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'No Quick Fix' From Nuclear Power
humoly writes to tell us BBC News is reporting that while many are calling for nuclear power, new nuclear plants are not the answer to combating climate changes or the wavering energy concerns for the UK. From the article: "The Sustainable Development Commission (SDC) report says doubling nuclear capacity would make only a small impact on reducing carbon emissions by 2035. The body, which advises the government on the environment, says this must be set against the potential risks. The government is currently undertaking a review of Britain's energy needs."
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While I was shocked how little nuclear power would reduce emission and the fact apparently intelligent people thought this would be a silver bullet deal, it should not surprise anyone that
There is no quick fix. A lot of things have to change, like our automobile usage, suburban lifestyle, and the excessive packaging of one time use products.
What about trippling the nuclear capacity? What about quadrupling the capacity? That should have an impact surely.
Congratulations on stating the obvious! Considering the fact that energy requirements are almost always increasing, and not decreasing, simply having CO2 levels maintain where they are now in 2035 would be somewhat of an accomplishment.
If you don't build nuclear, and instead build that new coal plant, does that somehow cause CO2 levels to go down? Didn't think so.
It's time for the world to face the fact that nuclear energy (and hopefully fusion in the "next 20 years") is the only practical way to truly reduce CO2 emissions and solve pollution problems. If cheap nuclear energy exists, it is possible to reduce pollution and CO2 production in other areas, in addition to the initial electrical generation. Hydrogen fuel for vehicles, electrical heating instead of natural gas or oil, etc.
While other forms of alternative energy are "nice", they all have their downside - solar cells aren't exactly environmentally friendly to produce, wind plants take lots of land and are an eyesore, etc. Nuclear plants may have some miniscule risks, but when properly managed, they are by far the best solution. The problem with nuclear energy (dealing with the waste included) is entirely political, not technical.
I see these 'reports' all the time, claiming that nuclear power would do little do reduce emissions. Now, wait a minute - those gigawatts per year produced would then instead come from what? A coal plant? Now, that ADDS to emissions AND it actually produces more radioactive waste isotopes than a regular nuclear plant (not many people seem to realize that). Why in the world is everyone so freaked out about building a frackin' nuclear plant, whilst tens of thousands of nuclear weapons are rotting away in the former Soviet states? And the U.S. has at least as many and they don't know who do drop them on either... It's all a big mindfuck if you ask me - NUCLEAR? BAD!! Poisoning the air with your car and other air polluting devices - GOOOD!
"By 2035" -- its sounds like a long way off, no? Lets suppose the modular plants the South Africans are building take of like wildfire. 2035 -- by that point you'd just be seeing real productive use of any significant number of them. That's a best possible outcome.
Are these the same people telling us we should just give up fossil fuels for WIND? That some combination of animal dung methane and solar power will make it happen?
Look, we rely on fossil fuels because they have a huge amount of easily available energy in a very dense package. Where else do you find that kind of energy density? Seems like the nuc plants work -- though they're expensive.
How about magic microwave beams from spacecraft with huge solar sails? Ummmmm......ok. Right after Scotty rides down in the space elevator to show us how to make transparent aluminium out of mile long flexible carbon nanotubes. Let me know when its working, I swing by in my flying car to come check it out.
The problem with quotes on the internet, is that nobody bothers to check their veracity. -- Abraham Lincoln
This (pay wall past intro) is an interesting article I read in Scientific American about a plan to recycle much of what is currently considered nuclear waste for use in advanced fast breeder reactors. It seems the most feasible alternative to oil I have seen.
CO2 waste compared to RadioActive waste isnt even in the same league
This is true. Radioactive waste is, overall, less harmful to the environment, easier to capture and contain, and has the added benefit of actually being potentially useful if reprocessed into viable nuclear fuel.
That IS what you meant, right?
Seems to me some of their claimed disadvantages are in conflict. To wit:
1) The economics of nuclear new-build are highly uncertain, according to the report
2) Nuclear would lock the UK into a centralised energy distribution system for the next 50 years when more flexible distribution options are becoming available
3) The report claims that nuclear would undermine the drive for greater energy efficiency
4) If the UK brings forward a new nuclear programme, it becomes more difficult to deny other countries the same technology, the SDC claims
Points 1 and 2 seem to indicate economic and technological malfeasance, but points 3 and 4 seem to imply the technology is good enough to curtail better economic options which would be desirable to other countries? Hmm...
Point 4 also implies that the UK would seek to deny other countries nuclear plants in general, or that "other countries" might use said plants for other than above-board reasons. I can't figure out whether point 4 is insulting to other countries or insulting to the UK...or both.
The only reason that doubling the number of nuclear plants wouldn't have an impact on emissions is because there are so few nuclear plants. For the UK, doubling would mean 23 more plants that would cover 20% of the UK's electricity needs.
I couldn't find details, but the study likely also ignores the benefits of nuclear plants in relation to automobiles. Currently, if a person drives an electric car, he'll still be causing emissions at the electric plant. In conjunction with electric car technology, nuclear plants could be a way to significantly reduce emissions that result from vehicles.
No, nukes are not a quick fix. But they (barring a breakthrough in fusion, which I wouldn't bet on) may still be our only hope, because changing the lifestyles of billions of people isn't possible.
Nuclear power does reduce emissions by helping us eliminate coal and oil power plants. Something's better than nothing, and nuclear waste is infinitely easier to contain than a cloud coming out of a smokestack.
Moreover, nuclear power scales better for the future. Like it or not, our energy usage is only going to go up. Nuclear also makes possible other technologies that reduce emissions- where do you think the hydrogen for fuel cells comes from? The easiest way to generate it is in a reactor.
Give a man fire, and you warm him for the night. Set a man on fire, and you warm him for the rest of his life.
You can say that again!
A lot of things have to change, like our automobile usage, suburban lifestyle, and the excessive packaging of one time use products.
* Switch light bulbs for fluorescent bulbs
* Replace bulky monitors for flat screens
* Incentivate low-power CPU's
* Invest in information campaigns about not using home electronics in stand-by mode
* Invest in solar power R&D for home applications
* Incentivate usage of bycicles instead of cars, change the infrastructure of cities to provide smaller stores in more places rather than huge walmarts 10 miles from home
Any other ideas?
...nuclear power plants are nowhere to be found since we're the world's largest producer of hydroelectric power but it wasn't always like this...
In 1968, after a nuclear meltdown in Charlemagne (Quebec's own Chernobyl accident), the government decided to ban nuclear power for fear of another disaster. Unfortunately, it was too late, since Celine Dion was unleashed to the world soon after that and the rest, as they say, is history...
Sounds like a badly written Uncyclopedia article or something.
