cheese posted:I totally agree, I'm just not sure if continuously applying a small amount of head on roads during the winter to keep ice from forming is an environmental issue of any note. Struggling to think of what the negative consequences could be. Small amount of heat? Pop quiz, what temperature does the panel have to be for the water on top of it to freeze? Now look at the climate of the United States. Now look at the size of the highway system. See if you can't figure it out. Beyond that, just take a look at what our highway system costs now and ask yourself how much more expensive maintenance is going to get when you've replaced miles of asphalt with miles of solar panels FOR NO GOOD REASON. Just build the solar panels by themselves if you want them, there's just no goddamn reason to hide solar panels on the ground. It's not like we have a lack of space to put them.
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Sep 18, 2014 02:41
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But replacing the largest and most used/worn parts of our infrastructure with something much more expensive and harder to maintain for virtually no benefit sounds like a great idea! I mean why put a solar panel in that empty field when you can rip up a road?
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Sep 18, 2014 02:47
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down with slavery posted:Small amount of heat? Pop quiz, what temperature does the panel have to be for it to freeze. Now look at the climate of the United States. Now look at the size of the highway system. See if you can't figure it out. cheese posted:We barely manage to put up solar panel farms in the desert and we are closing safe, green and reliable nuclear power plants. What about those "25 sq km solar panel farm in the dessert" articles that say an array that size could produce all the power needed for the world or a continent? And let's forget about attenuation over the lines. KoRMaK fucked around with this message at 02:58 on Sep 18, 2014 |
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Sep 18, 2014 02:51
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KoRMaK posted:Would the solar panels be able to generate enough energy to melt the snow? Does the solar panel optimize the sunlight into heat, or waste energy in the process (probably the former) I don't think you understand that "heating the panels above freezing in below 0 conditions" is actually one of the smaller problems with solar roadways. You need to read more and watch less youtube videos. quote:I don't really consider them green. When something goes wrong, it goes colossally wrong and stays there for a long time. Longer than oil accidents. Nope, this is actually factually incorrect (but welcome to the ever growing anti-nuclear for no good reason club) Pop quiz, is nuclear or solar power more dangerous? http://www.iaea.org/Publications/Magazines/Bulletin/Bull211/21104091117.pdf Whoops, turns out Solar is near 10x worse than Nuclear. Why you might ask? Because Nuclear actually can generate a reasonable amount of power in a small area whereas you'll need millions of solar panels(just kidding- even millions wouldnt cut it) to make up even a fraction of what nuclear power does, can, and will continue to deliver(assuming people pull their heads out of their asses). quote:What about those "25 sq km solar panel farm in the dessert" articles that say an array that size could produce all the power needed for the world or a continent? And let's forget about attenuation over the lines. What about them? Sounds like made up fantasy bullshit that just popped in to your head.
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Sep 18, 2014 02:55
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KoRMaK posted:I don't really consider them green. When something goes wrong, it goes colossally wrong and stays there for a long time. Longer than oil accidents. things very very rarely go wrong, and that's no reason to not consider them green especially when actually viable alternatives for large power systems not in hydro heavy areas is coal (worse) or the status quo (also worse on all possible metrics)
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Sep 18, 2014 02:56
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According to the American Road and Transport Builders Association, milling and resurfacing a four lane road costs approximately $1.25 million dollars/mile, and that's just for labour, materials, etc. There are approximately four million miles of road in the USA, so (and I'm vastly oversimplifying here) simply renovating the public highways would cost $5e+12. I am going to guess that solar panels are slightly more expensive then 1.25 million dollars/mile.
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Sep 18, 2014 02:57
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JawKnee posted:things very very rarely go wrong, and that's no reason to not consider them green especially when actually viable alternatives for large power systems not in hydro heavy areas is coal (worse) or the status quo (also worse on all possible metrics) Hydro is almost assuredly worse than Nuclear too. It has horrific environmental impacts (even if it doesn't emit a shitload of CO2) and can almost gaurantee its more deadly/dangerous as well. Also, fwiw when I said solar was 10x more deadly than nuclear, that's only for the workers. If you extend it to the general population it's closer to 500 times more dangerous to them. That's how economies of scale work people. "Nuclear accidents go colossally wrong" I mean what the gently caress are you talking about? There's been a grand total of ONE nuclear accident that even approaches "bad" and I really don't feel like explaining why Chernobyl will never happen again (for so many reasons) down with slavery fucked around with this message at 03:02 on Sep 18, 2014 |
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Sep 18, 2014 02:59
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KoRMaK posted:I don't really consider them green. When something goes wrong, it goes colossally wrong and stays there for a long time. Longer than oil accidents. The worst nuclear disaster in history killed 62 people and now it's a nature preserve.
