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Wind and Sun Beat Other Energy Alternatives
iandoh passes along the news that researchers at Stanford University have completed the first quantitative, scientific comparison of alternative energy solutions by assessing not only their potential for delivering energy for electricity and vehicles, but also their impacts on global warming, human health, energy security, water supply, space requirements, wildlife, water pollution, reliability, and sustainability. Based on their model, they found that the best sources of alternative energy are wind, concentrated solar, and geothermal energy. The worst are nuclear, clean coal, and ethanol-based fuels. In other words, "the options that are getting the most attention are between 25 to 1,000 times more polluting than the best available options."
Of course the ones getting the most attention can be much more easily controlled by those who provide it. I would love to see a rise in energy costs because a "shortage" of wind or sun light.
When a solution is safer, uses less resources, causes less polution. But costs more to scale to a useful size, then it tends to lose out.
While electricity is a commodity, and is sold on a market as such, the cheapest producer wins. To fix this artificial constraints that artificially inflate the cost of the cheaper methods of electricity production have to be considered.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
The corn farmers are going to be upset by this but once again research shows that Ethanol made from corn is not an energy efficient way to create fuel. It's time to stop the ethanol subsidies and start spending money on energy sources with real potential. That way corn will now go back into the food stream, and farmers will also start growing hops again rather than switching to corn to make more money.
Sincerely,
Home Brewer who misses his hops
"We make our world significant by the courage of our questions and by the depth of our answers." Carl Sagan
I love it. He only doesn't like nuclear power because of them there terr'ists. And that it's completely reasonably possible to get weapons-grade uranium from any nuclear reactor.
And he completely ignores the effects of wind power on things like bats and birds.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
Film at 11.
I am happy to hear this: Wind (and solar) does seem to be a very elegant energy solution.
I do note, however, that the report seems to assume wind-based power generation as taking place with traditional turbines.
The question arises in my mind if the use of the windbelt technology might offer additional gains in this respect?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windbelt
My searches for use or deployment of the windbelt seem to garner sparse results...any info out there?
is the windbelt indeed a more effecient method of wind-power generation? Or are turbines still the way to go?
Read my Very Short "Stories"
Yes, I read the fine article.
With the way the grid is currently set up anything that wants to provide baseline power needs to be a very stable and very controllable source of energy.
Sure, you can try to mimic that with wind or wave stations all over the place but then you have the problem of getting all that power to act like it was a single stable controllable source and still get that power to where it needs to go.
The rankings are based on a model, not empirical, real-world science. You can stuff whatever you want into a model, and make it say whatever you want. All we know from this is if you make some wild assumptions on XYZ, options ABC line up in the order of 123.
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Moon energy. I know there must be some way that we can harvest this great natural resource. Maybe attach a rope to it that pulls a gear or burn it or something.
Once you start despising the jerks, you become one.
I love how it's dismissed out of hand because of the bogeyman argument.
TERRORISM!!!!!! Oh crap.
We better rule out anything that is efficient and can be used RIGHT NOW.
No let's pick the ones based on Unobtanium.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
When I was young and savvy, I always knew that nuclear power was bad. Polluting. Toxic. Dangerous. Wrong. But now that I'm older, I'm not so sure. In fact I think it's pretty safe. But, I can't objectively confirm this. My current opinion is still just as uniformed as my previous one.
Trouble is, it's difficult to separate the facts from the rhetoric, and it is danm near impossible to find an unbiased introduction to radioactivity, its uses dangers and safety limits. I would like to learn more, but there is precious little information available. I mean real information, with numbers. Without them, I'm just getting gas. And no, I am not going to rely on wiki-trips.
It's easy to find information on astronomy, chemistry, physics, mathematics, radio, electricity, etc, etc, etc. But radioactivity? Not a chance. How close to I have to be to an exposed nuclear rod before I am "at risk"? 10 meters? 100 meters? A kilometer? In orbit? Give me graphs. Give me numbers. Help me understand. I'm not stupid, nor are most people. But without hard numbers, I can't confirm or deny my suspicions?
Or you could just keep making Radioactive super-mutant movies and promoting candle wick alternate energy sources. Whichever.
May the Maths Be with you!
It may be a bit slow in getting there as it's cloudy, and my solar powered network is a bit slow.
HexaByte - he's a square and a half!
When I read "space requirements" my first thought was 'How are you going to use wind power in space?'. Then I went through about ten minutes of mental gymnastics re: solar wind, and radiometers before I realized they were talking about how much room the technology required, and not about space at all.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
The most crucial metric is the lobbytheons of force directed in a concentrated beam from energy industrialists to the US Capitol building and its immediate surroundings.
Wind isn't the panacea because it needs back-up generation which needs to be running all of the time. What do you do when the wind isn't blowing? The back-up generation needs to be running because you can't just start & stop a power plant like a UPS system.
Living in Florida, one would expect that we would be the world leader in Solar Technology. The truth is that Florida's solar policy is worse than Maine's. The state is dominated by Utilities that believe research and development is a four letter word. Worse yet the local Orlando Utility, OUC, was involved in the pseudo energy crisis in California a few years ago and has continued to be run by management that places profit over efficiency consistantly.
However the one good comment I will make about Florida's Solar policy is that they increased the amount of KW one could generate so that if you were to create a solar panel array that was three or four times your usage, the power company couldn't balk at paying for the electricity you put back on the grid. Not considering cost, which should come down dramatically with increased usage, Solar energy provides anywhere from fifty to one-thousand times more energy per acre than any other technology.
From TFA:
I wonder if the transportation necessary to reach 0.5 of all U.S. land was considered. You must transport 1) the windmills themselves to the site, 2) all maintenance materials, 3) all maintenance workers over the lifetime of the windmills, 4) the windmills themselves offsite once they're retired.
Transport costs for windmills is undoubtedly large. I live in Texas and I've seen a few of these being hauled up I-45 from the port of Houston on the way to their destination in Midland. The blades are hauled individually by semi trailer and are about 2x as long as an 18 wheeler. And they're shipped to Houston from the Netherlands!
So I suspect that the analysis has neglected to take these factors into account when rating the carbon footprint of wind power...
Gee, who would of thought some idiot would babble about 'teh nuclear power'
Fucking moron.