While I am a fan of alternatives, the problems for alternatives is that stable power plants are built to handle the worst loads. That is, when you design your grid and your sources, you use the dependable sources as the figuring of the input energy. Well, we may add more alternatives, but we still need to increasethe plants that can be counted on. Why? Because almost all energy is at the whim of mother earth. Of course, there is tidal, geothermal, and hydro available, which can be counted on. But most of the alternatives showing a great deal of promise are in wind and solar. They can NOT be counted on. So until a good viable way to capture the excess energy is created (hydrogen is a LONG ways off), then we will have to use on the normal types (coal, oil, gas, and nukes).
And personally, I think that Nukes is about the only good choice left.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Carbon emissions are *rising*, with something like a 60% increase in the last 30 years.
Even a small impact in terms of *reducing* emissions over 30 years is a *huge* change form the level they would have *risen* to by '35 at the current rate.
"The worst tyrannies were the ones where a governance required its own logic on every embedded node." - Vernor Vinge
Unfortunately, as they point out, instead of resulting in a decrease in carbon use, what it might do is simply give people the ability to blithely continue the current climb in power usage (i.e. no real decrease in carbon emissions). Worse yet: knowing that an increase in power capacity, people might just continue increasing their power usage, rather than holding back in the knowledge that a wall was up ahead (i.e. the result would be (at least in the short term) an increase in carbon emissions.
And, on top of that, a massive increase in nuclear power would have notable structural and political downsides.
It's nice when the answers in life are simple, but it's rare.
OS Software is like love: The best way to make it grow is to give it away.
1) Long-term storage of nuclear waste.
...as opposed to the way things are now? There's an economy of scale benefit to most forms of power generation. This is nothing new or unique to nuclear. Furthermore, any alternative sources that could be decentralized could likely still be deployed and connected to the power grid as they become availible. History demonstrates that demand for energy generally only goes up.
First, keep in mind that the longer it stays radioactive, by definition the less radioactive (and thus less dangerous) it is. Depleted Uranium, for instance, despite being technically radioactive, is actually used as radiation shielding!
The obvious solution to dealing with waste is to seperate it into stuff that can processed back into viable fuel (and used as such), stuff that's so mildly radioactive that it could be ground into powder and scattered into the ocean and you'd never notice the difference in the background radiation level, and stuff that's not viable as fuel but still radioactive enough that it needs to be stored--which I imagine you'll find is not very much waste.
2) Economics of building nuke plants
Yeah, and how much of the economic uncertainty comes from artificial barriers created by scientific illiterates who oppose nuclear power? Other than fossil fuels, nuclear is the only type of generator that is proven to be long-term viable and scalable to any capacity. If the economics are "uncertain" for nukes, they can only be worse for anything else.
3) Centralized distribution system
4) Undermines the drive for efficiency
Uh, no. Efficiency is, within reason, its own driving force. Despite what some people would like, we're never going to use less energy. There's only so much efficiency gain possible, for one thing. Besides, efficiency gains don't reduce consumption any more than getting a bigger house reduces clutter. Efficiency just lets us get more value from the energy we do use.
5) Difficulty in denying other countries the technology
Oh yeah, because that's working really well as is.
and the excessive packaging of one time use products.
... but I'll be damned if I'm going to buy recycled condoms.
Maybe
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Nuclear power will most likely never surpass its existing use as a source of supplemental power for the world market. That said, I disagree with the article in its suggestion that it cannot make a significant dent in carbon emissions.
Nuclear power could very easily become the largest source of power for fixed location consumers. Existing coal and oil plants could simply be replaced with nuclear facilities. This eventual phase-out of legacy power supplies could easily cut carbon emissions by hundreds of tons per year.
However, nuclear power will never become the totally dominant source of all our power needs unless the near future reveals a revolutionary advance in battery or super-capacitor technology. Until then, transportation technology will never be able to efficiently harness power off the Grid. Transportation will continue to use energy sources that are easy to transport and distribute.
The major hold-up with nuclear power is two-fold. First, current generation nuclear reactors use uranium as a fuel source. This fuel creates huge amounts of radioactive waste. Although this waste was once highly desired for nuclear weapons projects in the past, today it is a worthless product that is expensive and dangerous to dispose of. Also, this fuel is quickly becoming scarce. Some scientists suggest that the world has less than 60 years worth of reactor grade uranium at current consumption. Secondly, current generation reactors have a high potential for danger. The horrific blunder of Soviet engineers when running a coolant test at the Chernobyl facility will haunt generations to come. America's own scare at Three-Mile Island brings that fear close to home.
Surprisingly, most of these issues have modern solutions. The French has developed an encapsulated uranium fuel source that places fuel within a heat resistant shell. This shell keeps the density of the fuel low enough that in the event of a coolant failure, the fuel rods never go critical.
Second, scientists have suggested that a switch from uranium to thorium could reduce radioactive waste by over half, and could reduce our plutonium stockpiles by using it as a seed for these new reactors. Furthermore, thorium is a more common element than uranium, with prices being only a fraction of uranium.
However, political pressure will most likely never allow it to happen since traditional power companies fund many anti-nuclear lobbies. Oil and coal hate nuclear. Popular media demonizes nuclear. Environmental laws make it nearly impossible to even whisper nuclear without the threat of civil lawsuits.
As such, we will continue to pump greenhouse gasses into the air. At our current rate, my home in Washington State might experience weather similar to that of Southern California today. Sunshine is good. . .
Thorium reactor acrticle: http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,68045, 00.html
Yeah, I'm with you there.
Next time I run down to the store to pick up a new computer, I'll bring in back home on my bike. Of course, it won't be in a box, so I'll take a blanket with me to the store to wrap it in for safety.
And, when I go for additional RAM, NATs, graphics boards, etc., I'll bring my own anti-static bags.
And then there's the candy and cookies for the kids. Buy in bulk or make our own, and when we take it with us we'll re-use baggies. Or wrap it in leaves.
Of course, since we'll be changing our suburban lifestyle, we won't be taking the kids to piano lessons all the time, that's less auto usage and less need for candy or cookies or other junk the can get quick energy on the road from. (On the other hand, if they are riding bicycles, they need more energy.)
Actually, this is not so much sarcasm as it might appear. I actually picked up my last sempron box with LCD monitor in Mikage, carried the bundle back to the train on foot (about a mile and a half if I remember right), and carried it from the local train station to home on the back of my bike.
My back was a little sore for a couple of days -- should have borrowed one of those wire-frame luggage carriers or something.
And my wife already does a lot of making and/or packaging her own quick food for the kids. Got to give her more credit for that.
