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Bruce Sterling On Lovelock's Pro-Nuclear Stance
Robert Berger writes "Bruce Sterling, author, journalist, editor, critic, blogger is also the creator of the Viridian Notes series of emails that comment on articles and websites about global warming. The current Viridian Note 00415: Doom is Nigh (scroll down past the inital links) has inserted his Sterling's pithy comments into Jame Lovelock's assertion that 'Nuclear power is the only green solution.'" (See also this earlier Slashdot post about Lovelock's nuclear apologia.)
a burning, corrosive, glowing green.
Unfortuately, coal and oil suck too. Natural gas is better, but also somewhat finite. And the other alternatives suck, too -- solar and wind might be eco-friendly, but they sure ain't cheap. Think the recession in 2000 was bad? Wait until you see what doubling the cost of electricity would do.
Bruce can make all the "pithy comments" he wants, but unless he has some terrific solution stashed up his sleeve they're ultimately not very helpful or insightful. So, unless you're looking to opt out of using electricity and other sources of power (I was camping this weekend -- it's fun, but it's no way to live), it's a necessary evil.
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
It is the "green" power solution... until a plant goes crazy, and it becomes the "yellow" power solution.
I don't see how this qualifies as a news piece, even by slashdot standards.
Somebody writes a piece in support of nuclear power. Some blogger fisks it, with as poor or lesser quality than the original article was written. No hard science, lots of hyperbole, and random conjectures.
Juvenile activity all around.
What the hell was timothy thinking?
If he's trying to advance his political views- and I'm not so sure this is the proper forum for him to do so- this is the least subtle and least effective way to do so.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
Bruce never even touches Lovlock's central thesis: that at current rates of usage and current estimation of reserves, oil will stop meeting our energy needs within just a few decades, and atomic fission is the only replacement we know can take it's place.
If Sterling's comments are taken at face value, then he wants to see a return to 1700s-style labor-intensive agriculture.
You'll seriously get a higher quality of discussion just re-reading last week's Slashdot, rather than looking for any insight in that blob^Hg.
If he thinks switching to a 'green' power will end global warming, he is in for a big suprise. The Earth is just returning to its pre-mini ice age temperature.
Before several volcanoes spewed greenhouse gasses into the air (several centuries before the industrial revolution), farmers in what is now New Foundland and England grew wine grapes. They will be able to again in another 50 to 100 years...
Hey kiddies, it's life. The world get hot, the world gets cold. Live with it or die, because the Greens won't allow us to build the technology to leave.
Just me $0.02 worth.
You mean "misinformed wisecracks". The only reason to conflate nuclear power and nuclear weapons, as is done repeatedly here, is because you want to use the fallacy of equivocation to trick your audience into viewing even the safest reactor designs as weapons of mass destruction. You might as well blame gasoline users for the horrors of napalm.
I was under the impression that Bruce Stirling was a cool guy, although I never read any of his stuff, but he comes across as a total asshat in this article. Here is one teeny example:
nuclear energy from its start in 1952 has proved to be the safest of all energy sources. (((If you don't count the nuclear energy released over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, that is.)))
Yeah, those 300,00 dead in the nuclear attacks on Japan certainly look horrible compared to the millions of air pollution deaths. He continually treats nuclear power and nuclear weapons as one and the same, and generally comes off making no sense.
I stopped reading halfway through, I couldn't stand it anymore, but he basically says, "What are you thinking? Nukes are bad. I don't care what evidence you have. I don't care what the alternatives are. Bad! Bad! Bad!" It's like a satire or caricature on the wacko ultra-environmental movement. Maybe that's what it really is. If not, then my only response is to say, what a jerk.
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
"Um, nukes are bad, mmmkay?"
No, really, that's it. "There are risks, so we shouldn't do it". That sums up the entire argument. He equates all nuclear energy with nuclear weapons. I also find it rather amusing that he assumes that the only use for oil is in fuel; this is not true. It would take a lot more than "green energy" to allow us to "leave the oil and coal in the ground"; we would have to completely break our current dependence on polymers as we know them.
There's plenty of propaganda on the other side, too, don't get me wrong. But I find it amusing to find people who consider nuclear energy "too dangerous" yet push for plenty of other equally-dangerous technologies. Let's have some rationality here, please.
Ok, this is nice, but neither side gives any evidence. Since when does "no it isn't" count as a refutation?
Everything that guy has to say is about nuclear weapons. Well, guess what. WE ALREADY HAVE NUCLEAR WEAPONS. There, accept it. Get over it. There is no danger of additional reactors turning the US, or China, or India, or Western Europe into nuclear armed powers. NONE, because they already are.
It's easy to tear down someone else's proposal when you don't have on of your own and need rely on nothing but juvenile comebacks. Get some actual evidence. And you know what, even if you count the victims of Hiroshima and Nagisaki against nuclear power (but don't count the victims of conventional warfare against fossil fuels) and you throw in Cherenoble, and maybe round everything up by a few hundred thousand just to be sure, Nuclear killed far fewer people per kWh of energy. It is almost impossible to imagine a scenario in which it might be otherwise. Fossil fuels kill tens (hundreds, depending on how you count) of thousands of people each year.
A nuclear disaster would have to kill tens of millions (at least) in order to even the score. Nobody can even conceive of how that could happen with civilian reactors built to even the most incompetent of standards, like Cherenobl. About the only real possibility is if WW-III breaks out and people start tossing around nuclear weapons (which they already have, and don't need civilian reactors for), and that is far MORE likely if we start fighting over oil.
Just once I'd like to hear a well reasoned out anti-nuclear position. Include some numbers (you know, dollars and cents, lives lost, that sort of thing) and keep them accurate. Include an honest asessment of nuclear waste dangers (assuming various means of disposal) and honest asessments of nuclear proliferation. I have never seen any evidence that civilian nuclear power leads to proliferation, but it seems to be a given for the anti-nuke types. Japan and South Korea both have reactors, and neither has nuclear weapons.
The only scenario the anti-nuke types ever argue against is such a complete straw man. They assume we dump all the nuclear waste into the nation's beer supply, give away spent fuel to everyone with a driver's license, and somehow (though nobody can really imagine exactly how this happens) have lots of melt downs in highly populated areas. Seriously. Assume an even marginally competent nuclear program (needn't be perfect) and then try a comparison with our fossil fuel system. See how that treats you.
It's like comparing against an oil economy where it's assumed that 99% of the oil is dumped raw into the ocean, the rest is burned in the foulest, dirtiest machines imaginable, and that somehow access to oil allows every fool who can rub two sticks together to build a jet fighter with which to kill people. Be serious.
Nuclear is to power what democracy is to political systems. Yes, it sucks. But sucks less than the alternatives.
- I don't need to go outside, my CRT tan'll do me just fine.
I think Sterling's comments would have been decidedly better had they actually proposed something else, instead of attacking an idea that is a feasable solution to significantly lowering the emission of greenhouse gasses. I have to wonder if he would have been among the people objecting to wind power because it ruined the view, if he lived in Martha's Vineyard.
