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Listen, unless your power plant effects no person or creature physically, emotionally, or financially it's out, I'm not even going to consider it. Unless it's coal or gas, which are awful, but until someone comes up with a perfect alternative we're stuck with it, sorry guys.
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Dec 12, 2013 21:07
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Or Japan for that matter...
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Jan 6, 2014 04:59
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Wait what, 20,000 deaths?? I thought like only a couple people died and not even from radiation?
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Jan 6, 2014 18:07
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I know germans are pants-making GBS threads stupid about nuclear power but they don't actually think the plant caused the tsunami do they?
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Jan 6, 2014 18:31
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Call me naive but I can't believe any group smart enough to run a competition related to energy genration, I mean they must be staffed with some people with some basic science understanding, could actually believe all the stuff they are saying. Is there a more cynical reason they could be banning the entry? A political or financial reason? Because I can accept idiocy like that from the general german public but not from a large org that should be staffed with intelligent people specifically focused on energy. Like they aren't even trying, they're using the anti-nuclear equivalent of "If climate change is real how come it's snowing?!?!". Like there's some smart people that make a lot of money denying climate change and they use some smart-sounding excuses, I would expect better bullshit and spin from intelligent people. I just can't imagine a bunch of people who are apparently seriously interested in energy generation, enough to run a scientific contest, to be so ignorant on nuclear they'd just lash out in such obvious ignorance and emotion.
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Jan 6, 2014 23:56
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You mean this DOCTOR* speaking about quantum physics might not actually be an expert? *of chiropractic medicine
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Jan 7, 2014 00:05
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Canadian greens have really hitched their wagons to alt-med types. you know, wi-fi causes generic bad "health symptoms" and golly I've been generically down around the same time that wind farm went up 5k away from my house maybe it's creating some passive wave harmonics that's interfering with my quantum self. Also rich NIMBY's that just don't want any wind farms ruining the views from their 5 million dollar "cabin" they just bought but they'll protest it on insane environmental/health grounds rather than their true "MY PROPERTY VALUES!" grounds.
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Jan 7, 2014 01:19
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Looks like a pretty good match up of climate + population.
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Jan 10, 2014 18:55
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I've been seeing a lot of those where I live too. I always imagined they were just to power some specific equipment or what ever. But then I think "why the gently caress do you need a stupid inefficient solar panel to power something attached to a power line??" Like I guess a solar panel is ok for your boat or your cabin but it seems really stupid and inefficient when you have the actual power grid right there, at least where I live. Solar is for hot sunny places that are running a lot of AC. Turn that stupid radiation that's making you run your AC into power for your AC. If you live in a climate where no one has AC solar is probably a pretty poo poo option.
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Jan 10, 2014 19:30
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Imagine how loving cheap nuclear would be if all the political red-tape in the regulations were eliminated and we just had a few mass-produced standard designs...
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Jan 14, 2014 08:12
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Germany is a perfect example on how to not handle energy policy. It's been entirely political/emotional based policy. It's all about the optics and sound-bites of "green" this and that rather than the actual hard economic and scientific/engineering choices involved in a sensible green energy policy. Just blanket ban nuclear, tell everyone solar and wind will solve all problems, and then end up having to expand coal power and import from nuclear neighbours to "pay" for the feel-good green policies.
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Jan 14, 2014 22:55
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If we're going to criticize nuclear for "mining" don't forget all the materials mined to make wind or solar. You think a massive steel tower doesn't need mining? Nuclear needs a tiny tiny amount of fuel mined to keep going, it's also made of steel and concrete which needs mining, just like wind. I actually wonder if you take the "amount of mining" needed to build and supply a nuclear plant divided by its lifetime energy output and compare the same for wind, which one would be the most environmentally friendly from a mining perspective. It's all about understanding the scale of the problems.
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Jan 15, 2014 00:31
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Even in hot climates a lot of people just put on the AC when it's bed time so they can sleep.
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Jan 16, 2014 19:52
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Other than political reasons why is so much being invested in fusion over something far more practical like thorium? Why not refine nuclear technology we know works vs much harder and potentially impossible goal of practical fusion?
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Feb 13, 2014 18:46
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Crell posted:This was an awesome read, much better than the Concerned Scientists one from last week. God drat I don't know how to read a reddit. Everything's hidden in a billion trees which then have further trees and I have to manually hunt for all the actual answers?? Am I missing some button that makes things readable and makes sense?
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May 14, 2014 19:43
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Vancouver uses mostly electric buses. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2-N6LOYOag They're pretty quiet but still produce a good hum.