From the article, these are the five major disadvantages identified by the CDC:
* No long-term solutions for the storage of nuclear waste are yet available, says the SDC, and storage presents clear safety issues
* The economics of nuclear new-build are highly uncertain, according to the report
* Nuclear would lock the UK into a centralised energy distribution system for the next 50 years when more flexible distribution options are becoming available
* The report claims that nuclear would undermine the drive for greater energy efficiency
* If the UK brings forward a new nuclear programme, it becomes more difficult to deny other countries the same technology, the SDC claims (emphasis mine)
While the first four are significant, the last one is an interesting angle I hadn't considered. If going nuclear becomes the model for leading first world countries, second and third one countries are going to demand the technology in order to follow the dominant pattern. If they're refused it, they'll probably feel very littlle remorse in cranking up their fossil fuel plants and polluting like elephants with dysentary in order to set up a little environmental blackmail. If every tinpot dictator is given nuclear tech, the chances of someone turning Manhatten or heaven forfend, downtown Vancouver into a radioactive cloud go up dramatically. Just on that point alone, it seems like going nuclear would only buy a respite of a few decades before the energy squeeze moves further down the chain and gifts us with a whole new set of problems.
How about opressive acts of Mother Nature? :D
"may still be our only hope, because changing the lifestyles of billions of people isn't possible."
We done it many times before. Or do you believe that humans have always driven cars to work?
Then please kill yourself now. Lead by example.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
More radiation comes from coal plants than from all the nuclear waste, reactors and mining. Now as to your statement that Yucca Mountain is overflowing, that'd be hard since it isn't taking waste until 2010.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yucca_mountain
http://www.ocrwm.doe.gov/ymp/about/index.shtml
"The Yucca Mountain Project is currently focused on preparing an application to obtain a license from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission to construct a repository."
If there is a "shortage" of something, whoever has the power to ration that resource has enourmous power. No matter if it is food, water, energy, medical care, whatever... if you can decide who, where, and why one gets the resource, you have an giant stick and a giant carrot to enforce obedience.
No government panel wants a solution to global warming that produces a lot of energy. No one wants there to be plenty of energy for everyone who needs it. They want an excuse to strictly limit and control energy. If they can decide who gets energy, and who doesn't, they have total control in a modern industrialized world.
Wind power, solar power, and such, cannot produce enough energy to satisfy current consumption. Nuclear Energy is the only technology that we have off the shelf that can produce the energy in vast amounts to satisfy our energy hungry society. That is why so many people are so dead against it. How are you going to usher in a new age of central planning and government control if there is no crisis to justify such a thing. Nuclear power is just not acceptable.
In Australia, _right_now_ you can buy 'green power', which is power that comes only from renewable resources. It costs a little more (maybe AU$40/year more). Perhaps a 10% price increase.
;-).
There is no reason why what can't be scaled up to provide electricity to every one in Australia (and presumably other countries too). (Of course, if everybody signed up in one day, I doubt they'd have the infrastructure
This isn't an anti-nuclear rant - it just isn't the best option for domestic electricity.
It seems that this very important government body only has one (yes, only one) PHD scientist on it's board (a metallurgist)... and zero (yes, no-one), with any knowledge of nuclear energy or physics at all!
Nearly all of the people on the board are lawyers, administrators, or prominent members of anti-nuclear organizations.
So a government body of people, with no knowledge whatsoever of nuclear power, and who were already ideologically dead set against nuclear power from the get-go, decided that nuclear power is bad. Wow, what a shock!
Yes, the advanced research determined that if you double the tiny amount of energy produced by nuclear power in England, you get double a tiny amount! Wow! I wonder what happens if you generated ALL OR THE VAST MAJORITY OF ENERGY VIA NUCLEAR ENERGY? I guess that would produce a lot more energy and reduce a lot of greenhouse gases, wouldn't it?
How come people take things like the "Sustainable Development Commission" seriously? I mean, this "commission" is a joke!
Let's see, you listed two nuclear weapon production facilities and claim that a disposal site that isn't open yet is 'overflowing' as for the problems with nuclear power.
Apples and Oranges. Enriching Uranium or creating enough plutonium to make a bomb is a dirty business, and we weren't exactly too concerned about the enviroment during the cold war(at least for weapons production).
But it's only significantly cleaner than coal when you ignore the waste.
No, it's significantly cleaner when you acknowledge the fact that nuclear waste is actually easily contained because there's so little of it.
I don't read AC A human right
humoly writes to tell us BBC News is reporting that while many are calling for wind power, new wind plants are not the answer to combating climate changes or the wavering energy concerns for the UK. From the article: "The Sustainable Development Commission (SDC) report says doubling wind turbine capacity would make only a small impact on reducing carbon emissions by 2035. The body, which advises the government on the environment, says this must be set against the potential costs. The government is currently undertaking a review of Britain's energy needs."
;)
Fixed it.
Honestly, doubling nuclear capacity would do more towards reducing CO2 emissions than doubling wind capacity. It's not like you couldn't go on a building program and build at a rate to commission, say, 5 plants a year using parallel building. 20 years of that and you'd have another hundred plants, enough to shut down most coal plants. That'd cut down on something like 700 million tons of CO2 a year.
I don't read AC A human right
you've got a few flaws here:
"and causes pollution in other ways such as in radioactive waste"
Yes but this waste can be easily contained and has zero chance of worsening global warming, most deffinitly the worlds chief environmental concern.
"Considering the fact that getting even one nuclear power plant built takes years, nuclear power does not look optimal."
Call me crazy, but I'm pretty sure more than one reactor can be built at a time.
"Therefore, solar energy is our best chance at meeting our energy needs."
Well you pretty much eliminate your "best chance" yourself in the next sentence by pointing the very obvious problem with solar power: "conversion/storage". There are plenty of places in the world where solar power would not be a viable sorce of mass power for several months out of the year because of this very issue.
I ignore Anonymous Coward posts. If you want to discuss something, that's awesome. Log in.
Well, we could phase out the market distortions that favor sprawl and wasteful land use patterns over compact (ecoheads call them "sustainable") urban communities. Tax deductions for mortgages on single-family homes, zoning laws that prohibit mixed-use development, the massive government funding of the interstate highway system--these are all market distortions we'd be better without. Unfortunately, if we want a smooth transition to aforementioned sustainability, it'll take generations to fix.
Of course. Haven't ya ever seen The Flintsones? :P
Yet, there are plenty of economic tricks you can impose to change lifestyles. Make something not worthwhile for people anymore, and over time they will change their methods of living. I don't encourage, condone, or am proposing any of the following... just pointing out there are possibilities if we are thinking in the extreme :)
As gas prices rise, we will see people move closer to their jobs (ie, the city) from the suburbs. Suburban sprawl is obviously more likely if the act of commuting is not in the least bit taxing (See: United States). If we want people to stop driving so much, make it expensive as hell...and in turn, maybe start using Europe's incredible public transportation. We don't have that in the U.S. (realistically).
