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McCain Backs Nuclear Power
bagsc writes "Senator John McCain set out another branch of his energy policy agenda today, with a key point: 45 new nuclear power plants by 2030." So it finally appears that this discussion is back on the table. I'm curious how Nevada feels about this, as well as the Obama campaign. All it took was $4/gallon gas I guess. When it hits $5, I figure one of the campaigns will start to promote Perpetual Motion.
Nuclear is the best option. Equating it with perpetual motion shows YOUR ignorance. Hate makes you stupid.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
I once wrote a paper for a class about the importance of adopting nuclear power. If Obama is against this, I'm voting McCain.
So why does $4 gas == need for nuclear power?
Oil burning plants were eliminated after Carter's oil crisis.
If we want cheap gas we need to do what Mexico does (for their $2 gas). Regulation and forbid speculation on a "critical" national resource.
(Or just get an ebike!)
I would support this and would allow it in my back yard.
It's pronounced "nukular," you insensitive clod!
-- The Republican Party
I'm curious how Nevada feels about this, as well as the Obama campaign
I'm curious how Illinois (iinm the most nuclear state in the union) feels about this, as well as the Barr campaign, as well as the various Greeen candidates.
Neither McCain nor Obama will get my vote.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
Is there really somebody out there that is comparing nuclear power to perpetual motion machines? Nuclear power is the leftist crackpots "Intelligent Design". Statements of faith entirely contradictory to science lead them to believe the rants and opinions of people far disconnected from scientific knowledge.
http://www.wired.com/science/planetearth/magazine/16-06/ff_heresies_08nuclear
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo.
So, you get a nice little hard-on about sticking it to "selfish jerks" who drive SUVs.
What about the really poor people in the world? You know, the ones living on the edge of starvation? High oil prices drive the cost of food higher, kicking the poorest in the world that much closer to death.
Yeah, that's nice.
And some hypocritical jackass like Hugo Chavez gets praise for throwing a few thousand barrels of oil at the poor - all the time while he's militantly supporting a cartel that drives up food prices for hundreds of millions of other really poor people.
And a "windfall profits tax"?!?! How the hell is a regressive tax like that going to help? Make gas more expensive? Yeah, that's good.
are 45 backyards in which to build them.
Seriously, the NIMBY (not in my nackyard) and BANANA (build absolutely nothing anywhere near anything) mentalities have held back nuclear power as much as anything else, especially after TMI. Getting local communities to agree to construction will be no small task.
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
I'm so sick to death of this "$4 for a gallon", my heart fucking bleeds.
Come live in the UK for a while.
Nuclear seems to be working pretty well for various foreign countries. It takes a while to get a reactor on-line, and it's not a perfect solution... But it's better in many ways than the fossil fuel options.
Wind and solar are great, and I support them also. But, $4 gas or not, all energy options should be on the table. And they should've been for about the last 30 years.
"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." -Albert Einstein
Didn't you hear, opec has decided they pushed the bubble far enough and is going to scale back the 'waters testing'?
We go thru this all the time with them, they push prices up to where they get worried we might actually go find an alternative, then bring it down just enough ( but higher then before ) to quiet us down and lose interest in alternatives.
Its a cycle that most people are too stupid to see, and thus we are stuck in it.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
What do you do when you faced with a problem. Do you speculate on it for years and years or do you choose an option. CHOOSE! ACT!
Last couple of days he has been pushing hard for oil and energy independance. I was pretty dissapointed with the party's nomination choice a few months back, but McCain is proving he can step up and fight the conservative battles to move this country in the right direction.
We need to be drilling in Anwar, we need to be drilling offshore, and we need more nuclear energy. These factors will help us last until something like Fusion power is ready.
The current reactor design is antiquated and hobbled by President Carter's decree that we will not reprocess nuclear fuel. So instead of extracting 90+% of the energy in the fuel and having 100 year nuclear waste, we extract 2% and have 10,000 year waste with the once-thru fuel cycle. Real smart, Jimmy. And he was a 'Nucular Engineer'!
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
Although i regard it as one of the first sane things this man has come up with, it's high time to start rolling out the new nuclear plant designs. As far as nuclear waste goes, we've already produced as much as we're ever going to make and current designs will be able to run with practically no nuclear waste at all.
At this point, getting nuclear fuel reserves built up should be one of the priorities.
You can not think global warming is both human caused and a genuine threat and not be for nuclear power. Yes nuclear power has its own problems, but far better than the purported consequences of global warming. Keep your eyes open for "environmentalists" that are against nuclear power. Those people have other interests in mind. "Environmentalism" is just their tool.
If we are going to build Nuclear Plants how are we going to tell Iran they cant, or any other country?
We are going to build 45 plants, no plants for you!
The alternative is coal. And coal mining is a far greater disaster than uranium mining, not to mention the pollutants that it releases when burned. Neither wind nor solar can provide a base generation level. Solar is still expensive there are problems with centralized solar. Wind is fine, but ugly and mechanically unreliable. Drive by a western wind farm and count how many generators are off line becuase they're down for maintenance!
Yet another reason to support McCain.
If middle-eastern countries or other unstable parts of the world want to build nuclear plants (which then can be used to create the materials for bombs) how will we be able to tell them "NO" when nearly our entire country will be powered by it?
Do as we say but not as we do?
why i can't vote 4 mccain: mccain-feingold:-P
and yet another reason:
McCain, co-author of the McCain-Feingold law that abridges the right of free political speech, has referred disparagingly to, as he puts it, "quote 'First Amendment rights.' " Now he dismissively speaks of "so-called, quote 'habeas corpus suits.' " He who wants to reassure constitutionalist conservatives that he understands the importance of limited government should be reminded why the habeas right has long been known as "the great writ of liberty."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/16/AR2008061602041_pf.html
Seriously, one of the more classic political tricks is to promise something way ahead in time, something that would have to be achieved by someone other than you.
It is just more obvious because of McCain's age. Don't get me wrong, nuclear is currently the safest, greenest option that is economically viable, but promising things 20+ years into the future is pretty bad.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
Yeah what a great guy. Interesting that he is pushing for a "solution" that only works with massive amounts of very centralized investment. I mean why would anyone want to encourage a wide range of smaller but much safer and more sustainable solutions? Solar, Wind, Geo, are only held back by the standard economic factors. Government intervention that leads to increased usage and production could solve that problem and reduce those costs almost overnight and the consumer wouldn't then have to be slave to yet another(or the same) energy masters.
Yea, because Carter, the only president to have ever had any formal training in any sort of nuclear technology, and also the only president ever involved in the cleanup after a nuclear accident, is all irrational and uninformed where nuclear power is concerned.
The 70's were a different world. Nuclear power meant nuclear weapons, and the public opposition then to nuclear power is hard to even imagine today. Don't blame Carter for the hysteria of the day.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
...to start reversing the DEPLORABLE conditions started by Jimmy "I'm a fucking moron" Carter.
You know - the guy who thought that if the US didn't RECYCLE nuclear waste back into fuel (which would SOLVE the "nuclear waste storage" issue) it would be an "example" to tin-pot dictatorships and insane genocidal religious nations like North Korea, Pakistan, India, Iran, Syria, China... and they wouldn't try to get nuclear weapons. Yeah, how'd that work out for us?
The guy who coddled so-called "environmentalists" to the point where we haven't built SAFE, CLEAN electrical power generation anywhere because nobody can get past the permits process and NIMBY enviro-wacko whining.
Think about it - even the founder of Greenpeace (who long ago left the organization when it became obvious the commies and inmates were running the asylum and not interested in real, rational discussion) says we need nuclear energy because so-called "renewable" sources are inherently (a) unreliable and (b) limited in the scope of what we can do with them.
I have nothing against nuclear power, I just do not trust deregulation-happy business criminals to run them. With proper designs, regular inspections, and a safety-first mentality, nuclear power is clean and safe. With Enron-style profit-raping and criminal evasion of government regulation, we'd be fucked and glowing in the dark. I wouldn't put it past them to try and build crappy Chernobyl-style reactors just to give the finger to the Greenies, the same way they have the hard-on for drilling in the Arctic Wildlife Refuge.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
From the NRDC: the cost of setting up new nuclear reactors makes them *economically non-viable*. Granted that their opinion should be taken with a grain of salt, but there is a legitimate argument against nuclear energy outside of a fear of mutants.
http://www.nrdc.org/nuclear/plants/plants.pdf
Re: Fusion power
Unfortunately, fusion power has been in the "will be ready for commercial use in about 50 years"...oh...for about 50 years now.
We aren't telling Iran that they can't build reactors. It is the weapons that will come from the gas centrifuges colocated with the reactors that are at issue.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
this argument is specious. France gets more than 50% of their power from nuclear plants, yet they are one of the strongest voices against Iran building plants.
so where are you goin to put all of this waste that will not be safe to be around for hundreds of thousands of years? Yucca mountain *is* in my back yard.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
I'm not surprised that a tech-savvy audience like slashdotters would support nuclear power. I haven't studied the issues of safety and environmental impact, and therefore really shouldn't make claims or arguments based on hearsay. However, as a geek, I consider how much science (nuclear, materials, environmental), and technology have advanced since the last US nuclear plant was built, and I have to think that much of the fear of nuclear power is based on 1960's/1970's (Three Mile Island) and/or Soviet (as in 'back in the days of the Soviet Union', and fears about Chernobyl) technology.
... often not the cleanest generation at the moment).
Computer control and monitoring has got to be vastly improved since then. I'd also imagine we have learned much about containment and recovery from the aforementioned accidents that would help prevent anything similar in the future. Again, I haven't got enough personal basis to make any claims, but these thoughts have occurred to me.
Add to that a story I recall about someone coming up with a direct nuclear-to-energy conversion material, (line the walls of the core and of high-level storage facilities to generate additional power from previously untapped/unused radiation/byproducts), and I figure nuclear could really give us a decent chance at meeting our energy needs while reducing greenhouse gasses and dependency on foreign oil.
With enough cheap, clean power, plug-in electric and hydrogen fuel cell vehicles might actually make sense (since those technologies may eliminate emissions at the car, but still require the generation of power elsewhere
Anyhow, IANANS (I am not a Nuclear Scientist), so I really can't offer any facts, and IANASP (I am not a stinking politician) so I can't really offer any FUD, but I believe we should give nuclear power a chance, and it appears that a lot of other geeks (for their own varying reasons) seem to believe the same.
The Digital Sorceress
"Across Europe there are 197 reactors in operation, and nations including France and Belgium derive more than half their electricity from nuclear power." Duh, we're living with 10,500,000 people with a population density of 892 per square mile here. The only other electricity-producing thing is one hydroelectric plant and if you look carefully you'll find windmills close to the sea. We simply don't have any place for other ways of producing electricity. The government planned to build a new windmillpark in the sea but the court ruled against it because people didn't want to loose there precious 'view'.
There's still waste after that, but much less.
But if you think there's resistance to nuclear power now, just wait until you try to build a 70ft tower full of liquid sodium.
Imagine if you weren't allowed to use roads because a bus company complained about your driving 3 times. --skunkpussy
You said
"Oil burning plants were eliminated after Carter's oil crisis."
Which is wrong.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fossil_fuel_power_plant#Gas_turbine_combined-cycle_plants
See those? They use oil. And as it happens, a quick search reveals where you can find them, like Texas
http://www.power-technology.com/projects/midlothian/
With the election of President Bill Clinton in 1992, and the appointment of Hazel O'Leary as the Secretary of Energy, there was pressure from the top to cancel the IFR. Sen. John Kerry (D, MA) and O'Leary led the opposition to the reactor, arguing that it would be a threat to non-proliferation efforts, and that it was a continuation of the Clinch River Breeder Reactor Project that had been canceled by Congress. Despite support for the reactor by then-Rep. Richard Durbin (D, IL) and U.S. Senators Carol Mosley Braun (D, IL) and Paul Simon (D, IL), funding for the reactor was slashed, and it was ultimately canceled in 1994. [Just 3 years before completion.]
Emphasis mine. See all those bold 'D's for Democrat? Uh huh.
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
To get 'safe' non China Syndrome nuclear reactors all you have to do is to build them to burn Thorium instead. And the spent fuel is only a problem for a few hundred years instead of several tens of thousands.
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
The second issue is that we have to get a nuclear depository up and running. Every year the treasury is paying huge amounts of taxpayer money to the nuclear power plants for storage of waste. Who knows how many of those of payments are fraudulent. Until we get a national nuclear waste dump up and running, nuclear power is going to a magnet for corruption of the public purse.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Nuclear power is by far a misunderstood energy source. I am in full support of 45 new nuclear power plants. They could put one in my neighborhood, and I would not care in the slightest.
45 nuclear power stations? In the us? really? Forgetting that people are way too paranoid to let this happen, that's a lot of development for a 4 year term.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
As a Native Nevadan, I'm for Nuclear power 100% (and to throw the statistics off more, I'm in my early twenties and have been backing Obama since before the Nevada caucus, which I attended). There are a lot of misunderstanding about the Yucca Mountain project, but more importantly the citizens of Nevada (on a whole) are not grasping an important concept.
I'm a citizen of Reno, first and foremost. After that, and in a larger sense, I'm a citizen of Nevada. If there is a measure that is good for the state on a whole and Reno does not get benefit from it, I still vote for it. Why? Because it is for the good of my fellow statesmen. After this, I am a citizen of the United States, and if there is a measure that my fellow American citizens will benefit from while Nevada or Reno might not, I back it, again, because it is for the good of my country and my fellow Americans.
The concept of working together for the greater good has been replaced with NIMBY communities and people who are too self-centered to think of anyone but themselves -- i.e. most of the people in my generation and the generation before me, the same people who took advantage of these Liar Loans and are being foreclosed upon now.
The other argument that I bring up to people that I discuss this topic with is that there is a great deal of money to be made for not only the State of Nevada, but also any and all states that have any railroad lines crossing through them that will be used to bring the nuclear waste to Yucca Mountain. The cut and dry of it is this: in exchange for not fighting to keep this project from happening, cut a deal with the federal government, using the old States Rights trick, and charge a fair rate for every cubic meter/yard/whatever that has to be transported to help cover the potential risk of a spill and for the right and privilege to cross through the state. This would give Nevada and the other states quite a bit more funding, bring the waste in to a place that can store it, and put this damn issue to rest already.
Nuclear power could provide a lot of benefits outside of its low carbon footprint for electricity generation.
How about a 2 gigawatt plant dedicated to pumping and desalianting seawater for the Southwest's water supply? Not only could this provide a primary source for drinking water, it would provide the immense environmental benefit of stopping the drain-to-dry on the rivers and aquifers.
How about a 2 gigawatt plant dedicated to producing hydrogen from seawater and allowing a bulk source of hydrogen? The hydrogen could be shipped elsewhere and used for electricity generation, fuel for more mobile vehicles, etc.
Building the plants and using the majority of the power on site has big benefits, too, since you won't lose half your power to transmission loss -- it's like getting a free power plant.
you are an uninformed idiot. Without Carter's ban on reprocessing there would be NO NUCLEAR WASTE. We had the technology then, we have it now. This is how European countries generate tons and tons of nuclear power without the waste problem.
For those of us who remember the 70's and early 80's which was sort of the Nuclear Power heyday, it wasn't the dangers of Nuclear energy that caused people to turn against the technology. It was the poor construction and management of the Nuclear Power Plants that was the problem. With Three Mile Island, there was the faulty sensor, at Browns Ferry it was discovered that many of the fail-safe provisions had been left out of the construction to save costs. I remember watching the news and seeing Nuclear Waste being stored in leaky, rusty barrels in a parking lot covered by a tarp. It's not Nuclear Energy most of us are against, it's the fact that too many companies were insisting that it cost too much to build safe Nuclear Power Plants. That's what killed Nuclear Power in the 70's and 80's. It wasn't the technology, it was the management of the technology.
I read most of the 'progressive' blogs and their general consensus is:
Nuclear is bad, don't do it.
Coal is bad, don't do it.
Oil is bad, don't do it.
Apparently it takes too long to drill offshore for it to have any measurable effect and yet starting new industrial technologies for renewables, from scratch, building out their infrastructure and making it affordable will NOT take too long.
I'd really like to hear their plan, assuming it doesn't involve some post apocalyptic disaster where first we have to unwind the clock back the 18th century and face mass starvation and epidemics in our new preindustrial world.
Maybe a golden talking unicorn will come down on a rainbow and be Obama's running mate too.
Go back to smoking dope.
"Why the hell should we?"
So we'll have it when we need it? Drilling is not as instantaneous process.
"Let's use up the oil resources of the people who hate us while it's still relatively cheap, then tap our own resources at $300 a barrel and make them come crawling."
Or, we could drill for it now so we'd have it when it reached 300 a barrel, instead of needing 5 years to get at it after it reaches 300 a barrel.
If that is the sum of your objections to drilling, then you have no legitimate objections.
Mod parent up. His language may be inflammatory, but what he's saying is spot-on.
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
1) Your country is far smaller than the US, so you need to do less in terms of commuting ,etc,
2) you've had the benefit of years of rational development and land use planning, and
3) you've got extensive and well funded public transportation systems. (yeah, I know NS has been having issues in the last few years - it's light years ahead of the way things are in the US. Most cities here have nothing nearly as good as the trams, busses, and metros of various European cities).
We built up our country stupidly, particularly after WWII. We put extensive, relatively sparse tracts of housing far outside of places where people work and provide only highways for transportation. And we're going to pay the price for that, but we're still in the kicking and screaming tantrum stage, and won't start to deal realistically with the issues till the situation is far worse. Expect our politicians to do nothing to get us to grow the fuck up, either.
I don't care if I'm modded troll or otherwise, but I'm not a US citizen and I don't care about US-specific politics. More to the point, this is just day-to-day campaign news, not a world-changing announcement. Yes I'm aware /. has and always will be a US based site, but there's a considerable amount of non-US traffic hitting this site.
Can we stop the non-news postings?
ilovegeorgebush
This is mixing two separate issues. Oil is not the problem as far as producing electricity, its coal. Coal produces an enormous carbon foot print and is just all around nasty (from other residual waste to the damage to the environment that occurs just getting at it). I grew up in north east Pennsylvania, and I have seen first hand the impact of coal mining, its pretty horrific.
Back to my point. Pushing nuclear energy has relatively very little do with our dependence on gasoline via crude oil. Please lets not confuse the two. There is no chance that there will be cars powered by "under the hood" nuclear reactors in the near future. Wind power will also do nothing for our dependence on oil for gasoline.
Another case of policitians using unrelated events to push policy. Albiet, in poor taste, he is at least using this opportunity to point us to a real solution. I hate to say it, but Wind, Solar, Geothermal, etc. are not ready for deployment today. They eventually will be, but by that time (10+ years), it will take another 20+ years before they even make up a few % of global energy production. By that time Nuclear plants can be rolled out en mass and go a long way to reduce our carbon footprint (but not demand on foreign oil, sorry, thats just a different topic).
20th century Marxism is not progress...
I'm a Nuclear Engineer.
Let me help clarify a few things.
1. In the 70's, our technology was not sufficient for reprocessing. It is arguably that we might have the ability to develop the tech now.
2. The HLW (high level waste) from reprocessing is hotter longer after final use than once through methods.
3. 10,000y is a design specification for HLW storage facilities. HLW is less radioactive than the materials dug up to make it after only 700y.
4. Furthermore, since HLW is loaded with rare earths and lanthanides, and our knowledge of their special and sometimes unique chemistry grows every day, and HLW is actually the only reasonable source for some of these elements, its possible that HLW would enter its own reprocessing cycle after just 200y.
Regards,
Jerry
Abrogating civil liberties sure is a great step. Hey what do YOU have to fear? You're an upright consum^w citizen right?
Stop talking about how exploiting more oil will solve the issues. Oil IS an essential resources, and is needed, and we would have plenty of it for the foreseeable future if we stopped burning the damn stuff for single-person transportation.
Nuclear power isn't a bad thing, I will concur. But other avenues have to be explored as well.
If he explores all forms and substances Straight homeward to their symbol-essences; He shall not die.
I don't understand why people can not get it through their heads that no one single item is the answer.
Look, we (US) have enjoyed our luxury of cheap single source energy. Now it is time to get with the program. We need ALL options for energy started now. Think of it as a diversified portfolio. So, I say the following:
YES! Drill for more oil and make some more darn refineries
YES! Build some nuclear power plants.
YES! Explore better ways to use coal in existing power plants.
YES! Build huge solar arrays and start larger solar power plants
YES! Build wave generated power plants
YES! Build wind generated power plants
YES! Build electric-based "commuter" vehicles
YES! Explore better ways to make bio-fuel
The government needs to subsidize some of the projects and needs to throw some money at these problems. If we deploy all of these strategies we may not get cheaper energy but we will get stable energy and maybe, just maybe avert major crisis as population and demand increases exponentially over the next 10 years.
Personally I believe a combination of nuclear and high efficiency solar is the way to go. Espeically if we use liquid salt reactor technology instead of light water reactor technology. Liquid salt has a number of advantages including the safety is in the physics not in the engineering, i.e. the reactor cannot run away or meltdown. Further if you use a Thorium/U233 fuel cycle combined with closed cycle helium gas turbines (which run about 50% efficiency at the high temps of the core... compare with about 33% efficiency with steam) you can potentially get 11 TWe-yr/MT of Thorium ore (becuase you "burn" all of the thorium in the process). To give you an idea, the present yearly output of one thorium mine in Idaho could supply the US energy needs for that same year. Additionally, because you burn it all all you get is fission by-products (no trans uranic waste) which you will need to store for only about 30 yrs (for the radioactive strontium). One other nice thing about the Th/U233 Lliquid flouride salt reactor, you cannot use it to enrich material for weapons production. If you try (ignoring the fact that the Th/U233 cycle is a very poor and inefficient way to try to make bomb material) you will make elements that have a very distinct and strong gamma signature, and you would be detected. If folks are interested there is a great resource at http://www.energyfromthroium.com/ In any case whom ever is the next president they will have to deal with our dependance on oil, and hydrocarbons in general.
I don't trust McCain or anyone in the Republican party to properly run regulatory regime required to safely operate nuclear power plants.
Look what happened to mining inspections over the last 8 years, and the concomitant increase in accidents. Bush appointed mining industry executives to positions of safety enforcement.
GOP crony capitalism is the thing to fear about nuclear power, not the technology itself.
Well?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_tax#Netherlands
"The 2007 fuel tax was 0.684 per litre or $ 3.5 per gallon. On top of that is 19% VAT over the entire fuel price, making the Dutch taxes one of the highest in the world."
Fiscal reality FTW.
1. use pebble bed reactors. you can walk away from these things and they do not go china syndrome, release nuclea water, gas, anything (they are in fact air cooled, no water). they are passively safe: they do not require constant human surveilance to keep from going haywire. the problem is that a lot of people base their opinion of nuclear technology on 1960s era technology. unfortunately, mccain might go with the ancient bullshit tech westinghouse will probably foist on the administration that greenlights new reactors. this is one case where "buy american" means "buy old tech"
2. use breeder reactors, for 4 reasons:
1. current reactors use 1/10th of available fuel.