Of course the ones getting the most attention can be much more easily controlled by those who provide it. I would love to see a rise in energy costs because a "shortage" of wind or sun light.
What about large deteriorating wind farms that eventually break down?
Visit the southern tip of the Big Island in Hawaii sometime and you might just look upon the future of many current U.S. sea coasts or plains.
Solar and wind are (almsot) forever. The means of collecting them is not.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Something it seems often is overlooked is that energy storage in the form of fuel is pretty much essential for any activity that's effectively off-grid
You can knock Nuclear for its waste issues as far as you like but it' still unique in offering massively replicable dependable power for long periods - and if you need to pour half your national electricity supply into electrolysing hydrogen or anhydrous ammonia as fuel for internal combustion engines and/or fuel cells, reliable and steady power has a lot going for it.
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
Let's give them 5 years to switch the entire campus over to "alternative power sources"......we can then see how well it works and at what price.
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
I didn't see much mention of economics in the article. If there's one thing I would have thought environmentalists had learned by now it is that no matter what the politicians say, nothing is going to happen if the finances don't work out. From what I can tell wind and solar are still a ways from being competitive with oil and gas even though the $/KWH cost is very close. The real problem is you have to put all the money in up front with wind and solar, whereas gas plants are cheap, and a gas plant can start generating revenue with its first drop of fuel. So a fossil-fuel plant carries less debt and less risk for the power company.
Also there's the problem of reliability. The wind doesn't always blow and the sun doesn't always shine. So you either need lots of excess power generation capability, or you need to burn something. And yes, I know Germany has this tri-mode system with wind, solar, and biofuel. But the Germans couldn't keep the lights on without French nuclear power.
the Machines can't be wrong, they do the modelling using a Matrix
Solar and wind are bad solutions because:
- They require thousands of miles of new power lines to be built. Getting power lines approved and built is monumentally expensive (which is why Mr. Pickens wants the tax payers to pay for them instead of building them himself).
- The wind doesn't blow all the time, nor does the sun shine all the time. You can store it (which is equivalent to running a hydroelectric dam) or build gas powered plants to run during the evenings.
- Solar and wind are not as inexpensive as proponents claim.
Nuclear is the only power source with a virtually unlimited source of fuel and that can be brought online without a massive new power grid and is nearly as cheap as gas powered generation.
impacts on global warming, human health, energy security, water supply, space requirements, wildlife, water pollution, reliability, and sustainability
What about feasibility?
There is approximately 13,000 ZJ worth of geothermal energy, and when that runs out what happens? On the other hand the earth get smacked with about 3,850 ZJ of energy per year from the sun. Do we really want to extract all that geothermal energy from our core or do we want it to just let it slowly leak out the way it currently is? What are the ramifications of opening up bigger seams to get at that heat? I understand it would take a long time to extract that heat, but it appears to be an irreversible process?
I suggest methane produced from anaerobic digestion. Humans already produce a lot of sewage. The world has a lot of livestock making a lot of manure. I've started a site to bring to light what the Chinese have been doing in rural areas for a while: http://www.solomonweil.com/chinesebiogas/
The problem is it is NOT comparing everything in one area. It uses multiple different measures, including pollution, cost, etc.
But when you that kind of study it requires you to make judgments about which is more important. These are value judgments, NOT scientific ones. Basically all this study does is tell you what a few scientists at Stanford want, not what is true or factual.
P.S. While ethanol as done in US is stupid, Ethanol as done in South America makes sense. They take all the production waste from agricultural and make ethanol from it. That would be the leaves, etc. the things we don't eat. In the US on the other hand they put the stuff we actually EAT into the pot. South American plan makes sense, but the US version does not..
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Moon energy. I know there must be some way that we can harvest this great natural resource. Maybe attach a rope to it that pulls a gear or burn it or something.
It's called "tidal power". There are some large power plants running on it already, and more being considered.
The moon's gravity drags the oceans around, creating a bulge on the side of the earth toward the moon and one on the side opposite. The earth rotates faster than the moon so the oceans appear to go up and down. This creates massive flows of water into and out of bays and other holding areas. Turbines in these flows can be used to generate electricity, while seawalls, dams, and other structures can be built to guide the flows for efficient harvesting.
The friction of the tides (either against the Earth or against energy harvesting turbines) slows the rotation of the Earth and raises the orbit of the Moon. This power will continue to be available until the Earth's rotation is slowed to where the Earth is tide-locked to the Moon - one side always facing the Moon, just as one side of the moon always faces the Earth - and further until the Earth stops rocking back-and-forth relative toward the Moon (as the Moon still does a little bit relative to the Earth). This will take geologic time, whether this "moon energy" is harvested or not.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
I believe that solar energy is the only viable energy tech worth its weight. Besides, if you count this as anything, my grandfather has had solar cells on his roof for a good 35 years. He has never had to replace them. Most months he still sells his excess produced energy back to the grid. Take that for what it's worth, but this isn't in someplace sunny, it's Oregon. It's not incredibly hard to implement. I don't know why people are so adverse to solar energy.
Nanosolar-coated Wind Turbines, made from carbon fiber types for strength, light weight, and for conductivity (no need for wires to transmit power when you could dope some carbon fiber to be nonconductive.)
I already proposed this to the Governor's office here in CA. Since most of the turbines face east/west out here where I live, you could easily maximize energy collection in that manner.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
I don't really have any problem at all with this guy, even if I disagree with him on a few poi-- "Wait, did you say disagree? Dude, you're disagreeing with science!! Didn't you see that it's a scientific comparison (supposedly the first? um, let's talk about that later) of energy sources?!"
The comparison, no matter how you do it, is still going to have subjective weights and values on everything. That doesn't make any of its analysis less "scientific" but it does mean the conclusions aren't exactly science. Not that there's anything wrong with it. But you throw that "scientific" word in there, and I can't help but feel like we're trying to gain some dogmatic authority.
Science is never going to tell you that burning coal is "better" than solar. Reason and common sense probably will. Science will tell you that burning mined fuel costs fewer dollars per joule, provided that you ignore the costs of pollution, which you probably will, because you'll never know the costs, much less actually pay them.
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
Not so fast. I've just calculated that all those extra wind turbines will cause the earth to slow down, increasing the length of the day. That will cause the earth to fry on one side and freeze on the other.
Back to the drawing board I think.
