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blowfish posted:The same gains in efficiency can be made anywhere else, and transmission losses are not that high anyway. Yes but if you for political reasons don't do nuclear as in Germanys case then solar is not such a fabulously bad option for generating a significant part of the needed energy as a lot of people make it out to be. Personally I'm all for developing nuclear, most of the nuclear plants in use today are really old and use tech that could be greatly improved upon if there was political support for doing so in the long term.
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Apr 22, 2016 09:30
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Germany's problem is that it's replacing already operational nuclear plants with coal, not solar. It's the worst possible thing to do for the environment, for multiple reasons.
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Apr 22, 2016 09:33
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doverhog posted:Germany's problem is that it's replacing already operational nuclear plants with coal, not solar. It's the worst possible thing to do for the environment, for multiple reasons. Yes and? Did anyone question this?
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Apr 22, 2016 09:47
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Zudgemud posted:Yes but if you for political reasons don't do nuclear as in Germanys case then solar is not such a fabulously bad option for generating a significant part of the needed energy as a lot of people make it out to be. Solar is less difficult than wind because its output is only very variable with a predictable day/night pattern and not ludicrously variable with a very unreliable day/night pattern, but something still needs to run at night so we need dirty fossil fuels, terrible biomass burning plants, or excessive amounts of storage. Also no matter how low transmission losses get, solar will always be inefficient in Germany compared to say Portugal or Spain because there is just that much solar energy per area you get up in the North. Having a half-carbon neutral grid (if that) is better than having a completely fossil fuel fired grid, but a half-carbon neutral grid is underwhelming and insufficient, especially if you want to electrify more things to stop them spewing CO2.
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Apr 22, 2016 10:58
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I CANNOT EJACULATE WITHOUT SEEING NATIVE AMERICANS BRUTALISED!
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Zudgemud posted:Yes but if you for political reasons don't do nuclear as in Germanys case then solar is not such a fabulously bad option for generating a significant part of the needed energy as a lot of people make it out to be. Finland is building two nuclear power plants currently. The one commissioned from the french is such a clusterfuck that for the second one, we opted to get russians to handle it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olkiluoto_Nuclear_Power_Plant#Unit_3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanhikivi_Nuclear_Power_Plant Giving Putin control of 3% of our power generation was seen as better option than dealing with the french again. Which kinda highlights a problem with nuclear power currently, the present plants are getting old but we actually lack the expertise to build new ones. Better hope that solar/wind power suddenly becomes viable because otherwise it's back to burning forests for warmth.
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Apr 22, 2016 13:18
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blowfish posted:Solar is less difficult than wind because its output is only very variable with a predictable day/night pattern and not ludicrously variable with a very unreliable day/night pattern, but something still needs to run at night so we need dirty fossil fuels, terrible biomass burning plants, or excessive amounts of storage. Also no matter how low transmission losses get, solar will always be inefficient in Germany compared to say Portugal or Spain because there is just that much solar energy per area you get up in the North. Yes this is all well and good but if the political reality makes nuclear a non option you have to go with the renewables and non renewables that are available. Out of the renewables that are available, solar is still a very valid contributor for Germanys energy production due to aforementioned reasons. It will be less efficient than in Algeria but it will be able to complement other renewables and should not be discarded due to Germany not being famous for its sunny weather.
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Apr 22, 2016 13:19
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Nuclear is the correct choice, there's no reason to try and force renewable into a role they are terrible for (baseline power) when there's already a very good and safe option available. It's really sad people are still huge retards about this, which is why you get what happened in Germany. Renewables still play a role of course, just a tremendously smaller one than green nuts envision. Zudgemud posted:Yes this is all well and good but if the political reality makes nuclear a non option you have to go with the renewables and non renewables that are available. It's soooo hard mannnnn. Nah, just convince your populace to stop being drooling dummies about it. There's literally no way we are going to stop GCC without massive investment in nuclear energy, aint gonna happen. The left is worst than the right on this in many cases, surprisingly enough.