I don't need to be made to look evil. I can do that on my own. - Christopher Walken
This piece is sad. The commentary is written by someone who obviously has a working mind and can write (see his published works) but is so blinded by an irrational phobia against anything connected to the N word he is blindly attacking it, and because apparently his mind shuts down in the presence of the N word he isn't even doing a very good job of rebutting the idea.
This guy can't even tell the difference between fusion bombs and modern reactor designs that are pretty darned failsafe.
If you are really concerned about global warming, dependence on foreign oil, etc, you have to at least have a rational discussion about fission power. Which is why the ultra greens are having none of that and attacking with such ferocity, to them it ia a matter of religion, not science. Gaia told them in a dream or something that "Thou Shalt not Fission the Atoms that I have given unto thee." That's religion for you though, Galieo wasn't the first to be persecuted by religious intolerance and apparently isn't anywhere near the last.
Democrat delenda est
I don't care if this Bruce Sterling person is Albert Einstein, Gandhi or Jesus. Nobody in the entire world can critique anything like that and sound intelligent.
Not only is he just sitting there with the debating sophistication of five-year-olds saying "I'm rubber and you're glue and what bounces off me sticks to you", he is confusing the issue of nuclear energy generation with nuclear weapons. Nuclear energy can be safe, if treated properly. Nobody will argue that nuclear weapons are anything but dangerous. "Painted with the same brush" is the phrase that pays, here.
Having said that: he has the right to say what he wants. We have the right to laugh and point.
HBH"Smart is sexy." -- D. Scully ("War of the Coprophages")
...the point of this story. All I saw was a bunch of smartass comments by someone who I guess is respected for his opinion. Anyway the whole thing reads like an Anonymous Coward with ADD.
While this might cause a small hit into the profits of those corporations, average Joe isn't going to go to the poorhouse because he has to pay more for electricity
This won't cause any hit in the profits of corporations because they'll simply pass on the cost of electricity to the consumer.
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
He's right. Unless there's a fantastic amount of oil and coal someplace that we can get at reasonably soon, or unless all the cars in the world start getting 90 MPG Real Soon Now, the price of gas is going to go to a place where it's not usable anymore.
Try to understand: We're not just talking about those evil SUV drivers paying $80 to $100 at the pump. The depletion of the world's fossil fuel supplies will mean a breakdown on a global scale if it isn't planned for *well* in advance. We're talking about a collapse of the global economy and a return to a way of living that can't support the global population. Famine, disease, abject poverty, devistating wars, genocide. A return to a feudal economy, a breakdown of our civilization and another dark age for my children and grandchildren to live in.
While some of the more frustrated environmentalists might suggest that this is what we have coming to us, I'd rather see it avoided. You can't wait for it to happen and then start responding -- humanity has got to get on this one now, and pie-in-the-sky "what if we could increase the yield of solar cell" shit isn't going to cut it.
Once you devise a method of generating power that can compete on an economic level with nuclear, of *course* the world will switch. It only makes sense that we'd switch -- it's basic economics. But we can't count on the tech genie popping up at the last second to save our bacon.
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
"Because Science" is one step from "Because old book". Try "Because of my experiment testing my falsifiable assertion".
Even though nuclear energy is relatively safe, environmentally friendly, and the only practical solution to global warming we have right now, getting people of Mr. Sterling's generation to accept it will be impossible.
These people have grew up their whole lives with the word "nuclear" being associated with the word "Armageddon". Nuclear energy is permanently associated in their brain with "biblical disaster". They have been sold fear of nuclear annihilation from childhood (duck-and-cover propaganda), to adolescence (China Syndrome), to adulthood (The Day After), and are even now being sold fear about nuclear energy (Iraq weapons of mass destruction, anyone?). Baby Boomer response to nuclear energy is like a Catholic priest response to Satanism. They are never going to be psychological capable of viewing the situation rationally. Nuclear power has been their "Satan" figure for their entire lives, and they will never change.
Once the Boomers start dying off, people will realize the benefits of nuclear power once again. Hopefully global warming won't mess things up too bad before that happens.
Dang, hope Santa has a contingency plan.
Harpo Tunnel Syndrome--my wrist feels funny.
Of course, in the end, this means that we (taxpayers) are paying more money to fund wind and solar producers (*not* wind and solar research, BTW, but to pay off people to have these plants).
If wind and solar were really reliable and less expensive, what in God's name makes you think we'd be relying on fossil fuels? The oil lobby is powerful, sure, but the rest of the economy would crush them like a bug if a cheaper source of energy came along. That's capitalism for you.
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
Bruce Sterling has written some decent material in the past, but I have to say the link to his Blog demonstrates a complete lack of an ability to carry on a conversation. Reading it makes it sound like Lovelock's argument is constantly trailed by smartass remarks and links, with never a solid argument to be found by Sterling.
For God's sake, this is Sterling's blog? I would expect a paragraph AT LEAST at the end to mark Bruce's idea or assertion, but instead his page/article left me more confused and with the impression Sterling just hates Lovelock instead of having a good counter-point.
Electricity generation is only a fraction of fossil fuel use. Industrial process heat, living space heating, and vehicles will produce almost as much greenhouse gas as we do today even if, like France, we go almost-all-nuclear for the power grid.
We could go to electric vehicles but not with today's generation of batteries. The battery pack in my Prius weighs about a hundred pounds and stores only as much energy as a few ounces of gasoline.
Things get interesting if we could build small reactors economically and operate them safely with off-the-shelf personnel. Then you could have nuclear cogeneration systems where a factory has its own reactor to generate electricity and generate heat for factory processes. Pebble-bed reactors promise to fill this role, if they work as expected.
You might even notice other goods and services increase in cost. It's silly to think that the cost of electricity is only reflected in your electricity bill.
...it can also be used in a devastating weapon.
Gasoline (oil) is therefore also bad, due to the existance of napalm.
Electricity must be horrendous, because of the electric chair.
Coal is bad because gunpowder exists.
Jesus, Bruce...any energy source can be compacted and used as a weapon.
I think you have your terms confused. Nuclear reactors are sub-critical, meaning that the fusion reaction is not exponential like it would be in a nuclear weapon where you want all the energy released at one time.
Also, the way fusion reactors are designed, I assume that a critical reaction would be almost impossible given the grade of material used.
"You know, I sense the makings of a really good, sensible deal here. Shut off the carbon. Destroy the coal companies and oil companies. Use nukes for fifty years while developing sustainable energy. Then shut off the nukes. Become fully sustainable. Legislate that all, worldwide, with global diplomacy."
Bwahahahahahahahahahaaaa....
Anyway.
I think addressing why this guys vision for the future is totally freaking insane is an exercise in futility, akin to debunking the moon landing hoax or creationist websites. It's just not worth the effort, because no matter how well reasoned or cited (to be honest, the article he was ripping was neither) you're dealing with a true believer.
But regardless, the fact he fails to even suggest a realistic alternative is telling. And while risks of global warming and nuclear power are real, most people seem to be happy enough with the current system i.e. we use fossil fuels until it becomes more efficient to use something else. As the price of gas rises, we increase our usage of alternative energy sources. Until then _very few people actually give a damn_, at least in the sense of "I'll give up my SUV", much less "I'm willing to give up the internal combustion engine."
