The Energy Generation Megathread: Heated Exchanges

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Taerkar: Dec 7, 2002; kind of into it, really

Rent-A-Cop posted:

If you give me $100 now I will give you $101 (adjusted for inflation) on your 80th birthday. What a great deal for you!

This terrible example sums up your bad argument.

Let's go with a lazy Worst Case Scenario from Install Gentoo's numbers above:

Install Gentoo posted:

Let's compare for only 20,000 hours of use (6.8 years or so at 8 hours a day):
CFL: 2 bulbs + 220 kilowatt hours = $40.66
LED: 1 bulb + 120 kilowatt hours = $37.50

We're already dealing with only 40% of the LED bulb's life, but that's part of the worst case. Also no change in costs for electricity (Rising costs make the LED even better) and, oh... let's do 8 cycles of this for 53.4 years (Mid twenties). That would mean that you get $124 for your $100 now, if there's no inflation.

Per bulb.

As the costs of power generation increase (And they will), the savings difference will continue to improve.

Is it enough to retire on? Of course not, but it'll make that retirement just a little bit nicer.

Edit: Tangentially related but I've got these strip lights in my house that use these bulbs and they fail like mad. Is there an LED option for them that's reliable?

Taerkar fucked around with this message at 20:27 on Sep 13, 2012

# ¿ Sep 13, 2012 20:17

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# ¿ May 3, 2024 04:43

Taerkar: Dec 7, 2002; kind of into it, really

CombatInformatiker posted:

I've read 1.5 chapters of that book (Google didn't let me read any further), and it seems to be a little simplistic (multiplying the chance of an accident by it's severity and conclude that there's no increased danger? Come on, you can't be serious!) and clearly biased towards nuclear energy, so it's not something I'm looking for.

That's a general approach for any sort of risk management. It's something that people don't like, but it's a really simple bit of economic reality. The chance of your house getting struck by a falling piece from a plane is infinitesimal, but it can be calculated. The potential damage that could cause (including you dying from getting hit from it) is factored into the likelihood of it happening, but the overall result is of the 'as X approaches 0' type of math.

The 'Bias towards nuclear energy' is because despite what you might think, nuclear power is pretty good. The biggest challenge facing it in the US is because not only does a significant portion of the country's population think that a NPP is one Homer Simpson away from being Hiroshima, but also because other forms of power generation are very strongly entrenched in the political environment.

CombatInformatiker posted:

I think the bad public image of nuclear energy comes from the promises of safety from the 50s and 60s, which they couldn't completely keep (sure, technology is a lot more advanced today).

It has a lot more to do with Three Mile Island and Chernobyl than anything before that. The former, of course, being an example of how safe the facilities can be, and the later being an example of why most countries never allowed that style of plant to begin with.

Now there's the hysteria surrounding Fukushima and the associated fearmongering in regards to it that is spurring another round of Nuke Hysteria, thwarting what little progress was being made on that front.

The bitter irony is that the Fukushima plant would have been closed before the Tsunami occurred if it had been properly replaced as originally planned.

Taerkar fucked around with this message at 20:19 on Apr 3, 2013

# ¿ Apr 3, 2013 20:15

Taerkar: Dec 7, 2002; kind of into it, really

Rent-A-Cop posted:

It isn't insignificant, but the costs of nuclear generation are heavily end-loaded. Startup and shutdown costs are huge, but actually generating power is relatively cheap.

Front and end-loaded, actually. The start-up cost is high and the decommissioning cost is high as well. Actual operation is incredibly cheap due to the low cost of the fuel compared to how far it can go. A trainload of uranium fuel will be more than enough to run a plant for its entire lifecycle. A trainload of coal is maybe a month.

# ¿ Apr 3, 2013 23:55

Taerkar: Dec 7, 2002; kind of into it, really

karthun posted:

A trainload of coal is about 8 hours. Sherco, the big coal power plant outside Minneapolis, goes through 3 trainloads of coal, 30 thousand tons, every day.

Oh wow. I was really remembering that bit wrong.

# ¿ Apr 4, 2013 00:07

Taerkar: Dec 7, 2002; kind of into it, really

Aureon posted:

Nuclear power (Not some methods of uranium mining, which also is really minimal seen the mileage it gets, especially with reprocessing) has never caused "Envinromental destruction".
The closed-off zone near Chernobyl had actually become a natural park, since some animals and plants rapidly adapted to the radiation.