2. they emit 10x the waste
3. the waste lasts tens of thousands of years and is highly radioactive
4. you can use thorium (extending nuclear tech for centuries with this hugfe fuel source)
use breeder reactors and you stretch your fuel 10x, emit 1/10th the waste, your waste is radioactive for only a century or two, and emits low level radiation, and you are stguck using uranium
so why the heck don't we use breeder reactors? for a big reason: that's how you make plutonium. which can be used in weapons. avoid breeder reactors, and you have nuclear power without bomb-making tech
however, i would assert that the defense expenditure for protecting nuclear reactors from terrorism would be orders of magnitude less expensive than sending our children and brothers/sisters and parents to foreign shores to protect rapdily diminishing oil sources. oil sources which are used to fund militant religious fundamentalist forces hell-bent on destroying us anyways
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Cheaper to Invade Canada and governmentize the oil they export to the US since Canada is now the number one oil importer to the US.. Hell we could even rescue the hockey sports in the USA by having a 10 game winner takes oil between USA and Canada..
Fred Grott(aka shareme) http://mobilebytes.wordpress.com
Not for much longer, I suspect. . .
http://nextbigfuture.com/2008/06/latest-update-on-bussard-fusion.html
If the experiments they are conducting now prove successful, we could plausibly see the first power-generating demonstration plants inside of five years, not fifty.
The total nuclear waste generated by all 103 nuclear plants in the U.S. over the last fifty years will fit in the volume of a typical high school gym. (That's 77,000 tons by weight so far)
So storage really isn't a problem!
Also in less than 600 years, the radioactivity of the nuclear waste is LESS than the ore that was dug out of the ground.
Even if the container deteriorates after 1,400 (which is what they are currently rated for) years; that's over 800 years
after the waste isn't a problem.
Republicans: build 45 new reactors.
Democrats: nationalize the oil industry, price controls on gas.
I'm not going to post which I think is which, but one seems rational and reasonable, the other is pandering to the masses with a policy that is not only short sighted, but dangerous.
-Styopa
Any time you mention the truth about the enviro-nutjob movement, some slashdot troll with a mod point will be there to bury you.
I'm all about SENSIBLE environmental policy. That means we have to balance OUR needs for resources with RESPONSIBLE environmentalism, not turn the entire fucking planet into an off-limits nature preserve.
And yes, it means that there just may need to be a power plant, or a chemical refinery, or any other of a large number of the usual items that trigger "OMGWTFNIMBYAAUGH" reactions from the enviro-nutjobs, NEAR to population centers so that we RESPONSIBLY reduce the transportation and delivery costs (not just monetary but WASTED FUEL ENERGY).
Think about it. It costs us at LEAST 25% more fossil fuel energy to turn OUR FOOD SUPPLY into ethanol fuel and deliver it where it needs to go, than we get back. Ethanol has been one of the biggest energy disasters we've ever gotten into. And at the same time we WASTE petroleum trying to do this, the price of food for starving countries is going through the roof because the US, an exporter of corn, is BURNING THE FOOD SUPPLY - LITERALLY.
Think of it this way: would you dump a gallon jug of Jack Daniels in your gas tank? Guess what - YOU JUST DID. Oh, and the reason you constantly have to get your injectors cleaned and serviced and buy injector cleaner to put in your tank? That's right - ethanol is incredibly corrosive to your rubber fuel line!
And yet the enviro-nutjobs keep screaming for ethanol production and refuse to consider how wasteful it is. They refuse to consider the fact that the "renewable" energy sources all have problems too: in order to make an order of solar panels from polysilicon, you create an immense amount of TOXIC WASTE that has to be dealt with. If you run a mirror-based solar farm, you've got to keep the mirrors polished (congratulations, keep a lot of toxic chemicals handy and be prepared to toxify the hell out of the soil) just as a start. And all it takes to lower or cut entirely your generating capacity is a nice cloud or two. Earth seems to be fairly old hat at generating those, somehow. Walk outside and take a quick peek at the sky, chances are there's one around.
Wind farms are INCREDIBLY noisy and disruptive, the power is intermittent at best with very minimal generating capacity for the land area used, and a major killer of endangered birds already.
Geothermal has limited areas in which it can be placed, areas which are invariably tectonically unstable (or worse yet: the "best" places are usually right in the expected lava flow/blast zone of a volcano).
Tidal power has the same problem, you can only do it on a shoreline, and a rise/fall in the shoreline (not due to "global warming" but simply tectonic activity or seasonal changes in large lakes) can kill it quite easily, since the turbines have to be set at the right place to match the incoming/outgoing tides... and even then, they ONLY generate power during the tidal shift.
Biomass is a nice thought, but you get back to the food supply and other effects. Wood chips? Watch the price of particulate board matter of all sorts (the sort likely most of your furniture is made of, especially if it came from Ikea) jack through the roof. Much of the rest is fed to animals or composted to create fertilizer in order to grow more food, which means you'll decrease crop yields and jack food prices up again.
Do I say we shouldn't use these? No. But if we had a SENSIBLE and RESPONSIBLE nuclear policy, including recycling "spent" fuel and refining it back for reuse rather than trying to stash it under a mountain, we could eliminate a LOT more of the oil/natural gas/coal portion of our energy than these sources are ever likely to manage.
We absolutely can -- and should -- blame Carter for not looking past the hysteria of the day. The whole reason we have elected officials is so that they can look beyond the hysteria/panic/trend of the day and make the right decision, even if it's not the one that everyone is clamoring for. It's why we don't have votes of no confidence, short term limits, or even direct voting.
I absolutely despise elected officials who live by polls. Public opinion is fickle: what everyone supports today, they are almost guaranteed to oppose tomorrow. Politicians are supposed to look beyond that. The fact that Carter failed to do so doesn't make him unusual among our presidents, but it's still a failure and he still should be held accountable for it.
And Nuclear energy is safe! The closest we've come to something like Chernobyl was Three Mile Island (not far from me), and they were prepared (unlike the commies) and controlled the situation before things got critical. These plants have now been around for while, we know what we're doing, let's get more of them up. It's cheap energy, it's safe energy, and while it be limited like oil, we haven't used up these resources yet like oil, so let's get started on them.
Umm, I'm pro-nuclear and even I realize that reprocessing is not 100% efficient. There will always be isotopes created that aren't useful that need to be disposed of somehow. Reprocessing is a great technology that one that we should be working on -- it can drastically reduce the amount of waste created -- but it doesn't eliminate it entirely.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Flamebait? More like painful honesty. Carter was a nice guy and obviously very smart, but his energy policies are crippling us. Think of where we might be today if we had 30 years of experience running breeder reactors on a wide-scale basis.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
I'm all for building more nuclear plants and think they, along with fuel reprocessing, are a key element in reducing our dependence on fossil fuels. McCain's plan, however, ignores the realities of what it would take to physically build 45 plants in the US by 2030.
There was an article covered a while back (http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/03/14/1238233) talking about the 600-ton steel forgings required for a reactor containment vessel and the fact that on one company in Japan can, currently, make them. Given that their production rate is only 5 per year and their first open slot is in ~2015, the US would need 80% of their output from 2015 to 2027 to hope to meet that goal.
Unless the rest of the world stops building nuclear plants or someone else starts making containment vessels, all this is just talk.
McCain panders to a crisis-mode mentality.
Nuclear power generation has its fans and foes, and the foes have great evidence of the difficulities of building, maintaining, and lifecycle costs. Ask the people in W Washington State about nuclear. Or Chernobyl, or Three Mile Island.
Nuclear power, like offshore oil drilling, isn't the answer. The answer is a rethinking of fuel use, efficiencies, growth patterns, and alternative geo-thermal, solar, and other safer alternatives to nuclear power. Electric cars sound like a great idea, but battery technology just isn't there yet, and that's how they'd be powered-- electricity ostensibly driven by nucular power plants.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
You insensitive clod, he'll be only 94 in 2030.
They're predominantly in Hawaii, Gulf Coast, and New England. Nationwide, it makes up only about 1.6% of generation in 2007, (source) down from over 3% in 2006. Non-hydro renewable makes up about 2.4%.
Furthermore, PHEVs aren't too far away, and they will serve to shift energy demand from petroleum products to electricity.
That said, I'm not a big fan of McCain's policy. It's not that he's pro-nuclear, it's that he's consistently voted against subsidizing wind, solar, biomass, and geothermal while at the same time voting to subsidize oil, natural gas, and nuclear. This policy is no different. Nuclear may well be part of the GHG emission solution, but it's not problem free [waste transportation and storage], and so long as other parts of the GHG emission solution don't create nuclear waste, we ought to focus on bringing those solutions online first.
Right...because giving power to the government works SO much better than corporations. Also, there are quite a few places where you physically CAN'T put wind and solar power, and the energy is produced by spewing something into the air. I'm not arguing against local stuff, just keep in mind that it's not a cure-all.
I live just outside of the Idaho National Lab (which Bush declared as the nuclear power research capital 2 years ago). Since the "declaration" the labs nuclear research budget has fallen and jack shit in terms of reactor research has happened.
There is a big push here to get a tri-core closed cycle plant (it makes and processes its own fuel). The locals are all for it, the state is all for it, the feds won't lift a damn finger.
So, I'll believe it when I see it.
Esp. given that Uranium is a limited resource.
And breeders make fuel, but they aren't a universal option (no one wants North Korea to build a breeder...) so we're back to using a mix of sources. People are going t o have to become more responsible for their energy consumption by becoming more responsible for their energy production.
The nukes (with hydro and geothermal) could be used for baseload, and wind / solar could add on/top off as needed. MASSIVE changes are going to be needed, and they need to be done VERY quickly.
Demand destruction is the only way a society can grow in the face of resource depletion - efficiency improvements must exceed depletion rates.
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
I was under the impression reprocessing generates more fuel than what was started with and it is even more radioactive. At some point we start having a surplus of fuel that will need to be disposed of.
The newer designs of reactors have no CHANCE of doing what either Chernobyl or 3-Mile Island did. Pebble-Bed reactors fail "safe" (without guidance, they simply hit their equilibrium temperature which is well within the structural design limits and stay there). Plus, they cool by inert gas rather than water so there's no chance of a contaminated steam-cloud explosion (which was why Chernobyl was so nasty).
THIS FACT ALONE: France is far more leftist and "GREEN" than the US and they have a far greater threat of domestic Islamic terrorism, yet they are almost fully nuclear because:
*It is SAFE
Oh, the citizens of CHERNOBYL beg to differ!
Why hasn't there been a single incident in the last 22 years. Could it just be that Chernobyl was an old poorly designed, poorly maintained reactor that bears no comparisons to modern reactors?
http://www.phyast.pitt.edu/~blc/book/chapter7.html
*Has nearly ZERO pollution
But Its NUCULUR WASTE!!! GODZILLA!!!.
An average plant produces just 3 cubic meters of waste per year and 95% of that waste is re-usable:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_reprocessing
As for the NIMBY's, store it in the desert where we used to test nuclear weapons. I'm guessing that's no one's back yard.
*Provides continuous power (unlike solar, wind)
Hey buddy, there are ways to store that power and supply continuous power.
Yeah, more expensive, less efficient ways.
*Provides CHEAP power (unlike solar, wind)
You'd put a price on protecting Mother Earth? We need a ZERO-RISK society!
Cost is actually important to the average person who can't afford to take their private jet around the country lecturing the unwashed masses about their evil polluting ways.
You can look up the facts about nuclear power yourself, or you can watch "The China Syndrome" and build the hundreds (thousands?) of windmills and square miles of solar panels it would take equate to one nuclear plant.
Sorry this was a little snarky. I know most anti-nuclear, pro-green people are just well intentioned and misinformed. So please do the research. Throw out any research you find from the Sierra Club and power companies and the answer will still be clear.
Again, why is the rest of the developed world going nuclear and we are tilting at windmills?
Are we that much smarter?
soem references. And that's not including new genetically enhanced corn varieties or other crop/waste sources that will come along once the industry is established.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
Look how long it has taken for any state to accept the toxic nuclear waste. How long before we have to start looking for more dumping grounds for these new active power plants?
One of our biggest poblems, particularly in the US, is the lack of long-range planning when it comes to energy policy. Our entire society has been built on the presumption that oil is and will always be cheap, which considering Hubbert's peak oil predictions in the 50's is remarkably foolish and short-sighted. We really need to look at the long-term implications of nuclear or any other energy source, and start planning now instead of waiting for another crisis to develop.
2. Where there's vast amounts of money, there is fraud.
Near my home in the 1980's a nuclear plant began construction, and it turned out that the contractor was skimming money off the top and not building the plant to spec. When the state finally inspected it, the walls were honeycombed because the contractor was skimping on the concrete! Imagine if that plant had gone online.
It's not so much the technology I'm worried about - it's the greedy motherfuckers who are willing to cut corners for a profit that concern me. I have no interest in helping some CEO finally get that island in the Pacific while my state turns into a Chernobyl site.
Well, in the northern US, it would/could make a big difference. For some reason up there...they use heating OIL to heat their homes during the long, hard winters.
Perhaps if we had more nukes providing cheaper electricity...we could get the heating done up north without so much oil usage.
I mean, if you think gas prices are bad now...wait till you have to buy oil to heat your house...something you REALLY can't go without....and be prepared for sticker shock...
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Anything radioactive for hundreds of thousands of years isn't terribly radioactive.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
I agree with almost everything you say. Coal is much worse; nuclear doesn't replace much of our oil dependence. Transportation makes up about half of our use of oil, mostly going to cars (SUVs!), trucks, desiel semis, etc. The only way I can see nuclear making a difference in our oil consumption is with the combination of electric cars. Right now, I wouldn't consider buying so much as an electric scooter as long as the power plant is coal. But if the grid is nuclear (or some other green power), buying an electric car, motorcycle, etc suddenly makes sense.
Ideally, I'd like to put up enough solar panels and wind turbines to power my house, charge my car, and sell back to the utilities.
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
We can't build Chernobyl style nuke plants here, because quite simply, ours are required to have containment buildings.
Chernobyl didn't, and is part of the standard of Russian design - design for average loading, then have shortages during peak load. American design is to design for the peak load, then things go along well at average loads.
I'm all for more nuke plants, and have been forever. And for anyone that thinks the government can do it better then private enterprise - get over yourselves. I walked the decks of "1/4 mile island", shortly after she melted one down. (USS Nimitz melted down a reactor in the same time frame as Three Mile Island).
thank you. But since when have facts discouraged the anti-Obama trolls? "olol he talks about hope and change, he must not have any real policy ideas!"
I've upped my standards, so up yours.
Yes, let us not do something just because the payoff is at a future date. Nothing is worth doing, if we do not reap the benefits while "I" am in office.
Inexperience ringing as truth to the inexperienced; Obama for prez.
Yes, but cars *can* be powered by elecricity. So nuclear energy *does* have something to do with our dependence on gasoline.
That power is already there, however every once in a while it has to be redistributed a little. Would you like some of it? Or would you like it given to your "local" utility? That is exactly what happened during the great depression. The US government had to inject money into the economy by giving money to individuals. In Canada, the depression was quite a bit worse for longer because their government refused to give "charity" and doggedly stuck to maintaining a balanced budget. The spending that started due to WWII in Canada pretty much wiped out the depression in about 6 months. The US didn't completely recover until the war either, but most historians agree the US faired better than Canada which was close to revolution. Look up about the march from the west of 10,000 out of work men to Ottawa.
I actually think Geothermal will be the only dependable energy source over the long haul, but we need to work out a few bugs first.
Electric powered cars will lower oil dependence for a bit, but since so many other products are made from oil it will continue to be an important resource regardless of whether people burn it or not.
In fact we depend on plastics so much now, that in my mind burning it as fuel makes as much sense as burning the food supply for fuel.
"All it took was $4/gallon gas I guess." In the Netherlands, due to massive taxing, that's almost what we pay for one *litre*, being about 0.23 gallon... That must be why we're still using windmills for energy, cause wind's free, although lately I heard they're planning to tax wind too.
Nuclear is expensive. Just about every plant requires govt. subsidies, and almost always goes over budget. Darlington NGS here in Canada is a good example of that. And now the Ontario govt. wants to build Darlington 2, Electric Boog-a-loo.
There was an article in the Wall Street Journal last month (reprinted here) about the high costs involved with nuclear power. New builds in places like Finland are behind schedule and over budget. The Bruce reactor refurbishment, here in Ontario, is already $300 million over budget.
I'm not anti-nuke (I work at a nuclear plant), but the public should know that nuclear power plants don't come cheap; and if their govt. decides to go on a nuclear building spree they should be prepared to open their wallets.
Unless that is how long it takes to build it. If you don't start now, when do you think it will be done?
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
We could use nuclear power in nearly every situation where we currently use natural gas--heating buildings, cooking, peak electricity generation. If natural gas doesn't get used for those applications, it will have to go elsewhere--and it will. The "gas-to-liquids" (GTL) process takes natural gas and turns it into ultra-low-sulfur diesel. Currently, it's not particularly economic, but if we reduce our demand for natural gas significantly (by building nuclear power plants, for example), the price for natural gas will drop to the point where GTL becomes economic.
Besides, it's important to remember that it's not just high gasoline prices, it's high energy prices in general. At our house, the cost per kWh has approximately doubled in the past two years, and our electricity bill currently dwarfs all our other bills put together (gas, water, cable, internet, phone, etc).
Help find a cure for cancer. Join the [H]orde
"Yea, because Carter, the only president to have ever had any formal training in any sort of nuclear technology, and also the only president ever involved in the cleanup after a nuclear accident [wikipedia.org], is all irrational and uninformed where nuclear power is concerned."
When viewed in retrospect, yes, that is exactly how it appears things have shaken out.
Your post is just a reworded argument form authority.
"Don't blame Carter for the hysteria of the day."
Why the fuck not? He, according to YOU, was trained better and more informed, yet he ALLOWED the hysteria, even kowtowing to it in some cases. Why shouldn't I blame him for allowing irrational fear to dominate the discussion, when according to YOU he should have had the information necessary to defuse the hysteria?
History proved his positions wrong. If he was as informed as you think, how did he ALLOW that to happen? And why do you think he gets a pass for it?
Hey jackass, where are you going to store all the nuclear waster? In your backyard? Let's sing you up. Do some research.
Better idea: put a breeder reactor RIGHT in my backyard. Reprocess the spent "waste" right back into fuel for reuse, like RESPONSIBLE people would (and DO) do in other countries.
The reason we don't have breeder reactors in America? Jimmy Carter thought the US could serve an "example" to tin-pot dictators like Syria, Pakistan, India, North Korea, Iran, China, etc... by having a "moratorium" on nuclear enrichment. Gee, how'd that work out so far?
Too bad we need 10 times that many to eliminate our need for foreign oil to generate electricity.
Contrary to the commonly espoused reasons, nuclear is not "the best" option. Not because of environmental concerns, although they are important. Not fuel disposal, although they present a sticky NIMBY-driven and real problem. Not because anyone is afraid of nuclear power. Or because anyone is short-sighted.
The plain truth is that in this country, private industry builds nuclear power plants, and nuclear power plants cost far more to construct per kW than yet vastly unexploited sources such as wind power. Regardless of what kind, breeder reactor or not, before one kilowatt comes out a nuke plant, it is already far behind in cost effectiveness. See http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/06/02/nuclear_power_price/.
1. I never said anything about this being a bad idea. Just that it's typical of politicians. This way he can put billions into nuclear power, have the corporations steal the money and not have to be accountable for the delays and increased costs.
2. The stupid two party system mentality is killing the USA.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
the website of an Ethanol consortium says that?
Gee, I'm not surprised.
How about some honest research instead.
Also here.
And then there's the other effects...
Electricity can most efficiently be generated as close to where it is consumed as possible. Energy is only going to get more expensive over time.
What we need to look at is massive investment in small scale generation. Every house in the world should have grid connected photovoltaics on the roof. If you are fortunate enough to live in a good location, you should have grid connected wind, hydro, or geothermal generating capacity as well. Net metering of power should be required by law, with a requirement that power companies pay fair market value for energy purchased from small producers. Tax credits and government backed financing should make the cost of system installation and maintenance reasonable for any homeowner.
This coupled with conservation will allow us to continue to run our economy on our current infrastructure. The power companies may find they have such a windfall of power during daylight hours that they have to invest in pumped storage hydro, flywheel, or other energy storage systems. While they can take the fossil plants offline permanently.
I have it on good authority that about 25-30 plants are in the approval process so this is nothing new. So calling for 45 by then is probably going to happen anyway. Of course this isn't being said because, well, its got to seem like his idea. Also, as for dangerous... get an education. 4th generation nuclear power plants are probably some of the safest forms of energy production available. Nuclear power is an incredibly safe form of energy production and to claim that its dangerous is talking out of sheer ignorance.
Mike Moore ph33nd@gmail.com
> here is a very limited supply of easily accessable fissable material on earth.
That's why they want to get after Iran, it's sitting on lots of uranium.
So it's kind of "I want that oil" warmongering on steroids.
Probably they could simply buy it, but want it cheaper and don't want to let Iran get all the profits.
If you free up coal reserves that would be used for power by switching to nuclear power, you can then use that coal for coal gassification which would help the current oil problem.
And in 50 years, no one figures out how to create fusion reactor?
Never count on future technology (i.e. non-existent technology) to bail us out of current problems. It's a fools bet.
Will it happen? Probably. But to count on it is magical thinking. We need to do something now and not count on the future to clean up after ourselves.
I think we should be counting on low tech options: conservation, stop being such energy pigs, riding bikes and walking, mass transportation, etc....
EU is a lot smaller than the US interms of actual land mass however many of their countries have Nuclear Plants in their backyard.
I don't seem to see huge protests over Nuke energy NIMBY waste... (I listen to BBC America and NPR)...What is their solution and can it be ported to the U.S.
Personally I think research into nuclear power generation is a good idea instead of the graft and corruption associated with getting the poor designs available into position to fleece the taxpayer. Build a single decent unit first and then go for the large number of plants when that works out.
It is only 'weaponization' of the fuel...IF you put it in a weapon.
Frankly, we've got enough nuke weapons now, and aren't really looking for a new source of fuel for those. If we look into IFR (Integral Fast Reactors) and the like...we can make very efficient use of the nuclear fuel...and reduce the amounts of waste, and possible weaponizable by products.
We do have pretty good scientific minds in this country, if we'd just use them, and stop playing politics with all this....our energy needs should be above petty partisanship.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Actually just about the entirety of Northern Europe does the same. Until very recently it was cheaper to heat with oil (and now only natural gas is *slightly* cheaper than the -much more flexible- electrical heating).
... what's with all the white and black tanks on all the rooftops. Well those provide heating and cooling. There about $200, but I doubt you'd get much heating out of them in more northern regions.
I do prefer electrical heating -a lot- over central oil heating though.
The only nation that really heats homes using renewable energy is Israel. It's almost funny when you look at Jerusalem from a distance, and you'll immediately ask yourself
Ok..but, as long as we don't stop allowing usage of natural gas for COOKING.
Cooking on electric stoves sucks....gas is the way to go, if you enjoy yourself in the kitchen, much easier to regulate heat with gas.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
This is mixing two separate issues. Oil is not the problem as far as producing electricity, its coal.
1. There's a fair number of oil fired plants. They were built in the 1950s as they are cheaper to maintain than coal plants and it was before natural gas turbine plants came into vogue. They operate any more as a power provider of last resort because they are expensive to operate.
2. You want nuclear is that if you are going to have a lot of electric cars, demand for electricity is going to go through the roof. That power needs to come from somewhere. Shall we burn more coal?
This is my sig.
Actually, pushing nuclear energy could have a great deal with our dependence on gasoline. If electric plug-in cars start to become more popular, nukes and wind power could in fact power our cars.