No doubt global warming may cause us problems in the future, at which point we will have to deal with them. I don't think it's clear that a massive investment of time and money to completely overhaul our energy policies (and therefore, our economic and social policies) is really any better than dealing with the problem 50 years from now. Who know what will happen between now and then?
I could be convinced, but present some evidence at least. Even a shred or two would be nice after that boatload ill written and scientifically inept crap.
... or just classic misdirection of a discussion to argue the absurd. Both sides of the nuclear debate use this technique.
... just answer the question that you wished was asked that makes the other side look stupid ... oh and make sure your answer is derogatory.
... nope ... everyone would rather spew the same old rhetoric that has been regurgitated for nearly 60 years. Surely we have learned something in all that time to add to the debate?
Q:"Is nuclear power useful?"
A:"No, you idiot, nukes are bad!"
Q:"Is waste from nuclear power managable?"
A:"Would you hippies rather be breathing coal dust?"
Never answer the question
How about some discussion regarding breeder vs. non-breeder reactors. Or half-life of waste. Or decommissioning of reactors. Or standardized independent safety inspection and rules
I hereby festoon you all the Viridian RSS feed. Much handier than getting the Viridian list in email.
A couple of statements :
There are credible statistical studies that show less than 50 people total died from the Chernobyl accident. There were approximately 600 additional cases of thyroid cancer (3 deaths) and little elevation in other forms of cancer, and 38 people who died from direct exposure as well as several hundred who survived acute radiation poisoning.
While not cheap, it is a relatively paltry human cost, comparable to a major accident with conventional forms of power and industry.
Bruce Sterling has little of value to add to this debate. He equates nuclear energy plants using different elements and isotopes to nuclear warheads. Conversion is possible, it is true...but Lovelock is not proposing building nuclear plants in countries that do not already have the warheads. The biggest energy user in the world, the united states, already has so many warheads and so much plutonium it has no need to make more using any power reactors built, and China has a considerable amount as well.
With all this said, solar may ultimately be a better idea. The relatively limited research into creating more efficient solar panels has yield extremely promising results. A panel that is perhaps 50% efficient and wafer thin, mass produced and used to cover vast tracts of unused land might ultimately be cheaper than burning coal.
It seems clear that were the 200 billion already burned in Iraq used to develop this technology further and built the vast plants to make solar panels of this quality on a large scale one would get better results.
Still a moron.
Pretty much his whole commentary, the strong point of his whole argument, is two words: "with NUKES!" This is religion, not science. Nukes are bad, unquestionably bad, so bad that they trump all other arguments. They are, after all, NUKES!
(pause for reader to quake in fear)
Nuclear power is, like any other energy source, a tool. Like all tools, it can be misused. You can make amazingly destructive bombs with nuclear power, so powerful, in fact, that they've never been used since the first two. But you can also make very, very effective explosives with oil... a fuel-air bomb is vastly destructive. And those, as far as I know, HAVE BEEN used. So which is really worse?
Mr. Sterling, whether he intends to or not, is playing on the confusion between nuclear weapons and nuclear power. Think how silly his argument would look with a different energy source.... "with FIRE!"
Humans don't survive radiation very well, we are quite susceptible to it. That does not, however, imply that all of Nature is. In fact, it appears that very few species suffer from radiation as much as we do. The Earth has not always been as cozy and comfortable as it is now, and humans are a relatively recent evolutionary offshoot. We die from even small amounts of the stuff, but most species don't.
(we argued back and forth about why this is, in another thread... no conclusions drawn. Regardless, Bikini Atoll, the site of 20+ bomb tests, including the first hydrogen bomb, is a lush tropical paradise. It's not safe for people to live there, but Nature is doing JUST FINE.)
Since humans are the ones getting the primary benefit from nuclear power, it is just that we're the ones who suffer if we blow it. From an environmental standpoint, nuclear power is nearly perfect. If we screw up completely and have some horrid catastrophe that renders the Earth too radioactive for human habitation, it'll be the best possible outcome for most other species, since their most aggressive competitor would be wiped out.
Now, I did think his comment about how we'll just add nuclear power and keep using oil to be pretty accurate... we'd need a concerted effort to switch power sources, not just supplement them. And of course we'd have to take care of the waste, but that's far from an insurmountable problem. However much it costs, it'll probably take only one prevented major hurricane on the East Coast to pay for it. (which, of course, we wouldn't see directly... but if the weather stopped getting worse, it'd MORE than pay for itself.)
I do think we'd end up with 'nuclear slums', low-rent districts around most plants. Poor people would be the ones to suffer first, but that's ALWAYS true of EVERY technology. And in this case, it would at least be a deliberate choice.
I am cheerfully willing to trade nuclear slums for cleaner air, cleaner water, and more natural weather patterns. I'd probably even live in one.... since I'm such a strong proponent, I really oughta be putting myself in the line of fire, so to speak.
This wise-crack got me confused. People sometimes say that there is no safe level of radio-activity, not realising that this is a methodological assumption, rather than an empirical fact. When scientists have tried to investigate this, using the natural variation in background radiation and existing epidemilogical data, they have found that radiation is a health tonic!
Some scientists have speculated that this might even be a real effect, not a statistical artifact. Their idea is that damage from free radicals is a much bigger deal than damage by background radition. Cells have repair mechanisms that get turned on in response to increased metabolism and the consequent rise in free radicals. Lags in the regulation of repair are responsible for much of the damage caused by free radicals, and if radiation upregulated the repair mechanism that could more than compensate for the actual damage done by the radiation.
My guess, from having done research on speech recognition, is that most scientists just don't get how hard it is to do statistics right, and the "tonic" effect of radiation will turn out to be an artifact, probably due to incorrect compensation for regional variations in cigarette smoking.
Meanwhile Bruce Sterling's attempt at sarcasm is a bit of a disaster, revealing that the controversy over the dangers (or otherwise) of low levels of radiation has passed him by.
Thing is, things aren't so simple as just the cost of power. One of the projects I had as a first year applied physics was 'sustainable energy'. When you actually look at the facts and figures, and are not just reacting to your gut reaction, nuclear is for the next 50 to 100 years the only way to go.
/it costs them bigtime to sell that power over the border!/ I know this sounds strange, but that's the way the world energy market works (well, call it a localised energy market, seeing as 'green energy' can be bought and sold like stock globally [but that's only on paper], but the actual electricity can't be transfered worldwide).
Wind power just doesn't cut it: reason being for one that it can't provide power all the time, and can't provide power when the wind is too slow or too hard. There's a number of nifty calculations you can make, but all you have to do is look at Finland, I believe it was: they invested heavily in wind power and are now regretting it heftily. Not only is power not being produced when it's needed, but it's being overproduced when it's not needed, and
And to boot, it's way more expensive than any other from of energy except solar.
Nice segue into that, eh? Solar energy is prohibitively expensive too. And appart from that, it's not very efficient. And (again), it can't provide power when needed. Which is not just important for cost reasons [so you don't have to buy from other countries] but more importantly it's important for getting the current to stay at a stable voltage so your equipment doesn't explode.
