on Jul 8, 2014 |
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Jul 8, 2014 20:51
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Ardennes posted:Yeah, the issue is that mocking freep doesn't make you left-wing and to be honest American liberals really aren't leftists. The age of LF is over, and D&D is more or less reflecting the American political perspective....which is a pretty big shift to the right.
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Jul 8, 2014 21:00
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what does the vague idea of a unidimensional political spectrum have to do with energy generation?
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Jul 8, 2014 21:03
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Ardennes: What the hell is your projected energy portfolio for various governments/societies? I'm re-reading earlier pages of this thread, and it's reasonable back and forth exchanges regarding what comprise valid comparisons and analyses. I keep trying to tell you that the current thread consensus tends toward "portfolio of renewables and nuclear to eliminate coal and gas would be best" with an understanding that solar has technical hurdles at present and nuclear has perception/regulatory hurdles at present. What you keep doing is some sort of bizarre equivalent of what some Fox News American Christians do: make vague claims of persecution, sticking like glue to a random example that may no longer be very apt. It's not useful at all. Advance an argument on its merits or you're just trolling.
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Jul 8, 2014 21:06
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quote:It very much is an anti-green position, because it is boxing in posters through a absurd example. No one suggested "only solar" as a solution yet Fishmech brought it up anyway. To be honest looking through the thread history I haven't seen this mysterious radical environmentalists you assume to exist, if anything it looks like some posters got steamrolled for crossing some invisible line. What most scientifically-minded people in the thread want to see are suggestions about paths forward. If you wanna crap on nuclear, that's fine, but you'll annoy the thread if you don't also present a reasonable alternative. If you can't, but still keep making GBS threads on nuclear, it requires us to guess at your motives and becomes a pretty unfun exercise of dealing with trolling. Trotting out political arguments in this thread seems pretty silly. I don't think anyone's political alignment really matters here. If you can't argue your point with science, it doesn't matter where on the spectrum you lie, you're going to get poo poo on, whether a right wing hack or a left wing moon child.
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Jul 8, 2014 21:11
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Anosmoman posted:NASA is working on vacuum magnetic bearing flywheels which I think is pretty interesting. They don't require any toxic elements, are fairly long lasting, have decent storage density and good roundtrip efficiency. Failure modes involve explosions though. That of course is going to work but you're going to lose a lot of the energy in the process which will further increase the amount of solar/wind you need. It will certainly be more efficient than pumped hydro which is a pretty hilariously inefficient process. Also, all energy storage is going to have the problem of catastrophic failure - that energy is stored and wants to get out after all!
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Jul 8, 2014 21:17
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hobbesmaster posted:That of course is going to work but you're going to lose a lot of the energy in the process which will further increase the amount of solar/wind you need. It will certainly be more efficient than pumped hydro which is a pretty hilariously inefficient process. Pumped hydro sits around 70-75% roundtrip efficiency which I think would be manageble if it was scalable and didn't have the environmental impact. Of course energy storage is an added component to renewables that make it more expensive and complex but there's a potential there if we can figure out a cost effective way of doing it. The rail thing actually doesn't look too bad now that I look into it. I can't figure out how much space it takes up but it's low-tech proven technology, no energy loss for long term storage and the environmental impact is neglible assuming it doesn't require vast tracts of land. They claim 85% efficiency but that's from a sales pitch so whatever.
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Jul 8, 2014 21:38
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Ardennes posted:So explain to me why they are a bunch of "hidebound shitheads"? Elotana fucked around with this message at 22:07 on Jul 8, 2014 |
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Jul 8, 2014 22:02
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Ardennes posted:To be honest, I don't think they are looking at the history of this thread. As for unspecified people, Fishmech is already a pretty good example, Kathun hasn't been great either. It is a 48 page thread filled with arguing. I haven't done anything you claimed. Ardennes posted:That said, enviromentalists and hippies seem to be the prime enemy of D&D at the moment. Most of the modern "enviromentalist" movement is staunchly against things that actually help the environment, that's why people hate them. Separately, the Green Party is absolute trash and rightfully hated. Everyone who has the capability to think critically should be proud to say they're Anti-Green Party.