That's dumb. As dirty as coal plants are, they are far cleaner than the equivalent power output from internal combustion engines. If it takes n joules to get you from place to place, you're better off using the more efficient method of getting those joules.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
It had it peak almost a year ago, but i bet 100 bucks that we will have something like that in the next 10 years if we choose to stay only with nuclear plants. http://www.uxc.com/review/uxc_g_price.html
Nuclear can potentially impact the price of oil.
If the price of oil will drop because of an increase in the supply of oil, then what would nuclear energy do to increase the supply of oil?
Well, everyone admits that nuclear power will likely replace coal power. Lowering the demand for coal should cause the cost of coal to drop. Why is this significant to oil? Imagine if we started turning our coal into oil. Coal is the one fossil fuel that the US has a plentiful supply. We could probably do this at a cost significantly below the price of a barrel of oil. So we could sell our coal oil at $70 for example, and if the oil drillers want to sell in the US, they're going to need to drop their prices.
"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork
Isnt there a HUGE problem of our electrical grid, does everyone completely forget east coast blackout of 2004? We need to upgrade our grid BEFORE we flood it with 45 nuclear reactors. Would you wire your house with CAT5 it it were made of straw?
The problem with building 45 new nuclear reactors tells me that's the only option for McCain, more oil more reactors while attempting to derail alternative fuels. Aging coal plants will still be there and when supply meets the demand, corporate America wont care about alternative sources of energy.
Its a sure bet that insane tax incentives will get these 45 reactors built. Most will come on line just in time for the next election cycle, with another spree of tax incentives to repair the aging grid!
If its going to take 4-5 years and billions in tax incentives to install Hydrogen Refill stations across the country or bring Nanosolar Printers to handle 2,000 feet per minute? Or one that keeps us on our dependency on fossil fuels and nuclear waste. Regardless of what option you choose, you'll suffer financially for years until its built or deployed.
So whats it going to be America?
There is no chance that there will be cars powered by "under the hood" nuclear reactors in the near future.
Given cheap electricity, today's technology offers a very real possibility of replacing the commuting fleet with battery powered cars. Nuclear was cheap relative to oil even before the price of oil started going up.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
X_X
Ideally, I'd like to put up enough solar panels and wind turbines to power my house, charge my car, and sell back to the utilities. What's stopping you, then? Unless you live in a neighborhood with covenants restricting such devices, you have all the freedom in the world to do exactly what you suggest. The technology exists. The products exist. What's stopping you?
Ahh...perhaps it's that little thing called "cost?" Independence from the power grid really sounds like a neat idea until you consider how much it costs to do it. Sort of like electric cars, which sound neat until you consider the cost to acquire one versus the utility and flexibility you can extract from it vis-as-vis a gasoline-powered vehicle of similar cost.
I'm not trying to be a downer on such ideas, though. I'm just pointing out the hypocrisy of so many of the wealthy "treehuggers" out there who have the means to do something about their energy consumption yet continue to shuttle around in limos, private jets, and occupy 15,000 sq. ft. mansions with an energy consumption the size of a small town. Environmentalism seems great to folks until you ask them to put their money where their mouth is.
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
under the hood nuclear reactor may be far off, but plug-in hybrids and fully electric cars need to plug into something. The increased demand on the power grid needs to be fueled by more power plants.
"1. I never said anything about this being a bad idea"
REHEHEALLLLLY?
"but promising things 20+ years into the future is pretty bad."
It appears that the advertising has paid off but I personally would have prefered the money spent on research instead to hit any one of those three goals.
Much of your comments are accurate, especially how renewables do not eliminate the use of oil for transportation. But you're wrong about the state of renewables: wind is in large-scale deployment today (19% of electricity in Denmark, 9% in Spain & Portugal, 6% in Germany); solar is closer than 10+ years as the first large-scale installations are being built.
A little more about wind power in Germany: they're aiming for 20% in about the next 10 years. And their experience is interesting; it turns out that when you have large numbers of wind farms all across the country, the wind is always blowing somewhere, and the problem with intermittent output starts to go away. (Requires, of course, a power grid able to deal with shifting inputs, which may require expensive upgrades.)
I continue to be puzzled when I hear people describe nuclear energy as "cheap." If you count only the construction costs for a new facility, and the cost of fuel, then nuclear is competitive on a $/kw.h basis.
But the moment you need to refurbish or decommission a reactor, just watch what happens to your costs. In my jurisdiction, I have witnessed spectacular overruns (both in time and money) for the refurbishment of 4 generating units out of an 8-unit power station. I am talking about tens of billions of dollars down a black hole. And when something like this happens it's either the taxpayers who get stuck with a bailout, or the costs are spread across the entire energy portfolio so that all producers (coal, wind, hydroelectric) pass the pain equally along to consumers.
And what about long-term storage of nuclear waste? How many years and dollars have been spend studying Yucca Mountain or other similar disposal options? What's the latest estimate to get a full-scale storage facility up and running there? Are those costs being added onto the per kw.h cost for nuclear-derived energy or would that be the federal government footing the bill again?
Given the holy mess we've created by increasing atmospheric CO2 concentrations by ~50% since the start of the industrial revolution, it's entirely possible that nuclear power is one of our best options in the short term. But it shouldn't be a conversation based on the idea that nuclear power is cheap. With full-cost accounting, building a couple hundred new nuclear power facilities is really really expensive ... I'm talking "why don't we explore the idea of orbital Solar Power Satellites beaming microwave power back to a collector grid in Montana" expensive.
If libertarians are so opposed to effective government, why don't they all move to Somalia?
It would decrease our dependence on oil bc like others are saying many homes are still powered by oil. Also home energy prices are on the rise as well. That story is getting buried by the gas price hikes, but energy prices all over the country are going up.
C8H18 + O2 --> energy + H2O + CO2 (modulo a little balancing!)
Take energy from the nuclear plant, CO2 from the atmosphere, and every time a car burns that fuel, it's simply returning to the atmosphere, that which was taken from it. Carbon neutral octane!
This is NOT a crackpot idea, it's something that a federal lab has already worked out, and it can provide that fuel for $4.60 a gallon (before brilliant people optimize the process even further). That's not much more expensive than gasoline is today. To make it competitive, all you'd need is a $.60/gallon tax, and it's probably already competitive if introduced in the rest of the world which has higher fuel taxes.
I have no idea why this idea is not more widespead.
Information theory is life. The rest is just the KL divergence.
Yes, we need to work on non-oil power sources, but we also have to have power WHILE we do that. So many people don't realize that having 100% wind power in say 2080 is meaningless if, due to idiotic bans, we run out of fuel in say 2050.
Most of the proposed new plants are based on designs purchased from other countries, who, unlike us, have been building new plants and researching new designs right up to the present day. Japan has some really amazing designs that are different from anything in operation in this country today.
Saying that we're going to be doing nothing but building more 1970's style plants is completely inaccurate.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
I think that's the ill side effect of the green house effect hysteria, green house gases aren't the way we're screwing up our planet but the only focus currently.
Just returned from visiting my family in Vegas, and there were a couple articles about this issue in the local papers. First, no one in Nevada wants the Yucca Mountain repository. Second, Obama doesn't support Yucca Mountain. Expect the nuclear power effort in the US to continue to be lifeless if Obama is elected. I'm not an Obama basher, just think he's wrong on this issue.
I can't understand why we're not massively building wind farms in the great plane states of the US. Until we have a means to safely dispose of nuclear waste, building more nuclear power plants make no sense. Although, I have to admit I'll miss W's attempt at pronouncing "nuclear."
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
It just runs...
Here is a neat idea:
.5m diameter rods (which can be a ceramic) encased in steel, ceramic, and then salt-water resistant polymer. Go out to the abyssal plains of the Pacific Ocean, drill a hole wide enough to accommodate the finished rods down 2050m below the 3m-5m silt layer, drop 1000 of the rods down the hole, top with a 25m layer of concrete, 25m of gravel, and 10m of silt. Go a few meters over and repeat.
After reprocessing the waste to recycle as much as possible, create 2m long,
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
Since when is an obvious troll with no information in it and slathered with insults in any way informative?
"I have nothing against nuclear power, I just do not trust deregulation-happy business criminals to run them. With proper designs, regular inspections, and a safety-first mentality, nuclear power is clean and safe. With Enron-style profit-raping and criminal evasion of government regulation, we'd be fucked and glowing in the dark. I wouldn't put it past them to try and build crappy Chernobyl-style reactors just to give the finger to the Greenies, the same way they have the hard-on for drilling in the Arctic Wildlife Refuge."
Well? What exactly is contained in there that would cause someone to think that this post had any useful information in it whatsoever?
Is that power or weapons?
My Sig indicates the end of the comment I posted.
As a Nevadan born and raised in Las Vegas, I believe there is generally a positive consensus about Yucca Mountain. I don't think anyone actually believes that nuclear waste buried far far away in the middle of nowhere is going to turn us into three-eyed mutants. If it will help lower gas prices (via electric cars), please do.
Its = possessive. It's = "it is"
How do we tell Iran that?
It is a sticky ethical question whether we build one or not.
The better question is that if even Iran wants to go nuclear, how can we justify fossil fuels?
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
Nuclear is still more expensive than coal, which we have a lot of, so why would we charge electric cars with nuclear power?
Actually, McCain opposes drilling for oil in the ANWR.
Well, in the northern US, it would/could make a big difference. For some reason up there...they use heating OIL to heat their homes during the long, hard winters.
Using electricity directly for heating is very inefficient, whatever the source, and requires substantial upgrades to the distribution grid. A much better option is to use the 'waste' heat from the power plant, by piping steam through buildings. This is already used in some places in Europe. I don't know if anyone's using a nuclear power plant for this though...Perhaps if we had more nukes providing cheaper electricity...we could get the heating done up north without so much oil usage.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
Nuclear power is far far more expensive than oil. Not only is it security risk, but the health hazards are enormous in obtaining the fuel, refining the fuel, using the fuel, and disposal of the spent fuel.
Inevitable accidents have world wide affects. To make it worse, nuclear power plants are not the most productive.
I can't recall the study, but the cost benefits of nuclear energy that are quoted never factor in disposal (storage actually) of the spent rods or cleanup of accidents.
Do we need a reminder of 3 mile island or chernobyl?
As for geothermal, how many locations does the US have that are suitable?
Yeah, cost. Worth every dollar, I just don't have the dollars yet. When I can safely afford to build, without endangering savings or going into debt, I probably will.
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
Nuclear is the best solution we have for now. To say that it's risky overlooks the hazards of coal: mining and moving 1 billion tons of coal, burning it and releasing particulates and heavy metals, acidifying the oceans by increasing atmospheric CO2 load. The relative risk of nuclear is probably overall lower than coal/oil/gas in terms of lives saved by reducing particulate and heavy metal emissions, and environmental benefit from reduced mining activity, reduced CO2 and metal emissions.
The first thing the incoming President will need to do to start the movement is rescind Carter's executive order against fuel reprocessing. Then, drive up the marginal cost of coal mining through changes in tax and land use policy. Third and most necessary, apply a sales tax to fossil and nuclear sources to fund development of the next energy source as well as improving efficiency of current consumers.
Fission is, at best, a stopgap over current problems with energy. We cannot neglect fusion, solar, etc. as well as improving efficiency of major electric consumers such as lighting, data centers, HVAC climate control systems, etc. Hopefully something better will come along in the next 50 years to replace these plants as they retire.
We're all hypocrites. We all have hidden parts, it's the contrast between them that make us more a hypocrite than others
Nuclear power plants can not be used to create materials for bombs. The real risk is in fuel enrichment plants, which in the past have generally been a necessary part of the nuclear power process and have thus coincided with nuclear power generation.
This can be avoided by using a heavy water moderated plant design, such as the CANDU and its derivatives, currently in use in Canada, India, and a number of other countries. These plants can use natural uranium, which contains less than 1% U235, compared to the roughly 5% U235 required for other reactor designs. No fuel enrichment is necessary using this design.
Thus, if we know countries are using this type of reactor, and fuel enrichment facilities pop up, any claims that it is necessary for power generation are clearly false.
We need to convince McCain to that we need to harness entropy as a source of power. Since it just keeps growing, and we're never going to run out.
If someone is passing you on the right, you are an asshole for driving in the wrong lane.
Lock-in this year for me... #2 heating oil... $4.799/gallon
That's up from $2.729/gallon this past winter
Believe me... I understand
I will not give in to the terrorists. I will not become fearful.
Estimates don't place the Anwar reserves to be all that big. If we extracted all of it tomorrow, we'd be set for about a year.
Offshore drilling has the potential to provide a better, long-term solution. I'd rather explore this route than wreck one of the last pristine environments on North America.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
no, mostly just from the left.
I like how you cleverly wrapped your political troll in a pro-nuclear candy coating.
If we want to start slamming people, we can talk about how the Republicans want to drill in the national wildlife preserve when scientists say that there isn't that much oil there to begin with and nowhere near enough to make a dent in oil prices. Also how McCain wants to have a "gas tax holiday" this summer which is the stupidest idea ever and will only make gas prices worse.
I'm pro-nuclear power. I'm also anti politics and anti bullshit. Both of the candidates are for renewable sources of energy and are looking on reducing the US carbon footprint. It's wonderful that McCain came out in support of nuclear power, but lets not start acting like Republicans' shit doesn't stink and slamming Democrats with political hyperbole just because McCain proposed 45 new reactors. Republicans had 6 years of total government control to fund construction of new nuclear reactors, where are these new sites?
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
I find that the difference between cooking on a gas stove and cooking on an electric stove matters if you have cheaply made lightweight cookware, and/or a particularly cheap electric stove.
If you have good cookware, it will stay a fairly constant and controllable temperature despite the range cycling on and off. Just needs more mass in the equation.
"Our gouvernments have a tendancy in Europe to tax a lot to control the behavior of the population"
Fixed that to make it accurate.
"A high price for fuel is an incentive to avoid wasting it and producing CO2."
So it's not about the economy, it's about deterring behaviors you find unpleasant.
"People uses smaller cars and public transports and that's right."
Says who? It's not the government's job to decide what's "right", even if you agree.
"Fuel Tax also reflect the very high cost for the community of the road transports."
Strange when the US certainly has more roads and at least similar costs, yet doesn't tax nearly as much. Hmmm...
Now that I've eviscerated your points, do you honestly believe the tax has ANYTHING to do with the public good? It's a method of controlling you, and you aren't even investing the intellectual capital to examine that possibility.
Iceland heats its houses with geothermal energy.
If you don't consider geothermal energy renewable,
then you shouldn't consider solar energy renewable.
*sigh* back to work...
I haven't heard any national leader talk about converting coal to gasoline which became cost effective when oil hit 40$/gallon. USA has lots and lots of coal. Time to start putting people to work on this in a big way. Anyway, glad to hear McCain is at least talking about nuclear.
There is no chance that there will be cars powered by "under the hood" nuclear reactors in the near future.
Why not, American cars are big enough.
Uh, wrong. Energy is energy. It's just a matter of storage. Nuclear energy could be used to generate hydrogen (using electricity)--wait, do they maybe need hydrogen in fuel cell cars. Or to power plug in cars.
If I had moderator points right now I'd dump them all here. With plugin hybrids only a couple of years away, reliable generation of electricity is the solution for supplanting oil. Not some new way to distribute energy requiring a whole new huge fueling infrastructure. While building new reactors will granted take years, it will also take years for cars to switch over to electric. While nuclear should not be the only means for increasing electrical generation, it should certainly be a part of the solution. Now if you want to moan about the dangers of nuclear energy think hard on this fact: the US Navy has been using nuclear powered vessels since 1955.
if you enjoy yourself in the kitchen, much easier to regulate heat with gas.
I keep hearing people say this, but my experience is that gas stoves have excellent control over the hot to very hot range, but completely lack the low to medium range.
Of course, the problem could be limited to my stove.
*sigh* back to work...
I think a big reason we are not drilling offshore - the reason for the ban -- is the
1969 Santa Barbara Oil Spill. This caused a lot of average folks to join the environmentalists and push for the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, and the offshore drilling ban.
Now you don't hear so much about rivers catching fire, GE dumping huge amounts of PCBs in the Hudson River, LA has better air than it used to. Acid rain was also brought under control. In a way,
offshore oil drilling in the past created the power the environmental movement in the recent past.
But fewer and fewer people remember seeing pictures of California beaches covered in oil and dead birds.
If the ban were lifted, it would be at least 10 years before the oil and gasoline would make it to the market. As we go past peak oil, on our way to producing a fraction of potential demand,
we as a country have to decide how much of the environment we want to risk in the transition away from oil. It is a political decision and no doubt will be a issue in the election.
After working hard all year to pay bills, buy things, and drive back and forth to work, I need nice natural places to go on vacation to. I have lived in California since the 1970s and I can
tell you the beaches are great. Some of them are part of the Pacific Flyway and have lots of different bird species. I like Point Reyes and Bolsa Chica particularly.
But that's just my opinion.
Our political system for everyone motivated by their values to apply pressure into the process.
I think McCain is going to lose a lot of those Women's votes he was supposed to pick up from Clinton over the offshore oil drilling proposal. Pluralism at work!
"We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them." -- Albert Einstein
Yes, if you suddenly convert 2% of several thousand tons of waste into energy you probably don't want to be near by.
But then again, if we burnt all available fossil fuels all at once you probably wouldn't want to be near by either!
How about instead of using it all at once we reprocess the nuclear waste and use that as fuel instead of just mined Uranium? We reduce the waste, we are creating as much energy as we would have anyway AND no one gets cooked!
Your argument was a little silly...
Sounds like a power company talking. If it isn't a one stop solution, then how can we possibly keep control of it? Rather than, lets look at how we can build up a stronger society with bits and pieces. Just because there is a lack in one method of power generation in one location means it shouldn't be used in others? Centralization is good for everything says Soviet Russia.
Let's not forget that tidal energy is only available in a very small number of coastal areas, and requires a lot of capital and time before it becomes profitable. I'm all in favour of long-term investments, but you have to realize that politicians may not be.
Additionally, for any renewable energy source, you have to realize that it is cost prohibitive to store electricity on the grid; which is to say that you basically need to use the electricity as soon as you create it. This creates a problem for renewable sources because it is difficult to respond to supply and demand effectively. Although if you struck a balance between consistent sources and sources such as wind as a complement, this issue should disappear.
Good to know he figured out what tune to whistle to get you on board. Never mind that he's a sock puppet for lobiests... but yeah, he changed his mind on this, lets follow him!
Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart, he dreams himself your master.
You should check out my post on how to safely dispose of spent nuclear fuel.
But, then I actually know about nuclear technology and don't get all my information from biased, anti-nuclear environmentalists.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
I agree cheaply made, think cookware makes cooking anywhere harder...and gas makes it easier. But I feel the same holds true for better cookware...gas makes it easier.
At the very least, I've not found an electric stovetop that can go from 0 to max btu's as fast as with gas....or come down again as rapidly.
Let's not even go into trying to stirfry on electric....that's a nightmare...
But, hey....cooking is different with everyone, but, I'd dare say you'd rarely if ever find an electric stove in a professional kitchen. There's a reason for that....
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
The homes need those in the ground heating/cooling systems (I forget what they are called)to get electric heat to work correctly. Going from 65 to 70 degrees is much easier then 20 (or lower). Electric heating is extremely inefficient at raising the temperature from 20 to 70. The added bonus is that it is almost free AC. You are not running a compressor so a lot less electricity is used.
Obviously we need a wide range of power generation methods. I was explaining to you why nuclear has to be one of those methods, and is, in fact, the most important one in the short- to medium-term.
What is being missed however in this forum is that Carter knew more about the subject back then than any readers here know today - and his advisors knew more than he did. We know a few more buzzwords that were not around then but we don't really have deep understanding of how it fits together and what the implications of things are. We can yell, throw bones and cheer for the other tribe but what remains is that that well informed nuclear advocates Carter and Thatcher pulled the plug on their respective countries nuclear programs for good reasons even if they personally thought nuclear power was the future.
Perpetial Motion is much better when applied in a distributed manner.
this guy promises to have perpetual motion going again for his (get this) -SECOND- time.
He too is motivated by $4 dollar a gallon gas, but not for budgetary reasons. He's rejecting the extreme wealth held by those with control of oil...
I fully expect him to fail, as no one has yet posted a video of any working copy of his device since describing it over a month ago.
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
Plus the fact that I live in Florida, a relatively progressive state as alternative energy goes, and 90% of our electricity is generated from burning a form of fossil fuel.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
Nuclear is being affected by commodities runnup tool. They are reopening old urnaium mines in Colorado.
!#@%*)anks for hanging up the phone, dear.
Fairy dust is the new future.
As a Nevadan who lives within 100 miles of Yucca Mountain, I'm pro nuclear power. The containment methods are rock solid and the shipping bypasses the major city of Las Vegas entirely. Plus, the fees my state will charge other states will provide a good supply of income that can be used to overhaul some underfunded departments, notably transportation and education.
Of course, the problem could be limited to my stove."
Hmm...it may be your stove. Is it a very old one? Does it maybe need service? You might wanna check on that. I find that I have great control for very high, etc...but, I have great control for low and medium too. I simmer things all day long with no problem. Good cookware helps both on good and poor stoves.....so, it might be the cookware you use. If you use thin, light metal cookware, you are going to have scorch problems on electric or gas.
Also, modern gas stovetops also often have different sized burners...smaller ones that make it VERY easy to keep a low temperature.
Anyway, you might look at if your stove needs servicing...or maybe looking to invest some money into some higher end cookware. A skillet that costs about $100 sounds horribly extravegant, but, think about how many cheap pieces you go through over the years...add those up compared to one really good one that will last you a lifetime, and give you superior performance the whole time, it becomes more cost effective.
If you catch them on sale, you can get the 10pc started sets of All-Clad for about $400...and it will pay for itself as you go through the years....if you really like to cook. The proper tool for the job as they say....
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
People really need to start investing in sustainable renewable energy, things like tidal, wind, solar, and what IMO is the most untapped, geothermal. Seriously, we have all these active volcanos around the planet exerting kilotons of energy spewing gasses into the air and creating massive amounts of heat, why aren't we harnessing that more?
Let's take this one at a time.
Solar: producing the polysilica base necessary for the solar panels on housing produces TONS of toxic chemical waste that then has to be disposed of somehow. Mirrors in solar farms require tons of toxic chemicals for constant cleaning and shining. Power generation is only good for a few hours of the day when you're aligned right, when there's not a cloud in the way, during the right season of the year when the sun's at a good angle, etc.
Tidal: Can only be done on immense lakes or the ocean shores. Waterline shifts (not due to "global warming", just tectonic activity and seasonal fluctuation) quickly diminish the power production levels as the turbines fail to match the tidal movement. Requires taking up a large amount of coastline and tends to get a lot of dead waterlife caught in it. If that's not enough to make you pause, two words: Zebra Mussels.
Wind: already (even at its low usage) a major killer of endangered bird species. Wind farms are large, INCREDIBLY (as in "you have to wear earplugs to avoid hearing damage") noisy, extremely susceptible to damage from even relatively minor storms, and only produce meaningful power on a relatively narrow band of wind speeds which rarely are sustained for a defined or predictable period.
Geothermal:
Seriously, we have all these active volcanos around the planet exerting kilotons of energy spewing gasses into the air and creating massive amounts of heat, why aren't we harnessing that more?
You just answered your own question. The best locations are right next to explosively active volcanoes. You put the plant in, but then you have to worry about projectiles, blast area, lava flow path, toxic gases (chlorine belches as just one example) hazardous to workers, and all the rest of the problems inherent in the setup.
