Slashdot Mirror
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."
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 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, it sounds like the author had an axe to grind. Being in the Bay Area, he's got to be aware of activists trying to shut down the wind farms near Stockton because they're killing birds. And I remember reading that the manufacture of photovoltaic cells uses some of the same processes that are already poisoning the groundwater in Silicon Valley.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
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!
The study claims to be quantitative and scientific. But when he goes into his anti-nuclear rant, it's all just opinion.
We currently have no perfect energy sources. I for one think nuclear sucks less than most of the others.
I also heard a "rumor" that the ore used in the production of electric car/hybrid batteries is another big energy/carbon sink (fueld used for mining it, sending it somewhere for processing, sending it somewhere to produce the batteries, sending the batteries to the car manufacturers). Does anyone know if this is true or have any facts or references that would be apropos?
Yes, solar thermal plants can be made using the same steam turbines and generators used by coal, gas power plants to produce energy from high pressure steam.
If one adds an additional component of a heat reservoir such as molten salt, a solar plant is even capable of providing electricity through night and cloudy days (depending on the duration of reduced insolation and the capacity of the thermal reservoir of course) without requiring any advancement in battery technology.
However, I really do not appreciate him lumping nuclear power in with inferior bio fuels and carbon sequestering. Proper use of feeder-breeder reactors can effectively eliminate nuclear waste from uranium reactors and provide power for the entire world for many hundreds of years (all on its own). Add to that the potential of thorium reactors using a more plentiful fuel and nuclear power makes a perfect compliment to solar for regions not blessed with great weather.
Meanwhile the drilling and pressure issues of carbon sequestering mean that the excess energy extracted is marginalized while the risk of a geologic release of billions of tons of CO2 due to fissures or shifting could kill thousands or even millions if close enough to a major city.
Biofuel is not a renewable resource. To meet our gasoline needs alone we would need a corn field larger than the continental US. Even with switchgrass we would need ~25% of the surface of the US to meet our gasoline needs. Consider for a moment that modern farming is already devastating the aquifers that will take 10s to 100s of thousands of years to replenish naturally.
Wind has some potential but can never be used for base load due to the fact that weather on earth is inherently unpredictable, producing squalls that can overload a power grid with to much wind or starve it with periods of calm over nearly continental spans.
Whoops, just re-read that part and I realize I got it wrong, they weighted average is of the RANK of each solution in each category, so for example the ridiculously high difference in mortality between nuclear and the truly dangerous technologies is lost. Because of the global nuclear warfare scenario, it even moves down a place against a technology which is actually LIKELY to kill many more people (CCS) than nuclear realistically would.
Only a fucking idiot would use a blind ranking system like that. If one technology solves all energy problems for 0 dollars with 0 pollution, but ranked in a close 5th place for the other options like land footprint (most of the rankings are decided by very small margins, with a few huge leaps separating truly bad technologies from others which are essentially the same), guess what... that option loses to fucking solar because solar squeaked out a few rank positions better on other categories.
This research stinks.
The US may never have good nuclear reactors. The process of developing new reactor technology is so mired in political bullshit that in the future we'll have to look at nations like France for how to apply nuclear power in an effective and safe way. I am convinced that it will never be developed here at home.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Carter decided to avoid breeder reactors in part because they can blow up and new fuel is cheep enough that reprocessing is not that big a deal. Also by letting the fuel cool off it becomes cheaper to reprocess in the future. It's not like we are dumping the stuff into a volcano so it's gone forever so when we get really well tested and safe breeder design we will have plenty of high grade fuel waiting around ready to be used on the cheep.
PS: Carter understood a lot more about the industry than most lay people. "He was assigned to Schenectady, New York, where he took graduate work at Union College in reactor technology and nuclear physics, and served as senior officer of the pre-commissioning crew of the Seawolf, the second nuclear submarine." So it's not like this was some idiot deciding something based on an uninformed whim.
> A scientist saying creationism is real will get him shunned, as it should.
Yes it should. As should saying creationism is false should. Neither can be proved by the ways of science and anyone trying to push a political or religious agenda under the cover of science should be written out of the profession. Current science is only even believed to be valid back to the big bang and can say zero about anything before that... even if the phrase 'before the big bang' has a meaning or not. It might be able to say more in the future as our understanding improves but as things currently stand science cannot answer the big questions of Life, the Universe and Everything.
> A scientist saying "we need nukes, there is no possible way anything else can work" is not a scientific statement.
Corrent. However one can say all of the following and be 100% correct from a scientific Pov.
1. We currently possess the knowledge to build safe reliable nuke plants on a scale to provide all of our energy needs. The only obstacles are political. Since we know of at least one route to generating all of the energy we could want any talk of an 'energy crisis' is this pure political theater.
2. Sufficient proven reserves of Uranium exist to supply our needs for over a hundred years without recycling spent fuel rods. With recycling we have enough to either last much longer or increase our energy usage during the next hundred year.