Less of an adaptation and more of a "An increased chance of mutation related offspring loss pales in comparison to the negative effects of humans in the area" effect.

# ¿ Apr 4, 2013 05:58

Taerkar: Dec 7, 2002; kind of into it, really

It is rather terrible that the people evaluating those sites are not considering the possibility of unicorns suddenly appearing and breaking open all of the containment vessels with their magical horns.

It's not as simple as multiplying too numbers, yes, but that's because the numbers involved have to be researched and evaluated first (And there's an entire discipline for such things), but just because you're bad at math doesn't mean that the method is flawed.

The Yucca Mountain facility faced a similar problem. Every time the people involved with it would update their projections of the likely and unlikely future of the facility, the NIMBY crowd would demand another couple of thousands of years of prediction. And surprisingly enough, they eventually raised the number high enough that we can't predict, therefore it was unsafe!

# ¿ Apr 4, 2013 14:44

Taerkar: Dec 7, 2002; kind of into it, really

Boner Slam posted:

There is something wrong with this technique, which is that it inheretly assumes that the expected values fully characterize the distribution - as Bernoulli.
Don't get me wrong, if you'd actually be able to find out the "probability" of of leakage then you could calculate which leakage you'd expect, and this could be equal to a certain outcome such as mining. But you can't, because it does not exist as a binary case.
And because of this, nothing you said is essentially applicable to reality. It would be very easy to assume a distribution of leakage with the same "risk" (ie. expected value), yet a much higher probability to leak a lot of material. It would have the same expected leakage. This could be characterized as more risky and in fact this is very often the case out there.
Which is also why risk is not equal to expected value, which is a valid criticism for any of these arguments. It is a fake argument and it is meaningless to reality. And any numbers derived on the basis of such a model would be misleading.

Ya... no. This is exactly the reason why your insurance rate is not based only on this.

Edit: Not that enough entities have made this mistake before of course. But it is not correct to describe reality this way, especially for risk analysis.

Again, just because you don't understand it doesn't mean that it's wrong.

Your insurance rates are almost entirely based upon a few factors that they use to determine your risk factor. The #1 factor is your past history of driving, #2 is your demographic (16-24 year old males are the worst!), #3 is what you're driving, not just because of the cost of the car, but also certain things such as the observed nature of people that drive it, its probability chance of being stolen, etc...

# ¿ Apr 16, 2013 00:06

Taerkar: Dec 7, 2002; kind of into it, really

Fine-able Offense posted:

Car insurance is not the same as calculating the risk of something like a pipeline rupture or nuclear powerplant meltdown, just FYI.

Like, nobody is using such a simple formula when the downside risk is effectively measured by ∞ instead of a dollar figure.

My example was a simplification because there's far more going into it in terms of variables, but probabilities of failure are extensively calculated for such situations. Hell, it's why Life Insurance is one of the safest bets out there for the companies involved.

The risk of a pipeline rupture, for example, would be based upon the observed failure rate of the various components of the system, the environment and likely weather patterns that the pipeline would be exposed to, and the caustic properties of what the pipeline would carry, just to name a few conditions. There's likely at least hundreds of more factors involved, but they're all part of that risk analysis.

Boner Slam posted:

We are not talking about simplifications or their worth.
It is not factually correct, and the poster before me pointed that out.

First off, you don't know the probability. You know the frequence of events in the past. It is not the same loving thing. That you assume you can _estimate_ the "non quote" probability shows you have no idea what you are talking about.

Second and more importantly, you equate a binary event with a continous value of "that much radiation by mining" by taking the expected value of a binary distribution. By that you assume that a barrel can leak or not leak, always with the same probability and always the same amount of leakage. And THEN you go ahead and claim that obviously this equates to a number value of radiation during mining. Without talking about the actual error severity of such an estimation, it is not correct in so many ways.

A guy pointed this out.
And instead of saying "I think in this case the difference is not important to the hypothetical argument" (which would have been fine) you guys went ahead and jumped on him like "just because you don't understand it dumbo". Literally.
It is a perfectly reasonable thing to point out and it is also correct. And this kind of posting makes you look like an rear end

We can make pretty good guesses at the probability, sure they're estimates of estimates, but a lot of it is based around some very strenuous stress testing and past evaluations, along with some pretty drat complicated computer modeling that gets tossed around today.

Those estimates are (or at least should be) reevaluated from time to time based upon both an improvement in testing procedures as well as an analysis of real-world performance. It's why we know of the potential lifespan of various parts of a plane, for example.

These are also more than just binary events of "poo poo goes bad" and "poo poo doesn't go bad". A properly done analysis will build a likely range of possible outcomes and then build out from there. And yes, one of those is the worst possible circumstance.

The problem becomes when those analysis meet up with other factors; Shareholders, governments, the voting public, greed, corruption, etc. Something that's evaluated to be a 'distinctively remote possibility' may become much more likely if, say, the item in question is used for twice as long as it was originally expected.

The risks should be reevaluated in that sort of situation but hey, that costs money, and that money would cut into the bottom line. Many of the risks that contributed to the failure at Fukushima are things that were known but not addressed in no small part because of the cost.

# ¿ Apr 16, 2013 21:13

Taerkar: Dec 7, 2002; kind of into it, really

shrike82 posted:

Comparing the risk of a Fukushima-level nuclear plant failure with life insurance companies measuring mortality risk is a terrible analogy which really underscores a lack of understanding about probability by you and other posters ITT. The reason why life insurance works so well is that there's a huge pool of participants (past and present) that help in deriving statistically accurate mortality tables. We don't have enough nuke plants operating in the world to give a similar confidence level.

If anything, it's probably better to make an analogy with the financial markets. We've seen enough hedge funds blow themselves up over the past few decades due to misjudgments about six sigma events.

As of the start of the year there are 435 NPRs in operation around the world. Overall those reactors, along with decommissioned ones, account for a bit under 15,000 years of combined operational experience. Source: IAEA Report

If you can't make a decent estimate out of that, you shouldn't do stats.

And I'm not positive, but I suspect that number does not include military reactors.

# ¿ Apr 16, 2013 21:55

Taerkar: Dec 7, 2002; kind of into it, really

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.

Rather than feeling like a place for discussion of alternatives and all their pros and con's there is an almost constant "well this isn't perfect so out shouldn't be on the table" unless it is nuclear. Counter points to the god king nuclear get cursory dismissals and that is that, the thread rolls on.

The knee jerk distrust of nuclear from the community is a major downfall for the tech but any attempt to address it just gets "people are dumb this is what they need". People don't like being told what they need, they do like getting what they want though. Rather than shouting about how good nuclear is maybe an open, honest and frank talk about all options would sell people on nuclear anyway?

That was what this thread looked like being I'm not sure if it got highjacked or that was never the intension but now it really does feel like the nuclear power appreciation station.

Why don't you just come right out and demand that we teach the controversy?

Nuclear does have it's problems, but a lot of them are political and social constructs, not natural ones. Fuel supply isn't really an issue. We have X reserves now, but like all other sources of energy that's at current prices. As those get depleted others can become available at higher costs of extraction. Sure there's an end-game, but it's stupidly far off.

# ¿ Jun 18, 2014 03:46

Taerkar: Dec 7, 2002; kind of into it, really

Maybe we can finally replace nuclear power with an infinite supply of strawmen to burn.

Or do they give off too much CO2?

# ¿ Jun 18, 2014 04:56

Taerkar: Dec 7, 2002; kind of into it, really

Tasmantor posted:

This is exactly what I mean. Nuclears down falls are social/political and therefore not problems. Why can't you see that public opposition is a major problem. Good news everyone it's not impossible to overcome! Sadly just shouting at people about how enlightened you are and how they are just scum wallowing in the filth of their ignorance doesn't work.

Do you seriously not understand the rather significant difference between social/political problems and problems that involve physics?

Coal cannot be 'clean', this is a basic fact concerning what's being burned. We can capture most of the pollution from burning coal for power, but we still need to do something with it and there are no real good options.
Hydroelectric in the form of dams is pretty much maxed out. There aren't many good options left. For wind and solar the problem is that the places best suited for those types of generation are either where people like to live (NIMBY!) or nowhere near where people like to live which means that transmission becomes an issue. Oh and both have very poor energy density, requiring large sections of land that again is not likely going to be near large population centers.

To further complicate this is that as gasoline prices continue to rise you're likely to see those large population centers get even larger.

Nuclear power in its current state is pretty phenomenally safe and can generate lots of power in a relatively small footprint. There are means by which we can even reduce the amount of radioactive waste that has to be dealt with, but that's legally impossible right now thanks to a ban on breeder reactors in the US.

