Slashdot Mirror
Two Google Engineers Say Renewables Can't Cure Climate Change
_Sharp'r_ writes Two Stanford PhDs, Ross Koningstein and David Fork, worked for Google on the RE<C project to figure out how to make renewables cheaper than coal and solve climate change. After four years of study they gave up, determining "Renewable energy technologies simply won't work; we need a fundamentally different approach." As a result, is nuclear going to be acknowledged as the future of energy production?
Just need to put on the Big Boy Pants and reprocess it. Carter's E.O on reprocessing was born of irrational fear and politics.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
It's not the engineers' fault; It's rare that I've seen as big of a misrepresentation of an article outside of say Russian state propaganda that I've seen with this Register article. Starting with the title.
The original article absolutely, positively does not say in any way, shape or form, "Renewable energy 'simply WON'T WORK'" or "Whatever the future holds, it is not a renewables-powered civilisation: such a thing is impossible."
The actual article says something very, very different. The engineers went into the project hoping that if we make the incremental improvements to make renewables as cheap as coal, then there will be a mass-switchover to renewables and CO2 levels will be held down. Except that that doesn't work. Why? Because of lead times. People who have existing coal power plants for example aren't just going to take them down because new renewables projects are cheaper than new coal plants. You need to get the price down well below that of coal to where it justifies them throwing their already-invested capital costs out the window. Without doing that, your switchover rate is limited by how fast power plants go offline, which is a very long time. So in their "as cheap as coal" scenario, they only get to a 55% emissions cut by 2050. They were hoping that'd keep the world under 350 ppm. But not only does the world still hit 350 ppm in that scenario, but it continues to rise. Hence, the hypothesis that getting renewables as cheap as coal is sufficient to prevent major climate change is suggested to be wrong.
What that DOESN'T say in any way, shape or form:
1) Renewables "WON'T WORK"
2) Renewables "don't help prevent climate change"
3) There's no scenario in which renewables can prevent climate change
What they call for are several changes.
1) They feel that focusing on preventing emissions with renewables isn't enough, that you need active CO2 scrubbing as well.
2) They call for renewables investment to adopt the "Google Model": 70% core business, 20% related new business, 10% risky disruptive new technology. This is versus conventional investment which is 90% core business (aka incremental improvements), 9,9% related, and 0,1% disruptive. They think this provides better odds for renewables or other technologies to stop climate change because incrementally improving down to the price of coal - while it'd have a big impact on CO2 emissions rates - still won't keep levels down below 350 ppm.
Does this even resemble the Register article? Nope. Not even a little bit.
Trick People Into Clicking Your Headline With This One Weird Trick!
Google "breeder reactor" and "thorium reactor".
Engineering-wise, nuclear waste is basically a solved problem. It's political and economical factors that are making it a problem still.
"Total destruction the only solution" - Bob Marley
At least the contaminants are packaged up neatly in big glass blobs rather than released into the atmosphere for all of us to breath.
TL;DR version: Register.co.uk is a serial clickbaiting site, they admit it, and this article is an intentional, blatant misrepresentation of the research. Link to El Reg only for the same sort of reasons you would link to The National Enquirer.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
The high costs of nuclear are driven by non technical issues. Five year Environmental impact studies, lawsuit after lawsuit, etc.
And the feds can definitely provide a framework and structure to a thriving private industry. Pre-approved designs, standard manufacturing facilities and techniques, etc can drive costs down. Right now, every plant is a one off and many parts are only made by one overseas company...the most expensive way to build anything.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
For all the talk of the dangers of nuclear, it has still caused less deaths per amount of energy generated than any other method that has been used to practically generate electricity: http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/... If you're not ignorant of these facts, then the only remaining reasons to oppose nuclear are either political (Naomi Klein-style anti-capitalist), or you're simply a misanthrope.
The whole issue of waste has been beaten to death. Reprocessing and breeder reactors leave only a little waste that can't be used for energy, and waste transmutation is a proven concept that further reduces any dangerous waste. With these processes, the actual nuclear waste left over is a tiny amount, and glassification trivially takes care of that.
"Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason."