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With regards to environmental impact: Uranium mining totally fucks up the landscape - however, mining for building sufficient renewable power to make a dent in the worldwide energy budget will be several times more damaging. Protip: "high energy density" vs. "we need to mine enough poo poo to cover several % of the land area and store all that energy on top of that" is key here. There's also some rough estimates on the amount of resources and land required for different energy scenarios on this blog - see the TCASE 4 article on the page I linked (written by a climate change prof from Adelaide). The main takeaway:  In order to have 100% CO2-free energy by 2050(including replacement of oil etc.), we'd require about twenty loving percent of the world steel production be used for solar thermal/wind and cover one to several percent of the world's land area (the nuke estimates in the graph are based on AP-1000s). Using a wider variety of renewable energy sources would just shift this mess around. Investing in nuclear reactors suddenly looks like a good idea  The blog also examines the S-PRISM/IFR (Integral Fast Reactor) in [url= [url]http://bravenewclimate.com/2010/02/16/ifr-fad-3a/]more detail[/url] - a research reactor using the relevant technology had been built in the 1970s, by the way. They also make the  ATOMZ crowd look even dumber than usual by producing waste that only needs to be stored for a couple of centuries and being able to burn existing waste instead of fresh uranium to boot (we'd need to invest in new reprocessing facilities, though).e: fixed link, image e2: outdated numbers for steel production, confused numbers suck my woke dick fucked around with this message at 10:34 on Apr 9, 2013 |
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Apr 9, 2013 10:07
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I CANNOT EJACULATE WITHOUT SEEING NATIVE AMERICANS BRUTALISED!
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http://www.theage.com.au/comment/japans-radiation-disaster-toll-none-dead-none-sick-20130604-2nomz.html posted:Heard much about Fukushima lately? You know, the disaster that spread deadly contamination across Japan and spelt the end for the nuclear industry. Considering that even the cancer rate estimates anti-nuclear people have come up with are in the ballpark of the number of people killed by the evacuation procedures, I think the following comment from another forum is pretty apt: "Fukushima should have been the ultimate Triumph of Nuclear power for the rest of the world. Nuclear power proponents should have immediately gone on all forms of media to say 'Here we have a nuclear power plant, that had piss poor safety run on it, the company involved was rather incompetent, it got hit by a massive Earthquake, and THEN a massive Tsunami, and the worse that happened was ONE out of the FOUR reactors partially melted down. Oh yeah, and NO ONE DIED from it.'"
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Jun 9, 2013 19:42
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LP97S posted:You can seriously reduce the need for mining uranium by reprocessing like the French do and the Japanese, much to the annoyance of their neighbors, are about to do. The two reasons the US doesn't is because first Carter banned reprocessing because he was worried about workers being lured by the Indians and Israelis into giving them fissionable materials and later Reagan unbanned it but went all Free-market so there's no subsidies. http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2012/rare-earth-alternative-energy-0409.html Wind power relies on vast amounts of rare earth metals (over half a ton per turbine). Electric cars with lithium batteries would need vast amounts of Li and batteries also tend to fail (current Li-ion batteries lose half of their maximum capacity in 3 years - obviously we can do better than that, but we'd still need to replace batteries regularly). PV Solar cells (current ones) need to be replaced every other decade and don't really get recycled as far as I know. So... we can't simply assume "renewable energy sources won't run out" and would need extremely good recycling to be able to say "we can use renewable energy for effectively indefinite amounts of time". Since we're talking about future developments anyway... Let me re-introduce the Integral Fast Reactor with which, using pyroprocessing we would only need a small amount of mined uranium to start up each reactor and could reprocess existing nuclear waste to satisfy the current electricity demand for a couple of centuries  . Let's go and recycle nuclear fuel very well, too 
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Jun 10, 2013 00:18
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Office Thug posted:At immediate first glance I thought it was genuine, because there have been materials that can suck up a ridiculous amount of CO2 reversibly (layered double The laws of thermodynamics are just mainstream science. Think outside the box.  In other news, Germany predictably fails at replacing nuclear power with renewable power, CO2 emissions are on the rise again. I am currently alternating between disappointment at this lack of progress and smugness about the "I told you so  " opportunities to be had.
