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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."
Concentrated solar doesn't necessarily require cells, you can use the sun to heat up oil or water which drives a traditional turbine.
Prediction: The real iPhone killer is going to be sex robots from Japan. Think about it.
The only reason most of it "needs" to be stored is regulatory. 99% of the so-called primary wastes are perfectly usable as fuel for future cycles. If reprocessing were permitted (like in France, etc.) most of our "nuclear wastes" would become "nuclear fuel reserves."
Almost all of what's left is either commercially valuable / recyclable or harmless.
The nuclear waste "problem" is a creation of our fossil fuel industry driven political system.
--MarkusQ
Take a closer look at this table in the paper, since it reveals a more nuanced approach toward quantifying the potential impact from terrorism. It seems that from the paper, the main reason why nuclear is pooh-poohed is because of the opportunity cost due to time-to-implementation (59â"106 lifecycle CO2e emission per kWh of electricity generated). Relatively speaking, the impact from a potential terrorism activity is quite low (0 to 4.1 lifecycle CO2e emission per kWh of electricity generated). The 0-4.1 is based on a probability of 0% to 100% of a single terrorist attack within the next 30 years. Later in the paper, they estimate that "the overall time between planning and operation of a nuclear power plant ranges from 10â"19 yr". Based on how long the government takes to do relatively simple things (highway expansions, etc.), I wouldn't be surprised if it took a looong time to get more nuclear power online.
Of course the ones getting the most attention can be much more easily controlled by those who provide it.
I smell a vague conspiracy theory that doesn't hold water compared to more simple explanations. Specifically that those which are attracting more attention are doing so in general because they're more viable in the short-term, or rather appeared that way.
Ethanol got a lot of attention (read: subsidies) because of exactly one thing: the iowa primary. Traditionally, politicians hoping to run for president supported ethanol because Iowa grows corn. The thinking was "If I support ethanol, I'll get big numbers in Iowa, one of the first primaries, and that will get me big campaign contributions!" Who cares about whether it is a real solution. Although not a good reason, it's not that "THEY" can controll you better. And to be honest, you can add it to your current car and put it into the infrastructure, that's a plus it has over other energies. Of course as the article points out, it's a waste of time for numerous reasons.
Nuclear: again, not evil white men out to control you, it was a big thing for a while. Of course it's going to get attention: we can do it right now.
Clean coal: you know who is pushing big for this? Everyone who is currently supported by coal, which is a lot of people. Say you own a coal-fired power plant. Which is more attractive: being forced to dismantle your plant completely in a few years (IE if solar power wins) or spend a few million on researching "clean" coal and convincing congressmen on your payroll that you're on the way to making coal which has all of the upsides of renewables but none of the downsides without raising taxes? If your answer is "going bankrupt" instead of "clean coal" you are either a saint, a liar, or are badly deluded.
In short, we can see it's not about population control, it's about money, laziness, and semi-corruption. It's not evil crafty men in suits trying to turn off your power if you stumble onto their secrets, its about fat lazy men in suits being greedy.
Subtle difference I guess, but be realistic and you won't sound like you wear a tinfoil hat.
Well given that he computes the carbon footprint of nuclear by dragging things like "terrorists could steal the fuel to make a bomb which could be used in a city which would burn and release lots of CO2," and that one of the reasons nuclear plants take so long to license is the regulatory hurdles designed in part to prevent terrorists from doing just that, I'd say the GP's summary, while glib, was accurate.
--MarkusQ
Yes, it was.
Without the stupid Jimmy Carter-style prohibitions on nuclear recycling, "nuclear waste repositories" would be completely unnecessary; we could re-refine our "nuclear waste" and the actual amount of real "waste" to date would be easily pit into a 100-gallon drum or two, stuffed into a rocket, and lobbed at the sun.
Not just that, they don't evaluate the OTHER problems caused by the technologies. Making solar panels for solar electrical generation generates massive quantities of toxic waste, which has to either be chemically treated or otherwise disposed of. Wind farms have massive problems of maintenance due to fluctuating conditions, and are unreliable at the best of times.
The most "reliable" of the lot is actually Geothermal, which is predictable. Solar and Wind both have weather-related (not joking here) problems; Tidal and Hydroelectric (river/dam-based) generation suffer whenever the water level changes due to rainfall or landmass motion.
Now admittedly, Ethanol is a fucking joke, especially corn-based ethanol which wastes 1.8 units of energy just to produce 1 unit of "energy" in the form of whiskey in the gas tank (you think I'm joking: I'm not). And Ethanol is also MURDER on engines.
And then there's the problem of burning food for fuel. I mean, seriously. That's an idea that came right out of the wrong side of an Animaniacs "Good Idea, Bad Idea" sketch if I ever saw one.
"Clean Coal"? Well, no combustion-based energy source will ever be "perfect", but I don't think that completely eliminating coal use overnight is possible, so I'm all for cleaning it up as much as is reasonable until we can phase it out over time (one big problem with the envirowacko movement, they always want things RIGHT NOW, they never can understand that you have to change things over time).
As for the rest... there's a reason that gasoline beat electrical batteries for automobile power sourcing in the early days and it still holds true today: our battery technology just has NOT caught up to where it needs to be. Gasoline allows for a fill-up to take 5-10 minutes tops, and a mobile range of a couple hundred miles before another fill-up. If you can't do that, then you can't compete with gasoline, and I'm sorry but that is just how it has to be.
"Hydrogen" isn't a real fuel source: you have to extract it from something, and store it somehow. IF we had nothing but electrical from "renewable" sources or properly refined Nuclear, it could theoretically be made viable (better utilized in fuel cells than a combustion engine, but still). Since the majority of our generation is still fossil-fuel based, generating hydrogen to "replace" gasoline will actually cause MORE emissions than just putting the fucking gas in our cars.
To put it plainly "There are a lot of reasons why birds die."
"Educate the mind but never at the expense of the soul."~Blessed Basil Moreau
Prohibitive? Try "implemented". http://www.inhabitat.com/2008/04/10/mojave-desert-solar-power-fields/
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.