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May 21, 2014 22:20
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Also, around here anyways, roads tend to be fairly shady places. You've either got buildings or trees. It seems like a really stupid ted-talk level dumb high-concept idea that isn't at all practical. Solar is already bloody expensive and has enough problems and there's no shortage of real-estate for solar. I can't imagine a point in the future where we've become so desperate for solar power that after coating every roof and well-lit surface in a city with solar panels we're turn to our shady dirty roads and sidewalks.
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May 27, 2014 00:03
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A lot of people that I know that even have science backgrounds are all excited about solar roads. When you point out the massive and insane shortcomings they just get really defensive and start rambling about how "there's no magic bullet" and "why are you against exploring every option??" It's really really loving stupid. Should I start a kickstarter to install wind turbines at subway stations to harness "that gust of air before a train comes!" or maybe we can put little hydro plants in our water mains. Ok it will reduce the pressure and we'll have to account for that but come on exploring options! (actually that wouldn't be a horrible idea on a pressure reducer but still probably not worth it)
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Jun 4, 2014 04:44
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Tasmantor posted:The nuclear fan club in here really seam to kill conversation. We get it, it's great, but the constant bashing of other tech makes this thread into the nuclear equivalent of the coal industry. This "well nuclear MAY have it's short comings, but they can all be engineered out or are just the result of ignorance" echo reeks of the sort campaign coal is engaged in. Do you have any actual solid points to bring to the table? Are you saying the pro-nuclear people in this thread are using bad science or bad numbers, or people pointing out severe flaws in solar or wind are missing some important facts? Where are people not being open and honest? Perhaps an open an honest discussion of energy generation actually leads to a conclusion, based on the current evidence. I think everyone in this thread will readily discuss any new information or ideas brought to the table.
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Jun 18, 2014 01:16
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Adenoid Dan posted:I get tired of hearing about all these highschool geniuses making these discoveries at science fairs. This one, the microwaved water on plant growth one, the one about skimming the plastic off the surface of the ocean. Run it by a real scientist (who's willing to hurt the kid's feelings a bit by saying they're wrong, instead of just saying, "that's interesting, why don't we repeat it in a lab and see if it holds up? ") before running articles about it. It's so misleading to pretend they might be on to something. News Media isn't there to inform, it's there to get viewers or clicks. Single mom finds secret to perpetual motion. University drop out finds easy way to stop global warming. Find out what a local science fair winner discovered that big physics doesn't want you to know about. But basically every bit of science reporting is always one of two stories. Some ridiculous amazing new finding that's going to change everything for the better soon, or some ridiculous amazing new finding that proves scientists can't be trusted and everything is dangerous and evil. Baronjutter fucked around with this message at 19:08 on Jun 19, 2014 |
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Jun 19, 2014 19:04
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Hedera Helix posted:Have these people never heard of Jevon's Paradox? Are they unaware that Germany's transition away from nuclear and fossil fuels and onto renewables has just resulted in more coal usage? They don't. I've spoken to people like this and it's an almost religious belief that nuclear is evil and ANYTHING is better. The general answer is "we just need to use less electricity" to make up for the difference when you get rid of the nuclear plants. They know coal is bad, they know pretty much all the replacements for nuclear are worse, but they don't give a poo poo. Their crusade is anti-nuclear, what happens beyond shutting down nuke plants is some meaningless externality someone else should deal with. Basically tear down all nuke plants, coal plants, gas, anything that isn't wind or solar, and even then only built them where people can't see them. Then just re-jigger society to deal with this new level and reliability of electricity.
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Jun 20, 2014 02:13
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Would it still be worth it if it just went after the "low hanging fruit" of the denser chunkier areas of plastic?
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Jul 1, 2014 21:44
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So like how come simple poo poo like plastic micro-beads which we now know are super bad for the ocean but are still in every toothpaste are still a thing? Is capital so loving resistant to not outright killing the planet?
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Jul 2, 2014 04:28
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I don't know what the solution is to our plastic ocean, but I swear to god the solution involves looser nuclear regulations and more money for thorium research.
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Jul 8, 2014 01:13
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Ardennes posted:Then I don't know why tinfoil needs to be brought up. Stop making vague hypothetical accusations and make a point anyone can actually respond to. Any point. Please convey some sort of specific idea, or respond to some specific piece of science or policy put forward in the thread. Please reply to an actual post and not a nebulous straw man "people in the thread" or "reasonable people" or "insane environmentalists".
