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So? They will replace them. Turbines in nuclear plants also wear out, and the cooling systems, etc. It's hardly unique to wind or natural gas. In fact if you are using turbine-based peaking plants, they are pretty simple and reliable.

Yes, nuclear power plants wear out as well and when they do they should be replaced with new nuclear power plants. At least until something better comes along. Why would Denmark not want to replace worn out natural gas with something safer and with lower CO2 output?

Denmark's population is pretty static, standards of living increasing don't always require lots of additional power.

That's fine, I'll give you that. There is still a need for new power plants to replace the old.

It is compared to coal, and 7% of energy from natural gas is tiny, so it doesn't make very much difference if it is replaced with nuclear (which still has some CO2 footprint up until the point that uranium springs from the ground and refines itself). I think you are also confusing the overall CO2 footprint of natural gas, and the issue of leakage from reservoirs of it, which depends very much on the type of reservoir.

I do see that natural gas reduces CO2 output from coal by half. Nuclear power reduces that to near zero. Again, why use natural gas when there is an energy source that is safer, lower CO2, and just as cheap? It's not likely to completely replace natural gas for things like load following but it makes sense to reduce the natural gas, and certainly coal, burning as much as possible.

I think you are confusing Denmark with Norway there.

Well, let's see...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Coal power provided 48.0% of the electricity and 22.0% of the heat in district heating in Denmark in 2008; and in total provided 21.6% of total energy consumption (187 PJ out of 864 PJ).

Official statistics estimate 231,000 residences heated by oil in 2014 (down from 328,000 in 2013), but only 87,000 actually purchased oil during 2014.

Looks like Denmark could in fact displace a lot of coal and oil with nuclear and natural gas.

https://www.worldenergy.org/da...

As of 2014, Denmark only held 35 bcm of proved natural gas reserves. Denmarkâ(TM)s fields in the North Sea are mainly responsible for the countryâ(TM)s proved natural gas reserves and have allowed them to become a natural gas producer. Denmarkâ(TM)s natural gas production was only 4.6 bcm in 2014. However, their production level still plays an important role as it is sufficient to not only cover their domestic demand, but also allows for exportation as well. Denmark is self-sufficient in regards to natural gas as evidenced by their consumption level of 3.2 bcm in 2014. This self-sufficiency has aided Denmarkâ(TM)s energy security of supply.

Denmark also is a net exporter of natural gas. The country currently exports natural gas through pipeline trade. In 2014, Denmark exported 2.1 bcm of pipeline natural gas to other European countries.

The less natural gas Denmark burns the more they can sell to other European nations. They are already a net exporter and use of nuclear power can increase those exports and bring them greater income. Or, put another way, with their limited reserves of natural gas they may want to hold on to it as long as they can. Reducing domestic consumption can make this reserve last longer, perhaps to the point that some new technology for storage can come along to displace the need for natural gas for load matching.

Venezuela seems to have quite a bit of hydro capacity as well.

Yet another nation announces abandoning coal, a nation with ample hydro resources

"Ample hydro resources", my ass.

98% of Sweden's energy comes from carbon free or carbon neutral sources. (Hydro, Nuclear, and BIO) Only 2% of electricity is generated using fossil fuels, and almost all oil plants have been either shut down or relegated to reserve use.

http://www.worldenergy.org/dat...

The railway system is already electrified.
So the only thing using carbon sources nowadays is the transport sector on roads. (cars and trucks). Which is why we are electrifying them as well :)

If that number is just pulled from his ass, he has a surprisingly accurate back side.

70% of future oil delivery contracts(oil futures) are owned by speculators, and the large majority of those speculators are hedge funds and major banks. So while it may not be entirely accurate that 70% is accounted for by hedge funds, the real issue being discussed is speculation, and he was right about that.

http://www.oregonlive.com/politics/index.ssf/2012/03/rep_peter_defazio_asks_preside.html
http://www.worldenergy.org/documents/congresspapers/84.pdf

A quick search http://www.worldenergy.org/wec-geis/edc/ tells me that in America the two big players are coal, at around 50% and nuclear at 20%. Oil sits at 4%, a large chunk in my opinion; especially when you consider that some of the ones you cite generate much less, with solar, wind and geothermal (which is one of the biggest players in NZ) contributing less than 5% combined. The reason I singled out oil was the irony value.