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Sep 18, 2014 03:04
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Rent-A-Cop posted:They are really green though because for the most part nature doesn't give a gently caress about radiation. Seriously, you can irradiate the holy hell out of most plants and animals before they give a gently caress. See the former site of the Georgia Nuclear Aircraft Laboratory where the USAF literally bathed a forest in radiation to see what would happen. It is probably the single most heavily irradiated site on Earth, and now it's a state park.
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Sep 18, 2014 03:09
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Rent-A-Cop posted:They are really green though because for the most part nature doesn't give a gently caress about radiation. Seriously, you can irradiate the holy hell out of most plants and animals before they give a gently caress. See the former site of the Georgia Nuclear Aircraft Laboratory where the USAF literally bathed a forest in radiation to see what would happen. It is probably the single most heavily irradiated site on Earth, and now it's a state park. down with slavery posted:Also, fwiw when I said solar was 10x more deadly than nuclear, that's only for the workers. If you extend it to the general population it's closer to 500 times more dangerous to them. KoRMaK fucked around with this message at 03:13 on Sep 18, 2014 |
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Sep 18, 2014 03:09
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KoRMaK posted:So it doesn't last for 1000 years or some nearly eternal bullshit amount of time? Law of conservation of energy. Emitting radiation is emitting energy: the more intensely it releases it, the shorter the half life. Radioactive material which is emitting energy for thousands of years does so quite slowly; the dangerous stuff eats itself up in a few years.
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Sep 18, 2014 03:12
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KoRMaK posted:So it doesn't last for 1000 years or some nearly eternal bullshit amount of time? It also depends how much of a risk you're willing to take, to some extent. This isn't to say that radiation or heavy metals are "good," but it's not like "pollutants, dangerous wastes, and so forth" are somehow unique to the nuclear power industry. I think sometimes every cost is toted up for nuclear power, while many of the costs of coal/natural gas are just sort of ignored, since we'll clearly all be running on solar/wind/biomass/living like medieval peasants again Real Soon Now, so they don't matter.
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Sep 18, 2014 03:14
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KoRMaK posted:So it doesn't last for 1000 years or some nearly eternal bullshit amount of time? Longer half lives actually mean that they're less radioactive. Think of it this way: if the same amount of energy is released, do you want the substance that releases it all in 2 days, or the one that takes 2000 years?
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Sep 18, 2014 03:14
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KoRMaK posted:Is the explanation for that stat in the pdf you linked? http://www.iaea.org/Publications/Magazines/Bulletin/Bull211/21104091117.pdf Yes. Table 1 (pg16) has the "man days lost per unit of energy generated" for both workers and the public tldr: quote:How can unconventional technologies like wind or solar thermal (the "power tower" concept)
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Sep 18, 2014 03:20
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CoolCab posted:Law of conservation of energy. Emitting radiation is emitting energy: the more intensely it releases it, the shorter the half life. Radioactive material which is emitting energy for thousands of years does so quite slowly; the dangerous stuff eats itself up in a few years. Still though, 30-40 years is most of a lifetime. It would really be bad if in my lifetime I had to abandon my nearest biggest city and all the infrastructure. computer parts posted:Longer half lives actually mean that they're less radioactive.
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Sep 18, 2014 03:23
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ExplodingSims posted:Solar panels on building don't really generate enough power to offset the cost of them for the most part. You can basically run the lights, but any high power stuff, like the A/C system is still going to need to be run off the grid. Maybe not for a multi-story office complex, but it'd be cool to run the numbers for something like Wal-Mart or Home Depot. Even if it couldn't completely replace grid power, I'd imagine it'd make a pretty big dent in demand. Nessus posted:It depends what you mean by "nearly eternal." A lot of dangerous nuclear waste will be very dangerous for a long time. There are steps that can reduce that risk, some of which involve "using it as fuel again" since the radioactive poo poo actually makes good reactor fuel. It involves a lot of plutonium which people could extract for nuclear bombs, however, which evidently presents a fundamental risk of some kind, possibly in case someone decides to steal it? I was never clear on this, but "proliferation risk" is usually cited when that factoid comes up. There's also thorium, which is both way more common than uranium and basically useless for producing weapons-grade material.