The biggest problem with environmental concerns (very similar to security concerns which any of us involved can relate) is obviously that a single person experiences very little payback for their contribution (and/or can see very little return instantaneously). To curb the public's tendencies, we may have instate some pretty intense restrictions.
How far do we need to go to really protect ourselves against Global Warming (yes, I said it), or environmental concerns?
I'm not sure what you mean by "suburban lifestyles" as a contributor to anything other than cultural pollution. I'm sure he means that all those people who live in the burbs are spread out and thus require oil burning autos to get anywhere, whereas in a dense city it is much easier to have a decent public transit system. Tokyo vs Aurora, IL for example
It amazes me to see so many informed comments, yet none practically based.
How many people here have worked in a nuke plant? How many know the logistics of it?
First off, redundancy factors make failure and meltdown a near impossibility. Unless an operator is asleep in the control room, and then deaf and blind to all of the alarms and lights that go off when a coolant failure might occur, the reactor will be shut down.
Second: Waste storage. Many people don't seem to know what a spent fuel pool is. Everyone's talking about disposing of waste, when all nuclear facilities in this country already have a means of storing the waste for the approximate life of the reactor. The spent fuel pools are huge buildings with a huge pool, where spent Uranium fuel bundles are stored. The walls of this building are solid concrete, approx. 10 ft thick. No radiation is getting out of there.
On top of that, most slashdotters would probably be surprised to know that they pick up more radiation in a year from their computer monitors, cell phones, simple radios, and other devices, than a nuclear employee does from the plant. Everything is carefully monitored with dosimeters (devices that measure your radioactive dose).
Another thing that annoys me: THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A RADIATION SUIT. The suits that nuclear workers put on are are called "Anti-C's" or anti contamination suits. Inside the reactor building, and in other areas where boric acid is used to absorb radiation, loose radioactive particles are everywhere. Movement of those particles from where they're expected to where they're not desired is called contamination, so these suits are used to prevent the spread of contamination. There's even a special process you are to use in removing these suits which prevents contamination. After that, you enter a scanning device which does a once-over of your entire body to detect contaminants, and if you're contaminated, a number of things can happen. If it's an article of clothing, it's simply disposed of. A shoe or boot, generally on the bottom, the offending region is sliced off. On your skin, anti-contamination soap is used, and if that isn't successful, they bring out the SOS pad.
Also, people don't realize how common Radon is. Often, workers would enter the "hot side"(we call it that because that's the area where exposure to radiation is possible) and come out, having gone nowhere near contamination, and they set off the alarm, mostly on rainy days. That's because of Radon. The water causes the radon to essentially stick to your shoes, and while sticky pads on the floor can help removing this, often a de-ionizing fan is required to get rid of it totally.
This is the extent to which they go to prevent public exposure to radiation/radioactive material from their facility. Environmental concerns are nil.
Fear of meltdown is an irrational, uninformed position, and an easy fear to maintain through ignorance.
"Current" nuclear technology is about 40 years old, for the most part. Only a few newer reactors in Europe and Japan improve upon this to come up to relatively recent standards of about a decade old (which is about as new as you can get, factoring in evaluation and licensing). The last US commercial reactor built was planned in the early 1970s using technology from the 1960s, and went live in the very early 1980s, IIRC. The most advanced reactors in the US are probably aboard Navy submarines and carriers, with a few research reactors scattered into the mix.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
All of the "zero carbon emissions" or "clean" people have forgotten that it is an industrial process that exists in the real world and not a washing powder commercial. One third of the carbon emmissions of gas turbines (assuming the best possible quality of ore) is still very good - but it isn't zero.
Big power plants of any description are never going to be quick anyway. It can take three years just to get a turbine rotor delivered out of a catalogue.
an idiot, I was referring to people doing things like say walking more often and not doing things like driving their car to their mailbox, rather than walk to it, like my old cul-de-sac neighbors.
That's the thing about cadmium, arsenic and mercury; they're poisonous forever.
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
What oil crisis?
Oil today (NYMEX): $61.47/bbl.
My understanding is that CO2 sequestration is a viable technology that has been in use for a few decades for different reasons. It is possible to clean power plant exhaust, but it may cost a couple more cents per kWh to do so.
There are other issues, environmental and economic concerns are complex, but I don't believe that they are necessarily contradictory. I do believe there are ways to encourage more sustainable energy use, it seems many countries do this by selective tax credits and taxes. The EU has a tax on automobiles based on their CO2 emissions and it has encouraged looking for more efficient cars and other fuels.
doubling nuclear capacity would make only a small impact on reducing carbon emissions by 2035.
......
And driving more hybrids would also make a small impact, and using solar power would make a small impact, and using energy efficient appliances would make a small impact, and using wind power would make a small impact, and using more hydroelectric power would make a small impact, and developing fuel cell technologies would make a small impact, and turning off lights at night would make a small impact,
The point is there's no magic bullet, there's no one thing that will make us stop using dirty, non-renewable energy sources. But, if we encourage all the things that will make us less dependant on oil, we'll be better off.
No Sigs!
The answer is simple to phrase but hard to acheive. We need to get off planet and set up solar collectors in space which transfer their energy to a power station in a geostable orbit around the earth, which transfers the energy to a power station on the equator, which feeds it into the global grid. Anything else is a stop-gap measure which cannot scale, whereas a setup like I've described can scale as long as there are materials to build more collectors. Practically limitless power.
As an aside, put this together with more advanced versions of rapid prototyping devices, the sort that started off printing 3D versions of X-Rays and are now advanced enought to print off cell phones and the like, and you can do to centralized manufacturing what the internet did to mass media.
Heady stuff, and nearing if not already within the realm of practical. This is the sort of environment where a communist economy would actually work, where the market is destroyed because there is PLENTY. But don't expect to see any capitalist robber barons pursuing such a dream... they'd rather destroy what PLENTY we already achieved with laws like those surrounding intellectual property. Am I the only one that finds it all reminiscent of the traditional "burning of wealth" parties that the Native Americans used to throw to keep their people working?
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
Yes we can - just keep using coal plants and dumping radiation into the atmosphere.
we will only have 10,000 years until the waste we create today will be even approachable
That's "will be safe enough to ignore", not "approach". And the newest line of breeder reactors take in waste like that and give off less radioactive waste that only lasts 1/10th as long. Even if it didn't generate energy, just using these reactors to clean up the mess we already have makes a lot of sense.
CO2 waste compared to RadioActive waste isnt even in the same league
But this isn't a CO2 vs radioisotopes question. It's between CO2 and radiation in the air we breathe, and radiation sealed in glass, encased in lead, and entomed within the earth.
You're absolutely right.
People love those sorts of lifestyle changes that represent a reduction in lifestyle.