Not only that, but solar cells are notoriously poluting in their manufacture.
Then there is tidal energy, which sounds nice...but there has been little to no research about it's environmental impacts (you know, the lack of which got us here in the first place?) like reducing tides, or maybe removing so much energy from the ocean tides that certain ocean streams will stop/reverse/whatever. BTW, none of this research has been done for solar and wind either: whilst there is research that says that localised heating up of the atmosphere might be enough to change tornado's from their path, we have no idea how we will affect the trade winds/whatever with these forms of energy. Oh, and again, to top it off, tidal energy is expensive.
I'll skip fossil fuels. Go look up the research yourself.
Now the two drawback to nuclear power in the form of fission (fussion won't happen for 50 to a hundred years, at least in a viable, mass-enough form) are the waste and risk of meltdown. Nuclear weapons are not a problem, unless we start enriching the radioactives just for powergenerating...and there's no reason to do that. As for terrorists? They don't have the resources to do that in secret. Hell, not only am I studying applied physics, but I used to study mechanical engineering: you need mayor funding and little bells will be going off in all the security agencies in the world when you start to try amasing the materials neccessary (which is one reason I started laughing when Powell went before the UN with his story about "tubes of such high tollerance" story...the tollerances he was talking about where a)used in many, many appliacations and b) in all probability not sufficient for cyclotrons. Anyway...).
Back to the watse and meltdown. Let's have a look at the latter: meltdown will be pretty much a thing of the past when the new generation (IV) of reactors come online. These are (amongst others) those pebblebed reactors you might've heard of. Not only that, but if something does go wrong (and with the new designs, it's not very likely, but we must assume a worst case scenario) it will be contained. We are a long way away from the not-up-to-standards, bad-maintenance reactor of Chernobyl; current standards mean that if something does go catastrophically wrong, only a square mile or so of the earth is rendered uninhabitable. Which is much preferable to rendering the whole earth uninhabitable as we are with the current fossil fuels.
And then there is t
-- Waht? Tehr's a preveiw buottn?
There is a bigger issue with solar and wind than simply cost: total power output. Demand for electricity is not going to drop dramatically and in all likelihood will continue to increase.
Now what about wind... Allow me to direct you to The Earth Policy Institute, an organization with a decidedly alternative/renewable energy bias. (Not a bad thing, just making it clear that it has no reason to artificially lower their numbers to make wind look bad.) Their examination of wind power is quite optimistic. Pay special attention to their expectations: gathering hydrogen for fuel in cars, halting coal usage, etc. Now let's look at the data they used for that. They cite a total U.S. potential (not current, but potential) of 1,221,191 megawatts. With that comes, I assume, the expectation that every possible free tract of land had a windmill farm stuck on it.
~1kW per square meter is what you have to work with in solar energy. When you have 8-12% efficient solar panels, that means you can get up to 80-120W per square meter...for six hours per day in the desert without trackers...on a cloudless day... In areas with more cloud cover, shorter days in winter, etc. the numbers drop off dramatically. Then we calculate that consumer solar cells degrade by 2-5% every year of use and have a life span of ~30 years. Then keep in mind that you have to keep all of those cells clean -- more energy used for something besides keeping the lights on. Don't forget that you have to actually manufacture those solar cells which of course means clean rooms (the real reason behind the costs) and the aquisition and refinement of requisite building materials. And to top it all off, when you cover large tracts of land with solar cells, that land gets less sunlight. So yeah, we can all put solar panels on our homes, get by on what we get, and then deal with the health problems after a year with more than average rainfall causes refridgerators to cease functioning and food to rot.
Repeat after me: large-scale power cannot be a "good enough" proposition where a 5% shortfall is acceptable.
So I want to get a pencil and paper and work out the total amount of land area needed to sustain 3,848,000,000,000 kilowatt-hours (Yes! That's 3.848 trillion!) of electricity -- of which 53% of that currently comes from coal. Now if you come up with a calculation that if you completely covered the sunny state of Arizona with solar cells, it would still not be enough to replace just coal, you're on the right track. To top it all off, it costs about $30,000 on average to fit solar panels sufficient to power a typical house. How much would it cost to cover Arizona will solar cells?
Repeat after me: It doesn't matter how much you are willing to pay. Solar and wind alone cannot do the job.
Solar and wind are excellent candidates for supplementary energy sources. They are great for providing primary electricity to many residences (provided that folks can afford the $30K price tag). However, most folks will still need the grid as a backup and supplement. Hell, I'd be bullish on solar if for no other reason than the effective elimination of large-scale blackouts. But it still remains a supplementary energy source. There is far more to electricity demand than making sure the microwaves and personal computers have power.
So what can produce that much power? Coal, oil, natural gas, and nuclear. In the US, we have hundreds of years' worth of coal. Oil and natural gas reserves are far more finite and are needed for materials (plastics, vehicles, etc.). And that leaves us with nuclear. Existing models will blow through our uranium reserves in less than a century. However, models that aren't just a one-pass design can not only use existing nuclear waste, but also nuclear weapons material. AND they extend the pote
- I don't need to go outside, my CRT tan'll do me just fine.
No one knows where to put the stuff. Everyone says "not in my back yard" and that "nothing will ever grow there. EVER." When you live someplace where there isn't anyplace to put it that you know of, those comments make a lot of sense. Only since I've moved to Utah did I find out there are thousands(?) of square miles of...nothing. Of big salty deserts. Where nothing will ever grow. EVER. People also worry about transporting it..."what if there is an accident?" Also in Utah is an airforce base where they make/dispose of chemical weapons. The most dangerous weapons in the world are disposed of just outside the city. And how do they get there? late at night on the public freeway. And its allowed. Still, regardless of all these facts, the overwhelming hatred for nuclear power is louder than anything else. Shows to go that no matter what, the hypocrisy of the "Green" to nuclear power conquers all.
- Nuclear waste.
- Plutonium falling into the wrong hands => nuclear weapons on a large scale.
- Radioactive leaks during operation.
- Containing the radioactive waste from the mining operations.
Radioactive leaks? Not a problem. The only two leaks of any significance were Chernobyl and Three Mile Island. Both of those came down to poor plant design combined with operator error (Chernobyl in particular). That leaves waste and plutonium.Waste falls into two categories: "low level" and "high level". Low level waste is your clothing, reactor parts, etc. Store them for fifty or so years, and they're no longer a significant problem. High level waste, on the other hand, is the nasty stuff, and it's what causes all the problems.
HLW includes things like plutonium and other trans-uranic elements (elements heavier than uranium), as well as fission by-products. Those fission by-products are mostly short lived; the long lived products are strontium-90 and caesium-137 for the most part. So the waste problem basically reduces to dealing with the heavy, trans-uranic elements; dealing with the uranium that hasn't fissioned; and dealing with the strontium and caesium. Everything else decays away quickly enough that storage for a year (at most) is adequate.