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Jul 9, 2014 00:36
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crazypenguin posted:Excuse my clumsy language, but I didn't mean just capability, but also the cost effectiveness of it. If you have to build more plants, only to run them at 60% much of the time, that's a lot of money that might be more efficiently invested in grid battery capacity. That's the weird thing, it probably isn't. Grid-scale power storage is ungodly expensive. I've seen serious (if optimistic) proposals for "wind is 100% of our power", and rather than storage they recommend overbuilding supply by a factor of (at least) 3. Energy storage is expensive because of the capital costs, not because of the efficiency.
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Jul 9, 2014 01:19
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Ardennes posted:It very much is an anti-green position, because it is boxing in posters through a absurd example. No, it isn't. If someone proposes a 100% renewable power grid (as several posters throughout the 50 page thread have done), then it's fair to point out the downsides of such a system. The same person who points out those downsides can still be in support of green power production. It's not an "absurd example", posters have brought up a 100% renewable power grid as a serious suggestion in this thread before. For instance, I am firmly on the side of solar power and believe that we should be giving even bigger tax incentives for residential photovoltaics and solar thermal power facilities. This is a great system, especially in hot climates where peak demand occurs during peak production. However, I do not swallow the illusion that renewable energy can provide 100% of our power needs. quote:To be honest looking through the thread history I haven't seen this mysterious radical environmentalists you assume to exist, if anything it looks like some posters got steamrolled for crossing some invisible line. I never called anyone a radical environmentalist, I was talking about 100% renewable strategies. Stop trying to put words in my mouth. And you may want to search your memory a bit harder because such strategies appeared many times in the thread. Here's an example: Hobo Erotica posted:Here's a pretty big report from the WWF / Ecofys, about going 100% renewable globally by 2050. Again, I am pro-renewable and also pro-nuclear. Some people are pro-renewable and anti-nuclear, such as members of The Green Party. From what I can remember, no one in this thread has been completely against renewable power, like you claim. Can you please provide an example if you're to continue saying this? QuarkJets fucked around with this message at 01:24 on Jul 9, 2014 |
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Jul 9, 2014 01:22
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Pander posted:Hobo Erotica was, but I think he's kinda accepted nuclear more as the thread's gone on (I think it was more looking from Australia alone to a more global view). There are several concern trolls who are anti-nuclear as gently caress, like Silence Kit and Insect Court in recent pages (not just from months or years ago), where no argument will ever sway them or get them to admit it's not a black and white issue where SOLAR GOOD and NUCLEAR BAD. I'm pretty firm that nuclear fission is a significantly less desirable zero-carbon solution for Australia to wind and concentrating solar with thermal storage for a variety of reasons. That's also probably true for other places that can manage high capacity factors for solar thermal like North Africa or the southern United States. I'm pretty consistent that anywhere that has clouds is probably going to need nuclear, though.
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Jul 9, 2014 02:30
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Waaaah the Christians are out to get me
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Quantum Mechanic posted:I'm pretty firm that nuclear fission is a significantly less desirable zero-carbon solution for Australia to wind and concentrating solar with thermal storage for a variety of reasons. That's also probably true for other places that can manage high capacity factors for solar thermal like North Africa or the southern United States. I'm pretty consistent that anywhere that has clouds is probably going to need nuclear, though. Can solar installations survive well in areas prone to hurricanes and severe strong thunderstorms? The CSP installations I've seen rely obviously rely on the sun shining directly on large sections of water, which seems like a vulnerability.