3. No other currently proposed 'alternative energy' source, alone or in total can demonstrate a plan to provide our current energy supply at anywhere close to the current costs. Solar and wind are currently so innefficient that without government subsidies they would only be practical in locations so far off the grid that wiring them would be impractical. Continued research and development may or may not improve the deployment cost and output so as to make one or more alternatives practical in the future. Thus adopting as official policy that we MUST adopt these technologies means betting our future lifestyle and prosperiety on an ASSUMPTION that the price/kwh can be brought down.
4. While it is true that a practical fusion reactor has been thirty years away for the last forty years, unity gain is getting closer and closer now. It is thus rational to argue that it is at least as likely that we can build a fusion reactor in the next hundred years as it is that we can perfect wind or solar in the next twenty.
Democrat delenda est
There are production solar-thermal facilities in California. They are base-load generation, too, because they burn natural gas when output falls (in practice they're 85%-90% solar).
Most of these "alternative energy" ideas are pipedreams that just can't scale to the 1 TW electical baseload (which will get far higher whe people start plugging in hybrids - the idea that "people wil only plug in at night" is another pipe dream). Solar thermal is great, however. It's not limited by the scarce elements needed by photoelectric cells. It's proven technology using well-understood components.
If you want *no* depenency on fossil fuels, nuclear is the only real choice with technology that doesn't depend on some future scientific breakthrough, but I think a minimal natural gas solution is a great plan for Southern states.
Replacing heating oil for heating in Northern states is going to be a huge infrastructure change, however. Even if you're OK with the inefficiency of electrical heating (and we could be OK with that, given the right source of power), you *must* have a reliable way to deliver that power. Too many places lose power in blizzards, when the lines come down. Burying all the power lines in a rural area is a gigantic proposition.
Still, I'd rather spend 2 trillion on that than on bailing out executive bonuses and stockholder dividends!
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Why are you pretending as though a lack of nuclear fuel will mean insufficient energy?
Do you know exactly how much energy can be harvested with even inefficient solar cells?
Is this just because I lived in the desert? Is that the only reason I know these things? You can power the entire United States on solar power alone if you're willing to build enough troughs, and it will require but a small percentage of unwanted shit land in the middle of nowhere.
Nice conspiracy theory you have there
It's a conspiracy theory in that it claims that the hard-core greens (which by no means includes all liberals, or all environmentalists) are lying about their stated reasons for opposing nuclear power. But unlike most other conspiracy theories it makes a specific prediction, which is that as solar, wind, and geothermal power becomes increasingly viable as replacements for fossil fuels, greens will suddenly discover reasons why they're unacceptable. I believe that is likely to be the case; we'll get to find out in the next decade or so.
How to solve most of our problems: 1.Lots of nuclear plants. 2.Cure aging.
I don't think electricity is a good idea for cars as they exist today.
Right now, cars are massive, they're heavy, they're expensive.
Why the hell would I want to pay for a car that only goes 75km for 5 years?! Why the hell would I want that car to take up a huge amount of space in my driveway?!
A more ideal electric vehicle would be inexpensive; less than $2000. A more ideal electric vehicle would be small; I should be able to fold it up and hang it on the wall in my garage when I'm not using it. A more ideal electric vehicle would be light; I should be able to fold it up and hang it on the wall in my garage when I'm not using it without a forklift.
Regular people would still likely own cars. They'd need one for trips, for towing the boat, for days when the electric just won't do the job, or it's too cold to use the electric (Batteries hate cold). An ideal electric vehicle would be more like a 4-wheel electric bicycle, with enough room for 2 people, a top speed of 50 km/h, room for a couple bags of groceries, an EXTREMELY light, watertight skin (It should be able to handle a foot of snow on the roof, but not someone standing on it), and a range that's short, but a hell of a lot longer than any of the "cars pretending to be environmentally friendly" we're seeing today. It'll take a change in our conception of a vehicle, but it'd be very useful.
If I were in the government, my goal would be to legalize a new class of vehicle for public roadways that would be designed specifically for 50km/h use and no more, with greatly reduced safety regulations, and for internal combusion engine vehicles, greatly reduced particulate emissions standards if the economy is beyond a certain level (for example, 80MPG city).
It's been a long time.
Yeah a grid is needed for high power transmission much like
we have now, though I say it is far less expensive to maintain
if they buried it in service tunnels.
In the tunnels the temp remains constant and thus less losses due
to heat such as in the southwest.
Sag of the lines in high heat has its own set of issues.
Too many times massive thunderstorms, ice storms, downed trees
damage the lines or lightning surges damage the substations and
end users personal electronics.
Often after massive storms, downed lines kill ppl and pets.
Less repair of the lines means smaller repair crews which
equals lower insurance losses, and lower operating costs.
The initial tunneling cost is high but could done in the
highest repair rate areas first, and the savings rolled
on to the other areas over time, ie. "pay it forward".
google "32 trillion offshore needs IRS attention"