Trans-uranics and uranium can be dealt with by reprocessing and turning them into additional fuel for the reactor. The problem then becomes keeping this material out of the hands of those that wish to make nuclear weapons. No, I don't have an answer for that problem; I wish I did. The strontium and caesium... again, I don't know. Solve those two problems, and nuclear power is definitely a viable option. They're big ones, though...
The US has coal reserves for about 250 years at current consumption levels. Not trivial to be sure, but not quite 1,000 years.
On the other hand, newer nuclear plants can extend the life of existing uranium reserves to a length of time longer than the entire history of humanity up until this point. And the use of IFR/AFR and other modern designs can do so without mining another once of uranium for some time by processing existing weapons and waste.
- I don't need to go outside, my CRT tan'll do me just fine.
It is cheap, compared to renewables, even after the decomissioning costs. Don't be surprised that the nuclear power plant operators don't want to pay the decomissioning. No private corporation wants to pay any taxes and all want the most benefits they can get.
Actually, the grocery store is a good place to start. Did you know the largest single cost of a big grocery store is the electricity bill ? It can easicly exceed $100,000 a month, more than labor.
Hmm. I don't think this is true. Go to bizstats and check out the costs of running a grocery store. Utilities consume just 2% of revenue. Most of the money a grocery spends is on obtaining the products to sell, about 75%.
It may be true that much of that 75% goes to pay for producers' energy to make those goods sold, though. Farming takes a lot of energy and so does making producing AL from bauxite like you mentioned. So I suppose you're correct in spirit.
This is completely untrue. Fusion has similar constraints to fission. Fusion requires an enoumous ammount of compression in order to increase the chances of neucli interaction. Fission is easily induced simply by sticking enough U235 or plutonium together. Of course, you could achieve fission with just a few grams of plutonium if you compressed it enough, the difference is that you don't have to. In order to achieve fusion just by sticking enough hydrogen together, you'd need a mass similar to the mass of the sun in order to achieve enough compression. That's a pretty big reactor core! So no, the main advantage of fusion is the abundance of fuel. Fusion even produces radioactive waste (though it is short lived).
In the end it makes no sense to pomote a far-off technology that has never been successfully implemented over an existing and proven technology that could be implemented now. Sure, fusion research should continue, but to do so to the exclusion of all other nuclear research is foolish at best.
One *huge* difference between Chrenobyl and TMI that people often forget to mention is that Chernobyl released tonnes and tonnes of radioactive material directly into the atmosphere, whereas TMI did not. The background radiation levels of the atmosphere were noticably (with radiation counting instruments) higher even hundreds of miles away from the reactor.
;-) After monitoring and replacing them for months, he recorded no significant change above natural background radiation. For all intents and purposes, there was no release of radiation.
Contrast this with TMI. At the time, my high school Chemistry and Physics teacher lived less than 2 miles downwind of the plant, so naturally he was quite worried. He placed radiation detection badges around his neighborhood. (He was a civil defense neighborhood captain, or something. This was still during the Cold War
Technically speaking, there was some release of radiation. The reactor did not "blow" and there was no direct release of radiation. However, the fuel vessel did crack and release radioactive water into the reactor chamber, some of which evaporated into the atmosphere. However, as mentioned before, the amount of radiation was statistically insignificant.
The reason that Chernobyl blew up and TMI did not is a matter of reactor design. Briefly, all nuclear reactors need something called a "mederator" to allow nuclear reactions to happen. They also need a coolant to prevent overheating and meltdown.
The Soviet reactor used graphite (like in a pencil) for the moderator and water for the coolant. When the water circulation system malfunctioned, the reactor continued running full blast until it overheated and blew. America, on the other hand, uses a kind of reactor that used water for both moderator and coolant. Thus, when the water circulation system malfuctioned, the reactor overheated, but there was not enough water to allow it to keep running full blast, and hence it only cracked the vessel rather than blowing it up.
Also, the Soviet reactor was housed in only a cheap warehouse building, whereas American reactors are stored in 7-12 meter thick reinforced concrete domes. Chances are good that such a dome would have held the blast of even a Chernobyl reactor.
So there are definitely major differences between Chernobyl and TMI.
The preceding comments reflect the author's personal opinion and are public domain, unless explicitly stated otherwise.
Mr. Sterling may well be a fool; I've never enjoyed his writing as much as many seem to. But there are a couple of differences to the present period of global warming:
1. The last time the weather was this warm, we weren't dumping billions of tons of carbon into the atmosphere. True, natural events can dump even larger amounts of greenhouse gas into the air, but it doesn't necessarily mean we should be helping them along, especially in light of:
2. The last time, we didn't have such a sophisticated world economy on which we depend. Life, of course, will adapt, including our own species. But in many ways our technological culture may prove less adaptable: hundreds of millions of people living on coastlines, trillions of dollars in immobile physical infrastructure designed for particular climates, and a concentration of agriculture that supports a far larger human population.
In other words, I can't dismiss the present global warming trend as "live with it or die". I presume your goal was to oppose Sterlings article, and support nuclear power, which would (hopefully) end one source of global warming, so you and I appear to be on the same page there, if for different reasons (I'm much more interested in ending the flow of petrochemical dollars to totalitarian countries). But I do hope that we don't have to move New York three miles inland. That would be really expensive.
Parent is a really good article! Some amplifications follow.
>Additionally the test was performed late at night when most of the reactor plant managers and supervisors (who would normally watch the tests like a hawk) were gone.
Take a look at major accidents like Bhopal, Chernobyl and TMI. They seem to happen in the middle of the night. Coincidence?
>5. The reactor was operated for full power during the day
For anyone curious, this matters because some fission products absorb neutrons, especially one xenon isotope. Full-power operation means full-rate production of fresh fission products. A short while after you turn off a reactor from full power, it's hard to restart because other precursors decay into absorptive xenon and you have to wait for the xenon to decay. In normal operation, the chain reaction is producing enough neutrons to burn off the xenon as it forms.
The Chernobyl operators didn't know about xenon poisoning, according to accounts I've read. They noticed the reactor was hard to start and kept pulling out the control rods. Eventually they had them all the way out. (Kinda like pouring more and more gasoline on your barbeque). Meanwhile the reactor was engaged in positive feedback: the more fission happened, the more xenon burned off and the more the reactivity increased.
>brief power spike
Up to an estimated 100 times the rated output, in about a second. It takes 30 seconds on that reactor type to do a scram (emergency insertion of control rods). The power spike seems to have been a "prompt criticality" event, driven by the immediate neutrons from fission. Normally reactors keep their chain reactions going only by delayed neutrons that sputter out of fission products seconds to hours after the fission. That's why power reactors are controllable. Prompt criticality is how bombs work.
>the NRC (which IMHO had previously downplayed reactor incidents)
They should have handled things more like the FAA and NTSB, with a culture of sharing safety-related information. If the operators at TMI had known about the Davis-Besse incident they might have recognized the situation and let the plant take care of itself.
Take a look at wikipedia's List of Nuclear Accidents and decide for yourself weather or not we should be using nuclear power.
The list is either alarmingly long or extremely short depending upon how you look at it.