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Jul 9, 2014 03:43
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ardennes are you seriously trying to make an argument of the overall shift of the sa forums using fishmech as an example? no offense to fishmech but the guy is pretty much an internet posting machine that has had the blueprints burnt in a fire. no one is like fishmech
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Jul 9, 2014 04:01
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Pander posted:What are molten salt's advantages and disadvantages in a nutshell? I know I've studied them, but it was 4 years ago and fuzzy. Advantage: 1. Thermodynamically more efficient. 2. Purportedly an inherently safe design. Disadvantages: 1. Little track record compared to the history of using water cooled reactors. 2. Significant corrosion concerns. (In terms of normal operational and leak.) 3. Health concerns for plant operations and repair craftsman who might be exposed to liquified salt. As for discussing the plants in the pacific northwest. I can only see Oregon and Washington either building more wind farms or building more combined cycle plants. If they shut down Boardman and Centralia coal plants that will be roughly 2000 MW they'll have to get from elsewhere. (Or sell that much less electricity to California.) As for more nuclear power plants in Washington or Oregon. I know at Hanford its been begged for for years by the local unions to keep the local economy going, but I don't see it happening due to the past credit default involved with WPPS. It would be possible to restart the FFTF (around 100 MW electrical if that, its primarily geared towards isotope production) and finish one of the other WPPS reactors (around 1000 MW electical), but it is extremely unlikely. All the documentation I've seen on the modular reactors certainly seems to heavily suggest that nuScale will be putting them at the Idaho test site. As for electricity conservation, your big users (production plants) are still going to be about the same. There is something to be said for improving energy efficiency at home, but honestly most of the household electricity use in the pacific northwest (on both sides of the cascades) is during the winter because a lot of older houses have heat pumps. Newer houses do tend to have natural gas but a lot of the older ones do not.
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Jul 9, 2014 04:15
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Ardennes posted:To be honest, I don't think they are looking at the history of this thread. As for unspecified people, Fishmech is already a pretty good example, Kathun hasn't been great either. It is a 48 page thread filled with arguing. I have no clue why you included me in this post. I haven't posted in this thread in a year and most of my posts were arguing with an energy regulator who didn't understand the difference between a megawatt, a megawatt-hour and a megawatt per hour. :edit: and some silly argument about geothermal heat pump during a minnesota winter. karthun fucked around with this message at 04:56 on Jul 9, 2014 |
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Jul 9, 2014 04:46
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You know what solar's pretty good at? Heating water. You don't need any horrible materials or manufacturing, just a big mess of black pipes up on a roof. I did a fire safety thing at an old apartment complex and the manager was bragging about how the solar water installation wasn't that expensive and will pay for its self in just 4 years or so. It's actually a perfect example of base load following renewables. They still have hot water heaters, but they're only used to top-up the heat from the solar system. On sunny days they don't even need to work at all, and even in the winter there's enough sun to still get energy savings out of the whole system.
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Jul 9, 2014 05:02
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Baronjutter posted:You know what solar's pretty good at? Heating water. You don't need any horrible materials or manufacturing, just a big mess of black pipes up on a roof. I did a fire safety thing at an old apartment complex and the manager was bragging about how the solar water installation wasn't that expensive and will pay for its self in just 4 years or so. It's actually a perfect example of base load following renewables. They still have hot water heaters, but they're only used to top-up the heat from the solar system. On sunny days they don't even need to work at all, and even in the winter there's enough sun to still get energy savings out of the whole system. The worst thing about this is that if I recall correctly, Germany's big solar push only gave real tax credits etc to people installing solar electric, and just about nothing to people installing solar water/home heating systems - even though in Germany's climate and situation in general, the heated water systems would be much more useful and consistent.