Store it in the trees in the park. Worked for Mr. Burns.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marge_vs._the_Monorail
I was at the Power Gen trade show last week in Orlando, and it was amazing how FEW companies were there promoting green/renewable/clean energy! I am taking part in an environmental sustainability class working on a masters degree, and I was trying to find a company "Doing it Right" for my final class report. I found ONE company in the whole show that was doing more than just playing lip service to environmental sustainability. Many companies were advertising "clean energy" but they were peddling filters or process efficiency improvements for $fossil_fuel turbines or boilers. The "Renewable Energy Pavilion" was about 1000 sf out of the 1M+ sf of the show floor!
The real showstopper for me was the Industrial Info Resources (industry research company) reception on the second night of the show: Cirque du Soleil performers, open bar for 4 hours, free food, live band, and scantily clad "Party Motivators" walking around... for about 4000 visitors! My colleagues and I estimated this cost them $300-400k, despite the current economic climate. Think they are about to invest in replacing their current model?
I love the gentle, and not so gentle twisting of the numbers on this report. Coal is unpopular because of the carbon footprint of its mining, but no mention is made of the sainted wind and wave generators.
It's been mentioned about nuclear boogeymen and terrorists and so on
but for the real obstacles. I guess money is unlimited here, and no account taken for maintaining these machines. Doing rather simple things like oh say.. states cooperating when energy exchange is needed.
The list goes on.
Really, this report should have been titled "Why I think that wind and solar power are just tops"
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Something I've always envisioned was using the DC power collected by solar cells for computers, directly. We all know that energy is lost in conversions, so why not skip that step? This would require power supply companies to standardize a port for the cells to plug into, but with everyone having a PC these days, I think it's a worth while idea.
Some recent scientific papers I've been checking out from ScienceDirect show that the most efficient and least harmful power source for moving freight and passengers long distances is actually wind-powered trains.
Short version of why: wind power can crack H2O and make fuel cells, and fuel cells due to economy of scale work best with a large power plant such as those found in trains (and to a lesser extent in large tractor trailers).
As to laptops - many people who go camping or hiking or to Burning Man use solar powered laptops.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
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Tell me again how nuclear is (at minimum) 25X more polluting than wind or solar please. I think I missed that part.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Do you also then take into account the amount of transport cost for the materials for building the coal power plant? And the transport cost for constantly shipping in fresh coal? (Or uranium?)
Libertarians somehow believe that private businesses should be stronger than governments but weaker than individuals.
Much like the steam engines of the 1800's, high-tech, dangerous nuclear reactors are only there to heat the water. Yeah, really.
Yeah, there's a reason: using the water/steam to power spinning devices to set the 60Hz-thing and stabilize the voltage at the same time is efficient.
But here's an idea: the cascade of a nuclear event is electrons. starting with splitting one atom, which break off and start splitting others. Big, gnarly rods intervene and slow the process, keeping things controllable.
But what if that huge flow of electrons could be harnessed and organized? Wouldn't that be an insanely-effecient use of the reaction?
I guess you don't actually mean to drive the trains directly with wind; but if you could it'd be pretty fantastic. In many areas it wouldn't be practical since there are too many curves and overhead obstructions along the line. However, just imagine if we could eliminate the overhead obstructions and straighten the line. In some areas, that could be done. Then, a train pulls off on a siding outside of Denver, hooks up to some kind of fantastic tall-masted locomotive, shuts down the diesel, and sails all the way to Kansas City. It'd be worth the price just to see such a contraption sailing across the Great Plains.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
In other news, it appears a weighted evaluation can lead to any result.
Film at 11.
cost/pollution wise clean coal and, in particular, nuclear power, are heads and shoulders above other options
The "science" part is a small part of reality. In reality, things have costs - solar and wind electricity typically cost five to ten times as much as coal or nuclear power.
If the author gets his way, you will open your electric bill every month, and it will be more than your mortgage. Renewable electricity prices would bankrupt millions of people. It would have more detrimental effects on the economy than medical costs, the housing bubble, and oil prices have in the last few years combined.
We've been giving solar and wind subsidies since the 70's, thinking one day they'll magically become competitive. They haven't and they won't.
http://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
Of course Nuclear, ethinol and so caled clean cole are what is being consentrated. How else would you propose to keep power in the hands of the few. Can you imagin the trouble it would cause the power brokers if everone was in charge of the own power needs and could generate it at minimal cost using solar energy why ... People Would be free of course, and we can't have that.
And if you choose your metric carefully, you can get any answer out that you like.
This doesn't tell me anything unless I know the scale of the projects you want to build and the purpose they are intended to serve.
You can live with a longer lead time if the nuke delivers 1000X as much power and is online 24/7/365.
Israel's biggest [photovoltic] solar power station is a 50KW rooftop intallation. Arizona's Palo Verde nuclear plant has a capacity of about 4,000 MW.
So basically, to make Nuclear just fall off his chart, he assumes that building more powerplants will lead to nuclear war, and calculates how much stuff that will burn. Is that not completely absurd?
Basically, the gist of what he's saying about Nuclear is this: "We have to pretend like it's a bad idea, because if we don't, other countries will want to do it, and then they might build bombs. So, say it with me: Nuclear is a baad idea."
Does somebody want to break it to the guy that Iran and other states will pursue weapons programs no matter what sort of powerplants we build in the US? And besides, what's more likely to cause war: Clean and cost-effective nuclear powerplants that the rest of the world will want to copy, or an energy shortage which sends us looking to secure fossil fuels? I think the latter.
Anyway, this calculating methodology is so incredibly bizarre that I suspect it's bought.
want seems to be the key to this study.
The old bogeyman "Global Warming" is thrown in because it can MEAN ANYTHING.
Sorry, this whole thing reads as "We wanted this answer so we kept adding variables" till we got it.
Lets see, solar and wind. Both are non base load power sources. The later is very finicky and we already have so many NIMBYS with wind its beyond silly, especially certain rich east coasters. Solar, well its all well and such provided you can store power efficiently for night usage.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
After all, a whole bunch of dudes here on Slashdot have been saying that nuclear was the answer!
Oh, you're not stuck, you're just unable to let go of the onion rings.
Yeah, blah, blah, blah. Same crap, different author.
I guess if you live in a country like lichtenstein and can't pipe in electricity from somewhere else, when the wind quit blowing, you'd be screwed.
