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The Myth of Renewable Energy
Harperdog writes to this "Excellent piece by Dawn Stover about what renewables can and can't do. The sun and wind may be practically inexhaustible, but 'renewable' energy isn't. Solar, wind, and geothermal power are not fundamentally different from other energy technologies that consume finite natural resources. Good reading for anyone who thinks they know how to combat climate change."
The argument being made is that expensive and potentially hazardous materials are required to make wind turbines and solar panels.
Unfortunately the article glosses over the fact that far more of those expensive and [s]potential[/s] actually hazardous materials are required to make carbon and nuclear based power generating stations. It also glosses over the lifespan of those products vs their counterparts (largely because no one bothers to collate the data on all the replacement parts that need to go into existing stations). The argument has never been that these solutions are perfect, nor infinite. The argument for green tech is that it's better overall and more sustainable than what we're currently doing.
... they're still better over the lifetime of the vehicle. MIT: http://www.pacinst.org/topics/integrity_of_science/case_studies/hummer_vs_prius.pdf
Actually, it already has been a problem
and continues to be
Someone had to do it.
I think that the point is that they all require maintenance, but that once started up, the solar and wind don't require mining, transportation of fuel, or environmental cleanup just by operating, while solar and wind just require machinery maintenance.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
The tl;dr on the Pacific Institute paper "Hummer vs Prius" is:
1. Someone else wrote a paper called "Dust to dust" that claimed the lifetime energy cost of a Hummer was less than that of a Prius.
2. The "Hummer vs Prius" author disputes the "Dust to dust" paper's conclusions because they used arbitrary figures for lifetime mileage, energy used in manufacture, and so on.
3. The "Hummer vs Prius" author claims a quick recalculation shows the lifetime energy cost of a Prius is, indeed, lower than the Hummer.
The massive problem is the long term cost of decommissioning. I was at primary school when they started decommissioning my local nuclear plant. I'll be dead by the time they've finished.....
That's one hell of a burden we are placing on our grand children.....
FAIL.
The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists is NOT a nuclear power advocacy group. It was founded by former Manhattan Project scientists as an anti-nuclear weapon advocacy group in 1945 in order to bring public attention to the dangers of nuclear arms.
They are probably most famous for the Doomsday Clock.
More recently the BAS has increasingly focused on explaining the dangers associated with nuclear power.
Here is a link to one of their publications:
http://books.google.com/books?id=ngYAAAAAMBAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=true
It's a misleading hack piece. First, 600 acre-feet of water per year to run a 1000-MW plant is diddly-shit. For comparison, a unit-home consumes about 1kw (averaged over a month, give or take a factor of two) and one acre-foot/year of water. So a plant supplying enough power for a million homes, which themselves consume a million acre-feet/year of water, will add 600 acre-feet/yr of water to their consumption. Whoopie-shit.
Notice how no numbers were given for the geothermal plants and their consumption. The Geysers were initially run from in-place groundwater, which they did consume (there was no condensation, no recharge). Now they are being recharged, NOT with groundwater, but with treated sewage water. So the article was misleading there, too, since groundwater is no longer the limiting factor.
She gives numbers for windpower resource consumption, but is again misleading. A "4-foot-wide, 7630 mile sidewalk". How do you suppose that compares to a single lane of interstate highway (12 feet wide) capable of carrying truck traffic? 636 miles of 4-lane interstate, NOT accounting for the increased road thickness. She repeats the "rare earth metals are rare" canard.
Neodymium: "Although neodymium is classed as a "rare earth", it is no rarer than cobalt, nickel, and copper ore, and is widely distributed in the Earth's crust". She may be right about Dysprosium, at least with current magnet technology. It's not clear if it's necessary, or merely nice at current prices. Note that the current main consumption appears to be hybrid automobiles, not wind turbines. (Hybrid autos, not a good idea at present size.)
Her treatment of hydropower is similarly deceptive -- first dismiss newer technologies as "experimental", then hammer on the problems of (some) hydropower installations. Wave power looks interesting. There's not too much that can go wrong with a buoy anchored to the bottom; we've got ample experience with them in their non-power-producing form.
All of the article lacks a good "compared to what" -- how much water and concrete are consumed by existing energy production? What resources do they consume?
So, NOT an excellent article.