Some of the accidents are incredibly trivial. Others are pretty darn frightening. It's all a matter of a chain reaction (no pun intended) of bad events happening in succession. Take this one for example:
"September 19, 1980 - An Air Force repairman doing routine maintenance in a Titan II ICBM silo in Arkansas drops a wrench socket which rolls off a work platform and falls to the bottom of the silo. The socket strikes the missile, causing a leak from a pressurized fuel tank. The missile complex and surrounding area is evacuated and eight and a half hours later, vapors within the silo ignite and explode with enough force to blow off the two 740-ton silo doors and hurl the nine megaton warhead 600 feet (180 m). The explosion fatally injures an Air Force specialist and twenty-one other USAF personnel are injured."
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
Integral Fast Reactor? It's supposed to be passively safe, and recycles it's own nuclear waste.
If the operators at TMI had known about the Davis-Besse incident they might have recognized the situation and let the plant take care of itself.
:w
Which Davis-Besse incident are you referring to? The stuck valve incident? The corrosion incident? Or the Slammer incident? Is there a lemon law for nuclear reactors? How about for energy companies?
I've been awake for 40+ hours and haven't touched on A/V since first semester calculus.
At any rate, k/x is still a hyperbola with the x axis as an asymptope and quickly reaches a point where even an obnoxiously large increase in x still only nets a negligible decrease in k/x. It's a losing man's game beyond once x > k and you're better off manipulating k (i. e. play with the shape, which is what I said before).
"You can make it as save as possible but judging from human history Chernobyl won't remain the only catastrophe and if something goes really wrong in a fission reactor it goes *really* wrong."
The problem at Chernobyl had almost nothing to do with nuclear energy and had everything to do with the lethally Byzantine bureocracy of the Soviet Union, to which I really don't think there's any possibility of a modern equivalent. It was a reactor design that wouldn't have even gotten on the drawing board, let alone built, except in a system where Party membership counted more than technical skill and a job-producing construction project was more important than what was being built. Chernobyl was a poorly-designed, poorly-built reactor core powering a poorly-designed, pooly-built steam plant that simply wasn't designed to handle the steam pressures possible in a crisis situation (and I'm not talking "not designed safe enough," I'm talking "never bothered to consider safety"). I wouldn't want to live near an LNG-burning steam plant built and operated by these guys, nevermind a fission-based steam plant.
"The problem with fission reactors is that you have much extremly dangerous material around and hope that nothing goes wrong."
You mean like liquified natural gas, liquified propane and coal? Uranium does't get hauled around the country by the ton and doesn't flatten small towns when exposed to a stray spark.
Iran and North Korea both have some sort of commercial nuclear capability, and may or may not even be working on weapons. Coincidentally, both countries have also surfferend horrendous railroad explosions in the past few months, each of which have killed hundreds (perhaps thousands in the case of DPRK). Guess what was on the trains. Hint: it wans't radioactive.
But what about the great grand-mother of nuclear accidents? Sure, the people who wrote it have an agenda, but these facts are still pretty damned interesting:
Them's fightin' words. I design wind farms.
> it can't provide power all the time
Neither can any other power source, but there's nearly always somewhere windy in a country. Wind can contribute to baseload, and does in several countries.
I could be mean and point to Ontario's CANDU reactors, some of which provide a 30% capacity factor. That's about the same as wind, which of course can't provide power all the time.
> can't provide power when the wind is too slow or too hard.
The low windspeed bit is true. As regards high windspeeds, even in extreme sites the wind very seldom goes too high -- a matter of a couple of hours per year.
> all you have to do is look at Finland, I believe it was: they invested heavily in wind power
Finland has only ever modestly invested in wind energy. They did do some sterling work on wind energy in cold climates.
> the actual electricity can't be transfered worldwide).
So why did a powerline failure in the US affect Canada? Many countries are interconnected.
> And to boot, it's way more expensive than any other from of energy except solar.
Wrong. We're cheaper than any new generation except gas. Of course, when you get obvious fudging of nuclear costs like we did with the Manley Committee (who grossly overstated the cost of all other forms of generation to make a nuclear restart look viable), we're not dealing with fair opposition.
That may well be true, but what you're not addressing is that the government does also heavily subsidize the oil industry, with direct subsidies designed to lower the price of gas so we will all buy more. Perhaps we would not switch to other forms of energy without these subsidies, but we would definitely use less oil because we simply couldn't afford to drive as much. This would drive more alternative energy research.
My site: Free Nature Pictures
*Look, fella, I get to wisecrack about nuclear power
/., it would seem I am not alone in feeling this.
to my own email list if I feel like it. I didn't post that thing on Slashdot,
and not everything that flies off my keyboard into cyberspace
is gonna be solemn, Asperger-style argumentation intended
intended to convince a bunch of Linux freaks.
* If you can't take a joke, take a hike! And if you can
take a joke, then read the friggin' list and get a clue
as to what's been going on there for the past six years,
before you send email to novelists and get
all teary-eyed about your disillusionment.
http://www.viridiandesign.org
bruces
On May 31, 2004, at 9:35 PM, Jakob Eriksson wrote:
Hi Bruce,
I stumbled upon your comments on Lovelock's nuclear power article today. I'd previously read your book "Distraction", and enjoyed it. In particular, I liked your portrayal of the nomads and the political power struggles.
Because I enjoyed your writing, and thus respected you as an author. I was hoping to read a creative and possibly convincing argument against the use of nuclear power. Instead, to my dismay, I was confronted with a series of immature comments, often with very little basis in fact, far from either creative or convincing.
Due to my respect for you as an SF author, I was prepared to take your advice to heart, and to give up the hope of nuclear power, had you shown good arguments for your case. Instead, I'm afraid you've spent all your whuffie (see Cory Doctorow's "Down and Out") on this childish flamebait. Given the comments on
You just lost a faithful reader.
It is the *propellant* that blew up, not the nuke!
In fact, the nuke flew 600ft as a result of the *chemical* accident, with NO CONSEQUENCES. This is a testament to all the failsafes built into untriggered nuclear bombs.
Bruce... what's wrong with you? Still mixing up energy with armament?
The next pasture is always greener
One storage method that will work in many places is water, on a hill. About 10 cubic meters of water 1000 ft up stores about 1 MWh of energy. This energy is easily stored and released with high efficiency, (pumps and turbines) This can be used easily anywhere there is a mountain 1000 ft high or more, and here in Utah at least, those are in abundance.
I read in another /. post that this is being done in West Virginia, and he had links.
Laws are horrible moral guides, moral guides make even worse laws.
Invention: Atom bomb
Nessecity: Win a war quickly.
Invention: Tanks
Nessicity: Trenches from world war I were a bitch
Invention: Surgery
Nessecity: War time causualties.
Invention: Rockets
Nessecity: The british, they shoot down planes too efficeintly.
Invention: Rockets/ space moduels.
Nessicity: IF we don't the damn ruskies will do it first...