Plus, you have to be EXTREMELY careful drilling in, lest your own geothermal pipes provide an escape hatch for the bottled-up pressures and you wind up setting off the equivalent of the cherry-bomb-under-the-garbage-can routine, with your extremely expensive power plant as the garbage can. (Hint: the garbage can usually doesn't survive that routine.)
It's all energy demand. Oil is just energy. If you increase the supply of energy using nuclear options you decrease the Oil costs. The market will adjust and people will switch to the cheaper forms of energy. Some people will use electric cars, they will switch to electric heat which will decrease diesel demand.
Decreased diesel demand = lower COST OF GOODS since out distributions systems in the USA all use diesel. Gas will also go down in cost since the demand will be lower as Gas is a more refined version of diesel.
Not only will fuel costs go down but the cost of goods will go down for ALL Americans. This solution helps the poor a LOT since they are most challenged by the cost of living.
I suggest you take a class in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macroeconomics .
I recently watched a segment on Fox News where they stated that Obama was against Nuclear Power. I did some research and as the parent states, he is FOR using Nuclear Power as part of an overall solution. Here is the letter I sent to Fox News:
Very early this morning I was watching FOX & Friends' coverage of the Energy debate between Senator Obama and Senator McCain. There was a graphic that showed the differences between the two candidates. I saw a difference that was curious to me as I had not seen it mentioned on any other news networks. The graphic and following dialog suggested that Senator McCain was pro nuclear energy while Senator Obama was against it. Energy is obviously a hot topic this election year and I personally believe that Nuclear Power is part of the solution. I found it odd that Senator Obama would be against using Nuclear Energy. I decided to "Google" it to learn more. The top two links were YouTube videos of a primary debate and a round table discussion. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TjDmyToTYBE and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRxl2cVFTLw In both cases it was made clear that Senator Obama is FOR using Nuclear Power as part of an energy solution. I would like to know what sources Fox News used to determine that Senator Obama is against the use of Nuclear Energy so that I may more clearly understand his position on the subject.
Both parties' candidates are making multi-decade promises on the energy front. And while neither of them would be in power long enough to take it to fruition, they can at least start programs that last a long time.
For better or worse, we've already seen the same thing happen many times (interstate system, social security, etc)
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I live in St. Paul, and in the downtown area, they have a combined heat and power plant. Not only that, but it's run on waste wood, much of it collected as a service... your waste leaves and branches from yardwork are tossed in the furnace instead of just rotting! Three birds (waste, heat, and power), one stone. Granted, this is just for the downtown area, but it's still pretty awesome. I don't think this would work in the suburbs, though... too much wasted heat just in the piping, plus the great expense of installing heavily insulated hot water pipes all over everywhere.
As far as nuclear, I find it hard to believe people will like have nuclear heated water run through their homes. The paranoia factor is just way too high. There are other uses for it, though. People will just have to be creative. Free heated water = efficient fish farm? = year-round tropical oasis in my home state of Minnesnowta?
Wouldn't cheap electricity allow us to start using cheap electric cars?
When it costs a solid 1,200 to fill your oil tank, and it takes 3 tanks to make it through a year, you feel the pain.
Sorry but this shows your lack of understanding how large scale ecconomy works. Roughly 30% of our energy is imported in the form of oil and natural gas in the USA. If you could build nuclear plants capable of providing 10% of our energy budget you reduce our foreign energy dependence by 1/3. That's a HUGE shift in the global energy market. It doesn't matter if you take that 10% from electrical generation, industrial use, home heating, or whatever.
People use oil because it's easier and cheaper. If your electricity was nearly free would it be worth accepting the somewhat lower range of a pure electric car? Battery charging or swap stations wouldn't be such an issue either. So no, people aren't likely to have nuclear batteries under their hood any time soon. That doesn't mean 50 new nuclear plants wouldn't represent a large change to the overall long term power comsumption in the 'states.
You can get rich if you own a politician, but you have to be rich to buy one in the first place.
No one was hurt or irradiated in Three Mile Island. Not one single injury.
No one in the world except the Soviets have ever built power reactors as insanely dangerous as the RMBK type power reactor at Chernobyl - the thing was fail dangerousm by design (everyone else goes for fail safe), for several reasons - such as having a positive void coefficient (meaning, in the case of the coolant heating so it boiled - resulting in voids in the coolant which was also the neutron moderator, the reaction would speed up further still). The reactor also had hollow ends in the control rods so when they dropped the rods to shut it down, it actually sped up the reaction initially (and that's why the lid blew off). It didn't even have a containment building. Only the Soviets ever made such insanely dangerous types of power reactors. No one else anywhere in the world did it like that.
Saying nuclear in the USA is bad because of Chernobyl is disingenious in the extreme, and obviously so to anyone with a modicum of understanding of the subject. No one builds reactors like the Soviets did, especially not in the west.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
Actually, since geothermal is a mix of residual heat from the formation of Earth and heat from the decay of radioactive isotopes, I consider it a form of nuclear energy. my $0.02 worth.
Stop talking about how exploiting more oil will solve the issues. Oil IS an essential resources, and is needed, and we would have plenty of it for the foreseeable future if we stopped burning the damn stuff for single-person transportation.
As has already been pointed out, the US is large and the population is spread out. Mass transit infrastructure is nearly non-existent, and would take decades (and much energy use) to bring up to truly practical standards such that a significant drop in automobile use could be realized.
Besides, as was also pointed out in previous posts, it's not all about individual, private transportation but also the movement of food and material.
The other factor is roll-out time. Even if we had a ready alternative transportation fuel and infrastructure system all worked out it would take many years, even decades to actually build it and get it deployed. So how do we feed people and deliver clothes, medicine, building materials, and get them to their jobs and back in the meantime?
Also stating that it's not practical to start domestic drilling now because it would take too long is not entirely true nor tells the whole story. This excuse has been used for the last 30 years, and if we had started then, we would be in a much better position now. Plus, just the simple fact of the US beginning to (finally!) utilize domestic oil resources in a serious way would have an immediate price-lowering impact on the price of oil on the market.
Nuclear, fusion, alternative fuels...great! Research, invest, build, and engineer away! But in the meantime there's a nation of some 300 million people spread over a very large portion of a continent that needs to be fed, clothed, kept warm, have lights and electricity, and provided shelter while maintaining a first-world technical/industrial economy and there's nothing right *now*, nor likely to be ready anytime soon, to take the place of what we have or even a truly significant fraction of it.
Cheers!
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
Now, this is all well and good, but what about my car? What will I use to power _that_?
Good idea.
But I say we put feathers and arrow heads on them. Then build a giant bow and shoot them into the sun!
Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?
My grandfather was the chief research scientist on alternative energy for a major oil company up until his retirement in the 90s. About two years ago I sat down with him and asked what the best alternative is to oil. He responded that he spent his entire career researching water, wind, geothermal, solar, nuclear, etc. and in his opinion there was no alternative but nuclear energy. Nothing else can come close to replacing our dependence on oil.
However, the greatest untapped energy source is, and always will be the sun. Things like using solar panels at your house and being more energy efficient will be our greatest step towards solving our energy problems. People themselves need to start taking their energy use into their own hands. Their are entire neighborhoods in the US who are self sufficient and actually give energy back. There is no reason why this idea cannot spread to more of the US. So rather than relying on 3rd party for all your needs, start thinking of how you can help at home.
mmmmmm....let's see. if the US is like my country (Italy), solar energy is subsidised to a fare-thee-well. the price of the panels is subsidised. financing is subsidised. the price at which you sell to the energy utility is artificially inflated.
[Be advised: the opinion of the higher ups, as noted above, is that no technological advance will put solar in the same ballpark cost than other sources, otherwise they'd be subsidising RESEARCH, not buildout: why put into place panels at 20% efficiency if you can push through and then have 40 % efficiency?]
let me quote: "Around 59% of world solar product sales installed the last five years were in applications that are tied to the electricity grid. Solar Energy prices in these applications are 5-20 times more expensive than the cheapest source of conventional electricity generation, although they may only be 3-5 times the electricity tariff that utility customers pay. By contrast, PV can be fully cost competitive on economic grounds in remote (off-grid) industrial and habitational applications.
source:Solarbuzz
So, in my view, the powers that be are doing this: instead of studying way to improve the ordinary power generation + trasmission system, for example by building gas fired cogeneration - and/or nuclear plants, high efficiency redundant trasmission lines and switching to more efficient use of energy, they are encouraging "believers" into investing [our] money at -80% interest. Why? because if the politician decide otherwise and push through plant constructions, they inevitably have to sow discontent in the voters. You know, NYMBY effect and so on.
One more disconcerting effect: since an initial investment is required ( meaning that you are rich enough to put up the money), and the subsidy comes out of general taxation, basically solar is a regressive tax, i.e. it robs the poor to give the rich. interesting, ah?
"If a boss demands loyalty, give him integrity. But if he demands integrity, give him loyalty." (John Boyd, 1927-1997)
But as far as efficiency goes, electric heating is 100% efficient. Every watt that gets consumed gets converted into heat. Even the IR losses in the building wiring help heat the structure.
Electric heating may not be economically competitive with gas or oil in all parts of the country, but that is not the same as efficiency.
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Actually nuclear can reduce dependence on foreign oil by powering electric cars and compressors that will fill the tanks of MDI's air engine cars.
It could also power high speed trains like the one being planned in California which would help reduce the need for planes.
Sorry, I forgot to post the link to the combined heat and power plant in my city of St. Paul: http://www.districtenergy.com/
The district energy also has a cooling plant that distributes cold water to the downtown area and 300 nearby homes. The chilled water is produced overnight and stored in tanks so that it can be produced with off-peak electricity. The nearby heat and power plant is run on waste wood collected from yards and parks and produces heat and power (much is used for the distributed cold water refrigeration). So... four birds (cold water, hot water, electricity generation and wood waste disposal) with one stone.
It is "the largest hot water district heating system in North America," according to http://www.districtenergy.com/
Or population centres "conveniently" don't locate themselves next to volcanoes (or volcanos?)?
Most people don't take enough chemistry to understand how safe and efficient these plants are in terms of environmental health, especially compared to burning (and mining)coal, burning oil, or damming up the rivers and killing off the salmon populations.
I'm an environmentalist and am very pro-nuclear.
"I only speak the truth"
Karma: null(Mostly affected by an unassigned variable)
I think that politicians would state it this way as a retort to your nuclear power does not mean less oil dependency argument.
More Hybrids, electric cars again and this will mean that using the current power grid powered by Nuclear, solar, wind and tidal power would be viable to reducing and possibly eliminating oil dependency in the future. Also large vehicles semi's etc could switch to Bio diesel. And lets not all forget the great and undying Myth of clean burning coal (this one will not die because the US has more coal reserves that the entire world combined).
But honestly when did we lose site on the fact that most of the politicians are oil moguls and have no real interest in getting America oil free, or even less dependent. Is it just me or can we really believe that something as piddly as Music and Movie lobby's can control our lawmakers, but Multi-billion dollar energy companies have less power in forcing their policies down our throats?
how do you figure that wind, geothermal, and solar are not ready for deployment?
Even at todays efficiencies it would take what, something like 200 miles square of solar panels to provide as much electricity as the US consumes?
Iceland is primarily geothermal.
Wind technology is ancient.
All those technologies could be deployed in sufficient and even cost effective quantities.
The problem is one of batteries and auto based transportation.
And at that, Tesla makes a car with sufficient range on batteries alone. Granted, it's $100k but look at their production numbers.
Nuclear is not the only option. It's the old option. And gives the "power that be" the central control pf energy they require.
Centralized energy has been at the heart of the oligarchy for a couple of centuries. They are not prepared to relinquish that control.
And not a single one of them as ever been destroyed in combat, and the two that we have lost, we lost at GREAT depth. The risks of catastrophic failure have never materialized in Navy vessels.
We could annotate the sins of Babcock-Wilcox for days. Just how many problems do you need? Chernobyl was certainly a bad design, and there are others. Should we start here in the US, or perhaps Canada, maybe Japan, or the incidents that have been attempted to be concealed?
Disingenuous? No. Unbelievably terrible oversight, yes. And I certainly don't trust the NRC to do the job.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
It's a hodgepodge of lies, propaganda and twisted truths.
Several of their people were outraged that FAIR might be reinstated. Though your method of watching it is the best way...watch then fact check...you will discover that most of what they say is garbage and should be discarded.
Not to harp on semantics, he just recently said oil was $4 per BARREL. Then caught himself and joked about the "good old days".
If you want McCain as president, you're not considering the truth, or you're incapable of thinking for yourself.
He wants them to open Florida's west coast to offshore drilling. This won't have an effect on gas prices.
Since Florida governor Charlie Crist is being considered for VP, he did a 180 against the interests of his own state and supported McCain's plan.
It will only take one spill to destroy the everglades entirely. Before you go on about "we don't need the everglades", it's the source of fresh water for the entire Southern part of the state.
This is just out of touch with reality. No one will actually benefit from this except the oil companies.
yep, just don't vote for John McCain. Nothing he is, is what we need.
They're using their grammar skills there.
Electric radiators are 100% efficient, or a "coefficient of performance" of 1.0. Electric-powered heat pumps, however, have a coefficient of performance of 3-4. Or, if you prefer misusing the thermodynamic term, they are 300-400% efficient.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_pump#Efficiency
The energy you draw from the nuclear plant is used to move heat from outside your home to inside your home, instead of being burnt directly. 100% smarter than radiator heating.
(Disclaimer: I live in Texas. My home is heated with natural gas, which is locally produced and doesn't have all the problems of heating oil.)
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
The price of that coal still doesn't properly reflect its true cost, because the people who burn coal don't have to pay for the air they pollute or the CO2 they release. And too many of them get away without installing the available technologies to scrub the exhaust, such as what almost happened here in Texas when Rick Perry fast-tracked a bunch of plants and forgave them from pollution controls.
When the real cost of coal in considered, and nuclear scales with more regular plant production, I think the prices will be more equitable.
(My home is powered from wind and hydro. http://www.greenmountainenergy.com/)
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
To the best of my knowledge, the amount of mercury emitted by my car's exhaust is zero. Mercury is THE major problem with coal, and it receives far too little attention.
You don't use science to show that you're right, you use science to become right.
When the government can safely afford to build, without going into debt, they should spend money on solar and wind power
Yes, a lot of nuclear plants in Russia are used for heating.
Especially, in the northern parts of Russia which require A LOT of heating during winters.
I completely agree - but do look into induction cooktops. I haven't used one, but people who have tell me it's as good as gas for heat generation, since the stove itself does not get hot.
I actually attended a semester of 'problems and challenges of nuclear engineering from a physics and economy viewpoint', but pray tell me that my university physics professor is somehow paid advertising.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
Any idiot can see the need for nuclear power and cheap oil now. It's funny how we only see the need for something which takes 10 years to build when we need it today.
A real leader would have seen it 10 years ago.
I'm not impressed. Building new power plants is a proposition that a 6th grader could write. These politicians act like their geniuses when their train of thought appears to be "If people scream about problem X, then we fix problem X.". It should be "X will become a problem in 5 years. Better start fixing it now."
"I'm curious how Nevada feels about this, as well as the Obama campaign. "
Huh?
Obama campaign?
Are you serious?
Oil exploration here? NO WAY.
Oil exploration offshore? NO WAY.
Coal? NO WAY.
Nuclear? Shriek, gobble, gobble, gobble.....
But this system is kind of nice in the US because rather than relying on the inefficient gov't to do all this, we have cool things like, refunds for generating power here. Which is a kind of nice incentive for people to start doing it. And as with anything in a capitalistic society, if we can get demand and supply to go up then we should see prices drop so lower classes can follow through. But admittedly this is a bit of an altruistic concept.
CS: It is all sink or swim...oh and did I mention there are sharks in that water?
Yay! 300,000 people down, 6.4997 billion to go.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
And that's what Governments and leaders are for.
;).
To spend your money for your own good (and the greater good) when you don't want to do it yourself
Of course, most governments do a mix of doing evil, wasting the money and spending it for the greater good. The ratios determine how good the government is.
I respectfully disagree. Generating sufficient energy in static locations is required for alternative "portable" fuel options like hydrogen cells or electric vehicles. Even cellulosic ethanol takes energy to manufacture, and manufacturing plants typically don't travel around. The problem becomes one of distribution, but absolutely reduces our dependence on "gasoline from crude oil". No, we won't have reactor-powered personal vehicles, but we could have vehicles powered by a fuel produced with that energy.
He who would be a man, must be a nonconformist. -- Emerson
Gasoline comes from oil. Most of the electricity in the United States is generated from coal, natural gas, hydroelectric power, and wind power. The handful of power plants that are burning "oil" are burning something called "residual fuel oil" which is a very low value remainder in a barrel of oil that oil refiners often have difficulty finding a market for, due to its sulfur content. So...building nuclear power plants will produce more electricity but it will not increase gasoline supplies or lower gasoline prices. The new nuclear power plants will allow plants burning natural gas and coal to shut down...but supplies of natural gas and coal in the US are abundant...so abundant that natural gas produced in Alaska is not even recovered but either burned in flares as a "waste" or reinjected into the ground.
Nuclear power plants are also very expensive, use an enormous amount of concrete (which requires a LOT of combustion fuel to produce) produce toxic waste which requires permanent long-term storage, and have the potential, in the event of an accident, to permanently contaminate thousands of square miles of countryside.
Because the companies ideally placed to take advantage of these changes and really get a strangle hold on the American economy are Oil Companies. The only way for them to really pillage the American Taxpayer is to be able to speculate on building reactors that are of the "approved design" into the future. The only approved designs are all 'once through' fuel cycle so any discussion about breeder reactors ends here and the discussion about the lack of net energy returns from the nuclear fuel cycle begin.
You have to be pragmatic about this, P.U.C.H.A was put in place to stop America going back into a economic depression. Greed is greed, supporting this will enable the legislative framework to gut the American economy and taxpayer of remaining assets for the next 20 to 30 years.
Please America, you are a technological nation, you can solve your energy needs without nuclear power.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Nuclear district heating does exist, but is not so widespread.
Still:
http://sciencelinks.jp/j-east/article/200607/000020060706A0175205.php
Because burning all that coal will turn Florida into Atlantis. Amongst many other unpalatable consequences of global warming.
In many places people use electricity for heating and it is efficient. We use heat pumps.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
I'm no McCain supporter (hint: I voted for Kerry, and I don't own a car), but you really can't slam him for this. Things don't magically happen 20 years in the future unless someone starts pushing it now and starts the ball rolling.
I agree about using the waste heat. This proves effective in many urban areas. On the other hand, the economics of this change a lot when you have a population that's widely dispersed or doesn't live close to the power plant. Even if it could be done economically can significant thermal losses be avoided with miles of steam/hot water pipes?
People call it geothermal, but I prefer ground source heat pumps.
They generally still have a compressor, it is just smaller because energy is being pushed to move faster, not being pushed backwards (heat pump in cooling mode: hot house to cool ground; AC in cooling mode: cool house to hot air).
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
Remember, right now the power it takes to drive an electric electric car (sedan) is between $7-$10. To fill a tank and drive 300 miles is $50.
Electricity has been cheaper than oil for more than 50 years.
The problem is power storage and recharge times.
Currently it is impracticle to get much more than cummuter range on most electric cars. To get that range it can take 5-8 hours to charge. Now true this covers 80-90% of all driving but the problem is that Americans will only buy vehicles that fit 99.99% of the potential driving they will do.
We Americans will not buy a cummuter car than rent a long distance car as needed...
While I DO think electric cars are the next stage of transportation, reducing the price of electricity won't solve anything.
What is interesting are Ultracapacitors, flywheels and battery technology. These are increasing the power density EXTREMLY quickly and the recharge times are dropping almost as fast.
I am looking forward to this year and next year. Several plug in hybrids, the volt not to mention ZENN and EEstor.
I don't know enough about the issue to comment, but that's still bad reasoning. If mercury is the only pollutant you care about, then coal plants are bad. If you also dislike CO2 and particulates more than mercury, then coal plants are better.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
http://www.barackobama.com/issues/energy/ - you can check yourself for magic pixies, but they are notoriously hard to find if they don't want to be found.
But what you are getting at I think is peak oil - a lot of green/environmentalist people have known this for years - as does the far right wing here in the UK - the fact that what was introduced around the world as the main power source, transport fuel and fertilizer source after the 2 world wars, is now dangerously low in supplies and that this will mean a huge change in our lifestyles in the next few decades, as we revert back. - Except that now we have lots of other energy sources, there are women working too, lots of stuff is sitting in rubbish dumps rather than at the bottom of mountains, we have telecommunications, and generally it's a positive thought when you consider that this gap in fuel is also a natural limit to the amount of change we can give to the climate...
What this means for power plants is microgeneration -small varied local power sources - if you have lots of wind, sun or water around, use that. If you don't, there is bio fuel(the kind that doesn't help food crises!) and other new technologies, but half the power is lost transporting the fuel or power around - so it has to be generated and used locally too.
But the hope/change thing will really come in to play if society needs to change dramatically - as we transition to low fossil energy and varied alternates, we'll all need practical skills, strong local business and social connections and an open mind.
Drilling for more oil resources (as is the situation, I believe, with building more nuclear plants on diminishing uranium) will only buy you a few more years of this historical blip. The cheap oil is being extracted fast, and the stuff at the bottom and in the small oil fields left to find, is much more expensive to get. Oh and they're not just YOURS as you say - they also belong to future generations. And who knows how efficient they could be with extracting and using it?
Ale
because they're in the business of selling you electricity, and the less you buy from them, the less money they make.
/. users always seem to miss the fact that Big Business is a competitive environment. If you try to "force" your will on people, the market will react and all of a sudden, you will find a competitor eating your lunch. Why do you think we are even TALKING about alternative energy sources? Because oil/gas is expensive. We are all looking for substitute products (read: competition to the current electricity sellers)
Right. And you don't think there are other businesses who want to sell you solar panels and steal that business away from the "greedy businessmen who want to sell you electricity"? I point you to First Solar (ticker: FSLR).
I guarantee you that doesn't make the seller of oil/gas energy very happy (ie: anyone selling oil or nat gas). They'd rather be our sole provider. But since their prices are higher than we want....we look for alternatives. Simple Econ 101 stuff.
(sidenote: I wholeheartedly agree with the rest of your post. But you are way offbase on the last sentence)
At least in CA, with all the rebates/tax-incentives, you can supposedly be cash-positive on a new solar installation by financing. That is, you finance the initial cash outlay and the payment will be less than your current electric bill. But in CA, we have high electric prices and big rebates. I also haven't investigated further (the information I have came from a MBA's graduating presentation on her new business) since I'm waiting for some of the newer tech (higher efficiency cells, cheaper 'printed' cells, etc) to make its way to retail.
Awesome furniture, accessories and cabinetry in Santa Rosa, CA: http://humanity-home.com/
It could be that. Or it just might be the massive cloud of anal vapour you leave in your wake.
Stringing high-tension lines across vast areas of countryside has always been popular, of course...
At some point it might make a lot more sense to move to electric or hydrogen powered cars. If you do that you are going to need those nuke plants up and running to provide the power.
Even if we stick with bio fuels in cars there are likely going to be limits to the amount of bio fuel we can produce economically so converting everything that doesnt move around to nuclear based electricity would take a lot of the load off of biofuel production.
"In America, first you get the sugar, then you get the power, then you get the women..." -H. Simpson
We need a better power grid not more power plants. As we have more then what we need in power plants but the grid sucks.