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Sep 18, 2014 03:23
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KoRMaK posted:Then what the gently caress have I been worrying about this whole time. How long does an area remain unsafe after a meltdown? So if this is true, why isn't Chernobyl cleaned up and inhabited? Or is it because it's only like 30-40 years old, and in another 20 it will be fine? It is inhabited, just not by humans. You can also go there as a human... but living there wouldn't be a good idea. Probably not as bad as living next to a coal plant though. quote:Still though, 30-40 years is most of a lifetime. It would really be bad if in my lifetime I had to abandon my nearest biggest city and all the infrastructure. CHERNOBYL WILL NEVER HAPPEN AGAIN quote:I guess I might be conflating nuclear bomb explosion, nuclear fallout, and a nuclear power station meltdown. Does the one that takes 2000 years give off enough radiation to make you sick and mess up your reproductive mechanisms? Please go read about this and stop posting. D&D isn't "I don't know the difference between a nuclear reactor and a bomb, please explain". Try Ask/Tell
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Sep 18, 2014 03:26
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KoRMaK posted:It would really be bad if in my lifetime I had to abandon my nearest biggest city and all the infrastructure Good news, this can't happen with most modern reactors. Bad news, we're not really using those modern reactors, nuclear power is  unsafe
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Sep 18, 2014 03:28
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KoRMaK posted:Then what the gently caress have I been worrying about this whole time. How long does an area remain unsafe after a meltdown? So if this is true, why isn't Chernobyl cleaned up and inhabited? Or is it because it's only like 30-40 years old, and in another 20 it will be fine? There are risk levels. You pick what's an acceptable risk and work from there. For example, Chernobyl was an active nuclear generating station until only a few years ago. People worked there every day. People still work there to monitor the site, do research, and maintain the environmental defenses around the most polluted areas. This is all perfectly safe because they take precautions to monitor their radiation doses and avoid areas where they know radioactive materials can collect and produce dangerous levels of radioactivity. However, it'd be a lovely idea to build a kindegarten anywhere nearby because children love to eat dirt, and eating dirt in Pripyat would be a very bad thing to do. Another example is Bikini Atoll. Perfectly safe to live there, bad idea to eat the local flora. The US nuked the poo poo out of it a whole bunch of times and certain plants have a tendency to suck nasty isotopes out of the ground and concentrate them to dangerous levels.
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Sep 18, 2014 03:34
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KoRMaK posted:Does the one that takes 2000 years give off enough radiation to make you sick and mess up your reproductive mechanisms?
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Sep 18, 2014 03:41
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Rent-A-Cop posted:There are risk levels. You pick what's an acceptable risk and work from there. On the other hand, you can teach kids what to avoid. Lots of people manage to surivive in florida where a bunch of innocuous poo poo can kill you. I just realized, I actually have a nuclear station 45 minutes from me. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perry_Nuclear_Generating_Station How do I find out how much energy the power company I use gets its power from that? e: After reading that, I now understand why only one of the cooling towers was ever producing steam. I thought it was a backup or rotated between them. I didn't realize it wasn't used. fake edit: poo poo, I'm probably on fossil fuels http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleveland_Public_Power KoRMaK fucked around with this message at 03:48 on Sep 18, 2014 |
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Sep 18, 2014 03:45
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KoRMaK posted:Then what the gently caress have I been worrying about this whole time. How long does an area remain unsafe after a meltdown? So if this is true, why isn't Chernobyl cleaned up and inhabited? Or is it because it's only like 30-40 years old, and in another 20 it will be fine? Basically, the answers are "it depends". Chernobyl represents pretty much the worst case disaster - big explosion (not a nuclear explosion, that can't happen in power reactors) reactor exposed to the atmosphere, fuel melted, lumps of burning crap everywhere, huge mess. Lots and lots of radioactive material dumped into the environment with all sorts of different half-lives. Compare to Three-Mile-Island which was also a meltdown (probably) but the vast majority of the material was confined to the reactor and containment building. How long its unsafe depends on what you consider safe. The general background in most of the exclusion zone is comparable to areas that people live in today and significantly less than some parts of the world with very high natural backgrounds. Remember, the actual power station continued operating for over a decade after the disaster (only two of the four reactors were affected) - its not instantly lethal just being in the area. The problem comes from the debris and bio-accumulated contamination. While the wildlife has recovered (there being no people about will do that) its still a polluted area. It was a major industrial disaster and its worth not downplaying that. Reoccupying the area could probably be done but it would be expensive and Ukraine has been having a few problems with unruly neighbors recently so I'd not imagine anything would be done soon. Compare to Three-Mile-Island, which would be a more typical case - there everything was confined to the site and things got back to normal pretty quickly.