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Aug 3, 2013 12:30
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Paper Mac posted:Yes you have, as I mentioned, the Singapore picture you linked was literally from a Singaporean commercial vertical farming project. They have 9-story dedicated towers. The EROI is massively negative, obviously, if you look at the chart above you can see that the skyscraper-farm doesn't do anything to reduce most of the energy costs of producing food. If you want to know why they're a stupid idea, Monbiot wrote a thing a couple years ago: It reduces land use, which is the other big thing loving up ecosystems. If you feed it with carbon neutral energy sources (say, nukes or renewables that don't take up massive amounts of space themselves), it's a very good idea to at least replace all those bullshit biofuel fields with vertical stuff.
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Oct 20, 2013 10:11
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QuarkJets posted:As a PhD-holding physicist, I can confirm that the people you argue with won't give a poo poo about your degree, your intelligence, or your facts. It is hilarious(ly sad) to see alleged scientists/science advocates/generally intelligent people just switch off their brain when it comes to nukyular power. As in, unironically saying that "how people die" is what counts after flat out admitting that nuclear power results in less deaths in some cases. I guess getting cancer from toxic waste as opposed to radiation is somehow less bad  e: Arghy posted:Hahaha man awesome video here also michio kaku should be loving shot with a gun by science for selling out. Jesus its like someone made a video about lies and misconceptions then slapped it all together. Liveleak  Liveleak is sturgeon's_law.avi, for any interesting video leak there is a bucketload of "leaks" of generally available videos about complete non-issues or crap.
suck my woke dick fucked around with this message at 14:25 on Dec 8, 2013 |
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Dec 8, 2013 14:21
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double post.
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Dec 8, 2013 14:24
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GulMadred posted:If you're aiming to lose money, sure. The cool kids are burning coal instead.  You kinda need hilarious overcapacity + hilarious amounts of energy storage or rapidly load-following gas plants in any kind of scenario that involves lots of solar or wind. Maybe electricity prices need another 30% hike this winter to make that profitable 
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Dec 11, 2013 08:37
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CommieGIR posted:I know, but unfortunately selling the 'cheapest' solutions is allowing coal and gas to gain ground and is not doing anyone any favors except the coal and petroleum industry. Also they have the (dis-)advantage of not being nuclear, i.e. not making you unelectable as quickly.
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Dec 12, 2013 00:17
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Trabisnikof posted:Germany exports electricity and imports energy. Yeah, Germany is the best example for why nameplate capacity for solar (or wind) is just a bullet point for a presentation. If it's sunny and windy simultaneously, Germany exports electricity because production > use (even including storage by water pumping etc) - except that happens like 0.5% of the time and we have to pay surrounding countries money to take in that electricity. Turns out that unpredictably getting a big rear end electricity surge that could (and sometimes does) mess with equipment isn't something other countries' energy grid operators want to deal with.
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Dec 13, 2013 02:23
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Trabisnikof posted:Uh, no...Germany gets paid for the electricity it exports. It actually gets paid a lot because it exports during peak hours and imports during off-peak hours (exporting further west and importing from the east too further helps the cost). Germany exports more electricity than any other country in the world. http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/high-costs-and-errors-of-german-transition-to-renewable-energy-a-920288.html http://www.pv-magazine.com/news/details/beitrag/germany--power-exporter-even-with-fewer-nuclear-plants_100010756/ That problem will not get better if we throw money at enough solar panels to supply most of Germany's energy (more so if many surrounding countries do the same). suck my woke dick fucked around with this message at 11:03 on Dec 14, 2013 |
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Dec 14, 2013 11:00
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NihilismNow posted:This is also regressive taxation because homeowners can install PV capacity under €0.28 per kWh and exploit the subsidies while renters and appartment dwellers are stuck paying a ridiculous €0.28 per kWh (~50% higher than in surrounding countries).