Though it may not seem like it right now social and political hurdles can be overcome. The public memory of nuclear events of the past will fade and, more importantly, the problems of the future will require people to accept things that they wouldn't otherwise. To many Americans, their understanding of how nuclear power works is based upon The Simpsons.

Taerkar fucked around with this message at 14:25 on Jun 18, 2014

# ¿ Jun 18, 2014 14:13

Taerkar: Dec 7, 2002; kind of into it, really

blowfish posted:

* Offshore wind? I've heard people claim it's bad, other people say it's good, and apparently it's expensive or something (unsurprisingly). I'm inferring based on the problems we face with onshore wind till I can have a more in-depth read about offshore wind since I don't know enough marine ecology to say whether building the things causes ecological problems or not.

I would imagine that a big part of the problem with offshore wind is that there's very few environments as hostile towards technology than the marine environment. Corrosion is a constant issue and moving parts only makes this worse. Add in the difficulty of maintaining an offshore wind turbine and it just becomes that much worse.

# ¿ Jun 18, 2014 15:16

Taerkar: Dec 7, 2002; kind of into it, really

Tasmantor posted:

That was a waste of time, noted.

Here's the answer in simplicity:

It's not Solar or nothing. It's not Wind or nothing. It's not nuclear or nothing.

With current technologies there's no practical means for any current level of renewal technology to replace all other types of power generation. That means that if you want to really get rid of the majority of the GHG producers then you're going to have to include nuclear as part of the equation.

I don't think any of us have anything against wind or solar generation in general, we just find the idea of it being the cure for all of our power generating ills to be foolish. And the absolute line against nuclear power by those that tend to advocate that to be either foolish, naive, or disingenuous.

There's a quote by Clausewitz that sums up these arguments quite succinctly: �The enemy of a good plan is the dream of a perfect plan.�

There is no perfect solution.

# ¿ Jun 19, 2014 00:47

Taerkar: Dec 7, 2002; kind of into it, really

Tokamak posted:

You can't set it and then forget it, like you can for solar or wind; That's pretty important. Likewise, the workforce to maintain and operate a fossil fuel plant is more developed and accessible, especially in developing nations. You can't build a shitload of nuclear plants overnight and have appropriately educated people to staff them.

Wind and Solar are not 'install and forget' units either, especially not wind turbines.

Technology requires maintenance. Technology that moves requires even more maintenance. Not nearly as much as nuclear, yes, but it's non-zero.

# ¿ Jun 19, 2014 03:28

Taerkar: Dec 7, 2002; kind of into it, really

crabcakes66 posted:

Who here has made this argument? I must have missed it.

I think he's including in that anyone skeptical of green technology being able to fully replace all other forms of power generation.

# ¿ Jul 8, 2014 15:45

Taerkar: Dec 7, 2002; kind of into it, really

Trabisnikof posted:

There is a lower carbon and lower emissions alternative. However, some people won't like it because its not zero carbon emissions and thus not ideologically pure:

http://www.thespec.com/news-story/4190319-u-s-steel-natural-gas-process-will-soon-replace-coke/

Unfortunately, like coal plants, we don't get the opportunity to replace steel plants that often.

Looks like a new front on the war on coal! :downsgun:

Seriously though that looks like a pretty neat and good improvement.

# ¿ Oct 15, 2014 17:54

Taerkar: Dec 7, 2002; kind of into it, really

3% initial failure rate in something that is A) rather expensive to buy and B) expected to last and be used for 5 to 10 years is pretty bad.

# ¿ Apr 11, 2016 19:11

Taerkar: Dec 7, 2002; kind of into it, really

A wonderful mixture of Clean Coal and Corporate Mentality.

# ¿ Jul 5, 2016 16:33

Taerkar: Dec 7, 2002; kind of into it, really

Phanatic posted:

Well, absolutely nobody could use it then. There's hardly any anthracite left in the US, most was mined out in northeast PA and they're not digging any more of that out there considering all the population growth that's taken place.

And possibly is still on fire depending on what kind of coal is at Centralia.

# ¿ Jul 6, 2016 04:14

Taerkar: Dec 7, 2002; kind of into it, really

Phanatic posted:

Oh. So your definition of "works just fine" *includes* massive overruns in budget and schedule, so long as a working road or order of file cabinets for the office shows up eventually.