"I told you a million times not to exaggerate!"
The industry required to build plants (iron workers, welders, shipping, raw materials, etc.) precludes getting a fleet of 30 new plants up and running in anything less than 20 years. He's just being realistic.
If you own your house you are probably already in debt.
If its worth the money to move your house to solar, why not take out a home equity loan (assuming you have equity... these days not everyone has a lot of that) and do the conversion. Don't think of it as debt, think of it as an investment. If its really more economical for you to go to solar then the monthly cost of that equity loan should be lower than the cost of electricity and other fuels and you would come out ahead every month.
People talk about debt like it is some horrible monster. Its not. Properly manged debt is a tool, poorly managed debt is an albatross.
"In America, first you get the sugar, then you get the power, then you get the women..." -H. Simpson
Ah, but you forget that in a few years the majority of vehicles will be electric. Right now hybrids still use some gasoline in combination but shortly it will be cost effective and even desirable to have electric only vehicles. Of course these will need to be recharged each night. And that is where nuclear plants come in. They can provide the electrical power needed to charge up all those electric cars.
As we get closer to paying $8.00 a gallon for gasoline more and more electric cars will become available and people will start switching over.
All in all it is good that someone is finally coming around to the fact that nuclear power can be part of a solution. As technology gets better we can introduce other energy solutions along side nuclear. But wringing our hands and worrying about what may happen will end up with civilization collapsing because no one wanted to do what was needed.
And as to other comments about northern states using heating oil, leave everything as it is and shortly global warming will fix that for ya. Al Gore said so.
And as to the carbon foot print thing, I wish they would come up with a different name for that. Every time I hear it I think of a giant Dr. Scholl's foot pad the kind that used to have charcoal in them.
My parents heat with fuel oil. I was floored when they told me how much it cost to fill up the tank. And they have to do it twice each winter! They really don't have any other options. No natural gas or propane lines are run to their house. I asked them about a pig tank, but that costs money to get the pig tank and convert or buy a new furnance. Also a retro fit to electric would cost money, and it would still be coming from a coal powered plant. So don't look for them to change anytime soon unless electricity is so cheap and clean the ROI makes sense, or until something is government subsidized.
I hate ethics, I avoid them on principle.
Al Gore took part in environmental studies while he was in college.
"Gore learned of global warming in the late 1960s as a student at Harvard University. He studied under a professor who had been measuring carbon gases for years and anticipated the danger that was coming."
But we all know there is a legitimate doubt about anthropogenic global warming.
doubts
doubts
doubts
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
"Only" held back by economic factors? Sir, the whole world runs on economic factors.
So if it cannot be achieved in 4 years it is not worth doing?!
This kind of thinking is what has gotten us into this mess! I want a president who is thinking beyond his term. Besides, any candidate that can simultaneously upset the core constituency of both parties has my vote.
Water heated by a nuclear plant won't be radioactive it will just be hot.
I guess I should have said, "Current power producers" rather than "Big Business"...Business doesn't give a damn where their power comes from, as long as its cheap. The problem is the big existing power companies. I'm not denying that you're going to be giving someone money, but I do believe that it is better to give money to a company like First Solar or their competitors in order to help reduce the overall dependence on large fossil fuel power plants.
New Nuclear plants are good, but there are plenty of new coal plants also in the works and I really don't want to see any more of that than there has to be.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
You are limited by your stove... most of us have crappy ones, gas or electric.
I was at a home show a while back and saw a beautiful gas stove. you could turn the burner down so low that a piece of paper put across the grate would not burn. You could leave something to simmer over that heat all day.
Not only that, but as a safety feature it could detect if the flame went out and relight the burner to avoid a dangerous gas leak. That stove was fantastic. When I finally redo my kitchen Ill be looking for a stove like that.
"In America, first you get the sugar, then you get the power, then you get the women..." -H. Simpson
Were any of them ever used in combat against a serious enemy? Of course you won't lose ships when quashing small third-world countries and the last roughly-even war the US was part of was probably WW2. Had the cold war gone hot there'd probably be a lot more sunk nuclear-powered ships but without fighting an enemy that's an actual threat there won't be many losses.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
I fear if I invested in an All-Clad set it would sit dormant while my cast iron got all the attention.
Admittedly there are a few things that I don't use cast iron for, but its definitely the material of choice for 75% of my cooking needs and its dirt cheep. When I can afford to upgrade some of my other pieces though, it will be All-Clad that I buy.
"In America, first you get the sugar, then you get the power, then you get the women..." -H. Simpson
We'd really be in a much better state if we could get away from the reactor designs we've been using for so long.
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a youtube comments section scrolling - forever.
On the contrary. Nuclear energy produces electricity, which will in a few decades supplant oil as the primary transportation fuel source.
Your bias is showing. With nuclear electricity production, electric cars can be made viable since the grid will not be overloaded by 100k's of cars plugged in at night. Voila, less dependence on oil (as well as coal).
While it certainly looks better at the stage of energy extraction, are you sure that losses in electrical grid, battery and efficiency of electric motors don't add up to be worse than combustion engine?
One that hath name thou can not otter
don't get hysterical.
" So I'd say it's good news that this can become a discussion, and a good sign that the "drill more oil" answer isn't going to cut it anymore."
Why should we have to pick a "one or the other" option? Why can't we build more nuclear plants and and drill for more oil? For that matter, why can't we do both of those and drill/dig for other plentiful hydrocarbon energy sources.... shale, tar sands, and the big one, coal. Do you realize that the United States has far more coal than any other nation, by far? We have 250 gigatonnes, nearly one quarter of the earth's coal supply, and if we used coal for every energy need, we'd never use up that supply in several lifetimes. And we can convert coal to gasoline; last time I checked, you can't fill up your car at the nuclear power plant.
People use polution and carbon as an excuse not to use hydrocarbon fuels, but face facts... we built the modern world on fossil fuels, and they're not going away for hundreds of years, probably. Even with nuclear, geothermal, solar, wind... that's just not enough to supply our energy needs. It's certainly not enough to supply the needs of a hungry, developing third world.
By all means, make gas engines more fuel efficient. By all means, continue to develop solar and wind technologies. But it's patently stupid to stand still on current energy supplies while we develop that stuff. If we're smart enough work on improving solar and wind, then we're damn well smart enough to work on fuel efficiency and cleaning/filtration technology for hydrocarbon energy sources. Don't just restrict us to "pick A or B. Pick everything that you need. Our "energy crisis" is largely self-imposed. We've got plentiful sources of energy. The US has enough energy sources to be an energy exporter if we so desired. We just have to make the decision that we're going to do it.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
You miss the point entirely. My point was that nuclear power as a reliable safe source of energy has been in use for over 50 years by the Navy without incident. Yet people still get immediately squeamish when anyone starts talking about building nuclear reactors. Power plants will not be going into combat, nor traveling all over the world. We have a huge infrastructure in the US for transporting electricity that does not involve burning fuel to ship it all over the country. Lets grow our existing electric infrastructure rather than building a whole new one.
I gained a very different perspective from working in the electricity industry and university engineering departments. Admittedly some of my co-workers with nuclear experience were from Russian and Indonesian facilities but the US plants really don't match the advertising either - it's always "just around the corner" so I suppose imaginary facilities may match on all three. Nuclear power is technically interesting but you really are having your leg pulled on the three jokes above.
The point about them still being active with no problems after 50 years still stands, though. There have been very tragic nuclear accidents, which serve as a reminder that it's not something to be trifled with. But nuclear power has also been reliable and stable for various countries for years.
"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." -Albert Einstein
Ocean-going vessels also require much more robust reactor and pump designs. While I can't say for certain that there have been no incidents, there have been zero non-communism-related accidents. The technology for compact and extremely safe nuclear reactors exists and would be prevalent if it weren't for SUV-driving suburban soccer moms trying to convince us to think of the children.
How, exactly, do you think we could possibly have 45 new nuclear plants opened by 2030 without getting some of the processes started in the next few years?
It's called "democracy", and the devils deal is, if you tell the public to go piss up a rope, you're out of a job.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
I'm managing my dept quite nicely. No CCs, no car loans, and I'm paying what those payments would be back to myself. I don't have the equity yet in this house for solar, and wouldn't use it all for that anyway. I've got a few other priorities for excess cash before I go solar too. In any case, part of the plan that makes going solar/wind feasible is an electric vehicle, and there aren't many good options right now. When I can get an electric motorcycle for short/medium trips and a multi-passenger vehicle for taking the family, then it'll make more sense.
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
The parent needs to be modded up even more. Nuclear is only going to be part of an over all solution. It is one that is attainable now with current technology. And as all those plants get built the process and technology will improve even faster.
The nuclear bogeyman needs to be laid to rest.
Coal != Oil!
The US has enough coal to power our cities for approx another 500 to 1000 years at the current rate.
I like the idea of nuclear, but not from a man who has a MAFIAA representative as his tech advisor.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
That's dumb. As dirty as coal plants are, they are far cleaner than the equivalent power output from internal combustion engines. If it takes n joules to get you from place to place, you're better off using the more efficient method of getting those joules.
Except batteries are so damn inefficient.
--- Justin Dearing http://www.justaprogrammer.net/ We're just programmers.
Mod Parent up - this is AMAZINGLY well stated.
So suck it up. If it really bothers you that freaking much, move. I live with a smelly mountain of garbage in my back yard, and they're gonna keep the damn thing open even longer (at least if city council gets its way). You NIMBY types piss me the hell off, because you only worry about the negative consequences that could affect you, rather than the benefits that everyone, including you, will receive.
Cynical Idealist
In the begining there was nothing. And then God said, "Let there be light!" And there was still nothing, but at least yo
If it takes 20 years to get 45 plants running, when do we start? If we don't start now, then in twenty years we'll be saying we should have started twenty years ago.
What are you people talking about? Have you actually tried refueling in the San Francisco Bay Area?
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
Well, in the northern US, it would/could make a big difference. For some reason up there...they use heating OIL to heat their homes during the long, hard winters.
It's my understanding heating oil comes from a different part of the crude than gasoline. Isn't heating oil essentially a refined byproduct of gasoline production?But if so, why are the heating oil prices going up? I think I'm missing something here.
This may be a silly question, but I don't know the answer and it may be relevant. What about our thermal footprint? We've talked about reducing our carbon footprint. Assume the world becomes carbon neutral *tonight*. How much heat do we still generate each day? Burning coal, burning gasoline, sending electricity down wires...
Wind, tidal, or geothermal might take energy out of the atmosphere only to put it back in, so those might be "neutral". Creating solar arrays and putting them in the desert would mean capturing more light (heat) instead of reflecting some portion of the light back into space (not neutral).
Is this something to start thinking about? Is this thought just completely wrong?
Keep in mind that the 30% only counts loss in the engine. It doesn't factor in losses in the transmission, differential, or anywhere else.
Grid losses are about 5%, IIRC.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
Maybe one day there will be wind and solar farms large enough to provide enough power to build other wind and solar farms. That is self-sufficient.
There is a much larger population near Vesuvius now than there was in 79AD.
It's true that there won't be any "under the hood" nuclear reactors, but an electric car's batteries can be charged from the electricity generated by a nuclear plant. Lets hope EEStor isn't just blowing smoke. I do believe that Nuclear is the main way that we should get our electricity. It's too bad so many people are frightened of it because of problems (ok, really big problems) encountered when it was in its infancy.
You aren't kidding -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centralia,_Pennsylvania -- the mine fire there has been burning for 46 years now.
Rule #1 -- Politics always trumps technology.
This water was heated by a NUCULAR power plant!? ZOMGZOMGZOMG RADIATION COOTIES!
Anti-nuclear notjobs are completely insane, I have many of them in my family. They blame everything down to blemishes on their skin on living in a city with nuclear power. I keep telling them that if they don't like being in the same city as a nuclear power plant, they REALLY don't want to be at a barbeque or anywhere near a smoke detector! But no, logic doesn't mean anything. Nuclear power = glowing green bad juju, end of discussion.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
"They all have at least one good point though: what do we do with the waste?"
Reprocess most of it. Bury the rest of it.
There's no technical or economic reason to ban reprocessing. Up to 92 percent of spent fuel can be re-used if reprocessed. Current law bans the practice. That's a political decision, made by the Carter Administration, because reprocessing spent fuel rods creates small amounts of Plutonium as a byproduct, and the argument was "but terrorists might get the Plutonium!". Well, they wouldn't if you secured the Plutonium. It's a silly argument. If that's the reason, then a President could solve the problem with a stroke of a pen; simply mandate that the military takes charge of the Plutonium and is responsible for guarding it. For those of you that have served in the military, you know how fanatical security forces are about the nuclear weapons in their charge. Recent USAF screwups aside, try and approach a nuclear weapons storage facility and see what happens to you. The security argument against reprocessing is simply farcical. France supplies nearly all of their power with Nuclear, and they reprocess their fuel to minimize waste. To date, Al Qaeda or Islamic Jihad doesn't seem to have been able to steal the French plutonium.
As for what to do with the remaining waste, just store it. There's several ways to do it. The easiest thing to do is simply store it in a secure facility. Do you know what highly technical mechanism is required to store spent fuel rods? A pool of water, 3 feet deep. France stores all their remaining nuclear waste in one single building, in a pool of water.
If you prefer to bury it, just encase the rods in glass, and bury it in a place where there's no water table. For the people going "Gasp! Radioactive materials! Underground!"... where do you think we got the uranium from the the first place? We dug it up. Underground.
The utter hysteria over nuclear technologies far, far outweighs the actual risks of nuclear technologies.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
then we still need to repurpose Yucca Mountain.
After all, we'll need it for the 100's of 1,000's of tons of toxic waste left over from making the polysilicate for all those solar panels.
Here is a list of potential increases to coal generation:
* Low-emission boiler systems (43% efficiency)
* Pressurized fluidized-bed combustion (50% efficiency)
* Integrated gasification combined cycle (52% efficiency)
* Indirectly fired cycles (55% efficiency)
* Gasification/fuel-cell combinations (60% efficiency, or 85% with cogeneration)
from this site.
So the old crappy ones get 33%. I have been a fan of gassification and co generation with the capture and storage of carbon and other by products because it really is "clean coal" at the plant. Of course the mining issue is still there, but with clean energy perhaps we can move our efforts to clean mining.
But please do not exagerate these points, it does little to help as when someone discovers that you are full of sh*t, then your point loses 100% credibility.
Electric radiators may be 100% efficient, but transmission wires and power stations most certainly aren't. A coal-fired power station is only about 30% efficient (the other 70% went into boiling the steam you see coming out of the cooling towers).
I have natural gas heating too (most people do in the UK, because the North Sea is/was full of it). It's much more efficient to burn the gas in the home, rather than convert it (inefficiently) into electricity, transport the electricity, and turn it back into heat. However, it's also efficient to build a CHP plant, to produce electricity and steam for heating (for instance, my university has one, which provides electricity and heat for the whole campus and several nearby buildings).
I don't know how that compares with heat pumps though, perhaps the "300-400%" negates the inefficiency of coal-powered electricity production.
That doesn't seem like much, but wind power is one of the fastest-growing sources of energy in both the United States and abroad. While the use of renewable energy sources as a whole has annually by 2 percent since 1971, wind-power generation has increased at an average of 52.1 percent every year between 1971 and 2000.
The American Wind Energy Association estimates that an additional 6,500 megawatts of wind-energy generating capacity were added worldwide in 2001, accounting for about $7 billion in electricity sales. The U.S. alone added 1,700 megawatts worth of generating equipment. [1] Fact is, they are ready. They just aren't quite as cheap (not accounting for environmental impact) as coal.
[1] http://www.pbs.org/now/science/wind.html
Battery efficiencies are in the 90% range so long as you don't push it.
Electric motors are in the 90-95% range.
Electric (and hybrid) vehicles allow for the possibilty of regenerative braking.
A true electric car will have an electric motor on each wheel that will also double as the primary brake. The only moving part of the vehicle will be the wheels and suspension. You dramatically reduce the weight of the vehicle by removing the engine, fuel tank, transmission, most of the radiator etc. Not to mention the price of maintaining all that equipment in the car.
If you want to include transmission costs then you must also include the costs of piping, trucking and supporting the filling stations for Gasoline.
You forgot tidal energy... a portion of geothermal energy is the result of the slightly elastic behavior of earth materials, the "earth tides" that generate heat through friction as the various solar and lunar gravitational forces act on the planet, stretching and compressing it.
IIRC, the energy released through recrystallization at/in the core is currently the primary component of geothermal energy.
At the surface, of course, something like 99% of the heat in the ground is the result of solar heating rather than geothermal heat (not that that has a whole lot to do with what we're talking about - but at the surface there is a hell of a lot more solar energy available than geothermal).
"Yes, but cars *can* be powered by elecricity. So nuclear energy *does* have something to do with our dependence on gasoline."
Cars can be powered by electricity, but that doesn't make electric cars a viable alternative to gasoline cars, because the battery technology is completely insufficient to meet our needs in automobiles. There's a good reason the EV1 died, and it wasn't a conspiracy. The battery performance sucked. With careful, judicious use, you got two hours driving, max out of electric cars, and it took too long to recharge them to be of any real convenience. The best results you're going to get with an electric car is with a gasoline/electric hybrid. Simply put, there's nothing out there right now that gives us the performance we want without an internal combustion engine.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
It's nice that you checked a box on your bill that says `I want green power!' and perhaps you paid a little extra to be able to say that, but the reality is that checking this box didn't actually change where your power came from.
I'm not saying that it's a bad thing, but it's not quite what people claim.
Well, we are moving toward electric cars. We ahve to, because it's going to be electric, or nothing.
"Ideally, I'd like to put up enough solar panels and wind turbines to power my house, charge my car, and sell back to the utilities."
This is not as easy at it seems, unless you have a large piece of property. In which case check out Solar thermal.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Battery operated automobiles are becoming more feasible every day. If we have to power them off of a coal based power plants it will add pollution, oil based power plants will just add to the oil price.
Wind farms get killed by NIMBYs, solar needs more development to be feasible.
Nuclear *could* be a good solution but we would need to eliminate the bidding process. Having contractors bidding bottom dollar to build what is critical to be done right is asking for trouble.
The Shoram nuclear plant in Long Island New York never opened because of proven shoddy work performed by people picked up off of street corners to do the work.
We should look to France for a decent model for nuclear power.
While I agree with McCain on this - he is greatly oversimplifying the solution.
You DO realize that the only way to cause something to "no longer" be a Noble Gas involves either Fusion or Fission, right?
Another case of policitians using unrelated events to push policy. [...] Actually, if hydrogen powered cars ever become a reality then nuclear energy will help us reduce our dependence on oil. The only practical way to produce hydrogen is through electrolysis.
Tree huggers had nothing to do with it. Plenty of us have fully supported nuclear power for decades (not that long myself since I am not that old, but still). Just because greenpeace are lying, anti-environment scumbags that do everything they can to stop nuclear power doesn't mean you can paint all environmentalists with that same brush. Greenpeace does not speak for me, they are not environmentalists, and by lumping real environmentalists in with those asshats you are doing us all a huge disservice. Real environmentalists are already getting shit on by the pretenders (greenpeace) and the neocons, we don't need you spreading lies and misinformation and making everyone hate us.
"solar is closer than 10+ years as the first large-scale installations are being built."
What? Solar thermal can be built today.
Wind power has other environmental issues with it.
Energy always comes from somewhere, so large scale Wind plants slow wind down. It changes wind patterns, and the best place for it is also where bird fly.
Look at the 1000
s of large birds killed in California every year.
There is alway a price.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
The fire department was afraid of using the `jaws of life' on a hybrid lest they cut into 400v wires
Small nuclear reactors are used in deep space probes and remote monitoring outposts (though I'm not sure the USSR/Russia still uses them), and while these would fit in a car, they wouldn't provide anywhere near enough power to power a car. These are designed to last for a long time, not provide a lot of power.
It looks like we're going to have to power our cars either with some sort of chemical fuel (gasoline, natural gas, hydrogen, etc.), or batteries (or ultracapacitators, if they can be improved), for the time being. Mr Fusion is still a few years off.
Side note -- solar panels might work, as long as the sun was shining and people are OK with going a whole lot slower. Solar panels on top of a car can't provide anywhere near enough power to make it go 55 mph, but solar panels on top of a bicycle (or tricycle) could provide enough power to go 15 mph or so under ideal conditions.
CO2 is a naturally-occurring gas that is part of the life cycle of, jeez, just about everything? And we're making too much of it. That's probably not good, but we can have a like/dislike discussion about that. Mercury, on the other hand, is a substance that requires only minute amounts of to render food virtually inedible, water undrinkable and cause terrible neurological disorders in children. I truly doubt that like/dislike really enters the picture.
Read a bit more about mercury poisoning, and you've probably heard about mercury in fish before. In its elemental form it's not particularly dangerous, but when it changes chemically to methylmercury, it's damned nasty.
Bottom line, regardless of whether we're talking about nuclear vs. coal power, globa warming, etc., there's always one more piece of information that you need to consider before you start to get "the big picture". And everything is so fscking complicated, we tend to try to keep it simple and stake out positions that we feel we can defend. But winning the argument doesn't mean we're right, or that we've moved the discussion forward.
You don't use science to show that you're right, you use science to become right.
Nuclear power in France
The 99.8% figure is the nuclear power share of the largest utility company. You get 79% when you divide 425.8 TWh (nuclear output) by 540.6 TWh (total output).
Those who would give up liberty to obtain working drivers, deserve neither liberty nor working drivers.
The other half of his argument was that "if we don't reprocess nuclear materials, it'll be an example to other nations and they won't either."
And as a result, the following nations lack either Nuclear Weapons or Nuclear Weapon Programs today: North Korea, Pakistan, India, Syria, Iran, China... oh, right.
Carter is, and has always been, a moron.
We blame Carter for the lack of leadership.
"We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." --The American President (20.1.2009)
This is mixing two separate issues.
Not from where I sit. If electricity was free and unmetered, do you not think that, say, home electrolysis feeding a hydrogen car wouldn't be popular? If electricity was an unmetered service, heating oil would go away almost instantly, and as fast as the car makers can do it, they'd come out with hydrogen or electric/hydrogen hybrids and sell or partner with a home electrolysis maker so that hydrogen would be made on a distributed basis. Oil use would drop significantly if electricity was free, so I see them as one issue - energy, not two issues, electricity and mobile power generation (cars) as others claim.
Learn to love Alaska
At this point im mostly interested in solar for household energy. I'm not holding my breath for electric vehicles that make sense for me.
The problem I have is that my heat is Natural Gas and the furnace is new. The cost to convert from steam radiators to an all electric system is pretty high. As a result there are pretty substantial limits to how much I can expect to recoup on solar power. I might end up with a negative electric bill which would be nice, but not the same as getting rid of a 3+ grand a year oil bill.
With only an electric bill to eliminate it would take a lot longer to recoup the cost than it would with an oil bill or running electric vehicles. Im hoping that some of the advancements in solar tech will make their way to market soon and that, combined with a tax credit, might bring the cost down to the point where a good way to go.
"In America, first you get the sugar, then you get the power, then you get the women..." -H. Simpson
The cost of a properly installed high efficiency propane furnace with DC blower motor, plus the cost of the in ground (or above ground if you prefer) holding tank would be quickly realized back as a net gain at the current heating oil prices.
their costs to operate a high efficiency unit over their current low efficiency oil furnace alone would probably do it in 10 years or less.