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Dec 14, 2013 16:42
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PT6A posted:Yeah, that's what I meant. It's really a problem of self-identification, sort of like the problems various religions have with nuts claiming to represent the religion. Yet, at the same time, there are some fairly prominent "environmentalists" who are crazy. The Green Party of Canada used to support homeopathic medicine, wants to have the health dangers of wind turbines (such as headaches and depression) investigated, and the party leader retweeted someone who asked for an investigation of Chemtrails. I think the rate of self-identified environmentalists being quacks is too high to simply be coincidental, and it's a problem that scientists, conservationists, and others concerned about the environment need to address head-on. The problem is if allegedly legitimate environmentalists are just as nuts as the usual suspects. Case in point: Greentec is a large green energy competition with involvement from our environment ministry. One of the candidates for the final round is chosen by audience vote, and in 2013, the Dual Fluid Reactor (a more economical fast reactor design to feed with nuclear waste) won that vote. The jury immediately disqualified it on grounds of lying (the entry said that the reactor was environmentally friendly and would be less dangerous than even renewables), sued and got back into the competition, at which point the jury changed the rules to throw it out again, and removed it from the greentec competition website entirely  On their facebook page, greentec posted choice quotes along the lines of "we will always oppose nuclear power, it is forever linked to the 20000 deaths at Fukushima" suck my woke dick fucked around with this message at 17:04 on Jan 6, 2014 |
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Jan 6, 2014 17:01
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For the sake of completeness: the injunction to readmit the DFR into the 2013 greentec awards was later lifted, which I hadn't read about before. Since we're now talking about the wording greentec used, sit down and grab a bucket of popcorn  :Have a screenshot of the original quote which they removed later: greentec awards posted:Der Name Fukushima wurde zum Inbegriff für mehr als 19.000 Tote und verwaiste Landstriche. Dieses können, wollen und werden wir nicht ignorieren! Atomkraft in jeglicher Form lehnen wir und unsere Jury kategorisch ab! Eine weitere Diskussion wird es nicht geben!" The remaining greentec facebook post on their justification to exclude the Dual Fluid Reactor is still a hilarious shitfest, despite extensive moderation on greentec's part. Note that greentec talk about that half a dozen times in their posts, elaborately mentioning whose posts they deleted and reported to facebook. The greentec commentary on the entry/statement in defense of excluding it is basically citation_needed.txt (does anyone want me to translate it?). Most of the comments are criticising greentec for kicking out the reactor entry, for confusing and disrespecting the tsunami victims by making them a talking point against nuclear power (prompting hilarious defensive replies from greentec), and for being ideologically opposed to nuclear power and thereby missing the point of actually doing something for the environment. Greentec also make several effortposts wherein they further justify excluding the DFR by countering the statement that it is safe and uses up existing nuclear waste with quote mining (the DFR website/documentation says the reactor does produce some waste - what a shocking revelation  ) and the well-thought out and intellectually honest argument of "You LIE! [citation needed]". This is also what just about all of their other posts in response to people pointing out benefits of nuclear power and exaggerations about the radiation around Fukushima ("which IRRADIATED ENTIRE SWATHES OF LAND", allcaps greentec's) boil down to.e: another hilarious quote: quote:... da haben sie recht - allerdings darf man auch als Veranstalter eine Meinung haben, die z. B. der politischen Richtung (Ausstieg aus der Atomkraft in Deutschland) entspricht. Und auch wenn es ideologisch klingt / ist: dazu stehen wir. Der GreenTec Awards Wettbewerb ist jedoch davon unabhängig - wie die Zulassung des DFR Projektes ja wohl beweist. 