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Jul 9, 2014 06:35
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Elotana posted:Their plan proposes a 50% cut in total energy consumption by 2050. That isn't even Looney Tunes, it's Youtube Poop. They are doing exactly what Germany is doing, trying to move base load from nuclear to renewables and relying on wishful thinking about efficiency to make the math work. Except this will have far more carbon impacts since Germany only ever had to replace a 33% nuclear share and also knock-on effects with France's neighbors as they will likely lose their energy surplus. Even if you disagree with their energy policies (which is fine), it doesn't mean the population is a bunch of shitheads. That is sort of the issue, anytime something doesn't go a particular direction for posters in this thread it is usually direct blame is placed on the population rather than any sort of analysis of why it came to be. Fishmech posted:Most of the modern "enviromentalist" movement is staunchly against things that actually help the environment, that's why people hate them. Separately, the Green Party is absolute trash and rightfully hated. Everyone who has the capability to think critically should be proud to say they're Anti-Green Party. More or less what I was referring to as a general attitude. Quarkjets posted:No, it isn't. If someone proposes a 100% renewable power grid (as several posters throughout the 50 page thread have done), then it's fair to point out the downsides of such a system. The same person who points out those downsides can still be in support of green power production. It's not an "absurd example", posters have brought up a 100% renewable power grid as a serious suggestion in this thread before. That particular example was suppose to be a 100% Solar grid...who is seriously talking about that? Quarkjets posted:This is why nuclear proponents in this thread act as though the choice is "nuclear or fossil fuels". That really is the choice. Solar, wind, geothermal, etc are all great sources of energy, but even taken together they cannot meet the energy needs of the United States. Maybe if we had a tenth of the population and we mostly lived in sunnier areas, then it'd be hugely feasible. How is a "mixed portfolio" boils down between a simple choice between nuclear and fossil fuels? Where is the logic that because renewable can't satisfy all needs that it becomes a diametric choice between the two. If "nuclear" is just a by-word for a "mixed portfolio with nuclear it in" then I think complete confusion is absolutely going to be expected. A big flaming stink posted:ardennes are you seriously trying to make an argument of the overall shift of the sa forums using fishmech as an example? No, not at all actually, Fishmech has been around quite a while. It is actually overall trends in threads themselves. To be honest, it is more just the politically orientated forums (GBS, D&D). GBS especially has gotten really really bad and D&D moved much more to the center. That said, the more American conservative forums (TFR/GiP) have mostly just continued doing what they are doing and then there is FYAD and FYAD-likes. Kathun posted:I have no clue why you included me in this post. I haven't posted in this thread in a year and most of my posts were arguing with an energy regulator who didn't understand the difference between a megawatt, a megawatt-hour and a megawatt per hour. It is a long thread, it started back in 2012 or so, so examples will be across the timeline of the thread. Pander posted:What most scientifically-minded people in the thread want to see are suggestions about paths forward. If you wanna crap on nuclear, that's fine, but you'll annoy the thread if you don't also present a reasonable alternative. If you can't, but still keep making GBS threads on nuclear, it requires us to guess at your motives and becomes a pretty unfun exercise of dealing with trolling. Thank you for providing the prime problem with this thread, you assume because I said anything negative not even about nuclear power but trends in the thread itself that I must be anti-nuclear power. If anything "anti-nuclear" and "enviromentalist" have been used multiple times to shutdown posters in which someone doesn't like. Do you actually have proof to back up your assumption? Provide some evidence. Pander posted:Wind/Solar argue based on idealistic grounds (no radioactive waste), but have historically relied on subsidies for cost-effectiveness, and generally require very sunny projections and assumptions to actually offset carbon-based energy sources. Here is a quote from you. Ardennes fucked around with this message at 07:13 on Jul 9, 2014 |
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Jul 9, 2014 06:45
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Pander posted:Can solar installations survive well in areas prone to hurricanes and severe strong thunderstorms? The CSP installations I've seen rely obviously rely on the sun shining directly on large sections of water, which seems like a vulnerability. Most modern CSP uses molten salt and not water. Bechtel (you know the same ones who make nuclear plants) has several new CSP plants going up in the USA that all use molten salt and in fact I'm not aware of any that require water to reflect upon. Unless you mean closed loop systems, which then a CSP plant handles a big storm just as well as an oil refinery or anything else with lots of pipes.