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Sep 18, 2014 03:46
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KoRMaK posted:Ok, so to me that makes the whole area generally un-livable. The sort of thing you have to remember is that not all accidents are equal. At Chernobyl the Soviets pretty much had a giant nuclear bomb factory burn to the ground in a totally uncontrolled shitstorm. Their reaction was a pretty minimal evacuation that came very late in the game. The result was a lot of preventable exposure that lead to fewer than 100 deaths. Fukushima on the other hand was a generating station that got obliterated when the ocean decided to come visit. Because the Japanese aren't totally insane and actually build safe plants it didn't go totally tits-up immediately. A few design flaws allowed some of the reactors to get out of control before they could be fully shut down and they destroyed themselves and breached containment. The Japanese government reacted with an abundance of caution and evacuated a HUGE zone. The result was a lot of people displaced, no serious exposures to the public, and some mildly radioactive fish. Three Mile Island went all wonky and melted down but because it was a safe design, and not under a mountain of water or on fire, its containment system worked as intended. The result was no danger to anyone, and a very expensive remediation process.
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Sep 18, 2014 04:03
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Continuing to run older less safe reactors beyond their original service life instead of building new efficient and incredibly safe reactors makes tons of sense when you think about it. 
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Sep 18, 2014 04:10
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crabcakes66 posted:Continuing to run older less safe reactors beyond their original service life instead of building new efficient and incredibly safe reactors makes tons of sense when you think about it.
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Sep 18, 2014 04:12
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Rent-A-Cop posted:Pretty much. It was a big industrial disaster and besides radiation threats there are a ton of really hosed up chemical contaminants all over the place. The Soviets were really bad about both chemical and radiological contamination. Large bits of the former USSR are seriously bad news due to negligent handling of all kinds of horrible industrial chemicals, and improper disposal of chemical and biological weapons. The initial response and cleanup efforts to Chernobyl were also completely reckless with little regard for responders lives. I mean they were incredibly brave for what they were asked to do. But it was a top to bottom shitshow.
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Sep 18, 2014 04:16
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KoRMaK posted:Then what the gently caress have I been worrying about this whole time. How long does an area remain unsafe after a meltdown? So if this is true, why isn't Chernobyl cleaned up and inhabited? Or is it because it's only like 30-40 years old, and in another 20 it will be fine? The shorter the half-life, the more dangerous exposure is. The real big problem wastes from the old light-water reactors are the transuranics - and (again if thorium breeder reactors ever get off the ground) we may be able to use those old waste products again in the reactors - and almost entirely eliminate all waste. I like posting this video as it's very informative and will answer some of your general questions as well as maybe get you pumped on some possible future tech: LFTR in 5 minutes - Thorium Remix 2011 Note that the first 5 minutes are a short synopsis of the rest of the video - watch the whole thing, I know it's over an hour, but it's worth watching. e: as mentioned, the thing to remember with Chernobyl is that a WHOLE bunch of things that should never have been able to happen were allowed to happen due to saftey regulations being actively ignored as well as a very silly design using graphite in the core I believe. Read up on it - it's not a mistake that will ever happen again, or frankly should have happened if people weren't intentionally being unsafe. JawKnee fucked around with this message at 04:21 on Sep 18, 2014 |
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Sep 18, 2014 04:19
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JawKnee posted:
I met an old engineer who worked as a construction worker on the plant when it was being built. He saw enough corners being cut and general incompetence that he wisely moved himself and his family out of the city as soon as the job was finished.