Worse yet: knowing that an increase in power capacity, people might just continue increasing their power usage, rather than holding back in the knowledge that a wall was up ahead (i.e. the result would be (at least in the short term) an increase in carbon emissions.
Then replace decomissioned coal powerplants with nuclear powerplants instead of adding new nuclear plants... Or we could just never build another powerplant letting the old ones rot and break, that would be a sure-fire way to reduce power consumption! If they don't have any power they can't consume it, genius!
I think you might be a candidate for secretary of energy...
Netbooks, they come with Linux or a $3 copy of Windows. Either way, Microsoft loses.
These are one-time improvements. A growth rate of 2% will double in 35 years. If England is growing at 2% a year, then doubling the gas mileage simply puts the problem off 35 years. Oil will have peaked in 35 years (probably sooner..) The first doubling of gas mileage may be easy, but each succesive doubling gets exponentially harder. It can't keep up.
The same logic goes for better insulation and efficient lightbulbs. Conservation and better efficiency are not long term solutions, practically they just break even for a little while.
One possible exception to this: Germany and other parts of Europe no longer have replacement birthrates. This means without immigration they are not growing. If England can achieve this, and ban immigration, and go carbon neutral by conservation, then - for england - they are done. As a practical matter they would also be on their way to extinction.
If the global warming crowd is roughly correct, and we have just a decade or two to significantly reduce CO2 emmisions (or face global catastrophy), then, since we have a [1]global growth rate of more than 2%, we have about that much time to come up with carbon neutral energy sources, - in excess of what we already have - that equal roughly double our current fossil fuel sources. All of them. Coal, Oil, rain forests (that we do not replace) ...
I see no way to do this without a huge increase in nuclear, or possibly carbon sequestration on coal, and this on top of lots of wind solar and biomass. Greater efficiency? One quarter energy use on everything, at a minimum, and then we have to have some alternatives coming online in 20 years or we just put off the problem, and not even long enough to pass it on to our kids.
[1] If nobody grew at all except China, we would still have greater than 1% per year growth. 2% is low for most places outside of western europe.
Laws are horrible moral guides, moral guides make even worse laws.
People are choosing to downshift their liftstyle already, without significant economic, environmental or political pressure. And you haven't demonstrated that a reduction in energy use is equivalent to a 'reduction in lifestyle' (heck, you haven't even defined what you mean by a 'reduction in lifestyle').
Is riding to work on a bicycle rather than going to the gym a reduction in lifestyle? Is eating a shared meal with your neighbours rather than eating in some fast food joint halfway across town a reduction in lifestyle? Is picking fruit from your own tree rather than buying from a supermarket a reductionin lifestyle?
I know you only wrote that as a throwaway line, but perhaps you could spend some time thinking about why you said it in the first place.
>This means without immigration they are not growing. If England can achieve this, and ban immigration, and go carbon neutral by conservation, then - for england - they are done. As a practical matter they would also be on their way to extinction.
If England's population continues to grow forever, at some point its biomass would exceed the mass of the universe, causing some difficult gravitational issues.
England, and every other subset of humanity, and humanity itself, will limit its growth eventually. The only question is whether it is done with intelligence and forethought, or through catastrophe. The natural universe admits no third way.
--- Attorneys Assisting Citizen-Soldiers & Families -
Do you have some stats to back up your argument that people are choosing these options in greater volumes than some earlier period?
I used to drive 45 minutes to work, as did practically everyone in the area that I was from. Dinner I cook, but then, I don't think that most people ever made McDonalds their primary source of dinner-food. I see plenty of TV dinners at work, and most people do not pick their fruit from their own tree.
Nope, but then you haven't given any real data either :-)
Follow the money.
Most objections to nuclear power are driven by the coal industry, who stands to be the biggest loser if the US and UK move towards more nuclear power.
Anybody else who objects is simply echoing the fears which were fed to them by coal lobbyists.
Nuclear power is both safer and cleaner than coal. Anybody who rejects nuclear in favor of coal plants out of "environmental" concerns is either badly informed or deliberately lying.
Also, anybody who says we can avoid the need of nuclear power by just riding bikes, using a more efficient furnace, and holding hands while singing "Kum Ba Ya" is simply not looking at the real numbers of what our future power needs are, even after you account for a radical scaling back of elective consumption.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
There certainly exist possibilities, but they are not politically viable. The American politician to try and push a substantial gas tax will be crucified. The American politician that tries to force Americans to live on top of each other using the force of law in expensive apartment buildings instead of 'sprawling' out into expansive and cheaper suburbs will be crucified.
Own a home with a lawn and having some space from the neighbors is probably the pinnacle of the American dream. Telling Americans they can't have that is a good way to get thrown out of office. The US doesn't have the political capacity to make any such proposed changes. In a totalitarian system like China they might very well be able to enact draconian policies like the "one child" policy, but they don't have to worry about the fickle masses getting pissed and voting for someone who will do what they want. In a place like Europe where significantly more people are dependent upon the government for jobs and money, they might be able to enact some social change to a limited extent. In the US, you are talking about a complete impossibility.
The solution to this environmental problem is not social. The solution lies in allowing people to live as they want without destroying the environment in the process. Instead of pouring money into social programs to change people and crippling the economy by burdening it with more expenses, the solution is to make reasonable changes when it is possible and work towards a technological solution. Dump money into R&D and really drive for technological solutions. We NEED technological solutions. Humanity is not and never has been "sustainable". We can't throw on the breaks and try and become sustainable now. The only thing we can do is do what we do best. Plow forward and try and solve problems as they come.
I am not advocating whole sale clear cutting of the rainforest and dumping as much CO2 as possible into the atmosphere. Environmental regulations are very important for buying time and trying to minimize negative effects on the environment. My point is that regulations can only slow down the process, not stop it. The solution lies in technology.
So looking at things from a logical perspective, the goal is to minimally inconvenience peoples lives (whether it be by global warming, running out of oil, or disposing nuclear waste). Since this is another example of the Tragedy of the Commons, governments will need to intervene or the problem won't get solved. The problem seems to come from too many people using oil and not a renewable energy source. Thus people need more motivation to use less oil (whether in their cars or in power plants).
Solution: do what the government does best and tax; tax crude oil or tax machinery based on CO2 emissions. Let the market sort out for itself whether it wants to use nuclear, hydroelectric, wind, tidal, geothermal, solar, or some other form of electricity generation. Let the market determine how much people want to decrease their energy consumption. Maybe spend the increased revenue on renewable resources; it's not necessary, but that would help too.
That's a red herring. additional nuclear plants can easily be built to conform to existing infrastructure using current technology. PVs on every roof aren't enough to power the houses under them without massive batteries, not only for operation at night, but also for operation on cloudy days, and during the winter. How much energy is required to create those pvs and batteries? what is the environmental impact of their producition and periodic replacement?
