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Australia uses 1463TWh of total energy, not 228, because you have to compensate for the oil used in transportation (among other things), so even this scheme would not lead to a zero carbon emission australia. According to the world bank anyway: http://www.google.com.au/publicdata...dl=en&ind=false That's in kilotons of oil equivalent, and each toe (tonne of oil equivalent) is about 12000kWh. rudatron fucked around with this message at 09:18 on Sep 4, 2012 |
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Sep 4, 2012 09:10
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| # ¿ Apr 28, 2024 14:54 |
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Flaky posted:Has any research been done on marrying nuclear fuel with a fuel cell type set-up instead of using steam pressure to push a big ol' turbine? Or are the energy savings of fuel cells inherent to eliminating the 'combustion' step of the cycle and thus not useful when using nuclear fuel?
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Sep 19, 2012 14:38
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The paper reinforces the main issue with renewables, that 'nameplate' (theoretical maximum) capacity has to be much higher than actual delivered capacity with renewables, then it does with fuel-based energy such as uranium or fossils. Even then, they end up using biogas to make up for shortfalls that occur at the wrong times. I'm not convinced that giving up farmland for biofuels is a good idea, in a future where arable land falls: A combination of renewable + nuclear should reduce the cost dramatically.
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May 8, 2013 16:56
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The cost of building, operating and maintaining the fuel cells and electrolysis on such a huge industrial scale would be enormous, and that's ignoring the incredible cost in just storing large amounts of hydrogen. And that's not even why the nameplate capacity has to be so much higher than actual, delivered capacity! The whole point of intermittent sources is that they're not always there, so you need to have excess capacity to take advantage of when the energy is there. It's not that the power plants are delivering power, and that power is somehow not being used, it's that you have to build more capacity then you theoretically should need to, because you're using the environment as your power source.
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May 8, 2013 18:15
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hobbesmaster posted:Just because our supply of something is near infinite compared to current or future use does not mean that it is renewable. There is a certain amount of uranium in the earth's crust, if we were to mine it all we would not have any more. Renewable is a misnomer, most energy technologies that are considered renewable are just those that do not consume a physical fuel to give energy. A better distinction between energy technologies is instead to consider it's 'true cost' versus 'apparent cost'. Fossil fuels have a low apparent cost, but are going to gently caress us over in the end so the true cost is higher (carbon sequestration notwithstanding, but that's a good thing because carbon sequestration is 100% fantasy greenwashing that will never be feasible IRL). Nuclear waste has to be disposed of responsibly, but it's not terribly improper to say that the true cost and apparent cost are similar. rudatron fucked around with this message at 03:23 on May 27, 2013 |
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May 27, 2013 03:15
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Paper Mac posted:I can't remember who was talking about hydroponics, but aside from the obvious increase in material inputs required to keep hydroponic systems going, the quality of the veg is often pretty similar to growing tomatos in fertilised sand- when you treat vegetables as hermetic units growing in some kind of interchangeable substrate, you usually end up with crappy tasting veg. rudatron fucked around with this message at 00:27 on Oct 14, 2013 |
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Oct 14, 2013 00:24
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Paper Mac posted:Like literally any soil microbiology textbook, pretty much. The population of the rhizosphere can strongly determine plant growth and flavour. You can read about this in many papers. Dan Barber gave kind of a modestly useful layperson's summary in this talk:
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Oct 15, 2013 03:26
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All Australian suburban homes are the same single storey uninsulated bricks, in slightly different colors and shapes, ad infinitum. As an addendum, the last government funded insulation scheme was roundly criticized for workplaces deaths and terrible practices, mostly because they relied on external private contractors who weren't regulated enough (They put too much faith in small business).
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May 5, 2015 04:00
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To save googling, here zizek talk being referred to, but the basic message is that the image of nature as a coherent spiritual entity with a righteous order doesn't exist. In that piece you can see parts of that personalization, "walking along [the rivers] shore's and talking to it", "direct connections" etc. I'd probably go further and say that 'artificial' doesn't exist either, in that both human-directed and non-human actions shouldn't be valued on that basis - they're both just phenomenon of the universe. Which ones you want to stop or start should depend entirely on what their side-effects/consequences are. rudatron fucked around with this message at 14:35 on Aug 1, 2015 |
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Aug 1, 2015 07:46
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| # ¿ Apr 28, 2024 14:54 |
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*in Seinfeld voice* And what's the deal with kilowatt hours??
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Jan 14, 2016 07:35
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