suck my woke dick fucked around with this message at 00:01 on Jan 7, 2014 |
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Jan 6, 2014 23:50
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Baronjutter posted: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 hereby call you naive. To elaborate: * if you read the entire string of responses in the facebook page, they consist exclusively of canned anti nuclear talking points that might at best be defensible when talking about 50-year-old gen II reactors (also they go "oh noes, weapon proliferation" and "long term geological storage of waste", the latter of which the DFR is kind of about). There is no evidence of the greentec people communicating that they understand anything about how the DFR (or current gen IV designs in general) work beyond reading the introductory paragraph of German Wikipedia on molten salt reactors. * The former nuclear safety guy at Forschungszentrum Jülich (one of our premier non-uni research facilities) Dr Rainer Moormann, who won the whisteblower award 2011 or 2012 for exposing some non-disaster involving nothing of note happening to nuclear wastefrom one of the former Jülich research reactors, argues against the DFR on an energy blog: He claims that geological storage remains necessary even if you pass waste through a fast reactor (somehow  ) and that it is a high proliferation risk (nevermind that the waste is so impure it would literally be easier to start from scratch with uranium ore when building nuclear bombs). Also he refers to the fast reactor at Argonne National Lab in the 60s, which according to him was found to be not worth pursuing, conveniently glossing over the fact that part of the reason it was not worth pursuing was precisely that it was really hard to get weaponiseable products out of it . Also something something something nuclear expensive (nevermind that even at ridiculous levels of cost overruns the Finnish EPR was/is still going to be half as expensive as our rooftop solar bullshit. * I've had the displeasure of actually discussing nuclear power with a group leader from the Wuppertal Institute's Future Energy and Mobility Structures group. The Wuppertal Institute is a sustainability think tank with strong ties to the goverment at least at the state level, and is semi-public (gemeinnützige GmbH), which amongst other things also lets it have PhD students. Choice part of the discussion: me [after going on about using gen IV reactors to burn waste - he literally didn't know the idea existed  ]: "The problems of climate change will be far worse than the problems caused by using nuclear power"him: "That is not true. I do not believe that." Choice bullshit coming out of their policy papers: They state that nuclear power to supplement base load where necessary will actually prevent renewables from becoming viable, because nuclear power plants are completely incapable of following load. Nevermind that when that paper was written, the European Pressurized Reactor (or whatever the EPR acronym stands for) already existed with the capability of going to/from 50% output in an hour, which the American AP-1000 also can do. e: again, someone hasn't been keeping up to date on what modern nuclear power actually looks like Yes, many Germans, including many policy makers and researchers, are that stupid / willfully ignorant. The most common reaction to nuclear power here is perhaps best exemplified by the following exchange with a passionate and otherwise very intelligent environmentalist: * statistics about how nuclear kills less people per energy unit than even renewables is posted "But how can you possibly evaluate a power source by how many people it harms? It really matters how these people die!" No thank you, I don't give a poo poo whether I die slowly from heavy metal poisoning when drinking water downriver of a Chinese solar panel factory or if I die slowly from cancer due to radiation exposure. suck my woke dick fucked around with this message at 01:35 on Jan 7, 2014 |
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Jan 7, 2014 01:06
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Install Windows posted:The direction of causality there remains unclear. Indeed. Oh well, at least we are not the only place with more idiot greens than actual conservationists. No idea whether that's supposed to cheer me up or make me depressed. suck my woke dick fucked around with this message at 01:17 on Jan 7, 2014 |
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Jan 7, 2014 01:14
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Squibbles posted:I think there's a brand of "invisible waves making me sick" type who hate wind turbines, power lines, wifi, etc. They seem to migrate to the green party because the Greens seem to be open to other loony things that sort of cross over into that territory I guess (alternative medicine and such)? Don't forget chemtrails. Yes, some of our greens are that crazy. Chemtrails are, however, useful as a litmus test for "people I won't take seriously, ever". The problem is that after the green parties become generally accepted, the loonies don't just disappear down the rabbit hole they came out of.
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Jan 7, 2014 01:19
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PT6A posted:I think part of the problem is that a lot of people end up becoming environmentalists because they're a bunch of New Age/hippie/nature worshipping/Luddite flakes. Something you notice when talking to many of the more open minded (as opposed to "brain fell out in the search for wholesomeness~" ) such types is that they are not against GMOs or nuclear reactors per say if you explain how you do those things, but then "gently caress Monsanto" (what do you mean there bucketloads of other agribusinesses that are just as bad?) and "perfect safety" come up again.e: Baronjutter posted: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. Why can't those people just join Republicans/the CSU so that I don't have to pretend to like them
suck my woke dick fucked around with this message at 01:39 on Jan 7, 2014 |
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Jan 7, 2014 01:34
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Frogmanv2 posted:http://about.bnef.com/press-releases/renewable-energy-now-cheaper-than-new-fossil-fuels-in-australia/ Problem: you need like 3-4 times overcapacity at least to get reasonably secure base load power, and you need to add storage to do that. That's going to increase wind/solar costs quite a bit if they are to be the backbone of your power grid.