I guess my main point is that electricity generation is still not terribly ecologically friendly. A 'low emissions' vehicle that requires you to convert chemical energy in the form of coal into heat, into movement, into electricity, into stored chemical energy in a battery, back to electricity and then into kinetic energy can't really be helping the environment all that much.

Hard to know, given we are still finding more deposits whenever we look, whether they are all there are. In fact, here in South Australia (with most of the uranium deposits of the worlds second largest uranium producer, the industry is growing rapidly. The major reason no-one knows how much uranium we have so far has simply been that until recently uranium exploration has been politically unpopular.
(Irony: The australian government intended to create a dump site for low level waste, and had agreed with WMC (now owned by BHP) to establish a low level site at their roxby downs mine, once a site could be found where there was insufficent uranium to be cost-effective to mine for. The only problem; two years later they still have not found the edges of the deposit.)

These things are big - the towers are 200 to 300 feet high. It takes 500 of them to equal one coal plant. And bigger wind turbines are coming. The latest General Electric 3MW turbines are so big they're only being considered for offshore installations. The Cape Cod Wind Farm project has produced much grumbling: "A 24 square mile industrial park the size of the island of Manhattan, 40 story turbines permanently scarring our ocean horizon, 580 lights destroying our nightscape, 130 air and sea navigation hazards in the middle of some of the foggiest air and waters in the world..." This is a generic problem with wind and solar energy. Once it starts really working, the installations are huge, because the energy densities are so low.

The downside of wind power, of course, is that it's intermittent. Typically, average power is only 30% of rated power. Of course, you don't get to pick when you get power. So you either need energy storage (like a pumped storage plant) or excess capacity in non-wind generation. Which means building more plant.

Still, wind power is real. Unlike much of the other stuff mentioned, like the "magnet engines" (an entry-level bozo idea), the "neutron generator" (a misunderstanding of a well-understood device), and "blacklight power" (generally considered to be a scam).

Tidal power seems attractive, but there are only about 20 good sites worldwide.

The Athabasca Oil Sands projects are already producing 1 million barrels of oil per day, and that should double by 2010. The scale of the operation is huge. It takes two tons of sand to yield one barrel of oil. That's one Panama Canal every ten months. Want a job as a heavy equipment operator? Move to Fort McMurray, Alberta. They're hiring. Rents have passed Silicon Valley levels, and the apartment vacancy rate is zero.

The future looks like coal. Too much coal. China is building about 50,000MW of coal-fired electric plants per year. US coal consumption has been roughly constant for a while, but will probably go up as oil prices increase.

Nuclear may make a comeback, probably when coal gets too ugly.

I used photovoltaic cells because that is the most commonly known technology. Thin-film PV cells (eg - copper indium diselenide and cadmium telluride) use less materials/square meter, but their conversion efficiencies are less and the infrastructure needed to support them is more; the amount of CO2 emissions per watt-hour (200 g/Wh) is pretty much a constant amongst the different technologies.

source: here

Now, I would suggest stopping the mouthing of empty platitudes and do some research of your own.

Lunar solar power is probably the biggest reason to go to the Moon. And before you blurt out some Sim City induced nonsense about microwave towers frying cities, PLEASE educate yourself. The powerlevels involved aren't enough to do anything of the sort.

Whenever you read another Peak Oil page, remember that we could use lunar solar power to provide first world levels of energy use to everyone on the planet, while simultaneously nearly eliminating the pollution caused by coal, oil, and nuclear plants.

The question isn't "Why go?", it's "Why didn't we go sooner?"

Three words:
________Lunar Solar Power__________

>Hybrid cars don't use energy from the "electric engine" to slow the car.

You are wrong.

Hybrid Electric Vehicles

An electric motor provides torque to the drive wheels for acceleration as well as for braking.

Yes, actually. This isn't just some sand scooped off a beach. Solar panel grade silicon comes from the leftovers after semiconductor grade silicon users have picked through their crystal wafers, which is why there is a shortage in the first place, since there is a narrow range of quality ("almost" good enough for semiconductors). As for titanium, my 30 year old encyclopeda says its one of the 10 most common metals on the planet. Titanium Oxide is cheaply produced and used liberally in paint.

