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I understood the nuclear argument a decade ago, not sure why goons are still so hot for it in 2022. Renewables are cheaper these days, and during those hot weeks a little while ago France had to lower their nuclear output because of the heat. With that being an increasing problem in the future, I'm no longer convinced we need nuclear. I wouldn't decommission what we have, but I'm not sure I'd bother building more.  Maybe there have been advancements in nuclear that haven't been realised yet like these thorium reactors someone mentioned 
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Aug 8, 2022 15:19
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Tbh I'd have probably joined the Greens a year or so ago if it wasn't for the behaviour of my local candidate in 2019. Although I've just checked and she's surprisingly not been selected for the next election (as of two days ago) so maybe I'll pull the trigger on that...
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Aug 8, 2022 15:19
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Just looking at this diagram I know, in my heart, that Nuclear Sounding is already a thriving online fetish community
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Aug 8, 2022 15:24
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Mega Comrade posted:I understood the nuclear argument a decade ago, not sure why goons are still so hot for it in 2022. The problem is we need tons of extra capacity to power our great British crypto mining and NFT minting. More seriously, isn't it more about ensuring a steady supply of energy and avoiding brown-outs caused by unfavourable conditions for renewable energy, rather than a capacity or cost issue? Genuine question because I am very stupid.
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Aug 8, 2022 15:26
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Mega Comrade posted:I understood the nuclear argument a decade ago, not sure why goons are still so hot for it in 2022. The issue with renewable energy production is that solar and wind are highly variable in their output. You get days when they produce a fraction of the power they're rated for, so you can't rely on only them, you need something to cover those sunless, windless days. That could be enormous quantities of batteries that you charge up on the sunny, windy days, but you'd need an unfeasibly gigantic number of batteries. It could be nuclear plants. Or it could be fossil fuel plants, most usually natural gas, but recently increasingly coal too. This is what tends to get used when the fossil fuel lobbyists decide we can't get nuclear plants. I don't see a feasible way to power a country cleanly that doesn't combine nuclear and renewables.
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Aug 8, 2022 15:32
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Mega Comrade posted:I understood the nuclear argument a decade ago, not sure why goons are still so hot for it in 2022.
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Aug 8, 2022 15:32
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General energy security could be a benefit too. By spreading your energy production over various renewables and nuclear, you reduce the risk that one failure (whether mechanical or political like with Russian gas) causes supply issues.
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Aug 8, 2022 15:37
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Also just generally it is a good idea to have a diverse selection of generating options. While renewables are not vulnerable to supply disruptions in the short term (at least, of the intentional or market driven variety unless someone builds a weather control device) they are as noted, not very reliable generally being dependent on highly variable weather. So, it is useful to have other options, if you build a nuclear plant and don't use it very much, great, but if you don't build any and keep buring coal or gas to make up shortfalls, that's bad.
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Aug 8, 2022 15:38
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Failed Imagineer posted:Just looking at this diagram I know, in my heart, that Nuclear Sounding is already a thriving online fetish community 3.6 inches, not great not terrible
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Aug 8, 2022 15:40
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Supply issues also run into ethical issues even with nuclear, because the conditions we in the first world subject others to for our fissile material really isn't great. Obviously fossil fuels are just as bad, but it's certainly something to keep in mind with nuclear.
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Aug 8, 2022 15:41
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Yes, but the same is true with all the minerals for a wind turbine and battery storage based electrical economy. Coal and oil are far worse than either, just as a matter of quantity.
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Aug 8, 2022 15:43
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If anyone's interested in learning about thorium reactors, this vid from science comms YouTuber Arvin Ash was interesting. I can't vouch for the accuracy of the information since I'm not educated but it all sounds very nice. https://youtu.be/T_jcbhE0u-8
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Aug 8, 2022 15:44
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Guavanaut posted:Coal and oil are far worse than either, just as a matter of quantity. Don't forget the whole "catastrophic climate change disproportionately affecting developing countries" thing. Without wanting to sound doomerist, we really have hosed things for a lot of people already. Full decarbonisation is needed right now and nuclear is a technology that could replace all our gas and coal plants.