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Jan 12, 2014 10:04
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Frogmanv2 posted:http://theconversation.com/baseload-power-is-a-myth-even-intermittent-renewables-will-work-13210 The paper says: quote:and sub-hourly generation uctuations are not modelled.. However, quote:The simulations are deterministic and quote:his agrees with a conclusion of Budischak et al. (2013), that The paper assumes perfect conditions (hey, under perfect conditions nuclear is next to free  ) so if this plan were really implemented, chances are we'd also see hilarious cost overruns here.Kaal posted:I hear this complaint a lot, but it really is something of a red herring. Renewable power constitutes 13% of total output in Australia, and most of that is from hydro plants. Realistically that problem isn't actually an issue that anyone is going to face for 50 years, even if they go full-bore into renewable wind/solar. For a society that typically doesn't plan past the next election, it's odd that we have such a fixation on wind/solar's role in the distant future. However (looking at it from a "we'd like to avoid the worst of climate change" perspective) we need to be done in 50 years, not just so far along that intermittent power generation starts to matter.
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Jan 13, 2014 22:32
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Trabisnikof posted:If you start looking at real world conditions, well placed Wind is cheaper than Coal and Nuclear currently. Do they use similarly heroic assumptions to the glut of "100% Renewable Australia in 40 years" things? quote:Edit: Also the newest generation of Wind Turbines have 50% capacity factors. Huh, that's sweet and looks worth pursuing. How do you get 50% capacity factors though, wind doesn't blow that regularly in most places? e: are those off shore or something?
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Jan 13, 2014 22:45
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Trabisnikof posted:Well sited wind is the key. You don't put the wind turbines where the wind doesn't blow. Ok, I'm going to read the report on the weekend. In other news: Nuclear and Wind do really well in the current US weather, coal and gas plants literally freeze up
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Jan 13, 2014 22:57
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Trabisnikof posted:My bad my chat is from an NREL study not an EIA one, nevertheless still legit. Just had a look at it (if someone wants it, pm me). tl;dr - Paper says: assuming a worldwide heroic effort (up to 2% of GDP) and immediate rollout of maximal efficiency increases, it is in principle possible to have 95% renewable power by 2050. The whole thing should start paying for itself eventually (ie at the end of the rollout). The operative part being "in principle", because this is again a best-case scenario.
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Jan 13, 2014 23:25
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Trabisnikof: is this the NREL thing you mentioned? http://www.nrel.gov/analysis/re_futures/ e: Trabisnikof posted:Yeah, I didn't think that paper included political realities. However, 2% GDP really ins't that bad of a cost for the absurd scale of the task. I'd agree on that, but good luck getting most of the world to spend roughly as much money on renewables as goes into defense... suck my woke dick fucked around with this message at 23:48 on Jan 13, 2014 |
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Jan 13, 2014 23:43
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Ardennes posted:Eh, it isn't like nuclear power doesn't have a bunch of hoops on its own and I think nuclear expansion is a good thing. Even if you have public opinion on your side, building nuclear power plants is expensive and at this point the US government really isn't interested in making that sort of investment. Yeah. At least Russia, China, India, and to a much lesser extent the US have new nuclear plants in build at all (plus places with like 1 in build each), which will ameliorate problems a bit. John McCain posted:Pumped water storage is the worst form of energy storage except for all the others that have been tried. Currently, hydro is being expanded even into biodiversity hotspots like the Balkan alluvial forests where it'll gently caress up the entire ecosystem. At least pumped storage has the advantage of just needing a body of water next to any hill (but we will find a way to put the largest pumped storage facility in the country on top of some exceedingly valuable habitats, I'm sure). suck my woke dick fucked around with this message at 07:54 on Jan 14, 2014 |
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Jan 14, 2014 07:47
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Baronjutter posted: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... China is leading the way  We need more work on small modular reactors that can simply be loaded on a big truck...
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Jan 14, 2014 08:14
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Kaal posted:By the by, that solution is actually extant in the form of the AP1000 nuclear power plant. China has adopted it as its official inland design standard, and is intending on building 100 of them over the next five years. The US is similarly adopting it as a go-to design. The AP1000 represents a bright new future for nuclear power, even if that bright future only happens in Guangdong Province. 100% safety, people
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Jan 14, 2014 13:05
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Pander posted:Right now I'm working on qualifying parts of a nuclear plant versus natural hazard phenomena. The safety margin is incredible. I'm dealing with a place that's never had greater than an EF-2 within 150 miles (no EF-5 tornado had ever struck within 1000 miles of this plant) yet I still need to plan as though a tornado with 230 mph winds is throwing 4000 lb cars through the air at the plant like ragdolls. something something fukushima At least as long as prehistoric piece of crap nuclear power plants exist, there will be ever-tightening regulation because obviously all nuclear plants are the same.