But countries like the USA, Canada, India, China, Russia, France, Germany, and a lot of others are big enough that there is ALWAYS wind somewhere. You just have to be able to move the energy around. And hey, whadaya know... people have been saying that our distribution grid here in the US needs an overhaul anyway.
And I guess if you live in Northern Canada, or in Christchurch, your solar day isn't very long. But guess what... there are massive areas of the world that get longer periods of insolation, and it just so happens to coincide with the greatest electrical demand.
Wind and solar are currently very viable, and have proven themselves already. And there is still a lot of area for advance in wind. Sure, they're not a perfect solution, but they do work, and they work now.
The biggest problem with nuclear is that it only works for rich, stable countries with good security. You can't just walk into any country in the world, install a reactor, and imagine that everything will run fine for eternity. Just ask the Germans, who are financing the operation of a good number of Russian reactors. Why? Because after the collapse, Russia couldn't afford to keep safety up at the plants, and nearby countries had to cover the bill just to keep themselves safe.
Unless we're going to keep burning things for energy, there is no single energy solution that is going to cover everything. Everyone who thinks that their pet favorite is the ultimate solution needs to come to grips with the fact that we're going to need a balanced mix of solutions.
Oh, you're not stuck, you're just unable to let go of the onion rings.
Doesn't that imply some kind of index will be used to quantitatively compare these wildly different solutions? I don't see that here. It seems more that some have certain benefits and others have different benefits, and he has given preference the the benefits he thinks are most important.
For one thing, he hasn't considered cost at all. That seems . . . important.
Another thing he barely considered was reliability. His claim that studies have shown that variability in availability can be overcome by having a versatile energy distribution system is really a bunch of hand-waving. It is almost certainly not true.
That's not what the author said. . .
But we eat the cows, right? So it will still effect our food supply.
We know there is a cost, and we know it's a high cost.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
http://www.tomosusa.com/
I'll NEVER understand why this simple & useable ( in the US of A, where there usually aren't sidewalks, only roads, from small-town home to Wallyland ) solution is ignored, while everyone whines about not being able to afford fuel-costs for getting to work, or anywhere...
Not everyone CAN bicycle, nor can bicycles sustain the speed that mopeds can ( unless you're very fit ), so this addresses the problem, directly.
WAAAAY cheaper than a hybrid-car.
...would be solar concentrator stirling engine technology. Backyard inventors around the world are tinkering with this stuff (including myself), and some private companies are beginning to develop farm-capable dishes in the order of 5m diameter.
The only really irritating problem is the fact that stirling engines have a theoretical 100% efficiency, yet we are currently nowhere close to that with current technology/metalurgy. While we will never be able to attain 100%, close to it should be doable with R&D investment.
yeah, i'd like to see it manifest too but it's like saying the goose that shits the golden eggs is better than working for a living.
It's called installed cost. Wind and solar have about 10 times more of it than coal and nuclear. So all things being equal (and they aren't, the operating costs are also a little higher for wind and solar) 1000 mw of wind or solar will take 10x as long to pay back their investment.
As to reliability. We could build electrolysis plants to produce hydrogen, and combined cycle generators to turn that back into electricity. It would only be about 40% efficient (maybe 50% if we use high-temperature electrolysis) but it would work.
Per the ref, the "study" ignores storage costs for noncontinuous energy like wind and sun
(not needed for nuclear) and dismisses nuclear not for its energy characteristics but because it supposedly makes it easy to build bombs. This is of course largely nonsense (the difficulty of refining uranium is still overwhelming to get from 5% concentrations up to 95%, and it has nothing much to do with the energy tradeoffs). Meanwhile, the prospect of providing a few Great Lakes full of water, say, to fill in hydropower when the wind stops or at night for solar, is ignored. Collecting solar power in space by the way offers the wonderful prospect of some concentrated energy beams to receptors on Earth...until something goes wrong with the guidance and they start beaming power all over the place - cities, towns, farms... - and possibly (Murphy lives!) destroy the spaceports where the only service vehicles reside. It is worth considering the hidden costs, as is attempted at least for biofuel, but a complete study of energy and pollution issues would at least compare apples to apples, and not to hand grenades or bull---- as is done here.
P.S. While ethanol as done in US is stupid, Ethanol as done in South America makes sense. They take all the production waste from agricultural and make ethanol from it. That would be the leaves, etc. the things we don't eat. In the US on the other hand they put the stuff we actually EAT into the pot. South American plan makes sense, but the US version does not..
I agree that south american (I assume you mean Brazilian) ethanol makes much more sense than US ethanol, but I don't think it's for the reasons you mentioned. I think I've read quite a bit about Brazilian sugar-cane ethanol production, and I've never seen it mentioned that they use the refuse for producing ethanol. The way that I understand they do it is that they use the juice of the sugarcane (one stalk of it has a LOT of sugar) to make the ethanol, and they burn the waste parts of the plant (after the juice is squeezed out) to help produce energy for running the processing plants.
I think that the real advantages with sugar cane ethanol production in Brazil are that the plant has many times the energy density of corn on a given size of land, it grows easily in most of Brazil (because of climate), and finally, I imagine that it helps that labor is so much cheaper in the interior of Brazil than it is in the US.
Sometimes the (non-science) environmentalists are overzelous and try to sell this argument. The fact is everything currently takes brown energy to produce so if you're making a nuclear power plant, that's brown energy because it takes carbon-based work to make the fuel.
Solar panels? Those are brown energy because the wafers and cells take carbon-energy to produce.
Electric cars? Those are brown energy because it takes brown energy to make the battery.
It's true, but really it's false. The energy produced, saved, converted, etc causes a net drop in the amount of brown energy we use and lets us stop. I suppose the idea is that we should somehow stop using energy all together or somehow magically convert to a green economy without using our current brown infrastructure. It's factually true, but inherently dishonest and despicable rhetoric.
It is no longer uncommon to be uncommon.
Turn off the sun! We have all the solar and wind we'll ever need. Nuclear is a complete failure.
It is no longer uncommon to be uncommon.
You can find plenty of old abandoned buildings so clearly the single family home is never going to catch on without creating huge wastelands of old abandoned homes.
