Hydro is renewable. It is basically solar power since it is driven by evaporation. Nothing misleading about that. It is rapid growth in other renewables and moribund behavior in nuclear that makes the cross over, but not counting hydro is silly. Just be happy about the good news.
Actually, a lot of plants were never completed owing to bad demand projections. Money was sunk but it never ever paid back. So, overcapacity does mean something.
There are dams that do both power generation and flood control. But much of flood control infrastructure does not generate electricity. When there is flooding, usually extreme weather is to blame and it is the non-generating levies that give way.
No new plants to speak of so really what we are seeing is decades of overcapacity in nuclear power, basically waste of capacity since nuclear power is supposed to be baseload. And this is really what killed the nuclear construction industry in the eighties. Bad planning. http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2011/06/25/244122/three-mile-island-accident-nuclear-power/
I think we'll see enough of an overbuild of renewable energy that once we've pulled enough carbon out of the atmosphere to hit 350 ppm or lower using that extra energy, we'll start to use accelerators to transmute nuclear waste to stable elements. If we stop using fission soon enough, we may not even need a repository. We'll build an accelerator at each dry cask site perhaps. Indian Point looks to me to be the highest risk just because of the bad attitude of the operator. But, it is a roll of the dice. The only thing for certain is that there will be another bad accident unless we stop.
I think of nuclear power as a battery. We're going to have to pay everything back in energy to transmute the waste. So, it really only has specialized applications. Add to that the safety issues and it is pretty clear that it only has application in life-or-death situations such as in the submarine service.
You already said your pump storage was inadequate to do the whole country. Wait an bit and you'll get batteries. No problem. You are not going to install solar so fast that storage can not keep up I think. But, you will eventually use quite a lot of solar.
There is no reason for you not to take the essentially free batteries from other countries that do electrify. As I calculated for you, you'll get the power you want if you oversize by a factor of 4.5. That is useful power in the winter. It is what you ordered. We can expect solar panels to get down to about $0.25/Watt in the next ten years or so. You will certainly be using solar then. The thrifty thing is a loony tunes reference.
Well, that might do for now. As transportation electrifies, the batteries will have an extended aftermarket as stationary storage which can cover half a day of storage in the US. In thrifty Scotland, perhaps they'll cover a day and a half. In that case, we can use monthly average insolation provided in the tool I linked. At Edinburgh, your winter optimized system would be about 4.45 times larger than an annual optimized system. An annual optimized system usually takes up a good portion of a detached dwelling roof so you'll want some yard space or you may want to use some south facing hillside that is too steep for sheep. You don't have to start throwing power away until these systems provide a quarter or more of average national power consumption. You could decide to do extra aluminum smelting in the summer and use the extra power of course which would fit the thrifty national character.
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Nope, the industry killed itself. http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2011/06/25/244122/three-mile-island-accident-nuclear-power/
Petroleum is used more than natural gas.
The clean up costs for the molten salt reactor were staggering. Going over budget does not even begin to describe it.
Hydro is renewable. It is basically solar power since it is driven by evaporation. Nothing misleading about that. It is rapid growth in other renewables and moribund behavior in nuclear that makes the cross over, but not counting hydro is silly. Just be happy about the good news.
Seems like naval reactors do OK so was it really deemed impossible?
You can't say I got it right. If I'd written the Bible, you are supposed to say I had and ax to grind.
Actually, a lot of plants were never completed owing to bad demand projections. Money was sunk but it never ever paid back. So, overcapacity does mean something.
No, it is all energy use, not just power generation.
How many tons of lumber are needed for a house? 10? Still, you get to reuse it every day.
Do you really really think that if the solar plant were not there the sun would not shine? You must really love the peek-a-boo game.
You can learn about relative support for nuclear, wind and solar here: http://www.repp.org/repp_pubs/pdf/subsidies.pdf
Apparently that is exactly what renewable power is doing and nuclear power is not.
There are dams that do both power generation and flood control. But much of flood control infrastructure does not generate electricity. When there is flooding, usually extreme weather is to blame and it is the non-generating levies that give way.
No new plants to speak of so really what we are seeing is decades of overcapacity in nuclear power, basically waste of capacity since nuclear power is supposed to be baseload. And this is really what killed the nuclear construction industry in the eighties. Bad planning. http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2011/06/25/244122/three-mile-island-accident-nuclear-power/
I submitted it, I didn't write it. TFA has a good point that nuclear is going nowhere though.
Dirty and unreliable. http://news.ninemsn.com.au/world/8267695/jellyfish-clog-shuts-uk-nuclear-reactors
are still for sale at the local little league field.
You should ask Japan if nuclear power is clean.
I think we'll see enough of an overbuild of renewable energy that once we've pulled enough carbon out of the atmosphere to hit 350 ppm or lower using that extra energy, we'll start to use accelerators to transmute nuclear waste to stable elements. If we stop using fission soon enough, we may not even need a repository. We'll build an accelerator at each dry cask site perhaps. Indian Point looks to me to be the highest risk just because of the bad attitude of the operator. But, it is a roll of the dice. The only thing for certain is that there will be another bad accident unless we stop.
I think of nuclear power as a battery. We're going to have to pay everything back in energy to transmute the waste. So, it really only has specialized applications. Add to that the safety issues and it is pretty clear that it only has application in life-or-death situations such as in the submarine service.
just sayin'
You already said your pump storage was inadequate to do the whole country. Wait an bit and you'll get batteries. No problem. You are not going to install solar so fast that storage can not keep up I think. But, you will eventually use quite a lot of solar.
There is no reason for you not to take the essentially free batteries from other countries that do electrify. As I calculated for you, you'll get the power you want if you oversize by a factor of 4.5. That is useful power in the winter. It is what you ordered. We can expect solar panels to get down to about $0.25/Watt in the next ten years or so. You will certainly be using solar then. The thrifty thing is a loony tunes reference.
If shoddiness can not be avoided, then nuclear power should be.
Well, that might do for now. As transportation electrifies, the batteries will have an extended aftermarket as stationary storage which can cover half a day of storage in the US. In thrifty Scotland, perhaps they'll cover a day and a half. In that case, we can use monthly average insolation provided in the tool I linked. At Edinburgh, your winter optimized system would be about 4.45 times larger than an annual optimized system. An annual optimized system usually takes up a good portion of a detached dwelling roof so you'll want some yard space or you may want to use some south facing hillside that is too steep for sheep. You don't have to start throwing power away until these systems provide a quarter or more of average national power consumption. You could decide to do extra aluminum smelting in the summer and use the extra power of course which would fit the thrifty national character.