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Jul 9, 2014 08:05
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Ardennes posted:How is a "mixed portfolio" boils down between a simple choice between nuclear and fossil fuels? Where is the logic that because renewable can't satisfy all needs that it becomes a diametric choice between the two. If "everything non-nuclear and non-fossil" doesn't produce enough power to meet demand, then you have to somehow produce more power with either "fossil fuels" or "nuclear". What don't you understand about this? There are 3 groups, and 1 group alone isn't enough to satisfy demand, so you need to choose which of the remaining 2 groups to use in addition to the first group, right? I mean what the gently caress else are you going to do to make up the difference once you've already maxed out on renewables, just cut power to a few million households and then pat yourself on the back for making the country run 100% on renewables? quote:If "nuclear" is just a by-word for a "mixed portfolio with nuclear it in" then I think complete confusion is absolutely going to be expected. When I say "renewables don't provide enough power, we need nuclear, too" how do you misread that as "renewables don't provide enough power, therefore only build nuclear"? Right there in the part that you quote I say that renewables are a great source of energy. How do you misinterpret that as a position of building nuclear power and nothing else? How much glue did you huff before reading my post? e: And in the context of the thread, everyone already agrees that renewables are awesome and should be built wherever it makes sense to build them, wind turbines in windy areas, solar power in sunny areas, etc. I didn't think that I had to further clarify my pro-renewable position when "let's build lots of renewables" was the next sentence. Honestly, I think that you're the only one who was confused QuarkJets fucked around with this message at 08:27 on Jul 9, 2014 |
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Jul 9, 2014 08:23
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Pander posted:Can solar installations survive well in areas prone to hurricanes and severe strong thunderstorms? The CSP installations I've seen rely obviously rely on the sun shining directly on large sections of water, which seems like a vulnerability. The concentrating solar I'm most familiar with is power-tower, with a central tower collecting light reflected off a field of mirrors. AFAIK the installations are relatively physically robust but the trouble with areas prone to hurricanes is they likely don't have the insolation profile. Solar PV can work off even diffuse light, but the efficiency of solar thermal drops like a stone the moment you get any sort of scattering (i.e. cloud cover).
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Jul 9, 2014 09:09
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Ardennes posted:Even if you disagree with their energy policies (which is fine), it doesn't mean the population is a bunch of shitheads. That is sort of the issue, anytime something doesn't go a particular direction for posters in this thread it is usually direct blame is placed on the population rather than any sort of analysis of why it came to be. Elotana posted:Well, that depends on what your definition of "respect" is. If you mean not literally revolt against the government of France IRL, then sure. If you mean not call them a bunch of hidebound shitheads in a thread on the Internet, I think you're asking a bit much. Our D&D megathreads for democratic countries aren't 100 pages of "welp, gotta respect democracy."