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Apr 22, 2016 13:48
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TROIKA CURES GREEK posted:The left is worst than the right on this in many cases, surprisingly enough. Britain's right-wing government is currently begging China to pay the French to build us a new reactor, which has a fixed unit-cost of twice the current unit cost per kWH. Even the pro-nuclear lobby are telling the government to back away from this stupid loving idea.
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Apr 22, 2016 14:01
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Zudgemud posted:Personally I'm all for developing nuclear, most of the nuclear plants in use today are really old and use tech that could be greatly improved upon if there was political support for doing so in the long term. There's another difference between back when nuke plants were made and now: back then, there was a certain idea of what a nation-state is, and that included having stuff like nationalized electric companies and long term planning. Now, everything has to be privatized, so that it can be made "competitive" by being for profit, so that we have one metric of what is competitive (makes a lot of profit) and what isn't (actually works as intended). Nuclear power today is a lot less reliable than in the 60s and 70s, because all the technological progress is undermined by a fanatical devotion to corner-cutting as an avatar of the ultimate good. That all this corner-cutting results in shoddy stuff that cannot be accepted as-is and will need to be scrapped and rebuilt from scratch if some oversight organism has a word to say, resulting in huge delays and massively increased spending, isn't a problem; what's important is saving $5000 in the immediate terms (so that you can embezzle them), even if it results in wasting $50 000 000 a couple years down the line. The EPR has been a mess everywhere because it's managed by people with MBAs instead of by engineers.
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Apr 22, 2016 15:19
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It appears that Leszek Balcerowicz became Poroshenko's representative in Ukrainian government  Edit: poo poo, wrong topic Gantolandon fucked around with this message at 15:41 on Apr 22, 2016 |
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Apr 22, 2016 15:38
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It doesn't matter if modern reactors and regulations are super-safe. Fukushima teaches us that 1. outdated technologies will be used, and 2. that regulations will be skirted. Fukushima happened in this age of "oh but nuclear power is super safe". It didn't matter that current technology and regulations are safe, because that assumes these technologies and regulations are present and adhered to in practice, which is an almost insane assumption to make. e; And even if we're talking about a brand new NPP, five, ten, twenty years down the road the thing will need maintenance, and there is absolutely nothing telling you it will receive that. YF-23 fucked around with this message at 16:19 on Apr 22, 2016 |
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Apr 22, 2016 16:14
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The windmill that will be ready for scrap in 15 years is much more desirable than a plant that needs maintenance, i agree.
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Apr 22, 2016 16:24
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NihilismNow posted:The windmill that will be ready for scrap in 15 years is much more desirable than a plant that needs maintenance, i agree. The difference here is that the wind turbine might stop functioning and be useless or whatever, whereas the power plant that doesn't receive proper maintenance continues to operate and becomes a mass-scale threat.
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Apr 22, 2016 16:31
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YF-23 posted:It doesn't matter if modern reactors and regulations are super-safe. Fukushima teaches us that 1. outdated technologies will be used, and 2. that regulations will be skirted. Fukushima happened in this age of "oh but nuclear power is super safe". It didn't matter that current technology and regulations are safe, because that assumes these technologies and regulations are present and adhered to in practice, which is an almost insane assumption to make. Fukushima teaches us that Japanese regulators are either incompetent or corrupt, it has no bearing on the safety of nuclear power as a whole.
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Apr 22, 2016 17:29
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doverhog posted:Fukushima teaches us that Japanese regulators are either incompetent or corrupt, it has no bearing on the security of nuclear power as a whole. Yes it does. You cannot say "nuclear disasters aren't a thing anymore in our day and age" in the face of a nuclear disaster. Because guess what, incompetent or corrupt regulators are not a Japan-only thing, it's something that can happen anywhere, and it seriously complicates nuclear power security as a whole. e; v I'll take that over an NPP security failure every single time. v
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Apr 22, 2016 17:31
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YF-23 posted:The difference here is that the wind turbine might stop functioning and be useless or whatever, whereas the power plant that doesn't receive proper maintenance continues to operate and becomes a mass-scale threat. Or the brakes might fail and fling a 60 meter turbine blade into the motorway.
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Apr 22, 2016 17:31
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Funny thing about nuclear disasters, they tend to happen to aging reactors that should've been replaced decades ago. One wonders as to why they weren't replaced, who exactly was opposed to building new reactors to replace the dangerous ones? It's almost as if some people want nuclear disasters to happen.