Oil fired furnaces are some of the most maintenance intensive beasts in the heating world.
They lose efficiency faster than any other single form of home heating equipment and in order to keep them running correctly and at near peak (for their age) efficiency thye require costly yearly maintenance.
Oil fired took off because it was cheap.
period
not because it was efficient, not becuase it was easier, not because it was better.
I grew up in the HVAC world and spent 15 years of my life working on everything from ground source heat pumps to oil fired behemoths.
even homes that had as many as 8 furnaces in them.
oil fired is not the answer at all, and simply upgrading will be a huge money saver in the very near term.
I hear that heat is a pretty good catalyst for cracking hydrogen from water.
I also hear that nuclear power produces a shitload of waste heat.
There also seems to be some flirtation with hydrogen-powered cars.
There's probably no connection though.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
Please provide details.
From everything I've read, a single coal fired power plant releases more radioativity than all nuclear power plants in the world have ever released (with the exception of chernoble) put together!
More people die from one coal fired power plant in one year than have did from all nuclear power plants put together (including Chernoble) in the history of the industry.
Because of the perception of problems with construction and waste disposal, nuclear power plants are unisurable so the federal government insures them (this is the only subsidy they get). A strict reading of actuarial tables suggest that nuclear plants are some of the safest things to insure.
Please provide sources for your claims.
Do you take the same approach to Bush's decisions? "Don't blame Bush for the hysteria of the day"? Or is that somehow... different?
Building a nuclear based power infrastructure would allow us to beef up the power grid to supply electric vehicles. A super capacitor driven car could recharge fast. But our current electrical capacity would be overwhelmed. Electric trains would also benefit greatly. We wouldn't need to heat buildings with oil either.
While I tend to agree that increasing electricity production will have little effect on the liquid fuel (oil) crisis, there are 2 legitimate arguments to support the opposite. 1. If you replaced the natural gas power plants with nuclear, or solar, or wind, etc, natural gas could potentially be used to directly power cars. See the Honda Civic GX. 20% of the world's electricity comes from natural gas. 2. If pure electric cars (like the Mitubishi iMiEV & Subaru R1e) were to come to market, generating more electricity would reduce demand for gasoline.
It was called the "planned economy". If you reckoned the economy needed 100 units of steel mills and 50 units of aluminum factories, but private individuals built 150 units of steel and 25 units of aluminum, you'd take money from steel to ensure that an additional 25 units of aluminum were brought online.
Not coincidentally corporate welfare is exactly the same thing, only you don't tell people they aren't allowed to build steel mills. Instead, you just take money away from everyone, and give it to the aluminum producers. As a result fewer of everything else gets built, including steel mills. What we have here is a proposal to have the government guarantee to the nuclear industry that at least two nuclear plants per year will be built on average, every year for the next twenty years.
Speaking as a free-spending political liberal, that's too much even for me. I'd be all for giving some government grants and regulatory relief to enable several pilot plants for new technologies to be built, to help the industry get back on its feet. But after that, they're on their own. I'm for technology research (which conservatives view as interfering with the market), but at least I don't think the government should be in the business of putting nuclear power's competitors out of business.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Oil is used for homes that are too far away from population centers to be economically hooked up to natural gas. Oil has the advantage of a higher energy density than the alternatives (typically propane) which allows delivery companies to provide more energy to their customers with less trips, thus requiring less trucks and less employees.
Propane is an alternative around these parts -- in my area I'd say it's probably a 50/50 split between propane and heating oil. A handful of homes heat with electric but that's generally not economical in New York State.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Birds also fly into skyscrapers all the time. Should we tear down the ones we have and not build vertically in the future?
they are as good or better than gas.
I have one.
We just need to get Mr. Fusion going.
Saying "I'll probably get modded down for this" in a post is the best way to get it modded up.
And that's a bad thing? ;)
*duck*
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
The old tech isn't expensive enough. ;-) The pollution from coal-burning and landscape-destruction from strip-mining, are externalities that they're not billing me to repair .. yet.
When I hear people asking political candidates what they're going to do about energy prices and technology, I get disappointed. I want to know what a candidate is going to stop doing about this stuff. For example: are you going to stop looking the other way with regard to pollution, which is essentially subsidizing the "dirty" tech and making it more attractive? We don't need "incentives" to develop green energy; we just need a level playing field, and that may cause solar (and possibly nuclear) to become the cheapest thing.
After government stops nudging me toward coal, if solar then isn't the cheapest/easiest thing for me to use, then solar must not really be "green." But I have a hunch that it is.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Ummm.. yeah, we won't have cars powered by under the hood nuclear reactors - We'll have electric cars that plug in, and need to get their source of power someplace. Hrm, wonder where that could come from? :)
I don't think they make much economic sense with the moratorium on reprocessing, though. And they haven't had a very good safety record, either. Wikipedia has a pretty good article on the subject:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeder_reactor
Following this thought - solar is closer than 10+ years as the first large-scale installations are being built.
What is stopping us from large scale roll out of photovoltaic in housing? We have new homes being built all the time, not to mention new roofing put on old homes. Why is there not a push to have solar tiles on any roofing in locations where there will be even a small financial return? When you add up all those individual panels on individual roofs, you'll eventually have a pretty good amount of electricity generated.
I'm not prejudiced. I hate everyone equally.
With a power grid sufficient to handle it you wouldn't need batteries. A capacitor can be quickly charged and discharged if needed. No lead, no acid. But you need to be able to connect to a very large power source. Plug in, 5 minutes your charged. Also you could have a replacement scheme similar to propane tanks.
Can we put that 70ft tower underground? Out of sight, out of mind.... :)
Nothing I've written implies that I like coal-fired plants. Fossil fuels in general are a bad idea.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
45 Reactors with 45 custom designs, 45 huge cost overruns and no synergy in problem resolution and control systems would be ignorant.
We should manufacture them instead of building them. Make them all alike. Cut the time to production and realize synergies both in creation and in fixing any problems that arise.
Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of congress. But then I repeat myself. -- Mark Twain
I think that's the thing we really need to look at. Is it true, or false? If I have to pay to store nuclear waste (presuming I'm also artificially constrained from getting the most from it (why?)) but I don't have to pay to remove coal waste from the atmosphere, then have we really compared the costs?
I think this issue has been heavily obscured. I honestly don't know the real numbers, and wonder if anyone does.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
A gas engine is about 30% efficient at best. Coal, you're looking at 50% for the old crappy ones or up to about 80% with the latest designs.
coal fired steam generators are not anywhere close to 50% efficient and are certainly not 80% efficient. If that were the case, then you would see coal fired locomotives everywhere, and you simply don't.
The reason coal is used is that it is dirt cheap and it is close. Go look at the price of powder river basin for coal. If you buy it by the rail car, you can get coal delivered to your rail siding for under $50 a ton. In terms of $ per joule, coal wins hands down, but in terms of absolute efficiency, coal is a pig. Coal requires huge maintenance to clean out boilers, its dirty and the soot gets into everything, you have to have loads of water to boil... all of that, is why they switched like droves from coal trains to diesel trains in the 1930s and tried to phase out coal boilers in favor of oil boilers. Coal is cheap, but you get what you pay for.
This is my sig.
Great tongue in cheek comment there commander taco. Because we all know how perpetual motion is a reality while nuclear power isn't.
And what is even dumber - a modern Pebble Bed reactor CANNOT melt down - it's physically impossible. It's moderator becomes more efficient at higher temperatures.
If you cannot keep politics out of your moderation remove yourself from the Mod Lottery.. NOW!
If we want electric vehicles, then we are going to need to look to nuclear power. Electric powered vehicles sound great until the whole country is using them and then the cost of coal and natural gas soar in response to the increased demand for power on America's coal and gas fired power plants. When coal and natural gas soar, then the cost of electricity will soar, too. The only long-term solution to meeting our power needs is to stop converting fossil fuels into energy. Nuclear energy doesn't have to be the cause of the earth's destruction, it could be the cause of the earth's salvation. At some point we will have to go all nuclear and the only question is will we wait until natural gas, coal, and oil are nearly gone or will we do it sooner and save future generations of Americans the economic hardship of paying for energy that is produced from ever dwindling supplies of fossil fuels?
-- I'd give my right arm to be ambidextrous
I didn't say it was efficient or maintenance free. And 10 years ROI? That's business timeline not personal. Even if that weren't the case let's take this for example. I pay $100/month for heat now. If someone told me, that I could spend $1200 and not pay for heat ever again. Guess what? I couldn't do it cause I don't have $1200 or the means to get $1200. Doesn't matter what the ROI is.
I hate ethics, I avoid them on principle.
These payback periods take into account both federal and state incentives (pay X percent of system for you) as well as loan incentives (0% interest or low interest loans on the amount of the system you finance).
Speaking as a free-spending political liberal, that's too much even for me. I'd be all for giving some government grants and regulatory relief to enable several pilot plants for new technologies to be built, to help the industry get back on its feet. But after that, they're on their own. I'm for technology research (which conservatives view as interfering with the market), but at least I don't think the government should be in the business of putting nuclear power's competitors out of business.
--
You need to have a look at what the arch liberal, Franklin Delano Roosevelt did. He not only built power plants, but he built an entire utility called the Tennessee Valley Authority. Put a lot of people to work, brought power to rural America.... and, it's remarkably efficient and works pretty well. Not too shabby for you socialists... so, why not do the same the with nukes? I mean, the conservative knock on socialism is that, it doesn't work, but, if you got a case where the Feds can do something efficiently, then, why not let them do it and accrue the benefits of public ownership?
This is my sig.
The energy market is more fungible than you might think. For example: Nuclear power frees up natural gas to be used in transportation, reducing oil usage. NG cars are here now (Civic-GX). You can buy one today and there are fueling stations all over.
An Even bigger factor: Plug-in hybrid automobiles are also here now and every one of them is reducing our dependence on oil. The biggest problem with them is that their success will kill us if we don't add capacity to our electrical grid. It's already approaching the breaking point in some areas - there's no way California's grid could handle a 6 pm spike from everyone coming home from work, plugging in their cars AND turning on their A/C, but a dozen new nuclear power plants would solve that problem.
That's dumb. As dirty as coal plants are, they are far cleaner than the equivalent power output from internal combustion engines.
Wrong. Energy efficiency of a coal power plant is roughly 10,000 BTU of heat to produce 1 kWh of electricity, which works out to about 34% (1). Factor in about 93% efficiency for electrical transmission (2), 85% battery storage efficiency (3), and 90% electrical-to-mechanical energy conversion efficiency for electric motors, and the whole path from coal energy in to mechanical energy out works out to about 24% efficiency.
In comparison, an internal combustion engine is roughly 25% efficient from gasoline energy in to mechanical energy out (4). So it's really a wash.
In the end, the decision comes down to other factors, like weight of engine and energy storage systems, cost, and available infrastructure. By all means, make IC engines more efficient, but it's crazy to throw them out at the moment.
In a time of unlimited options, the world chose gasoline as the perfect transportation fuel, due to its power-to-weight ratio, efficiency, simplicity, portability, and storability. As energy becomes scarcer, let's reserve it for the job it's best suited for.
(1) http://www.doe.gov.ph/EE/HRIPP.htm
(2) http://www.canren.gc.ca/prod_serv/index.asp?CaId=101&PgId=550
(3) http://www.ceere.org/iac/assessment%20tool/ARC2410.html
(4) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engine_efficiency
As the youngin's say, cheap power for the win!
Plug in cars arent a few years away, we are a few years past them....http://www.sonyclassics.com/whokilledtheelectriccar/
CS: It is all sink or swim...oh and did I mention there are sharks in that water?
You have to couple increased electrical output with efficient hydrogen electrolysis which can be used in cheaply converted ICE cars. Then it can all work and we don't have to renew the entire US fleet to see the benefits. Converting gas & diesel engines to use hydrogen boosting can basically start tomorrow if we saw fit.
The problem is abundant electric for home or commercial electrolysis kits. Nuclear plants *would* fix that. Although off-grid solar or wind would be "nicer", it's not realistic.
Another voter in the la la land for change. There is no solution on Obama's mind is there? Oh wait, I forgot that we have change. A change for the future, because the future is ahead of us... For a brighter future, full of change. /roll eyes/
Name one reason why increasing supply while removing reliance on foreign sources won't solve the price? Have you taken economics? Meanwhile, I'd like to see us move entirely away from coal burning power sources and to something far more efficient like nuclear. It will be a great power source until something better comes along. Unless, of course, Obama simply wants to raise taxes on a select few companies. Yeah, windfall taxes are a great solution.
Where's my sock? There it is...
I am sorry, I didn't mean to suggest that one way or another.
Rather since coal fired plants are generally accepted as "safe" and since they are very common, it is only reasonable to use them as a benchmark.
Do you have the sources you promised earlier? Everything I have heard about nuclear is generally positive with the exception of the waste disposal issue which is purley political in nature.
As someone once posted on Slashdot, "Electricity is the ultimate flex fuel."
Also, studies have shown that house cats kill more birds per year than wind towers (newer versions that sweep slower over a greater area). Please read before spreading da' FUD.
We're talking about the plug-in hybrids, not plug in cars. A subtle syntax difference but a big technology difference. Several auto manufacturers are already committing to selling plug-in hybrids in one to two years.
Admittedly there are a few things that I don't use cast iron for, but its definitely the material of choice for 75% of my cooking needs and its dirt cheep. When I can afford to upgrade some of my other pieces though, it will be All-Clad that I buy."
Cast iron is GREAT stuff too...I like it and it has its place. It's density is great for keeping things at a set temp...great for deep frying, and I used it on the burner under pots I'm making candy with to keep steady high temps.....
No reason not to have that and some All-Clad (and do get the real SS stuff, I like it better than the others, and they do have some cheaper stuff now with only the aluminum core disk in the bottom, not the whole pot/pan)...and cast iron.
They both have a place ....but, cast iron is kinda hard for doing sauteeing and the like where you want to shake and move the pan...and even toss stuff in the air with it.
Like I said..save up and look for a deal on the 10 pc starter set...i did that...and over the years...added other open stock pieces...especially when on sale. The 12" fry pan was a GREAT purchase...
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
The technology is really not there yet. Look at the Tesla Roadster - a performance car, sure, but I bet the majority of the price tag is in the batteries, not the drivetrain. Our batteries decay rapidly, and cost way too much to be replaced on a regular basis. Pure-electric cars that run off batteries (as opposed to say, electrified rail) are simply not economic at this point. We need a real breakthrough in battery longetivity, weight, energy density, and cost.
When you are in fact wrong yourself.
"and store it in octane (i.e., what people already use"
Uh, no. Octane ratings do not mean your fuel is octane. It means your fuel has the same knock characteristics as a mixture of X% iso-octane and heptane. It could have absolutely no octane in it at all.
No.. they're just the type of Environmentalist that annoys me: the ones that speak before thinking.
I am certainly an Environmentalist myself, but I like to think before speaking. Nuclear energy is much cleaner, and storage is easy and safe, at least one modern type of reactor CANNOT "meltdown" (it's physically impossible for it to do so).
As for the the criticisms:
"they have to ruin lands to store" - the cavern(s) the US government wants to use are man made and already exist
"what if it gets into the water supply" - the cavern(s) are seperated from the water supply by water-impermeable rock layers
"ZOMG radiation" - *facepalm* you're exposed to radiation every day.. most of it is harmless alpha and beta radiation that a simple sheet of paper can absorb. You get more radiation exposure from being in the upper troposphere on an airplane than you get living 100 yards from a nuclear reactor for 20 years.
But then.. i'm originally from Cedar Rapids, IA (Yes that one that just flooded) where I lived in the shadow of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duane_Arnold_Energy_Center for 18 years.
If you cannot keep politics out of your moderation remove yourself from the Mod Lottery.. NOW!
For the core load, nuclear provides the only real solution.
Coal plants emit more radiation into the environment than a nuclear plant. The irony.
Renewable sources destabilize the grid, wind is flaky, solar is also flaky. From a density perspective, renewable sources require massive areas to get the same power output compared to one nuclear plant which can operate 7/24.
Nuclear fuel can be reprocessed to extend its use. It only requires gov't incentives to make that option economically attractive.
One thing I wonder about is why we don't build nuclear plants in offshore platforms, away from major populations centers. Use the energy to create hydrogen, fresh water, and pipe that to the mainland.
They already have. Nuclear power will get vastly more expensive than today, but with operationally proven technologies we'll see the end of coal (over 200 years from now, all things being equal)) before we see the end of uranium as a viable fuel.
I'm no expert, so this is just a question, but it would probably cost several billion dollars for each nuke plant. How many solar panels could be supplied for the same price as 45 nuke plants? If we took the next 20 years and got one on 50% of the rooftops in California, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas, how much power would that produce?
Bonus: The solar would be distributed, so no terrorist target, and the grid would be several million times redundant.
Good idea?
Reality has a liberal bias
But solar and wind are ready for deployment. For evidence, look at all the solar and wind generators that are going up across the US. Nuclear is very expensive when subsidies are factored in, but there are many locations in the US that are sunny or windy enough to make solar or wind generation more cost effective than nuclear.
If you want to compare what types of power generators are in the process of being built check out the EIA (Energy Information Administration):
http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epa/epat2p5.html#_ftn4
Natural gas is the fastest growing, followed by renewable sources. There is no growth for nuclear.
Repairing our electrical grid and making it robust enough to transfer electricity across the US would go a long way to improving efficiency and the cost effectiveness of renewable resources such as wind, solar, and geothermal, which rely on unmovable resources. This would also prevent the localized blackouts and high prices that occur when regional capacity falls short of demand.
Abundant amounts of energy/electricity without pollution (it doesn't even have to be cheap), would solve tons of problems. Use the electricity to make hydrogen to run in cars. Most cars can burn hydrogen without much modification. Or just charge cars using electricity.
I live in San Diego and water is becoming a rather scarce resource. We could use electricity to desalinate water.
I don't know why we as a nation don't take the trillion dollar challenge and try to switch off of an oil/coal/natural gas in 20 years. It can't hurt us too badly. We've pissed away a trillion dollars in Iraq over the last 5 years and we're still kicking (I guess my dollars can't buy shit anymore, though). Plus, we're still going to need oil to make plastics and vasoline. Let's save the oil for the important stuff!
Back to my point. Pushing nuclear energy has relatively very little do with our dependence on gasoline via crude oil. Please lets not confuse the two. There is no chance that there will be cars powered by "under the hood" nuclear reactors in the near future. Wind power will also do nothing for our dependence on oil for gasoline.
Another case of policitians using unrelated events to push policy. Albiet, in poor taste, he is at least using this opportunity to point us to a real solution. I hate to say it, but Wind, Solar, Geothermal, etc. are not ready for deployment today. They eventually will be, but by that time (10+ years), it will take another 20+ years before they even make up a few % of global energy production. By that time Nuclear plants can be rolled out en mass and go a long way to reduce our carbon footprint (but not demand on foreign oil, sorry, thats just a different topic). Where are you getting your information from? Modern Coal firing plants are extremely clean. And the coal mining techniques from 2 or 3 decades ago that you refer to are far gone.
Also, wind, solar, geothermal etc are most definitely ready for deployment today; As we've already seen through the thousands of applications they've had in the past years.
Wind farms, solar arrays, solar towers, solar thermal, geothermal have even on a small scale been proven to work quite effectively. The only thing posing any sort of issue is the cost, which incidentally will drop rapidly with wider implementation.
>They all have at least one good point though: what do we do with the waste?
Power plant equality, now!
Why not hold all power plants to the same standard?
The mercury from a coal plant doesn't decay. It stays toxic forever.
Vitrifying nuclear waste is already a better solution than the one used for coal plants, which is to dispose of the waste in the downwinders's lungs.
my mistake. Although I did hear about a solar Prius hybrid supposedly coming out in the next 2 years. Haven't researched it to back up the rumor, guess I can do that now ;)
CS: It is all sink or swim...oh and did I mention there are sharks in that water?
"Using electricity directly for heating is very inefficient . . . "
If you really meant that electric heat is inefficient, you are wrong. The end point use is close to 100% efficient, and the total efficiency, including generation efficiencies and transmission losses, rivals the typical 80% efficiency gas furnace, which ranges about 45% to 75% overall efficiency in it's normal operating range, (not even counting the energy required to get the gas to your home). If the electricity is made by renewable resources or cheap (if there is such a thing) nukes, then it is surely a win.
If you meant electric heat has high operating costs, you are correct. However, it has a very low construction cost compared to other heat sources, which outweighs the operating costs in a lot of situations.
Electric heat can be made even more efficient by using heat pumps, especially if they are coupled to a ground source rather than to the outside air, so the temperature differences in the refrigeration cycle can be kept low.
Finally, in most parts of the US, the electric grid capacity is determined by the summer cooling load, not the winter heating load, so switching to electric heat could lower the overall costs by making use of more of the installed infrastucture during the whole year, rather than just in the summer.
>Number of people dead due to TMI incident: zero.
More than that, depending on how you look at it. Losing the wrecked reactor and shutting down the one next to it meant that the reactors were no longer saving lives by displacing coal. A nuclear power advocate named Petr Beckman took the Office of Technology Assessment figures for premature deaths due to coal use and calculated that having those two plants off the grid cost 100 lives per year.
IIRC, heating oil is a an oil fraction which could not easily be converted into petroleum for cars.
Oil naturally consists of hydrocarbons of various lengths which are refined into various fuels (kerosene, gasoline, diesel, etc). Since the ratios of these fuels are not what the market wants, the oil companies have "cracking plants" which can convert some hydrocarbons to others (diesel to gasoline, etc).
However there are some hydrocarbons which are very heavy and very difficult to convert to anything else. Since those hydrocarbons can't be used for powering cars, they are treated as "waste oil" and sold at prices similar to non-cartel fossil fuels (natural gas). Since that oil can be burned, it's used for heating.
Hint: The flamebait moderation != "I disagree with the content of his post"
I suspect you'll pay for that one if the people doing meta-moderation are paying attention.
It's a perpetual myth that energy costs are rising because of lack of energy, when in fact energy costs are rising because the Dollar is being massively devalued on domestic and international markets.
This is what happens when you have a fiat currency that's backed by nothing, and created out of debt. Every time the market "corrects" it leads to runaway inflation and rising costs because the dollar loses value as more and more worthless money gets pumped into the market to bail out near insolvent corporations and banks after the recent sub-prime scandal.
Don't blame lack of abundant energy, blame this fiasco of an economy run by a sadistic elitist banking cartel (the Federal Reserve) that has placed the American people and much of the world into a neo-serfdom.
That's mechanical energy at the flywheel. If you want to compare apples to apples, remember that an IC engine requires a transmission and differential which are not inherent in electric designs. Losses in the tranny and rear end are typically estimated to be around 20-25%, dropping the IC drivetrain's efficiency to roughly 19-20%.
Furthermore, large exhaust scrubbers are possible on coal plants, but the emissions controls on a car are limited to what you can drag around with you.
Note that I'm not particularly interested in electrics beyond recreation - I'd love to zip to work on an electric scooter mainly because I think it'd be a lot of fun. Still, it seems that even with today's tech, they really are the cleaner option.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Have you seen McCain's mother? Yes she is still alive. McCain plans to be there at their completion.
Roughly half my comments are never submitted. You may be reading the better half...
We have quite a bit of fuel I would think, why do we need so many nuclear weapons? Let's make something useful with them.