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Jul 8, 2014 16:59
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Most people I know on the left like to "bash" hippies because honestly a lot of their views are incredibly conservative and reactionary. There's the sort of "environmentalist" who has absolutely no scientific understanding of any issue and is just lashing out, mostly emotionally, at things they're scared of like "chemicals" or "radiation". Increasingly those sorts of environmentalists are against actual measures that will objectively improve the environment because the solution hits one of their emotional buttons, and they lack the knowledge to fairly understand the issues they claim to be so passionate about. That's the sort of "hippie" a lot of people in the thread mock and it does nothing to show there's some right-wing shift within SA, just a low tolerance for unscientific reactionaries trying to hijack science and energy policy. What I'd like to see, policy wise, is far less red-tape needed for the construction of nuclear plants. Get rid of or correct the regulations that only exist due to greenpeace and political lobbying, basically get rid of the regulations that have no grounds in science and were added specifically to cripple nuclear or make it artificially expensive. I'd like to see the government far more involved, preferably entirely as I don't trust private business to do anything for the public good, and utilities are absolutely a public good. I'd like to see a few latest-gen designs standardized and mass-produced to once again save money and save on regulations/approval. I'd like to see far more science-based regulations for what is considered nuclear waste and how it needs to be stored, with an eye to future recycling. I'd also like to see all subsidies related to fossil fuels phased out. They can be quite sneaky, tax breaks for gas exploration here, subsidies for coal mining there. I want the government to so heavily invest and mass produce such cheap nuclear technology that "only the rich burn gas". At the same time I'd like to see north america catch up to europe in terms of energy efficiency. I'd like to see building codes improved to demand higher R ratings, and I'd like to see land-use addressed to curb sprawl and thus reduce the need for driving. I have a hard time really fitting "renewables" into any situation though. Your off grid cabin? Your desert town baking in the sun all year? I guess my question is: with the unreliability of solar and wind and the inability to store power, what good is any supply that isn't reliable? If any "renewables" need base-load backups, why not just build and run the backups instread? For instance in a situation where a city has a nuclear plant that has the capacity to power the city, plus a bunch of rooftop solar and some off-shore wind, is it actually justifiable cost savings to reduce the nuclear plant's output during a windy week, or to tweak its output daily based on the output of the solar? When you take into account how much it cost to build that wind and solar, and how much it costs to maintain them, is it actually worth it vs just building the nuclear capacity you need? I honestly don't know because it's so bloody hard to find any good numbers for anything. Pro-renewables sources will of course give you stats based on the most optimal wind/sun conditions and take into account current subsidies, and anti-nuclear sources will add in all sorts of crazy poo poo to massively inflate the costs of nuclear.
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Jul 8, 2014 17:46
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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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As official voice of the energy generation hive mind I officially admit you are right, "green bashing" did occur as did limited amounts of "solar sullying" and "battery bemoaning". The issue is now fully settled, you are 100% right and you'll get no more arguments from us on this topic, nor more arguments about arguing. Now that that's settled and as a sign of our humble respect, we invite you to move the discussion forward with perhaps a post related to energy generation. If you wish that is, the floor is all yours, you've earned it.
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Jul 9, 2014 20:58
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From what I've read of the subject I think we'll see thorium or even bloody fusion before we see an economical and safe/environmental way to store energy. This isn't Total Annihilation where you can just build a mess of solar plants and "energy storage" to let you shoot your giant lasers when needed.
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Jul 11, 2014 22:17
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Can someone explain all the hype about "decentralization" I hear from low-info greens? Even if we were going 100% renewables why would getting rid of any sort of grid or backups would make things better because?? What exactly do they want, every building being its own island of power with no connections? Am I missing something? I just hear and read so much about how everything would be greener and better if we "moved beyond inefficient centralized power generation and adapted to a renewable decentralized system". Also apparently large power plants are less efficient than everyone having a tiny personal or neighbourhood power plant in their back yard? What??
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Jul 14, 2014 22:20
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Ok thanks, I had a feeling it was that but I wanted to give people the benefit of the doubt and hope I was missing something. Just this month I've read a few articles and now today in the Cnd Politics thread there's a dude mentioning decentralized power as some sort of cure all. What strikes me odd though is that it's not just some idiot on facebook, it's often in otherwise good articles. I was reading a good article on some urban land use issues that was mostly totally correct and well researched and the author just adds in some point about how OBVIOUSLY another huge thing we can do for the environment is decentralized power. I kept seeing this "decentralized power" thing referred to in articles and people as some inevitable and clearly superior system. I think the idea has leaked beyond reactionary greens who just see "big power plant = big environmental impact!" into other progressive circles where it's just eaten up as an obvious fact because a progressive ally said so. I got quite a nasty bunch of feedbacks when people were yelling about decentralized power generations and I mentioned small pre-fab plug and play nuclear reactors as an awesome solution for small towns and isolated communities. I guess decentralization would work if everyone had a big reliable local source of power they didn't need to worry much about. And yeah I do feel a strong libertarian vibe from it. Everyone would just boot-strap them selves into having their own household power plant and supplement their income from selling it back to the grid with no power company or government telling them what to do. Baronjutter fucked around with this message at 23:13 on Jul 14, 2014 |
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Jul 14, 2014 23:04
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I want to build a tiny nuclear plant to supply my house and sell back to the grid.