You missed my point. The point is that just like anything, Solar and Wind power require upkeep. But in reality Nuclear energy is just such a vastly better solution in terms of long term cost and amounts of energy produced and stability, that in the end you may well see solar and wind on a large scale as a fad.
Clearly the single family home is a totally different thing than something that has to produce energy 24x7 in aggregate....
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
It's important to be careful when using watern injection geothermal generation, as this activity has been shown to cause minor but noticeable seismic activity.
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Although it is less than 20% of the total footprint of life-cycle of the car. I understand that refining the metal to make the batteries is fairly polluting. However it is very easy to recycle the metal, and since the metal is reasonably valuable there is a significant financial incentive to do so. I am not sure how much the metal is worth but Toyota pays $200 for hybrid batteries (Toyota may be subsiding this so the actual metal is worth less).
For reference, the carbon dioxide emissions cost of thermal generation from fossil fuels (coal, oil, natural gas, etc.) is roughly 1000 grams of carbon dioxide per kilowatt hour (g/kWh).
While the synopsis criticises nuclear power as being "25 times" (or worse) more polluting that the best-case solar and wind, the lifecycle emissions cost of nuclear power (including emissions in facility construction, decommissioning, and fuel mining and refining) is pegged in the study at between 9 and 70 g/kWh: more than 90% better than conventional coal.
The analysis also imposes on nuclear an "opportunity cost" on top of that of 59-106 g/kWh, based on the long time required to secure financing, permits, and complete construction and commissioning of nuclear plants, as well as anticipated downtimes for refurbishment at the end of each lifecycle. Finally, there's an additional 0-4.1 g/kWh penalty assessed based on increased risk of a 'limited nuclear exchange' (small nuclear war).
In other words, the actual lifecycle carbon dioxide cost of nuclear energy is less than 10% that of dirty coal. Even if one includes the rather-dubious 'opportunity cost' penalties, nuclear is still about an 85% reduction over coal. Not bad for one of the 'worst' options, and not a convincing argument that we should abandon nuclear energy as one tool to reduce emissions.
~Idarubicin
Its not the danger of the waste that continues to be a problem despite all these claims there are solutions "5 years away" etc. The MAJOR problem with nuclear power is the COST end to end makes it too expensive unless you provide it a large corporate welfare program.
I haven't seen anybody address let alone prove that a cost effective nuclear power solution that has been done.
My 2nd biggest problem is that it is centralized power that is overly complex.
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Yeah, this is what I've been saying - non-food biofuels are likely to be just as bad as corn ethanol and the like.
Jackson "charges" nuclear power with CO2 emmisions and deaths equivalent to several large cities burning each year due to nuclear war, on the grounds that nuclear power plants encourage countries to get nuclear weapons. That sounds kind of backwards - isn't it countries that want nuclear weapons getting nuclear power plants as a means to that end? Shall we also blame electric car crash deaths on alternative energy electric vehicles?
He uses CO2 estimates of construction and fuel extraction and plant decommissioning and waste storage. Umm - but wouldn't most of those things be powered largely by the clean alternative energy electricity - of whatever form - that replaces fossil fuels? Isn't that kind of what his whole report is about? So why isn't that factored in? Could it be because it adds such a huge CO2 boost to nuclear power (which otherwise would have none), and only a small CO2 boost to his favorite - Wind power? And that's assuming his figures are un-biased, which the rest of his paper gives great cause to doubt!
Wind is good and clean - but you have to have back-up capacity for times when the wind doesn't blow or blows too hard - he discusses how other alternative energy might be used for that - but then apparently doesn't charge the CO2 and deaths and land area for those to wind power. And the best wind is far from the cities that could use it - requiring building of transmission, which he doesn't appear to analyze at all in his CO2 or land estimates.
Concentrated solar has promise. But he gently glosses over how much land it takes up - 0.5% of US land area to power the US is HUGE. That ethanol requires vastly more area doesn't change that fact.
For nuclear power plant land area he adds about 3x to 4x more land for a big buffer zone around each 1GW plant- but prefers to talk about the "footprint" for wind towers - i.e. just the tiny area under a wind tower's foundation. Factor in the 0.44 sq-km area tied up by each 5MW wind tower, and the wind equivalent of a 1GW nuclear power plant becomes about 88sq-km. Why couldn't nuclear power plants be clustered together like wind farms, and share their buffer zone? Even putting two 1GW plants next to each other would cut the land use estimate nearly in half. Seems like a double standard is being used.
Wind is a cool, good technology - there are many reasons to favor it. And maybe nuclear power is the wrong choice, for many reasons. But anyone basing that decision on Jackson's report is being badly misled.
is nuclear power. We're arguing about storage technologies.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
This "study" is not really a study, but a model. As such, it's only as good as its assumptions. Unfortunately, many of its assumptions are completely wrong or totally implausible.
For example, the model predicts that nuclear power emits 25x as much carbon as wind power. You may wonder how that could be possible. It's possible because that conclusion follows from the model's assumptions which are all wrong, as follows.
First, the model compares the carbon output of new windmills, versus the carbon output of obsolete ways of refining uranium as an average over the last 40 years. Since refining uranium is far less carbon-intensive than it was, we should use the new figures only. It does not matter how much carbon was emitted by uranium enrichment for plants in the 1960s. Nobody is suggesting building those. We are debating whether we should build new nuclear power plants, or new windmills. As such, we should compare the carbon output of new uranium enrichment against new windmills. In this case the author clearly commits the "sunk cost fallacy", and the assumption is totally wrong.
Another mistaken assumption behind carbon emissions of nuclear plants, is carbon emissions from delays in plant constructions. The author assumes that nuclear power plants will take 10+ years to construct, and in the mean time, we will continue to generate electricity by burning coal. On the other hand, he assumes that the delay associated with windmills is "zero". However, that assumption is totally wrong. Windmills will lead to "zero delay" only if the United States throws away every coal-burning plant we have and replaces them with windmills this year. Since that will never happen, the assumption is wrong. In actuality, those coal plants will be decomissioned at the end of their useful lives and will be replaced by either wind, nuclear, or something else. So, the delay associated with nuclear or wind would probably be quite similar. Since this factor alone accounts for most of the "25x as much carbon" which nuclear is said to produce, that figure is refuted.
And there are other assumptions which are wrong. For example, the model assumes that nuclear power will lead to nuclear weapons which will cause a nuclear war with a resulting environmental catastrophe. Since nuclear power cannot be used to construct nuclear weapons, this assumption is mistaken. Unfortunately, the author makes many errors when he discusses the relationship between nuclear power and nuclear weapons. In actuality, nuclear power has almost no probability of starting a nuclear war.
The paper states that "Worldwide, nine countries have known nuclear weapons stockpiles (US, Russia, UK, France, China, India, Pakistan, Israel, North Korea)" and shortly thereafter concludes that "Thus, the ability of states to produce nuclear weapons today follows directly from their ability to produce nuclear power". But that is entirely wrong. It's a spurious correlation. The reason some countries have nuclear power plants, and the same countries have nuclear weapons, is because those countries are technologically advanced, which causes both nuclear weapons and nuclear power; not because nuclear power causes nuclear weapons.
And there are other assumptions about nuclear (not related to carbon emissions) which are equally unrealistic. For example, the model claims that nuclear "produces fuel rods that are usually stored on site for several years in cooling ponds pending transport to a permanent site" and somehow concludes that nuclear has as much of a detrimental effect on wildlife as coal power. I honestly have no idea how he derived that conclusion (he doesn't say). It seems to me that mass strip-mining of the countryside (including mass-strip mining for serpentine rock if we intend to use that for mineral sequestration) every year, would greatly outweigh nuclear power's single kilometer of radioactivity buried deep beneath a single mountain in an isolated arid desert in Nevada, once. In fa
I also object to the claim that this study is "the first quantitative, scientific comparison of alternative energy solutions". That statement is clearly mistaken.
The topic of alternative energy generation has been the subject of intense study and interest for the last decade. As a result, there have been many papers published which include models for power generation and which compare the various kinds of power generation. Not only is this paper not the first, but it probably is not even within the first 100.
It's very easy to throw together a model with a few equations. You can do that in a couple of days. As a result, it's been done many, many times already.
Some of the other models which were done before this one, use much more realistic assumptions, and arrive at very different conclusions.
Everyone talks on how to produce more energy, but rarely I see anybody talking on reducing the energy consumption. Naively if one makes a calculation to produce the whole energy consumption of a country by solar or wind, then huge areas will have to be covered with solar cells or windmills. With an ecological damage far more greater than anything else. I think the target should be on how to become more energy efficient, rather on how to produce more energy!
Getting the highly enriched Uranium or Plutonium is the hard part.
"They also fail to mention that, with reprocessing, there is enough nuclear fuel to last for billions of years"
Not quite. More like several thousand if you burn up all the uranium and the thorium we can reasonably extract and don't waste any of it. Also, thorium reactors are experimental, and the jury is still out on whether or not breeding is actually commercially feasible with them. If not, you can only use the Uranium, and you're down to under a thousand years. Still, that is a very long time. It would give us the time and energy we need to build a viable solar/wind power infrastructure.
"All in all, this paper does not belong in any sort of science journal. It is that bad."
How many journals have you read? This seems to be par for the course, as far as my experience goes.
Theoretically yes, but it seems that in the near future there will be no shortage of photovoltaic cells. This is mostly because many thin-film solar sell factories are expected to start production soon.
Concentrating solar power is another business. It's mostly mechanical, maybe there are new jobs for ex-GM workers?
I wonder what will happen if they factor in costs . . . or short term vs long term needs . . . And the equation of what is 'better' is entirely dependent on the weights in the equation - meaning its only opinions and assumptions.
I'm sorry, but you have just shown that you do not have the slightest clue about power generation. Nothing in practice scales up to that which is why power stations have multiple units. If you are going to bring up some sci-fi nuclear option I have no choice to inform you that the leading contender for nuclear is pebble bed where the idea is to have a lot of really small units for safety reasons. You have also named the two most expensive large scale options as "the only real choice" - natural gas isn't bad at a small scale but at large scales it's not so nice unless you have a fuel source that is pretty close to free (eg. coal bed methane).
Hydro wins as always but requires big mountains and a lot of snow. Everything else is an alternative and second best energy source whether it is coal, oil, wind, tidal, nuclear, geothermal or whatever. There's no point discounting technical solutions that work based on blind ideology (eg. accelerated thorium might turn me into a nuclear advocate instead of a guy that dreads people re-incarnating 1960s expensive white elephant nuclear plants with a bit of green paint on them). Most of this stuff will work incredibly well in paticular locations, in which case it's the right tool for the job there and why care about the sunshine in Alaska when you can do things a different way there.
"The worst are nuclear, clean coal, and ethanol-based fuels." In other words, "Anything we can do right now." Wonder what the envirowackos will find to bitch about when we _can_ do wind and solar.
Simper whimper wind and sun Will Gaia-the-*itch ever be put on-da-run? Choke her smog her make her glow with nucki-atoms not the north winds blow.
"the options that are getting the most attention are between 25 to 1,000 times more polluting than the best available options."
They are more polluting because they require constant replacement. Things that companies can make the most profit on are the things they'll sell. To sell them they'll make them as indispensable as possible and emphsize the start up/switching costs of the long term cheaper alternatives. And people will buy that line because they don't want their lives disrupted. When the effects of current methods become more inconvenient than switching and the discomfort of not knowing if they'll have to switch again, then people will switch. Probably not before. This holds for both individual switching and for population areas fed by a power monopoly. More so in the latter case because those often ensure their survival by investing in their own suppliers, such as coal burning companies owning interest in the railroads that carry the coal. With an incestuous relationship like that, you can only expect the power company to spread FUD so they don't lose money.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
I charge my PDA exclusively using solar power, but unfortunately that's all I can use solar power for, as for anything bigger I would have to have huge solar cells. Similarly, wind power is great, but it's difficult to collect lots of power from wind farms unless you devote lots of space for them.
The problem of efficiency is well-known and much-discussed, but solar and wind power also have some disadvantages that most people don't consider: they attach us too much to the environment. What will happen if the environment suddenly changes? Solar power isn't going to work after a major supervolcanic eruption, no matter where you are on the planet, except if we develop solar power with artifician suns on Earth (ie artificial small Dyson spheres). Wind power assumes that the wind patterns will remain the same, but a major climatic change could affect the current wind patterns so we would have to build new windfarms. Additionally, I am very concerned about wind power because it could prove fatal for many birds.