Bringing liberty to the masses. - http://freetalklive.com/
No. Coal plants are about 45% efficient and burn a fuel which is almost entirely carbon. Your car's engine is about 25% efficient and gets half its energy from breaking carbon bonds and the other half from hydrogen.
As a result, coal plants are only very slightly better than your car's engine. Coal plants are more efficient, but the fuel they burn is far dirtier.
If you have a diesel car, then replacing it with an electric car would increase CO2 emissions if it were indirectly powered by a coal plant.
I'm not surprised that /. mods have lowered points on your post, but the general trend in McCain you mention is true. I was also opposed to voting for McCain as well, and wish he'd been on the right side of issues sooner. Better late than never I guess.
/.ers, tough toenails! Contrary to popular belief, /. does not represent the general population. If it did, we'd have Ron Paul vs. Kucinich now, wouldn't we?
Anyway, whichever candidate fixes our energy crisis, fixes our economy, and takes a tough stance on terrorism will win the White House. Right now, it's looking more and more like McCain is more in touch with the general population (he now supports drilling, he opposes terrorists getting the same rights as US citizens, and he has fewer skeletons in the closet, at least at the moment.)
If these views piss of a lot of
It's actually very efficient, if not as efficient as using the direct steam from the plant. Still, the region you can service that way is limited.
Beyond that, I'd suggest geothermal heat pumps to keep electricity costs down. The current efficiency of a geothermal heat pump is that it produces something like 3-4 units of heat per unit of electricy used.
That alone would significantly cut the amount of rewiring you need to do.
I don't read AC A human right
Well, in the northern US, it would/could make a big difference. For some reason up there...they use heating OIL to heat their homes during the long, hard winters.
Perhaps if we had more nukes providing cheaper electricity...we could get the heating done up north without so much oil usage.
I mean, if you think gas prices are bad now...wait till you have to buy oil to heat your house...something you REALLY can't go without....and be prepared for sticker shock...
I don't remember where I read it, but there was something comparing air conditioners run through the summer in Arizona with homes heated using oil through the winter in New York, and those air conditioners came out being much better for the environment overall esp when you consider where the energy for running each was coming from.
Blackbody radiation! Everybody panic!
"In my mind the biggest problem with nuclear power isn't nuclear plant safety, so much as it is the risk of weaponization of the fuel."
It is only 'weaponization' of the fuel...IF you put it in a weapon.
The problem is we can't control the 'IF' when other countries have the reactor. Witness Iran's enrichment facility at Natanz. They claim it's just to enrich uranium to reactor-grade but the difference between using it to produce reactor-grade and weapons-grade is the number of times you pass the uranium through the process.
As Iran is illustrating, the proliferation of overseas nuclear power plants that use enriched uranium will inevitably lead to nuclear weapon proliferation.
Nuclear reactors may end up being a default Hobson's choice because as a country, we can't seem to organize ourselves effectively to produce the huge quantity of energy we consume.
You're not kidding, though I've seen some examples of installs and how many rebates. It wasn't unusual to see a solar install that wouldn't ever make it's money back at 5% cost of capital for the homeowner, even when the various rebates were paying for 50-75% of the system!
Solar makes sense in some situations, but I think that it needs a few more breakthroughs before it can compete with nuclear.
I don't read AC A human right
Well, yeah, but note that I said "large-scale". I'm familiar with solar thermal. Intimately familiar. At least with the installation at my house.
Wind power has other environmental issues with it.Not particularly serious ones.
Energy always comes from somewhere, so large scale Wind plants slow wind down. It changes wind patterns, and the best place for it is also where bird fly.Uhmmm, I don't think wind turbines change wind patterns on anything but the most immediate scale at the turbine--they really don't take much of the power out of wind.
Look at the 1000s of large birds killed in California every year.
There is alway a price.
The raptor-kill problem has been largely fixed--newer generations of turbines use fancy new power electronics, direct-drive generators, and slower rotational speeds.
I'm always amazed to hear Europeans try and compare Europe to the United States. Do you have any idea of the scale of the United States? Mass transit simply isn't an option for a vast majority of this country. Most Americans (particularly those in rural areas) have to commute to work, to buy groceries, etc, etc.
Europe is in the same ballpark as the USA, both in terms of land area and population. The difference is that European town planning and industry isn't 100% based around the idea of cheap fuel, and long commutes.
The "suburbs" idea started in the USA, and is based around car culture. That well may end up being a terrible mis-allocation of resources.
Nice way to stereotype but at least half of this country doesn't have ANYTHING within a mile of where they live. Where I grew up it was a four mile drive into town.
Hint: town planning. If it's genuinely a country/farm like dwelling, then there's plenty of that around the world too - yet they seem to manage with higher fuel prices.
Face it, USA citizens use far more energy per capita then the rest of the developed world. The problem isn't because of land area or population - but cultural factors.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
The price of SUVs, how fast did that change? Then why act like using what energy resources we have is such a big hurdle? The often mentioned Carbon tax has been talked about as a way of shifting this balance between the traditional energy producers and newer systems. I didn't say those economic factors are trivial, but they are not insurmountable, given the stakes involved. Your reply is a good zinger, but has no worth beyond that.
I'm still waiting for Mr. Fusion to generate my 1.21 GW of power...
Didn't those proposed coal plants morph into nuclear ones when the pollution waiver was yanked?
It costs a lot of money to build a power plant that can burn coal cleanly.
I don't read AC A human right
Energy prices are going up in the form of electricity too, not just oil. Cheap electricity encourages the development of electric cars, plug-in hybrids etc, which in turn reduces our dependency on foreign oil.
Price. It's not cost-effective except when you can get government to subsidize 2/3 of the cost (as is happening in more & more locales). Interesting thing is: sand is cheap, the priciness of PV comes from turning sand into high-grade crystalline silicon, and much of the priciness of that process comes from, get ready for it, the large amount of energy required to do it! Current PV is not the free ride it is portrayed to be.
There are several startups that claim to be close to large-scale manufacture of much cheaper PV panels. I certainly don't expect any particular one to be successful in the end, but there's enough of them out there, with enough financing, that I believe at least one of them will succeed within the next 5 years.
So I have mixed feelings about all these subsidies for PV installation. Granted it is good to start getting experience with deployment issues. (What do you want to bet the very first generation of PV tiles have issues in the field after a few years? Like so many other new roofing materials in the past...) But all that money that governments and rate payers are pouring into panels that literally take years and years to generate the amount of power that went into their manufacture, wouldn't that money be better spent on improving panels to the point that it no longer requires massive subsidization for a homeowner to get any return???
Ask the French how well they cooled their reactors during the last heat wave. Then ask the folks in Georgia, Arizona, and southern California where they'll get the water to cool their share of the 45 new reactors. North Dakota should be cold enough, right?
Put them all on the hurricane prone and tsunami-expecting Atlantic or Gulf coast? The scenic Pacific coast? Got a river in your backyard? Good thing all that waste heat dumped into the oceans isn't considered "global warming". Just let the Gulf Stream carry all the waste heat north to help melt Greenland's glaciers.
How much gas/diesel would be needed to build 45 plants? How much new power distribution infrastructure will be needed to carry the power from 45 suitable locations to power hungry consumers? Fourty-five new terrorist destinations?
I'm more against monopolies and putting one's eggs in one basket than I am against nuclear power plants. Decentralized and diversified power production is my choice, perhaps through a "third industrial revolution". When will we all take personal responsibility for the resources we use?
I expect more questions than answers in the short term.
Plus ca changes, plus c'est les meme choses.
HTH.
Deleted
Nuclear isn't an option by itself.
Estimates for how much coal and uranium the planet would need to sustain itself do not successfully go passed the end of the century. The more conservative exercises place global uranium depletion between the years 2040 and 2050.
(Sources)
http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/secondpage.html
http://www.mg.co.za/articlePage.aspx?articleid=340148&area=/insight/insight__economy__business/
http://www.amazon.com/End-Oil-Edge-Perilous-World/dp/0618562117/ref=sr_11_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1213899543&sr=11-1
In my opinion, nothing less than a major, unified effort between several historically autonomous government departments (Department of Energy, Department Of Interior, Department of Agriculture) would be successful in mitigating any damage inflicted by Peak Oil. In the US, we've grown to rely on cheap oil, and merely replacing/offsetting that dependence with another limited resource won't solve the problem.
Call me jaded, but when McCain says he wants to do this with public money, I just see another Neocon Republican initiative to pat themselves and their friends on the back of their bank accounts. I don't see in him the ability to help solve the problem, I just see another reactionary who will blame Iran or Saudi Arabia or whoever for increased oil prices and wield the increasingly imperialistic US Military against it.
-ds
Here's a crash test video of an F4 Phantom II Jet being crashed into a wall built to reactor containment vessel specifications. As you can see in the video, at 480MPH all the jet really manages to do is vaporize and gently nudge the wall.
I think our reactors are safe.
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Cars can also be powered by compressed air, created with electric powered compressors.
They can run on hydrogen, split from water, by electricity... and so on.
Can make the limited supply largely irrelevant.
Well, yes and no. Of course you'll never have a nuclear reactor under the hood of a car, but you might very well have electric cars powered by nuclear power plants. Right now electric cars are hardly green (in America) because they're mainly coal powered, so that doesn't help, but if the power grid became green them electric cars would be green as well. I believe it works for hydrogen powered cars as well, if I'm not mistaken it's because you get no free energy from hydrogen energy because extracting hydrogen out of water takes at least as much energy as you can make out of hydrogen, so basically all the energy you get from hydrogen comes from when it's been transformed, which again comes from the power grid.
So again if I'm not mistaken, I think cars can only get as green as our power grid is, and right now in the USA it's not very green.
You just got troll'd!
Nuclear plant -> electricity -> plug-in electric vehicle = less gasoline (oil) consumption
Or even better:
Nuclear plant -> electricity -> air compressor -> compressed air vehicle = less gasoline (oil) consumption
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_car
-- "Oh. This guy again."
It sounds like a wonderful idea, but there is one problem with it:
It takes the control out of the Oil Companies' hands.
Think about it: if you could produce gasoline, quite literally, out of thin air, then every person could have their own fueling station built into their garage. The Oil Companies are too short-sighted to see the profitability related to that situation, so they are going to fight it as hard as they can.
Resistance is futile. Your technological distinctiveness will be added to our own. You will become one with the morgue
The harder part is frequently for the apartment dwellers, I get stuck with heating/cooling bills that cost a fortune, and have no way to ad either insulation, solar panels, or even just a more efficient air conditioner.
Insulation, incidentally, will do nearly as much as solar panels, since it will drop air conditioning costs, and even remove heating bills altogether in most of the country.
Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite (TM)
"Sorry, you do not pass the reading comprehension test."
No, actually, it is your shitty writing that fails.
"The emphasis is on _promising_ ahead of 20+ years."
Perhaps YOU think so, but the way you wrote it leaves said emphasis open to interpretation.
More importantly, you never said what "idea" you " never said was bad" and the discussion is about McCain announcing, not about the policy actually being implemented.
SO, long story short, you were off topic, wrong, and you DID say it was bad, it's just that you're an incredibly bad writer and didn't realize it.
"To sum it up:" you were wrong, got called on it, and are dancing around trying to find a way to avoid acknowledging it.
All summed up.
"Well, having a poor economy and a worthless currency are behaviors I find unpleasant."
What does that have to do with anything? You seem to think that the inevitable outcome of non-taxation is "a poor economy and a worthless currency" despite said assumption being impossible for an intelligent individual to make.
"Probably you've forgotten that the government *is* of the people, since America has somewhat squandered that fortunate situation."
Probably you're too egotistical to admit its not like that now, has never been like that, and never will be like that regardless of your claims to the contrary.
You can blather about idealism (children do that until they grow up, and stupid people do it forever, I hope you're just a child) but REALITY moots your points.
"What will it take for you to look around and realize that what America is doing isn't sustainable, and isn't working?"
Seems to be working fine for us here, what will it take to get YOU to realize all the wishful thinking in the world doesn't make your observations accurate or true?
"Yes, government job is to control the behavior of the population when it is relevant. "
No, it IS NOT.
"Here, it is relevant to limit the liberty to burn any amount of fuel a 4x4 owner would like, as it cause a pollution."
Yeah, so does breathing. Chew on that while they ban you from exhaling. Then look at the cars that burn gas but have exhaust that is cleaner than the air they are burning and get back to me.
"Anyway, I still think high fuel tax in europe has a good overall effect."
And I think you're a brainwashed fool who thinks it's ok to use the government to bully people you disagree with. You've admitted as much in your post, so it seems you and I are in agreement about the quality of your character at least.
A coal power plant is about 30-40% efficient, already worse than the gas furnace.
In the UK hardly anyone has air conditioning, and there's lots of daylight in the summer (over 17 hours today) so the summer load is quite low. Since the peak load is in the winter, there isn't any excess capacity for more electric heating. I read -- somewhere -- that the government were considering requiring new buildings to have appropriate heating, i.e. gas if available, or CHP, etc. Installing electric heating is very cheap (for the construction company), but the long-term costs for the resident and the power company are high. And, unfortunately, it's the poorest people who end up renting these cheap buildings.
Heating oil is basically the same as diesel fuel. Hence the red dye in places where the two are taxed differently, in order to catch tax evaders who run their diesel car on heating oil.
The underlying problem in our energy crisis is that all of our energy ( with the aforementioned exception of nuclear, and the irrelevant exception of hydro ) comes from fossil fuels. When that is solved, the distribution problems will follow.
I've read Obama's energy policy and it consists solely of biofuel and hopeful thinking.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
And to think, we have yet to untap the vast mines of Mako, a far superior and cleaner burning energy source! Then again, I guess the fact that it's composed of human souls may prevent it from going through Congress...
The reason loco's turned to Disel is because they didn't have to carry water
There's more to it than the water.
First is that while diesels might have been more expensive while running, coal trains take a -long- time to get ready to make steam. As a practical matter, this meant that railroads had to keep steam engines more or less operating all the time, but a diesel would just start.
Second is that steamers required way more maintenance. You don't have to do too much to a diesel engine, but you have to get into the boiler and clean out all the soot and crap in the firebox and around the tubes, and the insides of the tubes themselves would get scaled up.
The water was the icing on the cake. Sucks to have your water supply freeze, or to have to rail it into desert towns.
This is my sig.
If enough of us do that, then it would definitely have an impact on the amount of oil (gasoline) we collectively consume. Bonus points for selecting power generation technologies (nuclear, solar, wind, hydrogen) that also lower or eliminate the carbon footprint.
Your statement is false.
Lodragan Draoidh
The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it. - Mark Twain
You actually watched Fox News? Not only that, but you thought that writing a letter would actually educate them?
I had a friend who worked at Fox News. They're in the business of providing entertainment to a conservative audience. Nothing else. Writing them a letter to complain about an inaccurate portrayal of a democratic candidate is like writing SNL to complain that their portrayal of Bush is inaccurate.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
Please mod the parent up. It's a far-better reply than my own.
"And much of the road costs in the US are funded outside the gas taxes. They tax on fuel is insufficient to maintain the road structure in the US."
[Citation Needed]
And you've already lost all credibility by mentioning those.
And you know why that is? It's because on average, the population elects 6th graders to office that promise everything under the blue sky, rather than real leaders.
I hate to say this, but we're responsible for the people we elect.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
I don't know, that tells me he is in touch to have caught himself.
"Large scale deployment" is in the eye of the observer.
Denmark has 13 GWe of electrical production capability, with wind at 3 GWe (peaking), about 2 nuclear power plants worth of wind (well, not really a fair comparison because nuclear is stable base power).
Compare with the US at 932 GWe total electrical production capability.
(soure)
ok.. I know it isn't 100% efficient, nothing is, there is still some waste, but it doesn't last nearly as long and there isn't nearly as much of it.
It's called "democracy", and the devils deal is, if you tell the public to go piss up a rope, you're out of a job.
No, in fact, that sort of thing is one of the primary reasons Democracy was flat out rejected for the US.
They are damn well supposed to tell the public to piss up a rope when the public is being retarded. *That* is what they're paid for.
Of course, they'll end up getting tossed out in some cases which would once again just demonstrate what a complete failure Democracy is above the level of a small town.
I like the rest of your post, but this is apples and oranges. In fact -- and I know I'm stretching the language here -- I'd say that a gas furnace is 100% inefficient, since it extracts no exergy from the high-exergy fuel that it burns.
I know, we hear these numbers all the time -- but they're bogus. Too often the "efficiencies" we're told are based on energy, when what really matters is exergy. (I.e., a bathtub full of lukewarm water has a ton of energy, but very little exergy.) In this case, the coal plant has extracted most of the exergy from the coal and the waste heat that warms your house is low exergy, whereas a gas furnace wastes much more exergy to produce the same amount of heat.
Because being in the navy's nuclear cleanup crew makes him a freaking genius? No, it was a retarded political decision that he had naively hoped would limit proliferation.
It's a little known fact that uranium stocks are not exactly the "unlimited" thing they once were thought to be. Building NEW nuclear power plants by 2030 will be a bit useless when most estimates are looking at serious supply problems by about 2020. As usual, China's rapid increase in demand is a significant issue here.
From Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_uranium):
Of the ten largest uranium mines in the world (Mc Arthur River, Ranger, Rossing, Kraznokamensk, Olympic Dam, Rabbit Lake, Akouta, Arlit, Beverly, and McClean Lake), by 2020, six will be depleted, two will be in their final stages, one will be upgrading and one will be producing.[33]
When you realize that 30% of US oil usage is for heating and electricity, not going nuclear is just crazy.
Why do the stupid Al Gore loving tree-huggers think that solar power is that much better than nuclear? The manufacturing process for the solar cells produce 10 times the amount of hazardous waste than nuclear reactors. You have nasty compounds like hydrofluoric acid and the like. Nuclear waste can be encased in class and stored safely in an underground bunker. Hydrofluoric acid requires lots of treatments to even make it safe enough to store. Nuclear is a way to go until we can safely and efficiently master fusion.
Uh, Wind, Solar, Geothermal not ready for deployment today?!!?! What are you smoking???
Iceland is almost completely powered by geothermal. Denmark gets 20% of its power from wind, and that number is increasing daily. Plenty of places are using solar power RIGHT NOW. Open your eyes, man.
J
This is a pretty clumsy attempt at a partisan attack. For one thing the text itself points out that half the Dems were in support of the reactor. For another, the Democrats controlled both House and Senate between 1992-94, so it's not surprising that's who's featured in the coverage of that time.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
IF the rocket blows up you have a class 5 clusterfuck on your hands. Launching dangerous things into space is really a terrible, not to mention extremely expensive, all around bad idea. Works in comic books, not suitable for RL.
Relax I just want some peanuts.
You know you could just drive this argument to it's logical extreme ...
The second law of thermodynamics is quite clear : there does not exist ANY renewable energy. Not a single watt. Not one.
Actually, there is a serious proposal to build out massive amounts of nuclear power (because it's "cheap" if you only count the building and the fuel) and use the energy to synthesize gasoline, closing the loop. So it is not a separate issue.
Green Freedom: http://www.lanl.gov/news/index.php/fuseaction/home.story/story_id/12554
by the time that oil actually flows to market, it simply won't be enough to meet global demand which is already increasing at a rate of over 8% in china alone.
did you take economics?
It won't really affect the price of a barrel of oil by anything measurable.
And, the possible effects on the South Florida ecosystem are catastrophic.
one spill could destroy South Florida's drinking water and kill off marine life in the straits of Florida.
When this affects you, living in South Florida, then I'll consider your point of view.
They're using their grammar skills there.
Electric blanket/pad = you lose.
Exploit small temperature differentials over large thermal mass via Stirling cycle engine (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stirling_engine/) . Dig a hole in the ground in a sunny area and lay a large heat sink for the cold side. It only takes a few degrees difference, and if you pick a nice heat-conductive soil you can run for a very long time before you reach thermal saturation. Cost to run? Replace the bearings once every few years, perhaps.
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
I have a 3.2 kw photovoltaic array on the roof of my house, and have had it for 5 years now. I live in Southern California, so my heating bills are not bad at all, and my house is heated by NG. My clothes dryer and water heater are NG as well, though the water heater is getting changed to passive solar in the next few months.
The reason for my posting is that if you live in a really cold area, the amount of electricity needed for heating will be way beyond what a solar system is capable of producing. Solar works great until you have a really high load. Where I live, I need AC more than heat, and I try to avoid AC at all costs. From the data I have collected, running the AC for 8 hours uses the same amount of electricity I normally use in 5 days without AC. One day of AC will wipe out all the excess production for a couple of weeks. Luckily, my employer pays my cooling costs, since I am at work during the day, and it is cool enough to open the house and turn on the whole house fan when I get home.
The cost may be a bit more but super capacitors solve several of those problems. See the PML electric Mini.
Some of the fuel for his rocket boots must have accidentally gotten in the reactor.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
Noocularrr, NEW-CLEE-ERRRR.
My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my Father! Prepare to die!
I.e. new slashdot pastime as a consulation prize for those who don't get fp.
And btw, while I am here, nuclear power is a bad idea. Enslave the whales and make them turn big tubines. Free electricity and hey - those whales finally get what they deserve.
The problem is the availability of the reactor's containment vessels themselves, ALL of which come from a single factory in Japan, which already has a huge backlog of orders. http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/03/14/1238233
The 70's were a different world. Nuclear power meant nuclear weapons, and the public opposition then to nuclear power is hard to even imagine today. Don't blame Carter for the hysteria of the day. OK, maybe Carter wasn't irrational or ignorant. Maybe he *knew* that his plant not to recycle nuclear fuel was a bad idea but chose to go ahead with it because it's what the public wanted to hear. That's even worse in my eyes. He was the president for God's sake. He was supposed to lead. If he knew what he was doing was a bad idea he should have had the balls and the courage to tell the American people that there was a much better way. If he, as you suggest, just cowed under and went along with a bad idea because that was the way the winds of public opinion were blowing than I have lost what little respect I had for him.
Sounds good, but there are two problems with electric cars.
1. How many Miles/Kilometers can I drive on a single charge? I need it to be at least $250 as I drive from job site to job site around Houston, TX.
2. Where can I plug in to recharge? Public parking lots and my appartment complex does not facilitate the requirement. In any case, someone is going charge me for its usage (as they should). I can only think of something like parking meters poles.
Life is not for the lazy.
I'm not saying that someone couldn't build a safe, economical breeder reactor. I was just saying that breeder reactors don't make economic sense in the US, because of the reprocessing issue, and that the earlier breeder reactors weren't particularly safe.
As far as I know, there aren't any intrinsically-safe reactor designs ready for commercial use.
#1 With reprocessing the amount of nuclear waste created in a year by ALL US nuclear plants that is unusable/dangerous would fit into a standard closet. If you then include that into the fuel for breeder reactors the danger time period drops to about 50 years at which point that one ton of material a year is as radioactive as coal ash. Or you can use this extremely highly radioactive waste to generate even more energy and do so for the next few hundred years...
.sig.
Exactly right, and not doing anything about the current waste is just damn irresponsible.
The waste we've created in the past 60 years is going to be highly radioactive and dangerous for hundreds of thousands of years. What kind of fool is going to bet on a stable society for that period of time? No, we have to do something about this and we have the technology to reduce that period of time to about 300 years.
Now, if we decide to do this (I argue we must), just the waste we already have contains enough energy to provide all of the energy needs of our country (where electricity is feasible, anyhow) for the entire century. It replaces coal, old nuclear, natural gas, hydro, wind if you care to, and shuts the lid on our carbon output.