It is not immediately clear to me that decentralized power generation is all that superior to centralized power generation, and any form of generation that relies on a heat engine to work is going to benefit from efficiencies of scale for at least the following reasons: tolerances: fittings have much tighter tolerances percentwise the bigger they get due to machining capabilities
carnot efficiency: a large plant can achieve a Thot much higher than a small plant can practicaly achieve, and can often be located conveniently close to a Tcold significantly lower than can be found within a reasonable distance of any given local or household plant. for instance a deep lake or a river perhaps.
In fact, even solar power benefits from efficiencies of scale like this. a solar dynamic power plant of sufficient size is going to be far more efficient than the equivalent area covered in PV cells, in a region which has little cloud cover. At a cost of efficiency (but perhaps an increase in safety), the daily flux can be averaged out using wax or thermal salts to store energy in their phase change for later use in the generating plant. I'd like to see PV try that...
If it is demonstrably more efficient to decentralize the power plants, I'm certainly in favor of the redundancy that can be potentially had, but it certainly wasn't the case when the power companies were established (or they wouldn't have been. ).
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
a single person experiences very little payback for their contribution
That is the biggest evil in our culture... How many people bother recycling now that a bag of aluminum cans isn't worth much? [If anything].
I was away from my apartment for a couple of months. I turned everything off. My electric bill was insanely low, less than 100KHh -- 1/10 of my usual usage. Guess what? My electric bill went down only a third... Still paid $25/month for not using anything. In other words, using 10x the electricity only costs 3x as much -- a bargain! Where's the incentive?
Water here is shared.... I pay $40/month (USD) whether I bathe three times a day or once a week. And I live by myself...
Judging by the number of souped up 4x4 trucks with sparkling-new looking cargo beds, cars are still too cheap... Even a recent (Lexus) commercial seemed to make fun all-solar car attempts in an effort to promote their new SUV.
Forget environmental concerns... When oil becomes scarce [Or when people think it has], what will happen? How will goods be transported? How will plastics be manufactured? How will coal be mined without the use of gas-powered vehicles? How will people get to work? What will propel ocean liners carrying goods? How will farmers harvest food? How will they deliver it? Keep it refrigerated? Commercial planes aren't going solar anytime soon...
Yes, there are alternatives to some of these... No, I don't think people will plan the switch in time.
Society should not be promoting this sub-culture of waste and greed. Unfortunately, "society" has too many idiots and greedy businessmen for this to change anytime soon.
We seem to try to live as far apart as possible, as far from work, school, etc as possible... Just imagine how much time we could save doing more useful stuff, how much less driving done, and how things could be better...
Or do people in southern california and in large cities enjoy a 1-hr commute to work? Do people really dream of sitting in stopped traffic? Do they fantasize about gridlock? I for one, do not.
Buncefield, not to mention the dozens of tankers that have grounded, gone down or otherwise shed their oil all over a large patch of ocean over the years.
Shit happens in all industries; we just need to work to make sure it happens as rarely as possible.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
doubling nuclear capacity would make only a small impact on reducing carbon emissions by 2035
Doubling Hybrid and electric car use would make only a small impact on reducing carbon emissions by 2035.
There you go, some perspective.
My Suburban burns less gasoline than your Prius.
Nuclear is not a quick fix. Solar is not a quick fix. Biodiesel is not a quick fix. Drilling in ANWR is not a quick fix. Carbon sequestration is not a quick fix. Ethanol is not a quick fix. Methanol is not a quick fix. Hydrogen is not a quick fix. Hydro is not a quick fix. Tidal is not a quick fix. Wind is not a quick fix. Conservation is not a quick fix. Energy efficiency is not a quick fix.
However, if you add them all together, and you might just have a really slow, big pain in the butt fix.
If I hear "such-and-such is not the answer" one more time, I am seriously gonna smack the idiot who says it upside the noggin. There is no single answer!
Yet, there are plenty of economic tricks you can impose to change lifestyles.
There are also a lot of things we can do to cut down transportation energy costs w/o making sacrifices or massive changes. For example, you could more double the effective MPG of 18 wheelers by changing the regulations that limit them so heavily (pun intended) to rather light loads.
For example, Michigan raised it's limits and the largest food quality tanker truck fleet went from 5MPG to an effective 12.5 by carrying more cargo in a single trip. Kind of like making ONE trip to the store in the (E85 powered) Suburban per week than 3 or 4 in the metro, or taking two family sedans@22 MPG each to take the family somewhere instead of taking the 15MPG SUV and no additional vehicles.
For those worried about safety: require an additional acle for GVWR over 110,000 or so pounds. An additional axle will keep the road surface PSI from the truck at or lower than today (meaning no increase in road wear/damage) and the increased braking power from the additional axle will in most cases MORE than compensate for the additional weight - often making the vehicle *safer*.
But people don't like to think or talk about the "easy" changes we can make. Considering that the change I mentioned above would represent about a 40% savings in fuel costs ( one of the two most costly aspects of heavy transport), the no loss and likely increase in safety of the trucks, and the resulting lower costs and lower magnitude shockwaves to the economy you'd think it would be an easy, almost no-brainer. You'd think that the Environmentalism preachers would be railing away at it.
But that would require that "Environmentalism" be actually about making the world a *better* place.
Sure there are non-whackos who "care about the environment". It's one of the reasons I have a Suburban. It runs on E85. Here, the cost diffrence is usually a wash (lower MPGf, lower $$PGf) or tilted in favor of the E85. for example last fall when gasoline was pushing three bucks/gallon, I paid under two bucks for E85. When I get 10MPG on E85, I am getting 67MPG of gasoline. Now who requires more oil to drive around, my Suburban or the Prius?
Curiously enough, vehicles that get significantly higher MPGf will lead directly to a higher per-gallon tax. Why? Do you think the government will want to "lose" that revenue? Already some states are looking to increase their gas tax simply to keep up with a) better fuel economy and b) people driving less due to high prices.
There is always the conspiracy theory that the Fed doesn't raise CAFE because of the oil companies and car makers. I suspect a more realistic consideration is the loss in revenue they'd have to experience (or significantly raise the gas tax).
My Suburban burns less gasoline than your Prius.
It seems to me, who have no background in physics, that nuclear is the future, unless some new alternative pops up, yeilding a far better energy/danger ratio. If we truly can reuse the fuel through a breather reactor, and have basically unlimited energy for a hundred thousand years, who can serious say no?? I even think it would be a good psycological factor for humanity, to use a truly advanced form of energy supply. Anyone can burn coal, we've done it centuries... but getting our electricity from something we could not discover by accident, but only through understanding...maybe it would put our future in perspective. The future is science.