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Aug 8, 2022 15:47
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Someone can correct me if I'm wrong but much of the scare around brown outs related to renewables have been junk science pushed by the fossil fuel industry and politicians shifting blame from poor management of grid resources. Like Ted Cruz blaming the Texas brown outs on renewables when the reality was almost all sources went offline because the grid in Texas is held together with spit, tape and hope (because of freedom and deregulation). California did the same but it was caused because a complete lack of funding in storage and battery capacity. A good example to look at is Germany who've gotten up to almost 40% of their energy to renewables now and not seen any issues with reliability. OwlFancier posted:Also just generally it is a good idea to have a diverse selection of generating options. While renewables are not vulnerable to supply disruptions in the short term (at least, of the intentional or market driven variety unless someone builds a weather control device) they are as noted, not very reliable generally being dependent on highly variable weather. Of renewables solar and wind are the most variable but why does everyone pretend bioenergy, hydropower and geothermal don't exist? They are very consistent in output. The dream of renewables is you use all of them together to feed the grid in combination with each other, so at no point are you wanting. Mega Comrade fucked around with this message at 15:52 on Aug 8, 2022 |
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Aug 8, 2022 15:50
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I have read that lots of the UK coast is ideally suited for tidal power generation but not sure about geothermal - do we have sites suitable for this? I thought it was a thing for more volcanically active (not sure if that's the right word) places like the nordics and bits of north America.
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Aug 8, 2022 15:56
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There's not many great sites for hydro in the UK that don't flood a bunch of people's houses and cause mass habitat damage. We only have a couple of sites that are good for geothermal electricity production but we absolutely should be using the lower temperature shallow sites for district hot water.
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Aug 8, 2022 15:58
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Gyro Zeppeli posted:Supply issues also run into ethical issues even with nuclear, because the conditions we in the first world subject others to for our fissile material really isn't great. Nuclear power requires about a tenth of the mining for the same power output that coal does., so I'm not saying you're wrong, it's just not an issue that fossil fuels and nuclear have in equal proportion. Mega Comrade posted:Someone can correct me if I'm wrong but much of the scare around brown outs related to renewables have been junk science pushed by the fossil fuel industry and politicians shifting blame from poor management of grid resources. Like Ted Cruz blaming the Texas brown outs on renewables when the reality was almost all sources went offline because the grid in Texas is held together with spit, tape and hope (because of freedom and deregulation). California did the same but it was caused because a complete lack of funding in storage and battery capacity. I mean, obviously Ted Cruz is full of poo poo, but the situation in Germany is a long way from a good one. They're firing up the coal plants to fill the hole being left by Russian gas. quote:Of renewables solar and wind are the most variable but why does everyone pretend bioenergy, hydropower and geothermal don't exist? They are very consistent in output. The dream of renewables is you use all of them together to feed the grid in combination with each other, so at no point are you wanting. As far as I'm aware, there are limited avenues to use bioenergy, hydropower and geothermal. They're also much more greenhouse gas emitting than solar, wind or nuclear. (though obviously still much better than coal/oil/gas) So you should really replace them with nuclear, solar or wind if you can. 
Gort fucked around with this message at 16:03 on Aug 8, 2022 |
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Aug 8, 2022 16:01
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It's just the tragedy of the commons on a global biosphere scale, any liberal system will run into those same economic externalities. We've spent all this time with private "profits" being pumped out at the expense of socialised "costs". If you look at it on a planetary, human species level scale, all of our "productivity", our "ingenuity", our "industry", has actually been in the form of people waking up very early and working very hard to destroy the planet, at a massive collective loss for all of us. Private profit and a private bank account number going up is an illusion that convinces them they were being very successful people the entire time. If their accountants had to include the cost of destroying the biosphere on their balance sheet, it would look very different, but that's just not how we do things.
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Aug 8, 2022 16:07
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piano chimp posted:Don't forget the whole "catastrophic climate change disproportionately affecting developing countries" thing. Without wanting to sound doomerist, we really have hosed things for a lot of people already. Full decarbonisation is needed right now and nuclear is a technology that could replace all our gas and coal plants. I mean, going by Hinckley Point C, it'd be a decade before it gets ready to produce a watt. Seems like taking a decade is uhhhh sub-optimal when it comes to an emergency
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Aug 8, 2022 16:09
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Mega Comrade posted:Of renewables solar and wind are the most variable but why does everyone pretend bioenergy, hydropower and geothermal don't exist? They are very consistent in output. The dream of renewables is you use all of them together to feed the grid in combination with each other, so at no point are you wanting. Well hydroelectric and geothermal power are sort of... limted in where you can put them. There are only so many places you can flood to build dams and I suppose while you could drill all the way to hell to build a thermal plant in the UK I don't know if that is necessarily viable or a good idea. And biofuel necessitates using a lot of farmland to produce the fuel which you then still burn anyway so it doesn't seem like an ideal solution.
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Aug 8, 2022 16:12
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You don't need to go to Hell when you can go to Cornwall (my unfairly rejected bid for the tourism board)
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Aug 8, 2022 16:16
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If we drilled to hell we could perhaps offer them the souls of politicians in exchange for electricity. I know they're getting them anyway but hell is evil so presumably it would favour next quarter growth above all else.