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Jul 14, 2014 23:23
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How scalable is nuclear anyways? For instance why couldn't some small town have its own little nuclear plant? I remember seeing an article a few years back about, I think Mitsubishi, building some tiny tiny little reactor with the idea to mass-produce them for small or isolated communities. They'd require no staff, they'd just sit there generating power and on schedule they'd be replaced or re-fueled. I think the whole thing was about as big as a large van. The idea was to bury them under a public place like the town square or in front of city hall so there wasn't a chance anyone could steal it or tamper with it without having to dig for a day. They'd only need refueling every few years or more so you'd just bury and forget. I'd love to see tech like that developed and mass-produced on a scale that made it cost effective. Not just to give smaller towns a nuclear option, but for emergencies too. Something that could fit in a standard 40' shipping container ready to be plugged in to turned on and plugged in. Obviously a single large plant would be more efficient than a bunch of these micro-nuclear generators though.
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Jul 14, 2014 23:42
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God drat this is like our greens here. They protest the poo poo out of new gas plants, pretty legit, yeah gas is way better than coal but it's still absolute poo poo and such a short term stop-gap solution. They protest the poo poo out of new hydro projects, ok hydro is awesome but the initial build does gently caress up the area due to the whole "hey this river is suddenly a lake" business, but after that you got very clean power and good flood control. All the time they are just shouting a mantra of "renewables and conservation". Finally they try to build some wind somewhere and it's the got drat local rich property owning greens blocking it. Then suddenly windmills have dangerous effects on ocean habitats and kill seabirds and their harmonic vibrations cause land values to go down and make people develop morgellions or what ever. They honestly seem to think that we can just do rooftop solar on everyone's house and that's that. Also industry doesn't exist. ANy time you point out why this wouldn't work they just say "well then we need to adapt to using less power". Baronjutter fucked around with this message at 17:46 on Jul 18, 2014 |
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Jul 18, 2014 17:27
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We used to have a specific space colonization thread, but since we don't I thought I'd ask this here. In space what would be the best or most practical power sources? Obviously right now we use solar since what else are you going to use, but will solar always be king in space? If one had access to asteroids would nuclear become more of an option or would just mass producing solar and pointing it at the sun always be the cheapest option? What if one was not so close to the sun? Nuclear requires a lot of cooling and such, how could this be done in space?
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Jul 22, 2014 18:09
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Phanatic posted:No, because as insolation drops the size/mass of your collectors becomes impractical. For our solar system/level of tech, the cutoff is around Mars. The little Spirit/Opportunity rovers used solar panels, the larger ones (Curiosity, Vikings) use RTGs. Pioneer probes going to the inner system used solar arrays, Pioneer 10 and 11 to the outer system used RTGs, as did the Voyagers, Galileo, Cassini, etc. Generally; technological development pushes the boundary outward and Juno's on the way to Jupiter and will be exclusively solar-powered, but the falloff is inevitable and pronounced - Juno's solar array could produce 18,000 watts at 1AU but will be producing only 400 in Jupiter orbit. Thanks for all the info! Although I was more wondering for stationary power, not for ships. Like powering a huge orbital factory, habitat, or asteroid mine where mass isn't really an issue (and was all built from stuff already in space so no heavy lift). It seems location really matters in regards to solar, makes sense though. PS Where is the space thread? Can't seem to find it in D&D or A/T. Baronjutter fucked around with this message at 19:34 on Jul 22, 2014 |
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Jul 22, 2014 19:31
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Pander posted:The fun part of a nuke plant in space or on the moon is firing off waste products into the sun! But if we put radiation into space space will become radioactive and dangerous!! \/ That's natural radiation, background radiation isn't dangerous, only man-made radiation is. Baronjutter fucked around with this message at 20:58 on Jul 22, 2014 |
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Jul 22, 2014 20:54
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Can anyone give a good general rundown on Fukiyama and the current situation there? I keep hearing "It's a great example on how even ancient nuclear tech handled a disaster with no deaths or serious health issues as a result" to "Fukiyama is a massive lie and the radiation is 1000000000x worse than they admit and the area is going to be a mutant infested exclusions zone for a thousand years, also it keeps getting worse!"
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Jul 23, 2014 22:16
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Didn't they realize that was a bit crazy and change that rule because it's resulted in a really ugly boxy skyline and they're the only city in the entire world that does that? http://brighamyen.com/2013/12/16/tweaking-antiquated-lafd-helipad-fire-code-alter-downtown-la-skyline/
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Aug 9, 2014 17:22
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Someone needs to make some birds per Kw chart for various power generation since it's all the media likes to talk about.
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Aug 18, 2014 21:41
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