However, my question is how this report can conclude so differently from the previous slashdot discussion? Coal lobby, or scientific facts?
P.s.: But I'm not sure it will save the planet. Unless the world gets more stable and strong geopolitical climate, in which an authority (UN) can impose a nation to stop burning fossil fuel, I belive coal and oil will sell as long as there are supplies we can get with relative ease. Hopefully new rising nations will not pollute so much that the effort of other's will be in vain...
Doesn't it sort of imply that something is horribly wrong with the system when you propose a "stealth escalator" as a way to dupe people into accepting that they normally wouldn't?
More to the point though, I think it is still political suicide. I don't think the "stick" approach is going to win anyone. You will just severely punish the poor while the middle class family that desperately wants to own a home outside of a city with green laws and elbow room will simply shrug off the expense.
There is no social solution.
Even if you could convince all the people of the first world to reduce consumption substantially enough to make a difference, what about the other 5 billion+ people in the world? What do you think a guy making a dollar a day is going to do when you suggest that they should hold off on that industrial revolution of theirs? He is going to tell you to go to a hell, and rightfully so. The simple fact of the matter is that we do not and never have had a sustainable system. Since we first develop agriculture and started mining we have continually been operating in an unsustainable mode.
The only real solution is to develop technology to meet our needs and make it cheap. The 5 billion+ people of the third world and rising, and rising fast. We can either work feverishly to have technology in hand that will power their rise out of extreme poverty in a less destructive manner, or we can foolishly chip away at the exponentially growing problem and utterly ignore the gathering storm. The first world needs to be the ones to find a way to make cheap and reliable solar cells or whatever. We need to either get our shit together and start working on it NOW, or we can see what it is like when 5 billion people enter into an industrial revolution over the course of a decade or two. We know how ugly a few tens of millions of people entering the industrial revolution over the course of a centaury or two was, do you really want to see 5 billion+ do it over night?
Several post have mentioned that simply becoming more reliant on nuclear power for our electrical needs wont really reduce our carbon emissions that much, this is only partly true.
Coal/Oil/Gas stations would by definition produce more CO2 than a Nuclear station, however the big Carbon saving comes from nuclear vehicles(okay stay with me). By nuclear cars I actually refer to a hydrogen (or similar) vehicle that has its fuel create by nuclear power (i.e. Electrolysis). If 25% of the US and Europe's cars all switched to this virtually carbon free energy source then we would see some serious carbon reduction.
In the not too distant future, next Sunday A.D.
Show me a wind farm that produces emissions
That didn't really make sense. But I'm going to post it anyway.
All of them. That much steel and aluminium needs a hell of a lot of fossil fuels to be burnt.
The only way to really solve this problem is to stop wasting energy. The way to think about this is: if you have to live with using only 5% of the energy that you use now, what will you choose to use it on? Take it as a thought experiment - you're not allowed to invent ways to produce your own energy; assume that this has already been done. So what will you keep? A car? Your fridge? Your computer? How about not buying stuff that comes in unnecessary packaging? Avoiding ready made meals, drinks, snacks etc?
Perhaps 5% is not what we will have to live with in the future, it could be more or less, but I suspect it won't be far off at least for our children.
The reality is that any grouping put together by this man is unlikely ever to come out and say nuclear power (of any type, including Pebble Bed) is acceptable. The only acceptable solution in their book is for everyone to 'power down' and accept an energy budget akin to the Victorian era.
Although Nuclear Power isn't the full answer, we need lots of renewable investment as well, its almost certainly the best shot we have at the existing time for continuing our civilisation in roughly the same shape as it is at the moment as the oil supply declines. Renewables are just too low in energy density to be able to build fast enough to match the problem.
File under ignore - the government will.
Oh no, it's already been done
That didn't really make sense. But I'm going to post it anyway.
We need to get off planet and set up solar collectors in space which transfer their energy to a power station in a geostable orbit around the earth, which transfers the energy to a power station on the equator, which feeds it into the global grid. [...] Practically limitless power.
You're mostly right, but there's a limit to how much power you really want to get this way, though. That's because our little warming problem won't be exactly solved (only delayed) since our planet can only radiate the industrial process waste heat away so much/so fast before becoming too hot to live on.
The final solution would be to move the entire industry in space too, not just the power generating facilities.
(quick computation shows that with approx. 500 billion square kilometers of solar panels running at 50% efficiency you could (theoretically) generate enough power to make the whole earth glow brighter than the sun)
Ahh the joys of all them taxes and regulatory fees simply for being hooked up. And being hooked up is mandatory in most places. Go figure.
Forget environmental concerns... When oil becomes scarce [Or when people think it has], what will happen?
Nothing. It'll be a page 45 blurb in the NYT. Why? By the time that happens pretty much nobody will be using it. i twill be a footnote in history.
There is more oil in North America than most ever people dream of.
That is a damned lot of oil. And yes, it can be economically "produced" at today's rates, enough for several hundred years of oil use. It's politics that prevent it.
My Suburban burns less gasoline than your Prius.
People don't commute for fun, they commute to afford a home. Every off-ramp closer to LA you go the price of homes climbs around $5000. When you are up here in the Antelope Valley they start at $200,000 for a prefab.
This all has little to do with the commute. If you want to reduce emmisions then you have to reduce the number of poluters, in other words, people.
Lot's of money needs to be spend on R&D for better ways to collect energy, but some needs to be spent on getting the global population back down below 4 billion, if we ever want to see things get back under control.
And I think you need to check your numbers. How much of all of that "available" land is arable? Has water and irrigation? Isn't sand and desert? Isn't mountainous or tundra? Isn't a sheet of ice? Has a growing season longer than a few months? Isn't covered by rainforests and trees otherwise needed for, you know, oxygen? Isn't already covered by houses and roads and cities and towns?
Do the math, and I think you've find that most of the available land suitable for farming and food production is... surprise! Being farmed.
And just out of curiosity, what happens to technology and medicine and so forth when everyone is busy planting carrots?
Finally, you may not have noticed, but people involved in sustenance living do not have low birthrates. They breed little workers to help plow the fields, milk the cows, and help with the chores.
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
First, there's a tad more than 1 million houses in the UK, let alone the USA (why would you be using $ when talking about the UK?). Second, $3000 isn't nearly enough to pay for a solar energy setup that can power a whole house.
You use 2.2kWH in what timespan? Any only at times when there's sunshine? And does that include the energy used to light the streets, your workplace, the shops and entertainment venues you use and the factories that make the stuff you buy?
The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer.
--Henry Kissinger
More radiation comes from coal plants than from all the nuclear waste, reactors and mining.
Coal contains on average 3ppm uranium.
By comparision ordinary soil contains 1.8-5ppm uranium.
Coal fueled power plants have aerosol filters. Fields, roads, deserts, and lawns do not.