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Jul 9, 2014 09:34
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Trabisnikof posted:Most modern CSP uses molten salt and not water. Bechtel (you know the same ones who make nuclear plants) has several new CSP plants going up in the USA that all use molten salt and in fact I'm not aware of any that require water to reflect upon. Unless you mean closed loop systems, which then a CSP plant handles a big storm just as well as an oil refinery or anything else with lots of pipes. This is indeed a potential problem, because heliostats can be damaged by high winds or precipitation (we're worried mostly about freezing rain and hailstones rather than thunderstorms, but w/e), and any persistent cloud cover will diminish the facility's output. The standard approach is "just build it in the desert - deserts don't get much rain; avoid hurricane or tornado zones; find a spot reasonably close to civilization so that you don't blow your entire budget on roads and transmission lines; a local water source is nice (for mirror cleaning and evaporative cooling) but you can live without it." Ardennes posted:Even if you disagree with their energy policies (which is fine), it doesn't mean the population is a bunch of shitheads. The webpage I linked uses the present tense, but it was actually written in 2006 (after the borehole was complete but long before the surface facilities were ready for operation). They were using a single coaxial design, so the pipe needed to contain an inner insulating sleeve to contain the hot (rising) output water - the cold (descending) input water would occupy the space between the inner sleeve and the outer metal pipe. Unfortunately, the plastic-reinforced fiberglass material proved to be structurally inadequate. This is admittedly a very tricky problem - you need to balance water pressure, varying thermal loads, possible erosive/corrosive effects, and the non-trivial mass of a 2500m-long fiberglass pipe (and also the problem of quality-control as you insert and weld each pipe section - does the welding technique create local weaknesses? Are you sure that the welds are watertight?). You can model the variables on a computer and run simulations, but eventually you need to deploy it in the real world and see what happens. Well, there was a concurrent effort underway in Arnsberg (for a local swimming pool), and their inner pipe (using the same material) suffered structural failure during installation. gently caress. Well, no sense in repeating the same process and encountering the same error. Let's check our math, inspect our materials, and proceed carefully. Nonetheless, the inner pipe got stuck just before reaching the 2000m mark. Presumably they attempted to jimmy it around a bit, but eventually gave up (I gather that one of the pipes was slightly kinked and so there was no practical way to "work around the problem"). Okay, we've hit a snag. But we still have a deep borehole and a coaxial pipe, and we can theoretically circulate water to a depth of 2000m. Maybe that's good enough? Nope. The project originally called for an outlet temperature of 85C. The reduced-depth arrangement could theoretically deliver 60C. It was observed at 35C (presumably due to leaks in the inner sleeve which allowed the hot and cold water to mix). 35C is worthless. Even under very generous assumptions assumption (e.g. rebuilding the inner pipe using unobtainium), the analysts concluded that the project was economically infeasible - the best approach was just to walk away from the project and stop throwing money at it. Note: honestly though, this isn't an especially bad story. We should recall that this was a research project undertaken by a university. It was a tiny vanity project, and its failure did not cause a significant uptick in fossil fuel usage. It provided employment for skilled labourers; it proved/demonstrated the feasibility of minimally-disruptive drilling techniques in a cluttered urban environment (which will doubtless be useful for future geothermal ventures). It delivered some core samples that probably made a geologist happy. It may have failed in its stated purpose (and doubtless embarassed a fairly prestigious engineering department), but in so doing it yielded some good material-science data and lessons which will guide future efforts. Such as: "find a really good insulating+structural material for the inner pipe, or maybe use a metallic inner pipe with an insulating liner," or "use multiple adjacent boreholes instead of a single-hole coaxial setup," or "use a double-walled steel pipe with an intermediary vacuum layer like the one at Weggis," or "setup a shallow geothermal field with a low outlet temperature and use it exclusively for winter heating while you power your air conditioner with a roof-mounted PV array or miniature biogas plant or whatever." Finally - Wikipedia has a photograph of the site where the wellhead unit would have been installed. You can see the facility's water pipes terminating forlornly a few meters away from the borehole, forever bereft of the geothermal bounty that they were promised. A silent 23-million Euro testament to the fact that new technologies bring new challenges.
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Jul 9, 2014 10:23
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hobbesmaster posted:That of course is going to work but you're going to lose a lot of the energy in the process which will further increase the amount of solar/wind you need. It will certainly be more efficient than pumped hydro which is a pretty hilariously inefficient process. As has been said pumped hydro is not that inefficient. Turning less than a third of the energy you put in is actually pretty good, and even losing half is still decent. Also good point on any sort of interesting energy storage also making an interesting boom. That's one of the reasons utopian pie in the sky ideas like solar power IN SPAAAAAAACE with relay stations to beam it to Earth are dumb, whoever controls the thing can hold the planet hostage. Oh, and don't forget that... Dilb posted:Grid-scale power storage is ungodly expensive. I've seen serious (if optimistic) proposals for "wind is 100% of our power", and rather than storage they recommend overbuilding supply by a factor of (at least) 3. Energy storage is expensive because of the capital costs, not because of the efficiency.  make up your mind idiots).Overbuilding wind by a factor of 3 means including a decent amount of storage, since about 1/3 will be lost due to inefficiencies and variability in output is just too large. Wind without storage becomes ridiculous.  2012 German Wind Energy Output Jeffrey posted:what does the vague idea of a unidimensional political spectrum have to do with energy generation? Reality has a well known  , so apparently, some people can't imagine how to discuss an issue without politicising it.Did I mention I'm so right wing I'd vote for the German Greens based on their social policies if only they'd shut up about energy and environment issues 
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Jul 9, 2014 10:35
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I CANNOT EJACULATE WITHOUT SEEING NATIVE AMERICANS BRUTALISED!