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Jan 14, 2014 17:04
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Trabisnikof posted:Can anyone provide a source for how nuclear deregulation would actually work in a way that provided a cost savings without increasing systemic risk? Just fiating that "no regulations == experimental reactor designs become production designs", doesn't really count. Don't build 100 different reactor designs as one-off pieces that each require an elaborate licensing process. License a small number of designs, survey a large number of potential sites for suitability, plop down the same reactor type at every site. e: small modular reactor designs should help for that, just plop down more of them next to each other if you need a big generating capacity. e2: making them small should also make it easier to have them certified as safe, since you can protect a small structure from, say, earthquakes more easily than the lumbering Gen II hulks everyone has standing around. suck my woke dick fucked around with this message at 18:22 on Jan 14, 2014 |
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Jan 14, 2014 18:18
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Trabisnikof posted:I know that's the theory that everyone discusses on here, but there are 3 big issues I see with that (unsupported by research claim): 1.) and 3.) AP-1000 reactors in China. They may just be slightly better Gen III 1000MWe hulks, but at least they're standardised. Russia is also building 18+3 kinda standardised reactors (18 Gen III things and 3 fast reactors to try their hand at burning waste  )2.) France. Their regulation has been "upgraded" to the US standard in response to Fukushima and general anti-nuke hysteria, but in the decades before, French nuke plants haven't turned the country into a radioactive wasteland. e: the Russians have approved bulding 18x VVER-1200 Gen III reactors and three fast reactors of various types. Also they're actually doing the sensible thing and taking old piece of crap reactors off the grid to replace them with new ones instead of extending the operating life of 40 year old wrecks. suck my woke dick fucked around with this message at 18:48 on Jan 14, 2014 |
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Jan 14, 2014 18:32
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Trabisnikof posted:You mean a reactor design that is already allowed in the US? So what nuclear regulations do you think the Chinese do better than the US, if the design you'd prefer is already available in the US? The US requires a lot of what amounts to relicensing if you want to build an AP1000 at a new site, instead of just going "we know what the AP1000 is built for, does this place look geologically stable enough?" quote:Also I don't think France is the pillar of low-costs that it seems. Sure you can blame the recent cost rises on Fukushima...except they started before Fukushima and closer to when EDF was privatized. Yeah, privatisation sucks. However, France is now starting to require similar regulatory crap as the US. Still, French electricity is cheaper than German electricity for some reason and we're both Central(-ish) EU countries. It would be much better to really thoroughly test the EPR and then send geologists/safety people to survey each proposed site (even if that somehow ends up costing millions per site, it's a drop in the bucket for a nuclear power plant's build cost). A significant factor in cost overruns is the fact that halting the construction costs hundreds of millions per year, and nuclear power plant construction in the West is a prime target for litigation and takes breaks all the time even after the thing has been properly licensed. suck my woke dick fucked around with this message at 19:01 on Jan 14, 2014 |
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Jan 14, 2014 18:59
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Trabisnikof posted:The issues are more complex than that. For example, France's most recent plant was stopped within a month of starting construction because they didn't have process controls in place for their concrete mixing. That's something that's in the AP1000 plan, and has nothing to do with the geology. But requires regulation and oversight. I'm really curious what kinds of specific regulatory processes you think are needlessly driving up costs? I actually have to retract part of what I said: the US has expedited its approval process. The currently under-build AP1000s, which is 4 out of 5 currently in build, only needed site-specific stuff checked for approval. At the moment, the most uncertainty about new US nukes is from cheap gas plants (which are less horrible than coal, but still bad).
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Jan 14, 2014 19:16
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Kaal posted:Just as an FYI, the EIA is extremely clear that you should not be comparing their estimate levelized cost between wind turbines and nuclear power, because wind turbines are non-dispatchable and therefore you're comparing apples and oranges. That's why they separated dispatchable and non-dispatchable technologies in the first place. So basically it is the raw number of what investment per kWh out you pay, not including the fact that you need to deal with unplanned intermittency.