By *that* definition, the current process where the government doesn't build nuclear plants works just fine.

Government programs and projects that work well don't make the news.

# ¿ Aug 25, 2016 22:12

Taerkar: Dec 7, 2002; kind of into it, really

Uhhh.... What?

Economic theories are not a one size fits all thing. What works in one country often won't work in another. Hell even different regions of a country can have wildly different economic challenges and issues.

# ¿ Aug 26, 2016 17:20

Taerkar: Dec 7, 2002; kind of into it, really

In many ways the whole "Government Cost Overruns" issue is not a ptoblem unique to government itself but is something that gets a lot of attention because of the afformentioned "Mah Tax Dollahs!" effect.

Sinestro posted:

That is entirely true, different things happen in different situations. That is not equivalent to proving the point that you are making is true. Please keep trying.

And just what point do you think I'm trying to make?

Potato Salad posted:

I'm not even talking about spending infinite money -- I am talking about funding Plant W with loan X on repayment schedule Y because the plant will have Z revenue.

To add on to this the rate at which the US Government can borrow money right now is almost unprecedented in how low it is right now.

quote:

Raise your hand, anyone in here, if you have experience or have done reading into how toll highways, mass transit, and other revenue-generating public works are funded?

I went into the private sector instead of the public one but I did receive some training and education regarding government funding as well as partial exposure on the Government-Funded research side of things. It's an entirely different beast than anything in the private sector on so many levels.

# ¿ Aug 26, 2016 17:44

Taerkar: Dec 7, 2002; kind of into it, really

If we used coal then we would never see this happen because of the smog

# ¿ Mar 31, 2017 13:55

Taerkar: Dec 7, 2002; kind of into it, really

Phanatic posted:

Disclaimer: I think bitcoin is lovely and stupid.

You're also ignoring the credit check authorization when the card is swiped. Going from the old carbon-copy paper to the magnetic strip connected to a modem did a lot to reduce credit card fraud.

Bitcoin would be even worse in this regard because Person A could promise person B, C, D, and E the same bit of magic currency and it would only go to whichever one got a transaction through first.

# ¿ May 23, 2018 03:54

Taerkar: Dec 7, 2002; kind of into it, really

It also was probably hilariously inefficient.

# ¿ May 9, 2019 23:38

Taerkar: Dec 7, 2002; kind of into it, really

There's no reason to. Said 100 year old fridge was probably made almost the same way as one a decade or three later.

Now there's typically rather significant changes in the same time frame, so people are more likely to replace it. (Energy efficiency is but one reason)

# ¿ May 9, 2019 23:49

Taerkar: Dec 7, 2002; kind of into it, really

Accountants had very little to do with such decisions, it's entirely upper management. </petpeeve>

# ¿ May 10, 2019 03:21

Taerkar: Dec 7, 2002; kind of into it, really

Comrade Blyatlov posted:

there are also specific circumstances where a crew might have to sacrifice their engine in order to save their ship

fine with a diesel engine, but christ, now i'm imagining having to run a nuclear reactor past its safe limits and shuddering like gently caress

i guess one solution there is redundancy but this isn't a thought path i really want to go down

on the other hand, you'd most likely wind up with steam making a comeback, unless there's some other way of directly translating the heat generation into mechanical work that i'm not familiar with

though that causes its own issues again, steam propulsion is a different beast to diesel and has its own ticketing and qualifications, that plus nuclear

i guess with enough impetus it's not an impossible set of obstacles but make no mistake they are not small challenges

The drive gearing would be what would be run to the limit much earlier than the reactor most likely.

# ¿ Aug 25, 2019 14:23

Taerkar: Dec 7, 2002; kind of into it, really

Harold Fjord posted:

If we are caring about cost effectiveness we are doomed as a species.

The invention of capitalism is just a very drawn out suicide attempt.

# ¿ Sep 1, 2020 12:55

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# ¿ May 3, 2024 04:43

Taerkar: Dec 7, 2002; kind of into it, really

The USN reactors were also designed for operation inside of a warship which is why servicing them is such an extensive thing. There's a lot of ship between the reactors and the exterior and opening them up for refueling is quite the task.

Oh and immediate proximity to the things the reactors would be powering.

# ¿ Oct 17, 2020 05:49

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > The Energy Generation Megathread: Heated Exchanges