People work better under pressure. A lot of thigns come from serindipity and imagination but desperation makes it come faster. For instance, most scientist do their most ground breaking work before their 40. Why? Becuase they are desprate to prove their worth.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
I am somewhat bemused that despite sitting on something like 28% of the world's uranium, us Aussies don't have a reactor of our own (with the exception of the Lucas Heights HIFAR reactor opened in 1958). We even bitch about mining the stuff, the proceeds of which could be used to deal with real threats to the surrounding environment, like cane toads. We make over 10% of the world's supply of computer grade doped silicon, yet we bitch about upgrading the reactor facility too. Hopefully with some debate people will start pulling their heads out of their asses and making it happen before we end up with some serious problems on our hands. Before long chernobyl et al will end up being the most catastrophic events we've ever experienced - not because of the local effects but because of the resulting widespread misconception about nuclear power. Yes, where there are more plants nuclear fuel necessarily is more available so there is a greater need for security. However those linking the increased use of nuclear energy with foolish nuclear enabled governments and terrorists ought to spend more time worrying about who's got the weapons, why, who pays and what they are (or aren't) doing to protect them.
At best, all you've listed is productization. Some things get invented many times over, and don't become widespread until there's a real need.
Far and away, the "mother" (reason it was invented then, and not earlier) to all those inventions was simply whatever precursor technology was needed as the prior building block.
Invention: Atom bomb
Can you tell me who "invented" the atom bomb? You can't, because it's irrelevant. Multiple phsyisists worldwide had already worked through what was (to them) obvious results internationally-published work. Actually building an A-Bomb was hard, but building!=inventing.
Invention: Rockets
Sorry, rockets were invented in North America circa 1905, and Britain wasn't shooting at their planes at the time.
Whoops! My mistake... rockets were invented in Manchuria, circa 400 BC... and the British weren't shooting their planes either.
Invention: Tanks
Who "invented" tanks? You probably don't know, because it's almost to obvious to qualify as an "invention".
Nessicity: Trenches from world war I were a bitch
Lessee, World War 1 started in 1914... but the tank was invented in 1507. You've got a problem there, unless you can tell me when the flux capacitor was invented (1985?)
Nessicity: IF we don't the damn ruskies will do it first...
Rockets you listed already. But space modules? Umm... the Russians did do it first.
What a dork. If he wishes to reserve the right to look like a fool, so be it.
* If you can't take a joke, take a hike! And if you can take a joke, then read the friggin' list and get a clue as to what's been going on there for the past six years, before you send email to novelists and get all teary-eyed about your disillusionment.
He does have a point, I must say. I just read a fairly large random sample of his 400+ "notes", and sure enough, pretty much everything he says illustrates what a fuckin' joke this clown is. His editorializing is always in the form of a snide remark with the occasional assertion of unsubstantiated "facts". He might as well just resort to calling everyone he disagrees with a "fucking NAZI". I mean, if you're going to be an impertinent jerk-off, why beat around the bush? Does he really think people are particularly interested in his "thoughts" when they consist mostly of wisecracks and non sequiturs? I like his fiction, but his blog is a load of crap.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
Great response from Bruce, but I'm not sure why you bothered posting it. Bruce is right, his piece wasn't intended to be a "creative and possibly convincing argument against the use of nuclear power." He certainly never advertised it as such. Take it for what it is, some light-hearted jabs at the current embracing of nuclear power as the deus ex machina for all of our energy problems. Did you expect Shrek 2 to be "a creative and possibly convincing argument against using Happily Ever After potions"? Take it for what it is. Hope you are still a fan.
If someone has a better realistic solution than nuclear power, please speak up.
- mipe -
Because solar cell technology is the first cousin of semiconductor chip tech. The laws of physics suggest 50-60% efficiency may ultimately be possible, and prototype panels are extremely thin and require very little in the way of materials, as well as give at least 30% efficiency. 200 billion, if the future resembles the past 30 years, would advance microchip technology several generations, buying the R&D to make dramatically faster integrated circuits and new fabrication plants to make them. "Moores law" is approximately the value it is mainly because that is the rate that profitable businesses can afford to create new generations of parts - were profits and budget not a concern, obviously faster progress could be made, including venturing in new directions that may not be profitable for some time. There are hundreds of superior, exotic approaches R&D labs have found over the years that have not been pursued because the initial investment is too high for a corporation. The same applies to solar manufacture.
... over 95% of this "waste" still holds it's energy, so we have only used a little bit of it. Once we learn how to refine and utilize it, we can become more efficiant with nuclear power, and grasp it. The nuclear powerplants we have are from the 80's, if we built new ones, we could start to research and fund ways to make nuclear power even more clean and efficient. Nuclear power is the best way to go. I want to see a Nuclear/Hydrogen economy. Eletric cars and nuclear power == bad for 3rd world countries. Electric cars are very practical, look at www.acpropulsion.com and the TZero, if it hit mass production, and similar cars did, think of the possibilities!
Sig: I stole this sig.
That's the problem. Most people don't want to change their lifestyle one iota to save the planet. Even when there are grants (like those for cavity wall), people won't do it because there's still an outlay (takes about 10 years to pay for). Lots of people still drive 20mpg SUVs to get them and their fat ass to work. I know some people who drive to work - 1 mile.
I wonder if there's a big difference between chernobyl and the UK and the USA. Chernobyl existed in a country with virtually no press freedom. Exposing the risks would have been difficult.
So let's say $2 billion per 1,000MW reactor ($2,000 per kilowatt is a high estimate if plants were rolled out in greater frequency and used a common cookie cutter design instead of the custom work current ones require, but it'll do for now). About 200 plants would replace all of the coal plants. That's $400B. What was the cost of the war in Iraq again?
300 more plants than we have today (at an average of 1,000MW per plant) would handle the current US demand for electricity. $600B. Mind you, this doesn't have to be purchased all at once. The costs can be amortized over several years.
Expensive? Certainly. An easy solution. Not really. Possible? Yes.
Cheaper than solar cells when you figure that 200 square meters (size of a house) of solar panels cost about $30,000? Hell... Let's work on the economy of scale. We'll say $10,000 per house-sized set of panels. Let's see... 294,313,298,879.85 square meters in Arizona... Divide by 200... 1,471,566,494.39925 house-sized panel clusters... Multiply by $10,000 per cluster... Hmmm... $14.7 trillion dollars. Even if you cut production costs for solar panels to 10% of its current cost, you're still looking at $4.4 trillion. And completely covering Arizona still isn't enough power to cover even a quarter of US demand.
It ain't a question of easy solutions. Easy solutions went out the door long before we were born. At this point, it's about running the numbers and seeing which adds up. Nuclear ain't cheap and easy, but it's cheaper, easier, and much more realistic than the alternatives.
- I don't need to go outside, my CRT tan'll do me just fine.
If someone could show me a blueprint for a more environmentally friendly world, I'd be happier. What I hear instead are vague solutions that are not.
There are many proponents of wind power, but it ignores the fact that the UK can't sustain itself on wind power. Solar? Great. Now, who's going to pay to fit cells on the houses. We could get out of our cars, but some trips in the UK are crap without a car.
What many environmentalists and environmental cheerleading politicians also fail to do is to raise the point that what's really required is for people to also change their lifestyles. Instead, we have sticking plasters - wind farms and recycling centres.
It is actually quite common to not include the cost of the goods sold in expenses.