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Sep 18, 2014 04:56
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If you think nuclear power is good you should put your fedora down and quit living your jizz stains everywhere
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Sep 18, 2014 05:06
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Lord Waffle Beard posted:If you think nuclear power is good you should put your fedora down and quit living your jizz stains everywhere I don't think it's good I think it's great but I have no fedoras to put down I look forward to your E/N thread about falling off a roof while cleaning your inneffective solar panels
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Sep 18, 2014 05:09
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Lord Waffle Beard posted:If you think nuclear power is good you should put your fedora down and quit living your jizz stains everywhere And can you explain why, oh shitter of threads, that you think nuclear power is in fact not good?
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Sep 18, 2014 05:20
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Rent-A-Cop posted:Fukushima on the other hand was a generating station that got obliterated when the ocean decided to come visit. Because the Japanese aren't totally insane and actually build safe plants it didn't go totally tits-up immediately. A few design flaws allowed some of the reactors to get out of control before they could be fully shut down and they destroyed themselves and breached containment. The Japanese government reacted with an abundance of caution and evacuated a HUGE zone. The result was a lot of people displaced, no serious exposures to the public, and some mildly radioactive fish. The reactors were actually already offline by that point, but still contained waaaaay too much heat and needed constant pressure to be kept up by pumping water into the chambers. Because the reactors were offline they couldn't supply this power themselves and the backup diesel generators had to do this; they decided that the best place for backup generators keeping poo poo from getting ruined was in the basements - which got flooded and knocked out the backup power. They did have emergency backups in the form of batteries but once those ran out there was no way to keep water pumping into the reactors, so the water turned to steam, and some (or all) of the hydrogen separated and eventually exploded (which was what those explosions that everyone on the news was freaking out over were).
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Sep 18, 2014 05:22
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Caros posted:And can you explain why, oh shitter of threads, that you think nuclear power is in fact not good? Um he just said that nuclear power is bad b/c you're a goon what's so hard to understand.
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Sep 18, 2014 05:31
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ma i married a tuna posted:I'm not quite sure why no one is offering anything useful in this thread yet, but this idea seems viable. The notion that solar panels require more energy to produce than they deliver over the course of their lifetime is no longer true, and their purchase cost is no longer prohibitive. Obviously, location is a factor, but you could legislate for that - factor in yearly sun-hours, and environment obstruction. I can't imagine why this would not be cost- and energy effective all over the southwest, for example. Like most places in America, the Southwest has too many Republicans from other states angry the region isn't a sanctuary for the far-right.
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Sep 18, 2014 06:49
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Gonna laugh like crazy when we move to full "renewables" and then run out of the elements and minerals we need to make batteries and PV panels and poo poo. Death is certain
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Sep 18, 2014 15:14
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GROVER CURES HOUSE posted:Um he just said that nuclear power is bad b/c you're a goon what's so hard to understand. yeah but what isn't bad b/c goons??
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Sep 18, 2014 15:40
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ErichZahn posted:Like most places in America, the Southwest has too many Republicans from other states angry the region isn't a sanctuary for the far-right. Just frame it as a way to show know-it-all liberals that you're better at addressing issues they care about than they are; seriously, it's more effective than you think.
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Sep 18, 2014 15:43
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MizPiz posted:Just frame it as a way to show know-it-all liberals that you're better at addressing issues they care about than they are; seriously, it's more effective than you think. Right triangulation, best triangulation.
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Sep 18, 2014 19:56
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Nessus posted:It depends what you mean by "nearly eternal." A lot of dangerous nuclear waste will be very dangerous for a long time. Here's a very cool story about this fact.
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Sep 19, 2014 03:39
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Nessus posted:A lot of dangerous nuclear waste will be very dangerous for a long time. As extremely poisonous heavy metals, yes. Anything highly radioactive will stop being highly radioactive very quickly because it's highly radioactive. Nessus posted:There are steps that can reduce that risk, some of which involve "using it as fuel again" since the radioactive poo poo actually makes good reactor fuel. It involves a lot of plutonium which people could extract for nuclear bombs, however, which evidently presents a fundamental risk of some kind, possibly in case someone decides to steal it? I was never clear on this, but "proliferation risk" is usually cited when that factoid comes up. Making a plutonium-based bomb takes a lot of effort and would probably cause less panic than stealing some medical isotopes and setting off a couple of dirty bombs. You don't really see anyone panicking about that because Tom Clancy's never wrote a book about it. Anyone capable of making a Pu bomb already has the capacity to manufacture all the Pu they will ever need.
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Sep 19, 2014 04:55
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