I do not think there is a single solution to our power needs. I believe that the best solution is to use a mixture of many power sources so that we are not dependent on any single source: 10% oil (as long as we still have it), 10% coal, 10% gas, 10% nuclear, 10% solar, 10% wind, 10% geothermal, 10% hydro, and so on, or maybe just have a slight bias in favour of solar/wind.
I also believe that it would be much better to have decentralised power grids, ie every human should be able to produce enough power for themselves plus some more that would be delivered to a worldwide power grid. Centralised power generation means massive plants with massive pollution around them, but if we decentralise power generation then there would be no pollution hotspots and any generated pollution could be cleaned easily by natural means (the wind etc). Decentralising power generation also enhances the probability of having surviving communities after a major catastrophe such as a big asteroid impact.
While solar "heat oil/water -> turbine" approach may be plausible, with the common "ecological" solar batteries, it takes more (usually "dirty") energy to produce such a battery than it can produce in its lifespan. Meaning solar is just a hype which in fact is bad for environment.
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
Off topic, but do you have any idea what character encoding is being used in your posts? In Linux/Firefox with auto-detect encoding, I'm seeing garbled text around what looks like ranges you've typed, like "power plant ranges from 10(hat-A)(quote)19 yr(quote)" and "due to time-to-implementation (59(hat-A)(quote) 106 lifecycle"...
I've cycled through all the western character encoding options without improvement. Anybody have a clue what's going on here?
I wish people would say "Nuclear Fission" instead of just "Nuclear". Nuclear Fusion if ever achieved cost effectively would be the best choice.
All Nuclear not bad. Just Fission Nuclear.
Most of the energy on this planet has come as a result of the Sun (wind, solar, Oil). Which is fusion based (well..mostly)
The main point is that the thermal efficiency is not too important provided the collector is cheap.
Multistage PV - i.e. being able to use longer wavelengths in more than one stage of electron acceleration, as happens with photosynthesis - probably has better long terms prospects as it has no moving parts.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Any attempt to use a model to describe a complex situation is wrong, and only as accurate as the assumptions made by the researchers. The authors of this research made a fair amount of assumptions that are obvious judgement calls that invalidate the model if any one of them are shown to be innacurate. This paper looks to me to be an attempt to justify ones own opinions by the use of modeling.
Bureaucracy expands to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.-Oscar Wilde
Mining is hugely polluting, both to landscapes and to water, especially the sorts of mining that batteries need (heavy metals). If we had to ramp up production to populate the entire planet with many-battery-containing vehicles, that would be a significant effect.
It would also require a very well run and credible disposal/recycling program at the end of life, i.e. not just ship the dead batteries off to China.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Except that they aren't snow proof, and that most of the time they are used by 1 person only : bikes are already there.
For these who live in hilly places or who don't want to shower at work, there are electric motors for bikes (you pedal as much as you can, the electric motor makes up the difference).
A bicycle is light enough to be hanged on the wall or on a hook from the ceiling without using a fork lift.
If you got to the slightly bigger : Electric scooters are almost all designed to accommodate easily a passenger in addition to the driver, easily reach 50km/h, and can transport a lot more things than a bike could.
If there were any electric scooter with a roof (an electric equivalent to the BMW scooters) you would even get the snow-proof part.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Try Biking to work in 10 degree F weather with 4 inches of snow that is now Ice. Try biking 5 miles in 30 degree weather with fresh snow or rain coming down or catching the road spray of other melting ice and snow as you roll down the roads.
It's a snow plow problem. Not a biking problem.
Had 0ÂC with rain/snow the whole last week and that didn't pose much of a problem. If it's a problem to you, maybe you should consider buying a better adapted rain coat.
-10ÂC with ice tends to happen seldom, because the streets are cleaned/covered with gravels fast enough to avoid too much ice forming.
(Still, I managed to hurt my knee in a park which wasn't cleaned and were ice did form, so I see you point. But that was because I was cutting through the park and not staying on the cleaned streets. If the streets aren't cleaned your problem is coming from your city not putting enough resources into it. Not from the bike itself)
But if you want there are bike tires which are adapted to biking in snowy/icy condition. Will help you manage to ride the bike, even when the city officials are to lazy to do the necessary to keep the streets clean of ice.
Also biking is a good sport to help change the parent's "overweight non-athletic nerd" into something a tad more sexy.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
And it appears I won't, 'cause I was not only glib, I was wrong.
Specifically, the dead tree source I got the factoid from seems to have misrepresented (or misunderstood) the sources it cited. The actual facts of the case (all percentages approximate) seem to be:
However, the tract I got the stat I quoted from got this wrong (saying that less than 1% of the U235 had been used, instead of the correct ~70% figure), and I haven't been able to track down any of the underlying numbers in anything wikipedia grade or higher, I'm considering the whole thing suspect at this point.
Yes, reprocessing makes sense in some contexts (cf France, Japan). However, the detailed figures I cited in support of this position were badly sourced and I retract them.
--MarkusQ
Two quotes from the original article:
"Jacobson said that while some people are under the impression that wind and wave power are too variable to provide steady amounts of electricity, his research group has already shown in previous research that by properly coordinating the energy output from wind farms in different locations, the potential problem with variability can be overcome and a steady supply of baseline power delivered to users."
""Obviously, wind alone isn't the solution," Jacobson said. "It's got to be a package deal, with energy also being produced by other sources such as solar, tidal, wave and geothermal power."
How do you reconcile these two quotes: if wind can supply steady power, why is it obvious that wind alone isn't the solution?
Those numbers seem way off. At 10%, roughly 100W per square metre, Arizona's land area (295,000 km2) could produce 29.5TW, about 9x the US' average consumption of 3.3TW. Even if you divide by four to allow for night, cloudy days etc, that's still a lot less than what you're claiming.
And solar panels are hardly the most efficient approach, either. Solar thermal approaches currently give 20-30% efficiency, so you could conceivably power the entire US with about two-thirds of the Mojave Desert alone (57,000 km2 @ average 75W/m2 gives about 4.2 TW).
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
Notice that he is comparing to wind. Nuclear is still far better as far as carbon goes than coal or other common power sources.
Nuclear must emit more carbon and air pollution than wind due to the construction of the plant and the mining/processing of the uranium since the actual operation of the plant does not emit anything.