What?! You REALLY need to read up on statistics. You might say that if there is a one in 100 000 chance a year of a catastrophic failure in a nuclear power plant and there's 100 000 nuclear power plants in the world then there will we one catastrophic failure a year. (The numbers are lower. Much lower.). Even if you live to be a hundre years old, there will only be a
The terrorist attack? Those structures have a LOT of concrete around the nuclear core where the dangerous stuff happens. The concrete is meant to contain accidents inside. But they also mean that crashing a plane into a nuclear reactor is a bit like crashing a car into a mountain - spectacular but ineffective.
I agree with Lovelock. We know that global warming is a global catastrophic event. Let's work on nuclear energy and green energy - the results of our failure to do anything about the problem right now are greater than a few large-scale catastrophes. Cynically put.
Stop the brainwash
All this bickering over nuclear power being the only environmentally-friendly solution in the next 50 to 100 years has me thinking of another solution: oribital solar power .
Okay, there's the cost. It'll be expensive.
But if we put that aside for the moment, the orbital solar power seems to make more and more sense for the near future. The idea is to have vast arrays of solar cells in orbit, which can collect solar energy the vast majority of the time (since Earth will block their view of the sun only a small percentage of the time) and then beam that energy back down to earth.
One of the big advantages some see in this is that you could, feasibly, transmit energy to regions that needed it on an on-demand basis, much moreso than we have today.
And it'd get more stuff happening in space. But that's a different story...
"Why can't everyone just be straight with me?"
"Because we live in a bendy world, dear."
8-12% is a little low. Current product cell efficiency are around 14-18%, and Concentrators w/ multijunctions get 30%. But who cares? Your car gets 15% efficiency in average use, nobody complains about that even thought you pay for the gas. Sun is free. The question is does 15% efficiency do the job? Yes. Even if it gets no better, it wouldn't matter.
Wrong. The average insolation in the US is 6 hours of peak sun per day, no desert required (ie 6000 Wh/sq. meter per day). For a flat panel, the deviation from the best southern nevada site to the worst northern washington state site is only 2-to-1! The rest of the country is suprisingly small devation within this. See rredc.nrel.gov/solar/
Wrong again. Silicon solar cells degrade less than 10% over 25 years, and are garanteed by the manufacturer to not exceed this over a 20-30 year guarantee - compare that to any other product guarantee! Though, they are guaranteed for 20-30 years, their life isn't limited by it. (see Solarbuzz.com)
Wrong. If you clean them verses do nothing you get a whopping 4% increase. Few people clean PV panels.
My roof doesn't seem to mind. What land? The average roof has 4-6 times the generating capacity of the average house. 1600 sq ft house = 148 sq meters. 148 m x 150 watts x 6 hours = 133 kWh/day. Average house power consuption 24kWh/day. Beat that with some other form of energy.
Wrong. When is the last time you noticed the sun failed to come up (yes you still get power in overcast conditions). Further, home PV systems are designed using statistic based on the past 30 years of weather data (see rredc.nrel.gov/solar/). Ask somebody with PV, their power is WAY more reliable than the grid. In fact, most of the comminucation repeaters throughout the western US use PV for this reason.
Wrong. Solar is a reasonably dense form of energy wirelessly transmitted through a light "grid" in a usable form almost everywhere on the earth. If you wanted to compare space needed to produce all the electricity consumed in the US it would be a small 100 mile square (see picture for scale www.energycooperation.org/solarh2.htm). In fact studies have shown coal uses as much space due to the space required for strip mining. Try strip mining on top of your roof!
Wrong. What would it cost to pay for solar electricity? Try the cost of the Irag war. Seriously, do the math (including new military spending) and that would be enough over the next 3-5 years to t
Otherwise, good post, I'm sure Pavel's used to getting his name misspelled, and SlashDot won't let anyone put a cedilla on top of the C anyway. It's a nice blue.
Bruce Sterling needs to learn a lot more about nuclear power than he evidently knows. He seems to be stuck in a Chernobyl culture.
My own answer would be to go off-planet in search of energy, but we can't break that down into small enough pieces to sell to anyone with enough resources to actually do it.
In the absence of that sensible but grandiose solution, I'll quite happily swap the local coal-fired power station (Muja) that burns 12 tonnes of Uranium every year for one that reacts maybe half a tonne of the stuff every year, less than a tenth as much radioactive material involved and the results carefully captured and rationally stored for reprocessing instead of being spewed into the atmosphere.
This says nothing about the Radon and other radioactives released in the mining and processing of the coal, nor about the miners killed and injured in extracting it, nor about the huge amounts of diesel burned in mining and transporting it, nor about the enormous tracts of bush turned over so the miners can whip the coal out from underneath it.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
We are not running out of fossil fuels any time soon. I repeat, we are not running out of fossil fuels. That, of course doesn't mean we should stay the course.
Most modern reasonable and respectable estimates peg existing reseves at several centuries (depending upon fuel, geographic boundary of analysis, and energy use patterns). While the US may have decades of petroleum or natural gas left, the world has plenty. Likewise, the US has unfathomably expansive coal deposits.
The economics of power systems is not as most people expect. For any sane alternative energy system the sticking point is infrastructure, not the enabling technology. Assuming hydrogen is such a great idea (it's not, at least as currently envisioned by most) the problem is supporting infrastrucure (pipes and pumps), not the cost of fuel cell (even if though it uses platinum).
We have a vast existing system which supports fossil fuels, and this is a huge hurdle for anything else to overcome. Leaving things up to the market many alternatives, even if free, could not comepete. And how did we get into this situation? This network of fossil fuel arteries did not spring from the earth overnight. No, we invested in it, and we paid for it. Largely through hidden costs such as subsidies (but you'll be branded a commie-bleeding heart liberal if you suggest we give even a tiniest fraction of that money to alternative energy systems). The other means a lot of this has been paid for is to work it into the unit cost -- this has been part of the problem with deregulated energy markets.
I recently wrote a brief essay on the readoption of nuclear, it's available at http://pthbb.org/natural /17_32-nuclear.pdf.
Were that I say, pancakes?
First of all, you forgot to multiply by the 100 square miles. So you're off by a factor of 100.
Second, s/he said a 100 mile square, not 100 square miles. So you're off by another factor off 100.
Fourth, an average of 6000 Wh/sq.meter per day is the same (for the purposes here) as your 1.367kW*6 hours*250/365 days, so your "rocket scientist" sarcasm serves no purpose other than to make you sound like an even bigger jerk.
Fifth, if you had read the article s/he linked to, you would have seen the calculation carried about by someone who knows enough not to keep fifteen significant digits when doing an order-of-magnitude calculation and you wouldn't have had to take the time proving what an idiot you are by doing the exact same calculation incorrectly.
Sorry for such an obnoxious response, but 1) you're really asking for it with the "oh this is gonna be good" attitude and 2) you didn't take the obvious step of figuring out why your calculation didn't agree with the sources the grandparent quoted, instead forcing readers such as myself to get to the bottom of it.
PS. $30k is a lot, but keep in mind that replacing a roof will cost $10-15k without solar panels.