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Aug 8, 2022 16:17
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Depends how deep you drill, the circle of Stupid Evil only accepts crypto.forkboy84 posted:I mean, going by Hinckley Point C, it'd be a decade before it gets ready to produce a watt. Seems like taking a decade is uhhhh sub-optimal when it comes to an emergency They're not perfect, but they'd buy enough time to get the tidal lagoons and larger plants online, which we should have been doing anyway.
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Aug 8, 2022 16:21
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piano chimp posted:I have read that lots of the UK coast is ideally suited for tidal power generation but not sure about geothermal - do we have sites suitable for this? I thought it was a thing for more volcanically active (not sure if that's the right word) places like the nordics and bits of north America. Guavanaut posted:There's not many great sites for hydro in the UK that don't flood a bunch of people's houses and cause mass habitat damage. We only have a couple of sites that are good for geothermal electricity production but we absolutely should be using the lower temperature shallow sites for district hot water. Its better than a lot of people realise  Drilling is limited economically to about 4.5km however technology is set to make 7km drilling viable within the next decade which could dramatically increase that. Gort posted:I mean, obviously Ted Cruz is full of poo poo, but the situation in Germany is a long way from a good one. They're firing up the coal plants to fill the hole being left by Russian gas. I'm not sure you can leave that at the foot of renewables. They needed energy now and the plants were sitting there and could be turned on.
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Aug 8, 2022 16:30
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Avanti West Coast is the next operator deciding to gently caress their customers instead of addressing their staff's concerns: https://www.itv.com/news/granada/20...ctxcAUcNhmH7YUg
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Aug 8, 2022 16:33
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Mega Comrade posted:Its better than a lot of people realise This is really encouraging, thanks for sharing. I hadn't realised how much potential there was here.
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Aug 8, 2022 16:38
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The problem with nuclear is everyone insists its obviously incredibly safe except it keeps having high profile and dangerous disasters Plus we're just gonna dump all the waste in the sea
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Aug 8, 2022 16:38
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High profile and dangerous disasters that kill less people than a coal plant of equivalent power running normally, that get turned into apocalypticism.Mega Comrade posted:Its better than a lot of people realise Mega Comrade posted:I'm not sure you can leave that at the foot of renewables. They needed energy now and the plants were sitting there and could be turned on.
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Aug 8, 2022 16:41
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Well Russia never turned off the gas during the cold war, so they won't do it now surely....
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Aug 8, 2022 16:42
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Ah, but now we have a hot war, which is different.
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Aug 8, 2022 16:46
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sebzilla posted:Ripe for having a wicked entryism done on them tbh, if the left could get their poo poo together enough to organise it. This is actually what happened for about 5 minutes in 2015 (myself included). Doesn't lead to roaring electoral success, turns out, though.
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Aug 8, 2022 16:56
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Time to found the Green Party (Glowing Chapter). We're more likely to get a nuclear catastrophe because some Guardian columnist can't control their hard on for "Nukin' the Russkies".
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Aug 8, 2022 17:10
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Gort posted:The issue with renewable energy production is that solar and wind are highly variable in their output. You get days when they produce a fraction of the power they're rated for, so you can't rely on only them, you need something to cover those sunless, windless days. That could be enormous quantities of batteries that you charge up on the sunny, windy days, but you'd need an unfeasibly gigantic number of batteries. It could be nuclear plants. Or it could be fossil fuel plants, most usually natural gas, but recently increasingly coal too. This is what tends to get used when the fossil fuel lobbyists decide we can't get nuclear plants. Flywheel energy storage has been used in a few places in the US but not much else i think, no bad byproducts, just have to makes sure not to be near one if it explodes (shrapnel). 
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Aug 8, 2022 17:12
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Molten salt is apparently the new energy storage take. The idea has been around in some form for a while, but technologies like MOSAS claim to be able to retrofit coal/oil power stations to turn stored heat (in vars of molten salt) into electricity in order to turn fluctuating supplies into steady ones.
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Aug 8, 2022 17:20
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Communist Thoughts posted:The problem with nuclear is everyone insists its obviously incredibly safe except it keeps having high profile and dangerous disasters High profile yes but dangerous no. The majority of disasters just break the plant and don't really cause further problems, but everyone goes ballistic about it because omg scary atomz. Meanwhile utterly ignoring all of the non sensational death and destruction caused by the alternatives. Sort of like how if a train derails it makes the news but nobody gives a poo poo about shitloads of people dying in car crashes all the time.