Titanium is malleable when hot (meaning you can flatten it into foil). So producing titanium foil is probably not a difficult task, depending on how hot "hot" is. (Though the article mentions that the titanium foil used is thinner than household aluminum foil. The process looks like it would be easy anyway, but time consuming.)

As for your post on waste products, the most common smelting procedure in use works without catalyst or flux to produce pig-iron and Titanium Oxide, though this process is common because of its use in paint. This process was recently developed for producing metallic titanium, its outputs are salt (NaCl), titanium, and whatever impurities get washed into the liquid sodium stream and removed later.

Yeah, and disguise it as a completely harmless power plant.

It is electricity that is used to crack water into hydrogen, so to say that they are using something unavailable to the US is wrong. The US has tremendous Hydro potential, if you can get the damn tree-huggers out of the way...

Reference: http://www.worldenergy.org/wec-geis/edc/countries/ Iceland.asp

The article I read was in an IEEE magazine. This link I found has wording and images similar to the magazine. See the 3rd section to answer your questions.
LUNAR SOLAR POWER SYSTEM FOR ENERGY PROSPERITY WITHIN THE 21ST CENTURY
-Brandon

What we know is that higher income and education reduces number of children.

The question is actually how much people with income approx equal to US or that one in Europe the earth could sustain?

from my memory the estimation was about 10-15 billions people. And estimation of the population we have in hands say that earth population will not exceed 15 billions at least for coming 100 years.

as for sustaining energy for every one of 15 billions. There are alternatives see for example solar power from moon idea.

(Slashdot had an article on solar power energy report to congress last year, later I found the link to report of the author of idea see http://www.worldenergy.org/wec-geis/publications/d efault/tech_papers/17th_congress/4_1_33.asp )

Coupled with possible space elevator http://www.spaceelevator.com/ and new advances in solar panels with higher efficiency such as for example approach here http://www.lbl.gov/Science-Articles/Archive/MSD-fu ll-spectrum-solar-cell.html the paper http://www.lbl.gov/Science-Articles/Archive/assets /images/2004/Mar-24/Multiband%20Semiconductor.pdf it will cost to develop even less than estimated in original suggestion and thus cost of power will be even less.

also even though we are far from fusion power - but nuclear power on fast neutrons ( as we call it here in Russia not sure what is the proper call for the approach in English) ( so not that well known nuclear power stations on slow neutrons but that power stations based on new approaches with greater efficiency) could provide energy for the earth ( with the already known resources of uranium) for 2500 years! ) to reduce nuclear pollution it is possible to use such things as http://www.anlw.anl.gov/htdocs/anlw_history/reacto rs/ifr.html with recycling of nuclear waster.

That is - I think that rather than try to control growth of population it is better to devise and pursue clean ways to get power and provide better living standards for everybody - then there will be less pollution and the growth of population will stop.

A good place to make and run solar cells would be good old Luna Firma. Check out this report. Lunar Solar Power

The world population currently stands at over 6 billion, and growing. If only 17% of the world uses simply one extra IP, then your supply is exhausted.

Let's put this in perspective. With more than one third of world's population lacking proper sanitation and nearly third of the world lacking access to commercial energy, I sincerely doubt the whole population would need even a single IP.

The Space Studies Institute has plenty of studies and reports on the benefits we could receive from power from space - solar satellites, Lunar Solar Power, etc.. There is no basic technology mystery there (unlike, say, fusion), the hardest pieces are some development bits relating to large-scale construction in space and use of resources on the Moon. But there's no public political interest in this for some reason, and the NASA budget category for this has been basically zeroed out for years (I believe the total spent has been about $50 million, with only $2 million spent looking at lunar options).

Why aren't we at least spending more money on research in this area? So many billions are spent on nuclear power, but space-based solar power is the ONLY way we'll ever move beyond Kardashev leve 0.7!

Though not Tidal Energy. There is a (1990 - used to be ?) a working 1.1MW/150kW oscillating water column power plant using Wave Energy near my home town in India. There seems to be some details here. It was a research project done by IIT, Madras. A lot of details, pictures etc. can be found here.