If all of the power used to do the construction and mining came from nuclear/wind also that problem would be solved. So the more wind turbines /nukes we build to replace the coal powered plants the less of a problem this is.
I am a big fan of wind power (being from Tehachapi, CA USA Here we can find a wind power calculator filled in with some typical values.
A modern state of the art giant wind turbine can produce 500kw on a good day. It needs about a third of an acre. Fill in 2200000 for the "input value". Leave the area at .38 acres and size of turbine at 500kw. The result says we need 4,400 wind turbines and 1672 acres to replace the nuclear power plant. But that is *just* the actual footprint of the base of the wind turbine. You need space between them. I'd say you can probably multiple that number by at least 12 for a realistic setup. Now we are talking 20,064 acres.
Note that those 20,064 acres need to be in good windy areas like mountain passes (such as they are in Tehachapi). That alone is rather tall order. Then consider that you will need a number of these setups in different areas because it won't always be windy.
We have 15,000 wind turbines in CA on tens if not hundreds of thousands of acres of land. And it still only produces 1% of our power.
I think the right answer is going to be both. Put wind turbines where we can as they are doing in CA (Tehachapi, Palm Springs, Altamont) and other areas. Build out nuclear plants to handle the rest of the load. And because nuclear reactors take so long to build you have to get started now. You can't wait until an energy crisis due to the lead time. And, of course, recycle the nuclear fuel (feeder-breeder, thorium reactors, etc.) so that we produce much less waste. If it is radioactive it still has plenty of energy in it. Don't bury it. That is a huge waste of resources. React it.
Geothermal power is just nuclear power in disguise. The radioactive elements in the earth's core aren't going to run out any time soon. Geothermal isn't so much extracting heat as it is taking advantage of heat already being generated.
"Pulling together is the aim of despotism and tyranny! Free men pull in all sorts of directions" -- Havelock Vetinari
It shouldn't take much to realize it takes a lot to get coal from the ground to the steam turbine's furnace.
Unlike nuke power, wind power costs are known and could be estimated. Furthermore, wind power prices will go down and they have not been subsidized by government like COAL is. Sanity dictates that conventional power either should lose its welfare or green power should be able to get the same level of welfare.
Welfare aside (which is a big concession,) wind power has been slowly growing for decades despite the opposition and extreme difficulty in getting financing. THIS HAS BEEN AN UPHILL BATTLE (avoiding a wind metaphor.) I think its fair to say that once you remove the major hurdles to wind power it can compete with coal.
Wind is free. Coal is not. Coal plants require a lot of upkeep and are more complex. Wind is simple and distributed and it likely has lower upkeep.
The most common ERROR people make is the difference between startup and operating costs. Solar and wind have high upfront costs; equal or lower upkeep and ZERO fuel costs. The margin of victory is determined by how long it runs and the upkeep costs (which should be competitive.)
Operating and construction costs are not that high compared with the revenue; possibly this is why governments don't care about funding the building of conventional power plants.
The real BIG problem downtime. These problems are solved in a few ways TODAY and a few others are near ready (if not already in use somewhere) these new systems are closer to reality than clean coal or new versions of nuke power/waste. If added to the cost, then I think coal would win before carbon taxes start.
Pump water uphill: ready now.
Flow Batteries: in use now.
Flywheels: DoE worked on it; should be ready but likely to be costly.
Heat storage: in use.
These all promote a NEW market of grid storage which could be part of the existing grid power money games.
Smart Grid - next gen: decades long and expensive but NEEDED because the USA grid is worn out and primitive. HF DC is the way to go! well, for distances over 300km anyhow (again, I think the savings likely over the lifespan of the gear make it better for shorter distances. less wires, smaller towers, lighter wires, easier to go underground... the reason AC was used was because of the electronics of the day. Today DC wins.)
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you *must* have a reliable way to deliver that power.
Onsite power generation is the answer to the "distribution" problem: multiple sources of renewable energy (not only solar electric / thermal, low-power wind, and raindrop harvesting [http://www.physorg.com/news120216714.html], but also improved Seebeck/geothermal* sources) with improved battery/flywheel storage technology + more efficient appliances could take *everyone* off the grid. Cooperative groups of 4-10 houses will become their own power utility.
Of course, there goes a utility's business model, so don't be surprised when such an option is pooh-poohed in the mass media. (Why do you suppose utilities are in such a hurry to get nuclear projects rolling again? They need to lock their customers into their 'big iron' "solution" -- before people catch on to how easy and affordable it is becoming to 'get off the grid'. DTE just pulled some legislative shenanigans here in Michigan, in an attempt to reach just that end.)
But since 2/3 of the energy (in America at least) is utilized by *businesses*, utilities themselves could "decentralize" as well: creating multiple smaller energy plants near their real customers; more efficient because less energy loss from shorter power lines from utility to customer; also the loads on the lines will be smaller. At that scale, nuclear is infeasible.
Adapt or die, guys. The days of centralized power utility monopolies are over. Interestingly, there will be unexpected ramifications in the financial markets as the ratings of utility bonds will begin varying unpredictably due to the collapsing of the current 'fixed base' model. And the utility bond market is *huge*. Better get out of any utility bond insurance companies *now* while you still can.
*Seebeck/geothermal: the Seebeck effect is the generation of a voltage due to a temperature differential across two different metals. Using the constant 56 degree F (13 C) Earth's temperature ten feet (3.3m) down, the ambient air temperature would be used to generate the temperature differential. The current research problem concerns the fact that the differential must be fairly large (in the hundreds of degrees F) to generate significant amounts of electrical potential when standard metals are used. It's possible organic composites might be developed to drop the differential to tens of degrees F.
The final manifestation of this mechanism would be a noiseless boxlike enclosure about 3 feet high and maybe 6 ft by 6 ft square (1m x 2m x 2m) stuck somewhere where there is dirt and air, pumping out maybe 1-2 kw/hour. It would be scalable: you are limited only by the amount of earth that you can cover with these -- something to plop into marginal lands, or an old brownfield.
A possible drawback: this mechanism would work best when temperatures are at their extreme points: summer and winter (indeed, at air = 56 F / 13 C, it would produce no energy at all). However, since summer and winter are the two seasons where energy usage peaks, this may be a feature rather than a bug.
DNA is a Turing machine. You, however, being dynamic and emergent, are not.