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Jan 14, 2014 19:32
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Pander posted:"nth of a kind" does apply to wind (as it does for nuclear). It's just that nuclear has a relatively small footprint and few environmental restrictions in terms of construction (they're built in all climates and environments!). If you build 200, the 200th will be pretty cheap still. For wind though, while they'll be cheaper to build with mass production, the fact that they each require a certain amount of open space, good wind, access to a grid, and solid installation (you don't want a wobbly tower. that is when bad things happen) means that later ones (after extensive building) will almost certainly cost more to install than the first. The amount of resources needed to build x MWe of capacity is quite a bit higher for renewables (as is their footprint, as in literally space taken up) so that going to an all or mostly renewable grid carries with it the risk of substantial environmental damage just from taking up space. Case in point, the plans for hydropower in the biodiversity hotspot of the Balkan alluvial forests (alluvial forests get hosed consistently around any sort of dam and there's extensive restoration projects in Central Europe because of that).
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Jan 14, 2014 21:39
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Pander posted:Wind is nice, but the US trying to go all deutschland energiewinde would be suicidal. Are you implying we're somehow not doing badly ourselves German renewables are at an all-time high, but so are German electricity prices and even our CO2 emissions are rising again (go coal, it's cheaper than gas so utilities really want to have less gas and go back to coal  )
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Jan 14, 2014 22:50
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Baronjutter posted: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 environmental policy. That statement can be expanded and stays true for the most part
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Jan 14, 2014 23:06
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Even if we grant much reduced overcapacity for renewables than in this comparison, wind is still going to use way more resources to build than nuclear. Also 200 tons of fuel per reactor year really isn't much, and you can reduce that to low double digits if you use fast reactors. e: also regarding wind vs. nuclear: We'll need some (lots of) storage for renewables anyway. Current nuclear designs are certainly load following to a certain extent (100% to 50% in an hour), so they could run in a pattern according to average energy use and provide a certain percentage. Why not put renewables on top of that? You could have enough wind or solar or whatever to ensure sufficiently reliable overall power on average, with storage to buffer their short-term intermittency and/or to keep up with load spikes which nuclear dials up to meet in the meantime. Any super-sensitive manufacturing equipment that can't survive ultra short power grid fluctuations could be directly hooked to nuclear. suck my woke dick fucked around with this message at 01:50 on Jan 15, 2014 |
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Jan 15, 2014 01:43
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Trabisnikof posted:Once again, comparing future designs to present realities. What power reactors under construction right now can do that? Experimental designs & research reactors don't count. In addition to Enrico Fermi 1, there were also the shutdown Phenix and Superphenix in France and the Schneller Brüter in Germany which was scrapped right after being finished (now it's one of the favourite examples of greenies arguing that nuclear power is forever doomed ).There are the three new fast breeder reactors in Russia I've mentioned already, of which the BN-800 is actually currently being built, following up on the existing BN-600 fast reactor (non-breeding) which has been operating for quite a while. While the Indian fast breeder reactor currently under construction is technically a prototype, it's commercial scale (500MWe). suck my woke dick fucked around with this message at 02:31 on Jan 15, 2014 |
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Jan 15, 2014 02:22
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Hedera Helix posted:
"The Energiewende has some issues. Our solution: Energiewende 2.1 - Energiewende harder!" e: also "Argh gently caress the utilities electricity got more expensive again" To be fair, some of our newspapers (mostly the classier ones) have very occasional pro-nuclear articles in them maybe twice a year. suck my woke dick fucked around with this message at 08:57 on Jan 15, 2014 |
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Jan 15, 2014 08:53
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| # ¿ May 17, 2024 14:37 |
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Renaissance Robot posted:Gosh I'm sorry, allow me to rephrase: Quick extension to that: If we spread out the mining over a long time (by, say, not heavily subsiding things that require a sharp increase in mining immediately) then the impacts will be much less costly to offset and therefore be more likely to be offset in an acceptable way. I'm a bit stretched for time right now so I'll postpone the  posting to the weekend.
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Jan 15, 2014 20:26
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