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Aug 8, 2022 17:29
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OwlFancier posted:Sort of like how if a train derails it makes the news but nobody gives a poo poo about shitloads of people dying in car crashes all the time. The cries of "Omg teh immigrantz are taking all our jobs" when its human trafficking victims turned into sweatshop slaves. Meanwhile Great British Businessman James Dyson outsources his entire company to Singapore. One is somehow an issue for all the wrong reasons while the other is business. Or the Yanks and their insane "we protect the right of this fetus to be born so they can be senselessly executed by their incel classmate 7 years later".
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Aug 8, 2022 17:43
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Communist Thoughts posted:The problem with nuclear is everyone insists its obviously incredibly safe except it keeps having high profile and dangerous disasters Except all the spent nuclear material ever produced in Europe can pretty much fit on a football pitch* without any engineering more complex than "big concrete silo". (* Preferably the Etihad Stadium)
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Aug 8, 2022 17:43
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Mega Comrade posted:Does she have a specific reason for hating Labour (that she'd choose Tory over them I assume it's not the thread standard reasons) Sorry for late reply! Posted at lunchtime & didn't get chance to look in until I got home. Not really. She is 84. She didn't like Corbyn, 'the bins', 'crisis what crisis'. She's a royalist. She is of the 'people should pull themselves up by their own bootstraps' turn of mind and most people in unfortunate circumstances brought it upon themselves by their own choices. Mad though really because she grew up in poverty - nan was widowed at 49 and with no education to speak of had to work 3 or 4 jobs late into the night to make ends meet, and when we were kids, we used to get the welfare van round with the free orange juice, rosehip syrup, vitamins and rusks and of course, the non-means tested Family Allowance which benefited many kids now in their 50s and 60s. She likes the idea of strong women - and don't ever tell mum that a woman can't do something because she'll give it a darn good try. I think she admired Thatcher on that basis, and I remember seeing her eyes light up when Emily Thornberry was on the TV from PMQs asking me who it was. She's a bit of an enigma though. 40-50 years ago, she was anti-gay "They should be locked up", anti-divorce (a couple my parents knew were coming to stay, unmarried, but with 4 kids. Normally mum & dad would give married guests their room and were in a total quandry what to do. We asked why not do the same as usual and mum's response was "we wouldn't like them to think we thought they got up to that sort of thing" - mum - we said - they've got 4 kids.... ). However, she is much more open to 'alternative life styles' (for want of a better phrase) now - a friend of mine who she really liked a lot ended up with a divorce so she mellowed on that point, one of my cousins is intersex and was brought up female but 'transitioned' (if you can use that word with intersex?) to male in his late 20s, so she has no problems with trans-persons whether intersex or not. I could say more but it seems mum usually modifies her opinion about 'the way things are' when she meets and likes people who are not doing things 'the way things are' for whatever reason. Jaeluni Asjil fucked around with this message at 17:48 on Aug 8, 2022 |
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Aug 8, 2022 17:45
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She sounds small-c conservative then really. All for maintaining the status quo but when the status quo changes she just shrugs and accepts it.
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Aug 8, 2022 17:47
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OwlFancier posted:High profile yes but dangerous no. The majority of disasters just break the plant and don't really cause further problems, but everyone goes ballistic about it because omg scary atomz.  Those 5 are Chernobyl (Ukraine SSR, 1986) with 31 immediate deaths and a large amount of land contamination, but the increased cancer risk among the relocated was nowhere near as pronounced as originally speculated, probably about 4,000 according to the UN, Fukushima (Japan, 2011) 1 confirmed death due to radiation, over 1,000 due to the completely overblown relocation program, Kyshtym (Russia, 1957) not a power plant but a Soviet weapons project that had big settling tanks that should not, Windscale (UK, 1957) also not a power plant, Churchill's Kyshtym, terrible idea, and Three Mile Island, where an inter-agency analysis found that the accident did not raise radioactivity far enough above background levels to cause even one additional cancer death. That's the worst in the words of the people telling me they were the worst. Let's do hydro. Banqiao and Shimantan (China, 1975) 240,000 dead and mass land destruction, Machchu-2 (India, 1979) 5,000 dead, Vajont (Italy, 1963) 2,000 dead, St. Francis (USA, 1923) 451 dead, Gleno (Italy, 1923) 356 dead. But strangely few History Channel lists unless a Lancaster bomber does it and then it's good actually. (Also yes let's do air pollution for London. Or rather let's not, because we already are. But 9,400 Ella Adoo-Kissi-Debrahs a year doesn't make the news like nuclear.) Failed Imagineer posted:Except all the spent nuclear material ever produced in Europe can pretty much fit on a football pitch 
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Aug 8, 2022 17:52
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