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Apr 22, 2016 17:41
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Even if we were to accept (which I don't) that every 30 years we must get a Chernobyl Fukushima type disaster, both of which could've been easily avoided, it's still better than coal for overall environmental impact, and especially for CO2 emissions. In case you don't know, the Fukushima incident happened because the backup generators were not tsunami-proofed, even though the power company and Japanese regulators had been warned about this being a problem. They straight up ignored the warnings and made a bet on there not being a tsunami before the reactor was decommissioned. doverhog fucked around with this message at 17:43 on Apr 22, 2016 |
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Apr 22, 2016 17:41
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First I never said that coal is cleaner than nuclear, second my explicit point about Fukushima is that ignoring warnings and skirting regulations means that nuclear power is risky in practice no matter how secure it is in theory. Like you're telling me "oh but Japan ignored warnings" as if that somehow refutes my point that warnings don't matter when they're ignored. 
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Apr 22, 2016 17:56
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You think the danger of regulations being ignored is too great, ok. Does that mean Germany did the right thing in replacing their nuclear with coal or that no new nuclear plants should be built, or what is the point you're making here exactly?
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Apr 22, 2016 18:05
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doverhog posted:You think the danger of regulations being ignored is too great, ok. Does that mean Germany did the right thing in replacing their nuclear with coal or that no new nuclear plants should be built, or what is the point you're making here exactly? No, it does not. I never commented on what Germany is doing. My original comment about nuclear power was that I wished that renewables were being developed further in its place. I made absolutely no comparison to fossils whatsoever, and I fully agree that on the large scale, nuclear power is preferable to fossil power (but renewables are preferable to both).
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Apr 22, 2016 18:07
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YF-23 posted:First I never said that coal is cleaner than nuclear, second my explicit point about Fukushima is that ignoring warnings and skirting regulations means that nuclear power is risky in practice no matter how secure it is in theory. Like you're telling me "oh but Japan ignored warnings" as if that somehow refutes my point that warnings don't matter when they're ignored. That's a failure of government, not technology. If a drat bursts because building regulations weren't followed when constructing it, that doesn't make hydropower a risky practice. Misuse of technology is the fault of the people in charge, not the technology being misused.
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Apr 22, 2016 18:09
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Friendly Humour posted:That's a failure of government, not technology. If a drat bursts because building regulations weren't followed when constructing it, that doesn't make hydropower a risky practice. Uh, yes it does.
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Apr 22, 2016 18:14
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Friendly Humour posted:That's a failure of government, not technology. If a drat bursts because building regulations weren't followed when constructing it, that doesn't make hydropower a risky practice. Misuse of technology is the fault of the people in charge, not the technology being misused. It's not about whose fault it is, it's about how dangerous the technology is when it's anyone's fault.
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Apr 22, 2016 18:18
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YF-23 posted:It doesn't matter if modern reactors and regulations are super-safe. Fukushima teaches us that 1. outdated technologies will be used, and 2. that regulations will be skirted. Fukushima happened in this age of "oh but nuclear power is super safe". It didn't matter that current technology and regulations are safe, because that assumes these technologies and regulations are present and adhered to in practice, which is an almost insane assumption to make. Maybe privatized power is a bad thing, and not essentially nuclear power  I mean, I'm just going to point to the US Navy and France now and you can figure out what I am implying on your own...  YF-23 posted:It's not about whose fault it is, it's about how dangerous the technology is when it's anyone's fault. So, basically every modern technology. Got it. And yet we let them burn coal and decide what to do with the radioactive and heavy metal infused ashes on their own. YF-23 posted:No, it does not. I never commented on what Germany is doing. My original comment about nuclear power was that I wished that renewables were being developed further in its place. I made absolutely no comparison to fossils whatsoever, and I fully agree that on the large scale, nuclear power is preferable to fossil power (but renewables are preferable to both).  A large portion of Germany's renewables is burning wood/biomass. So new age coal generation. Careful what you wish for. And no, renewables are not likely to totally offset fossil fuel useage.Your choice are: Coal Gas Nuclear Solar and wind are great, yes we should strive for more of them. But they won't replace baseload. Not yet. Not for many many decades, if that. Make your choice. CommieGIR fucked around with this message at 18:27 on Apr 22, 2016 |
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Apr 22, 2016 18:18
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YF-23 posted:It's not about whose fault it is, it's about how dangerous the technology is when it's anyone's fault. That doesn't really sound like a good strategy for much else besides terrifying yourself. Anything can and does lead to death and destruction if you've got corrupted crapouts in power, and banning nuclear energy isn't going to change that. Although it will ensure nothing changes for the corrupted crapouts.