Could people please stop perpetuating this idea that coal is radioactive please. Coal is a kinematic and chemical pollutant, not a radioactive one. Unless you consider your breakfast cereal to be radioactive.
May the Maths Be with you!
Actually, that energy was stored for the entire history of the Earth, but it was built up in a matter of seconds by the enormous neutron flux in a supernova. We're releasing the energy over a much larger timescale than it was built up over... in reactors, at least.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
As they say in medicine, the dose makes the poison, and burning coal, oil or whatever isn't really such a problem unless you've got 6-8-10 billion people participating in it.
There's no way that we can sustain the growth of our current global population and I'm not entirely sure we can sustain our existing population. I can't help but think that the global strife we're experiencing now isn't just a side effect of too many people sharing the same space.
In reality it's far, far worse than that. The best farmland is also, generally, the best living land. Two areas I'm familar with -- rural Maryland and the Willamette Valley in Oregon -- were once among the most fertile areas ever seen. Unfortunately, they are also great places to live so every year thousands of acres of prime farmland becomes yards and parking lots and roads. From an economics standpoint this is a perfectly rational allocation of resources -- houses and businesses are more valuable than farmland -- but it doesn't bode well for the long term sustainability of our economy.
Waltz, nymph, for quick jigs vex Bud.
Nuclear power has been the convenient club with which to bash tree-huggers over the head, as long as one ignores all the drawbacks of nuclear power (not the least of which deal with waste disposal, leaks and accidents, and the peculiar tendency of US Govt regulators to look the other way when safety rules are violated - damn pansies! we don't need no stinkin' safety rules! We're tough Americans. Not a bunch of goggle-boxed do-gooders going around telling everyone that radiation's bad for them. Pernicious nonsense! A guy could take 400 chest x-rays a year. Oughta have em too.)
It's good that some of the other drawbacks are gaining attention too. But I suspect that this is going to be framed as "radical leftist nonsense" by the media, and dismissed, and soon we'll return to building tons of nuclear plants. Oh what a joyous future we'll have. Can we please build them in Republican neighborhoods?
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Who said that nuclear power would be a quick-fix? It may not solve the climate change problem right away but there are other immediate benefits that make it very worth while.
For instance, it would reduce dependence on foreign oil, which always makes sense.
if the number of nuclear power plants goes up, the demand for oil burning power plants will go down. Thus, the demand for oil goes down. As you know, oil causes more deaths from resultant military and economic conflicts over its supply and its profits than nuclear power ever could, even after a meltdown or contamination. It therefore makes sense for *human rights* and for economic reasons for every country to aggressively pursue a non-oil-consuming energy policy. One way to streamline such a transition would be to invest in nuclear power technology.
Moreover, risks as they are now are not necessarily risks as they are in the future. Funding nuclear research could potentially make safer nuclear containment and waste-storage technologies. Eventually the technology could become so advanced that the net risk to human lives inside Britain would be close to zero, or still less risk than oil poses to the average Brit. While a complete conversion to nuclear power right now might not be a risk worth taking, at least some conversion with some funding of future technology to make nuclear power acceptably safe could work(to the point where the benefits outweigh the risks).
If there was say, an international coalition for nuclear power technology that maybe organized an effort to store nuclear waste in one location on earth or to shoot it out of orbit every year, or say, into the moon or sun, - instead of under a mountain in Nevada - most likely the international cooperation would result in a very cost effective nuclear solution.
In any case, nuclear power(fission) is definitely something that should be pursued more actively than it currently is.
And when nuclear fusion comes? Can we say party?
I don't think I've yet seen definitive proof that solar power is renewable. That may sound absurd, but it takes a lot of power to get all the raw materials, transport them to the manufacturing plant, build a solar panel, ship them to distrubution areas, carry them home, install them, etc. Is the lifetime power output of a solar panel really greater than the energy expenditure to build it? And how much pollution does the manufacturing process create? Some of the materials in some solar panels sound a little toxic.
Anyway, ethanol is essentially solar power, but it is only energy-positive if it's used locally. I'm curious to see what solar panels yield in a full lifecycle analysis.
E pluribus unum
The energy used to make a panel is recovered within 1-2 years of operation, beyond which a further 13-18 years of net energy production remain
Also here
Since the price of solar panels makes the economic breakeven point 10-20-50 years, this must be because of the cost of materials, which can be recycled. All of this, of course, assume you live somewhere solar is useful, not, say, England.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
" Cover the polar ice caps with solar cells, ... to stop the ice caps from melting."
Nope, the cells would absorb more heat from the sun than the nice white ice. The temp would go up.
Ethanol does not come straight from the field; it requires considerable inputs to grow the crop, and more to turn it into liquid fuel. The average EROEI that I've seen for ethanol from today's sources is 1.34:1; the most optimistic is 1.67:1. Further, about 20% of the energy in a gallon of E85 is from petroleum. Summing that up, you've got:
- 0.15 gallon of gasoline per gallon E-85
- Of the 0.6 gallons-gasoline-equivalent of ethanol in the
.85 gallons of ethanol, between .36 and .48 gallons-equivalent is from fossil fuels (petroleum, coal and natural gas).
Your total fossil energy per gallon of E85:Sustainability and energy independence essay
And that oil is declining. Cantarell (Mexico's biggest field) has peaked. Kuwait's biggest field has peaked. Even Ghawar has peaked (and if you don't know what that that means, you don't know enough to expound on this subject). A million barrels a day from Alberta tar sands will offset a whole 5% decline in other US sources. Big whoop. Even if it pays off, you still have to replace most of that oil with something else.
Sustainability and energy independence essay
If only I hadn't used all my points yesterday, I'd mod you up so fast you wouldn't know what had hit you.
Why?
Because he thinks nuclear energy comes from fossil fuels!?
Because he thinks a few nuclear waste sites represent a greater threat to future generations than unspent uranium lying around in unused ICBMs!?
Because he's worried that solar energy will cook us to death!?
Oh... I get it. You mean you would mod him up "+1, Funny."
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Going nuclear at least buys us some time.
Or allows us to become complacent again?
Find someplace where the magma layer is relatively shallow that's relatively near a coastline, and drill a tunnel in the shape of a U, with one end under the water and the other exiting into a steam turbine. Make the depth of the tunnel (bottom of the "U") deep enough to heat the water to boiling. Inlet water pressure and/or a one way flow mechanism would ensure the steam is forced to exit through the turbine.
Voila, electricity with a bonus of desalinated water!
Obviously there would be issues to deal with such as drilling in such a hot environment and the salt/impurities of the water, but these seem managable. For such a simple concept, IMO it bears at least some idle ./ speculation.
This comment is my opinion and does not represent an official position of Donald Trump or others I do not work for