If that weren't amazing enough, I'm arguing we have to do it anyway.
We designed and ran a reactor that can do this in the 80's and early 90's, which Clinton defunded something like 3 weeks into his first term, purportedly as a Gore prerogative. Not that Bush has done anything to restart the project, of course, this isn't a partisan issue. Links to the Integral Fast Reactor are on my
Beyond that, these kinds of reactors are self-contained re-processors, so input fuels are fully consumed without creating WMD-grade by-products like light-water reactors. So, we can actually teach States we're afraid of how to use these kinds of reactors. That takes care of the rest of the world's CO2 problem.
The biggest question is whether we're really serious about solving these issues.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
The sad truth is that there is pretty much NOTHING that can be done to reduce gasoline prices in the next few years. The world market (including India, China, etc) controls prices, and if prices go down/up, it's just the laws of supply and demand.
Even if the oil companies could do whatever they wanted, "shale oil" production (which really isn't oil at all) would not help gas prices. "Shale Oil" production is extremely expensive and the technology is really not yet ready for large scale use. It also doesn't produce the gasoline that our cars run on, and it's extremely damaging to the environment -- much much worse than oil wells. It wasn't until gas prices became so ludicrous that anyone really gave it much thought. If prices went back to $2.00 per gallon, the oil companies will not bother to strip mine for "shale oil" (it wouldn't be profitable). Besides, they are so profitable now, what's really in it for them to get prices down?
The fact is that the US only has 2% of the world's proven oil reserves. Our oil production peaked in the 70's and has been declining ever since. If we pumped out EVERY DROP of oil we know about in the USA and didn't import any oil, it would only last us around 3 YEARS and then it would be ALL GONE.
I personally believe we need to start a "man on the moon" style project for alternative fuels and higher efficiency. It's necessary for the environment, stable gas prices, and independence from foreign counties.
Brazil is 100% independent of foreign oil. Why? Mainly because 30 years ago they started a crash program of Ethanol production from SUGAR CANE. Today virtually all of the cars in Brazil run on ethanol that is produced from sugar cane grown in their own country. All of their gas stations sell ethanol. There was an excellent special on CNN showing how "We were warned' several times -- most notably in the 70s when there was an oil embargo from the middle east and people had to wait for hours to get gas in lines that went around the block.
By the way, compared to corn, it is 4-8 times more efficient and cost effective to convert sugar cane into ethanol. However, the US is pushing corn because of politics. We even have a HUGE TARIFF on imported ethanol (so Brazil can't compete). We tax foreign countries for selling us clean burning ethanol, but we don't tax foreign countries a dime for oil! It doesn't make economic sense, but it is what it is.
Nuclear weapons are essentially 1940s garage science. A gun type nulcear weapon, like "Fat Boy" used in WWII are nothing more than a large pipe bomb: two halves of a critical mass placed at either end of a pipe, with an explosive to propel one into the other.
It is the most efficient? No. Does it work? Yes. Even when using Pu isotopes, gun weapons will work. Yes they pre-ignite. But that isn't a bad thing, it means the weapon will explode guaranteed. So what if it's only 1kton explosion instead of a 100kton - the effect will be the same from a terrorists view.
So what is the hard part? Getting the fissile materials. For that you need nothing other than one of a number of nuclear reactor designs. For this reason alone, the US should lead the world in not using Nuclear technologies. 9/11 was nothing compared to even a sucky nuclear weapon.
A fundamental problem with nuclear reactors is by the law of physics you either get lots of nuclear waste, or weaponizable waste. Why even go there when renewables are either already competitive with nuclear, or close (and solve all sorts of other problems with nuclear besides waste)?
...that nuclear power is being compared to perpetual motion.
Uranium is enriched without a reactor. All that's needed is heavy industry to separate the isotopes and make yellowcake. So your argument against reactors makes no sense. I would actually argue the opposite: Developing nuclear industry will help control the technology for positive uses. e.g. The "portable" reactors are designed to be tamper-proof in that they are sealed and can easily be checked for signs of tampering. That would prevent the "bad guys" from using the nuclear materials while still providing them with the benefits of nuclear power.
In general, it's not a good idea to suppress disruptive market forces. The end result of the suppression usually does a great deal more damage than embracing the change.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
How?
What fuel?
Uranium enriched for power plant fuel rods is typically only a few percent. It has to be an order of magnitude more enriched to make a bomb. Anyone who can do that can just as easily start with natural uranium.
Plutonium from reprocessing fuel rods? Power plant plutonium is not all Pu239; it contains a lot of Pu240 and Pu242. This stuff fissions spontaneously, giving you a constant high neutron background. It's somewhere between very, very difficult and flat-out impossible to implode this stuff fast enough to get more than a fizzle out of it. The difference between Pu239 and Pu240 is only one AMU, which makes it a lot harder to separate than uranium. Anyone who can do that, you're back to "they could more easily start with natural uranium."
Reactors are the only other major use of these materials. If we shut down the world-wide nuclear power industry - and supplant it with renewables (for instance), it becomes very easy to manage the flow of nuclear materials, there world becomes a much safer place.
Uranium isn't the only weaponizable material. Many of the fuels or waste materials of breeders, pebble beds, etc can be used to form a critical mass.
In the past the concern was other nation-states having nuclear weapons. Shared mutual destruction was sufficient to insure safety. We are coming to a point, that the technology is so easy given sufficient nuclear material generation, and lots of plants world-wide, that individuals and groups could have their own nuclear weapons. Well guess what, they don't care about their own destruction. Of all the things too be worried about in the post 9/11 era, nuclear is the one that should be concerning (not the nonsense the bush administration has hyped).
ANWAR? Offshore? Oh you mean the places that have only a few years worth of oil in it and will take years to come on line?
How will that solve ANY problems?
Nuclear will take years to deploy. While we wait for that, more incentives for solar, wind, etc. would go a long way to helping out.
But more oil? O_o
Oh...oh please...I...I just need one more hit...just one.....please....I...I have an SUV...and...it hasn't had a full tank...in months....
~X~
~X~
Mod me as flamebait all you want, but I guarantee that you won't hear about anything but the rosy "upside" from the pro-nuke folks. They are banking on the inability of the public to see past the rhetoric. For some reason I though Slashdot would be more comprehensive, or dare I say, intelligent. Bad call on my part.
All this talk of the safety and harmlessness of nuclear waste brings up the question, "why do we need to do anything with it?". Lets just leave it in your backyard.
There are two critical flaws in that statement:
1. You can't manage the flow of nuclear materials. Uranium is literally (yes, literally) found in your back yard. All that coal we burn in coal-fired plants? Loaded with uranium. Shutting down the world-wide nuclear power industry would do zilch to stop a rouge, industrialized country from developing nuclear weapons technology.
2. "Renewables" is a buzz word with no actual meaning. We can generate SOME power off of sources like wind, solar, geothermal, and waves, but there's currently no technology capable of replacing our infrastructure. All those technologies combined still wouldn't manage to meet our current energy demands. With current technologies, they can only manage a few percent of our current power generation needs.
If a "renewable" technology really existed that could economically replace our existing infrastructure, you can bet that power companies would be all over it. It's bloody difficult to build a power plant these days, which is part of the reason why they have tried to appease the public by installing alternative power generation technologies.
Uranium and Plutonium are the only materials that have been successfully weaponized. It is currently beyond reason to expect a country with a fledgling nuclear program to be capable of doing the R&D to produce a next-generation nuclear weapon that uses alternative materials and/or avoids pre-detonation/fizzling.
You need to keep in mind that you aren't looking for a mere critical reaction. You're looking for a super-critical reaction. If the reaction is not super-critical, all you get is a molten lump of radioactive material.
I think you underestimate the degree of industrial capacity required to produce nuclear weapons. Any "individual" attempting to own a nuclear weapon would be likely to kill himself with a large radiation dose long before he succeeded in creating his device. Look up the radioactive boyscout sometime for a story of a kid (and later as an adult!) who attempted to construct his own nuclear reactor. Things didn't quite go as planned.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
That's the Nevada Test Site, where what was "tested" was nuclear weapons. Lots of 'em, as that lunar landscape will attest. All the fission products and unburned uranium and plutonium just sitting in those holes completely uncontained.
Wind already is near coal in cost, large scale solar is on par with nuclear. Solar as of this year will be installing more new capacity world wide than nuclear, wind surpassed nuclear in 2005.
Plutonium are the only materials that have been successfully weaponized. And? The point was reactor grade plutonium can be, and has been, successfully used in nuclear weapons. MOX and Pu-240 do nothing to change this, and any claims that the output of breeders, MOX fuels, etc, etc can't be used in weapons in just false. Pre-detonation is an asset for a low budget weapon, it insures it will work, even if considered a "fizzle" by superpower military standards. By reality standards a 1-10kton explosion is a success. I think you underestimate the degree of industrial capacity required to produce nuclear weapons. No, the whole point is the only thing complicated is making the material, and simple weapon, is VERY easy. But if you have a the right kind of nuclear reactor, or if you can at least pilfer the fuel/waste, you can get the nuclear material.Just take photovoltaics, while expensive compared to other renewables, illustrates "capability" very well. There is 350% more roof top space on buildings alone than is needed to supply all US electricity given current technology. The cost of the Iraq war could have paid for that infrastructure.
1KG of U235 = 1.557*10^6KG of Gasoline
People who don't question blind environmentalism's (eg., vocal, looney, PR-addicted GreenPeace, et al) motives and logic are just going along to get along because they want to avoid crazies shouting at them. At one point the shit hits the fan.
I have solar panels installed on my roof and can easily generate enough energy to completely stop my reliance on the local power grid. The total cost of the system was $20k, which sounds steep. However, 75% of the cost was covered by rebates and tax credits. When all was said and done, I paid $5k for the system.
I knew he reminded me of Homer Simpson for some reason. That and his similar bottomless stupidity.
I was thinking about energy replacement mechanisms -- what can replace fossil fuels so large electrical plants run by big corporations can continue to leach money off of the general public while returning no useful research. Why -- they can build nuclear! Vs. Solar that people can install on their home and no longer be attached to 'the corporation', even 'windpower' is more likely to be distributed in production and ownership than any fossil fuel
plant -- nuclear is the perfect way to help corporations currently using fossil fuels to move into the future -- so it makes perfect sense that McCain would want to back those efforts -- instead of solar cells that people could just 'own' -- because corporations haven't figured out a way to charge for sunlight (yet?)...
If we could figure out ways to transform sunlight to energy, our energy needs would be met long term -- but nuclear? It's a dead end -- look up the expected fuel reserves of Uranium, Thorium and whatever else they might try to use -- by current estimates, the world is feeling a pinch in Uranium as well. Are we sitting on nuclear deposits or will we be fighting against some nuclear sheiks in 50 years?
The beginnings of a fission-fuel shortage is already starting to show in prices and futures. Same boat there as oil. Just another way to expend a limited fuel resource while corporations charge excessive money for something that could conceivably, eventually be had for 'free'.
Going nuclear is about as intelligent as eliminating the federal gas tax for the summer to 'relieve' oil prices. Uh...it won't.
"Frankly, we've got enough nuke weapons now, and aren't really looking for a new source of fuel for those."
Of course we don't have enough! We got to get a head-start on our arms race with China!
Well thry are putting up a shitload of wind turbines in West Texas, so I would say that wind is here now. I think it is much more feasable for wind to be a larger safer alternative to nuclear or coal in the very near future. Currently the grid in Texas is >3% wind. I don't know the amount of power being supplied to other states from Texas
For now the biggest issues are line loss,transmission lines, and getting more turbines up.
Both of which could be resolved in much less than 10 years.
I drive through West Texas about once a year and the number of visible turbines every year during the last 5 seems to have increased by 25%. It's actually has to be greater than that since it has easily more than doubled. 10 years ago I was astonished by the number. Now I'm just amazed. I believe the current production capacity is over 5GW and there are already enough wind turbines on order to provide another 4GW. If they started building today, I don't think they could finish a nuclear plant in 10 years.
I still think that most of what the current Administration is spitting out is hogwash. Funny how 4 dollar a gallon gas has seemed to be an excuse for increasing drilling in the Oceans and in Alaska and building of nuclear power plants.
He who said 1,000,000 monkeys on 1,000,000 typewriters would eventually type the great novel, never saw an AOL chat room
Ha! Yea right! I'll believe it when I see it. This is just typical election-time political BS.
This is such irony. First in the 80's there was the whole debate about nuclear facilities being harmful to the environment because we have no idea how to handle the nuclear waste other then bury it for decades.
Now we face a gas and oil shortage and Nuclear is suddenly the green alternative?
Marge: I'm worried about the kids, Homey. Lisa's becoming very obsessive. This morning I caught her trying to dissect her own raincoat.
Homer: [scoffs] I know. And this perpetual motion machine she made today is a joke! It just keeps going faster and faster.
Marge: And Bart isn't doing very well either. He needs boundaries and structure. There's something about flying a kite at night that's so unwholesome. [looks out window]
Bart: [creepy voice] Hello, Mother dear.
Marge: [closing the curtains] That's it: we have to get them back to school.
Homer: I'm with you, Marge. Lisa! Get in here.
[Lisa walks in, chuckling nervously]
In this house, we obey the laws of thermodynamics!
According to many sources (U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the U.S. General Accountability Office), we need liquid fuels. When the highway system and power grid fail due to insufficient oil (liquid fuels), everything fails, including nuclear power. Developing nuclear power means that we use much oil to build the plants, and we don't face Peak Oil planning and risk management for the coming catastrophe. All systems depend on oil to work. There are no good alternatives to oil. The best studies point to Peak Oil now, followed by worsening depression and worse. See this report: http://www.peakoilassociates.com/POAnalysis.html
We all know what problems there are with nuclear power; or we know some of it at least. What I don't like about it is that it isn't a long term solution; it is just an "easy" temporary fix, and as all temporary fixes it will be regarded as more or less permanent once it is up and running, stifling any motivation for getting down in the dirt to find the right solution. What makes it doubly pointless is that we already have better solutions within our grasp - at least two different ways of exploiting solar energy directly, several ways of exploiting water power, wind power. The only real problem is lack of political guts and stamina.
That is the problem with being as old as McBush - young people have visions and ideas for the future because they have one. And before you get started about age-ism - I'm old myself, I bloody know what I'm talking about, at least in this respect. Believe me, when you know that you probably don't have many decades left, you stop planning so far ahead, because what's the point?
Why is everybody drawing parallels to oil, or say it's better option than burning our oil. Reality check!! We are not burning oil to produce electricity, at least not in large quantities.
Just out of curiosity, has anybody done the math to figure out how much petroleum we use to get the coal to the plants?
Of all the Universal Constants, here's one I know: Nice guys finish last
In my opinion, there is no reason why we can't have a vibrant economy AND an environmental economy as well. (However, I do have a personal problem with our "disposable/consumption" based economy.) The real problem is that there are far too many filthy rich living off the OLD economy (oil, greed, cronyism).
Germany is now the world leader in solar energy even though they have a lot less sun, land and people than the US.. Germany accounts for over HALF of the world's solar production! They made a political decision to do that, and the production of solar panels and other research is HELPING their economy by allowing them to gain a dominant position in a huge area of economic growth. Currently their solar production industries employ over 55,000 people and it's growing by leaps and bounds. They simply can't keep up with demand for solar panels. In a decade or two from now, it will be a huge contributor to their economy. 75 years ago, who would have thought that entertainment, IT/software, and pharmaceuticals would be the mega-businesses they are now in the US? Do we want a piece of the new economies that are emerging -- that happen to be environmentally friendly?
INVEST IN THE FUTURE, NOT THE PAST.
The Silver State is my home state. Having the perspective of living in coal-fired countries with perpetual black skies, I'm a big fan of nuclear power, which is comparatively clean, cheap, and efficient. Practically, it makes sense to bury nuclear waste under mountains in Nevada. FYI most of the Great Basin is desert wilderness. Already, nuclear testing has been going on for decades with waste storage not becoming an issue until Yucca mountain was proposed. We stand to ruin more of our environment, meaning the environment that PEOPLE are the part of, by burning coal and petroleum in populated areas. Leaving nuclear waste inside a mountain bunker in my home state is okay by me. By the same token, we should be open to harvesting oil in the ANWR, which is a tundra wasteland that none of us are likely to go to in our lifetimes. We'd only need a small plot of acreage for this task, anyway. If you're worried about the caribou, we have plenty of rooms in Nevada's abandoned casinos for their shelter.
-- Jimtown Kelly
pff back in France the price of the gallon is 8,87$
still we already have too many nuclear power plants to building more is not an option.
Still, we wish we could pay only 4$/gallon then we'll also be using SUV instead of our little minis (great car anyway), fiat and japanese cars...
HEMP Every retired (20-25 years) nuclear power plant is a bubbling time bomb. SO you stupid fucks.........Hemp!!!!!!
Typical rhetoric.
There isn't a single claim backed up and furthermore all the claims are false.
Generation IV reactors have been tested. There is enough uranium already mined to power a fleet of more than 100 gigawatt CIV reactors for more than 60,000 years. Is this what he means by temporary?
"better solutions within our grasp"? Boy - thats a good one with oil at $136 per barrel and Gas on the climb.
We're in trouble folks... serious trouble. All we need now is the water cut in the Ghawar field to head north. When this happens we'll lose perhaps as much as 5 million barrels of oil production per day. When the North Sea and Pemex's Canterall fields went into decline the rate was 15% per year. If Saudi Arabia follows this pattern then we'll start to lose 1.5 million barrels of oil per day. I personally expect this will happen within a few years.
So much for "no vision".
Well, technically, yeah, but reversing combustion requires creating temperature/pressure conditions only feasible and safe inside an expensive facility. But you are correct, people will be able to screw over oil companies by powering their cars without oil that has been extracted from the earth. However, you don't need nuclear octane to do that, just electric cars with sufficient storage, at which point, you don't need zillions of fuel stations per neighborhood; people just use their own outlets to power their cars.
Nuclear octane is just a "legacy solution" for energy storage while cars still use gasoline.
Information theory is life. The rest is just the KL divergence.
Which was actually my point. You suggested that it was "easy" for individuals or militant groups to obtain nuclear weaponry. Yet they can't do it without a heavy industrial base to create Uranium and/or reactors. In the grand scheme of things, it's a lot easier to enrich uranium than it is to make an implosion bomb. (If any of the aspects of construction are off by even the slightest bit, the bomb will NOT fission.)
It's more than enough. Any more and it would Uranium, not coal. :-P
You need to provide cites for this and the other statements you made. Because I can tell you right now that your figures are WAY off. At best they sound like back of the envelope calculations that rely on best-cases and ignore the realities of real-world solar and wind usage. At worst, they sound simply made up.
Think of it this way: If there is 350% more rooftop space than necessary to power the power entire infrastructure, then there is enough power in an ideal situation for a single home to convert. What is the ideal situation? A single-story family home with a roof. That home must be capable of generating at least 350% of the home's energy needs to meet your figures. Once you factor in tall structures like skyscrapers, family homes will need to generate far in excess of 350% in order to make up the difference of the non-power producing surfaces of these buildings.
Running features like computers, monitors, TVs, heaters, air conditioners, stoves, refrigerators, and lights can easily place the average home's power requirements in the area of dozens of kilowatts. Some back of the envelope calculations might suggest that it's possible to power a home using solar panels on the roof (e.g. an 80x16 ft manufactured home would have a theoretical output of 61kW using the "new" 40% efficient solar panels), but those calculations ignore a great number of problems with solar power.
For one, roofs aren't flat. You will get different power outputs at different points of the roof at different times of day. Secondly, the light fall on the earth (1.3kW/m^2) is significantly reduced by atmospheric reflection and is thus not consistent in all locations. Areas along the equator will receive a greater amount of light energy than areas in the United States. Thirdly, solar panels are high maintenance. Unless they are kept 100% clean at all times, the power generation will drop significantly from the time of install. Fourthly, any obstruction (shadow from a tree, leaves blowing, birds, clouds, etc.) will reduce the power generated. Fifthly, power generation is significantly impacted by seasons where the Earth's distance from the sun impacts the amount of solar radiation we receive. Finally, we have such a thing as nightfall. Unless you have a method of easily storing terajoules of energy for when power production drops off, you can forget about Solar being the primary driver of the electrical grid.
Wind has even more problems that I won't go into as I've already used up way too much space.
Cite sources for your information. Otherwise it's as good as made up.
No, the point was that you claimed nuclear materials other than Uranium and Plutonium have been used. Now you're doing an about-face. Which is it?
That was never a que
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
"The question was, does the revenue from the federal tax of 18.4 cents per gallon cover all federal expenses related to roads?"
that's funny, I DID NOT ask that question, and as the originator of the question, I would say I know what the fuck I'm talking about.
I like how you limit the parameters to make your opinion fit the question that was never asked, very disingenuous of you and more than a little pathetic.
And I recall asking for your source. I'll assume that your failure to produce one, and your follow on discussion with someone else on this subject while ignoring my request for your source, indicates you know you're lying.
That, coupled with your lie about what "The question was" makes it clear you know you're full of shit.
Well?
You've lied several times now, and you've been called on it. Back your argument up with FACTS or shut the fuck up liar.
Solar
1. For perspective, an average split level house (typical medium sized housing stock) has approx 2000 ft^2 of footprint area. Given an average 5.5 peak hours of sun per day (average insolation in the US) at 15% efficiency (average PV efficiency), an average house roof will produce 153 kWh per day. The average house uses 29 kWh/day (http://www.eia.doe.gov/).
So the average US house roof produces 5.3 times the amount of energy it needs with current technology. With emerging 40% efficiency concentrators, that increases to 14 times the needed power. So solar is relatively dense.
2. So here are the calculations for US roof area. Note that this doesn't take into account other structures and parking lots. For instant my local suburban big box shopping center, if you covered the roof and parking lot, you could power 12,000 homes with current tech.
From the US census: /50% 2 or more)
Residential, single family houses: 1.78E11 ft^2
Residential, 2-4 unit houses: 4.47E9 ft^2
Residential, 5 and up: 1.18 E9 ft^2
---------
Total Residential footprint: 1.84 ft^2 (50% 1 story
Residential roof With ave 20% slope: 1.95E11 ft^2
Commercial roof sqft 6.7E10
---------
Total US roof area: 2.62E11 sqft
Average US insolation 31.7 kWh/ft^2/year @ 17% efficiency panels
Total Solar production: 8.3E12 kWh/year
US electrical Consumption: 3.3E12 kWh/year
Total production (17% eff): 246% need
Total production (40% eff): 579% need
(all data from the US census and the doe eia)
...but the approach.
As a Mechanical Engineer I encourage folks to read up on Pebble Bed based Nuclear Power.
What is it you ask?
Enjoy:
http://www.memagazine.org/contents/current/features/pebbles/pebbles.html
Don't be too pissed that when the focus of weaponry and the Atom Bomb arrived that we put the best solution and actually safe one aside for that lovely side-effecting of uranium decaying into plutonium.
Well of course not. But an amount of power from wind and hydro is put on the grid to match my power usage. And that means that an amount of power from a coal plant was taken off the grid, which means the plant burns a little slower and a little less coal exhaust is pumped in the sky.
The electrons moving through my house don't really move very far regardless, they just get pushed back and forth. But it works out at the other end that there's less pollution.
(Green Mountain Energy doesn't sell polluting power, so there's no little check box.)
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
And if that means it's cheaper to build nuclear plants than to build clean coal plants, then let's build nuclear plants!
It doesn't hurt to be nice.