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Apr 22, 2016 18:23
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Do we really have to remind everyone in the thread that Nuclear still holds the lowest amount of deaths per KwH of any method of generation?
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Apr 22, 2016 18:24
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My point though was that the reason that we've got aging reactors that occasionally explode is that we haven't been building new ones to replace them because of political pressure from the ecological movement. And so in the meantime what we got instead of solar and wind power was a whole lot of coal and natural gas. Turns out opposing things without providing a viable alternative is a pretty good strategy if you don't give a flying gently caress about the consequences.
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Apr 22, 2016 18:27
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Friendly Humour posted:My point though was that the reason that we've got aging reactors that occasionally explode is that we haven't been building new ones to replace them because of political pressure from the ecological movement. And so in the meantime what we got instead of solar and wind power was a whole lot of coal and natural gas. Turns out opposing things without providing a viable alternative is a pretty good strategy if you don't give a flying gently caress about the consequences. Greenpeace.txt They oppose nuclear maintenance in hope a catastrophic failure occurs so they can blame the failure on nuclear
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Apr 22, 2016 18:28
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CommieGIR posted:
YF-23 posted:You will be happy to know that my definition of "renewables" is not, in fact, stupid, and the complete opposite of what it is supposed to be.
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Apr 22, 2016 18:30
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So then you admit that Germany shutting down its nuclear plants was a disaster for the environment?
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Apr 22, 2016 18:32
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Then your definition of renewable as a solution for baseload is unachievable right now and you are proposing pipe dreams while raising Fukushima fearmongering. Well done.
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Apr 22, 2016 18:33
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CommieGIR posted:Your choice are: Hydro?
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Apr 22, 2016 18:39
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Friendly Humour posted:So then you admit that Germany shutting down its nuclear plants was a disaster for the environment? I don't know the exact statistics, but my non-expert knowledge leads me to agree with that statement. I'm not sure why you are phrasing it using words like "admit", as though I am ashamed of it or something. CommieGIR posted:Then your definition of renewable as a solution for baseload is unachievable right now and you are proposing pipe dreams while raising Fukushima fearmongering. There's a bunch of things that are good and that we should strive for even though they are decidedly not short-term projects, such as full renewable energy, or full communism. Why do you call my statements wrt Fukushima "fear-mongering"?
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Apr 22, 2016 18:42
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Subjunctive posted:Hydro? Tapped out in Europe.
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Apr 22, 2016 18:42
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YF-23 posted:There's a bunch of things that are good and that we should strive for even though they are decidedly not short-term projects, such as full renewable energy, or full communism. Because it is fearmongering. Considering what happened, the reactor melt-down is a minor blip in what is going on in Fukushima, and shooting for full renewable is so vastly pie-in-the-sky wishy-washy dreaming that it ignores the reality of modern energy demands. You've already said yourself that Germany was mistaken in their shuttering of their plants post Fukushima, so why would appealing to a nuclear reactor that has done next to nothing as far as risk versus the tsunami that killed/displaced 18.000 not be fear mongering?
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Apr 22, 2016 18:46
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Friendly Humour posted:Tapped out in Europe. 
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Apr 22, 2016 18:49
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Subjunctive posted:Hydro? I'd way prefer Nuclear, Hydro royally fucks up river ecologies.
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Apr 22, 2016 18:56
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Well get to it then!
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Apr 22, 2016 19:06
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Friendly Humour posted:Well get to it then! Its not like dams are not known for causing mass destruction when they fail or anything, along with loving up ecology....
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Apr 22, 2016 19:09
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