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Elotana posted:
quote:Well, that depends on what your definition of "respect" is. If you mean not literally revolt against the government of France IRL, then sure. If you mean not call them a bunch of hidebound shitheads in a thread on the Internet, I think you're asking a bit much. Our D&D megathreads for democratic countries aren't 100 pages of "welp, gotta respect democracy." Respecting democracy is unclear in this context, if the government are the shitheads...wouldn't respecting democracy be a good thing? The subject of the third sentence is rather ambiguous. I assume "respecting democracy" means the government respecting the will of the people not the people necessarily respecting the government, since a government as an entity exists outside democracy as an idea. Also, quite a few of the mega threads are about respecting democracy....especially the Middle East one. quote:If "everything non-nuclear and non-fossil" doesn't produce enough power to meet demand, then you have to somehow produce more power with either "fossil fuels" or "nuclear". What don't you understand about this? There are 3 groups, and 1 group alone isn't enough to satisfy demand, so you need to choose which of the remaining 2 groups to use in addition to the first group, right? You say in that quote yourself that renewables wouldn't satisfy the needs of 10% of the population (at this point they do that already), right there. I will post it again... Quarkjets posted:This is why nuclear proponents in this thread act as though the choice is "nuclear or fossil fuels". That really is the choice. Solar, wind, geothermal, etc are all great sources of energy, but even taken together they cannot meet the energy needs of the United States. Maybe if we had a tenth of the population and we mostly lived in sunnier areas, then it'd be hugely feasible. quote:Maybe if we had a tenth of the population and we mostly lived in sunnier areas, then it'd be hugely feasible. Basically you are saying a "mixed portfolio" is going to be nuclear (preferably) and fossil fuels, with renewables at 10% or less on the side, less than we have now. A 90% nuclear-10% renewable mix non-carbon mix is not really a mixed portfolio at all in any real sense. You may have changed your mind, who knows. Anyway, I am fine with giving up on the topic. Ardennes fucked around with this message at 15:08 on Jul 9, 2014 |
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Jul 9, 2014 13:26
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You probably should since you haven't made a real arguement yet. Unless you have a specific proposal to supply 100% solar power to, say, Canada.
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Jul 9, 2014 14:40
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Nevvy Z posted:You probably should since you haven't made a real arguement yet. Quite a old saw you are trotting out there. Also, I said what I wanted (energy wise) earlier. Ardennes fucked around with this message at 15:09 on Jul 9, 2014 |
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Jul 9, 2014 15:02
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Ardennes posted:Thank you for providing the prime problem with this thread, you assume because I said anything negative not even about nuclear power but trends in the thread itself that I must be anti-nuclear power. If anything "anti-nuclear" and "enviromentalist" have been used multiple times to shutdown posters in which someone doesn't like. Do you actually have proof to back up your assumption? Provide some evidence. That's part of the problem. You're talking about trends rather than power. Talk about power. Talk about nuclear, talk about solar. Stop talking about posters or trends or politics. You're the single most useless poster in the thread right now, because you're trying to very civilly talk about absolutely nothing at all except tone and smarm.
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Jul 9, 2014 15:40
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