??What?? Exactly how is Michigan keeping the nuclear electrons separate from the dirty coal electrons? It's a grid so power is shunted from producer to consumer as required and I'm sure that Michigan, like pretty much everyone else, operates nuclear as near-constant baseload. Aside from the convenience of having the Gigafactory close to Fremont, building it in the southwest gives Tesla the opportunity to provide some of their own power using wind & solar and perhaps even sell to the grid and earn rebates and credits. Michigan would have to ante up a pretty sweet deal to offset that but I suppose Elon has enough money to buy Detroit outright.
Unfortunately, that info will be hard to come by unless someone in Russia or France finds his inner Snowden. The reason why I'm so leery of the Russians is because of Putin's strong, meddling hand. If the government's involved, he's involved and if he's involved, there's deception.
The batteries don't care but Elon does. You do know he's involved in Solar City (rumored to be the largest single shareholder) and they just bought Silevo? I suspect he's going to be one of his own big customers.
This is about office space not factory floor so import duties & NAFTA don't apply. But even if Tesla were to start assembling cars in Ontario, I don't see what would be any different between their vehicles and the many millions of cars the Big Six have produced there over many decades. As a single jurisdiction, Southern Ontario is the NorthAm's largest producer of automobiles
The Gigafactory would have to be built somewhere with good solar & wind resources so if you want to combine that with prison expertise, the best option would be Arizona and Tesla can hire Sheriff Joe.
France has a big issue to face in the coming decade or two, which is replacement of the nuclear fleet as their reactors will be 40-50 yrs old by 2025. And there's also the as-yet unresolved problem of a longterm dump site unless Bure has been definitively chosen. Other issues include the use of some nukes in load-following mode and heavy reliance on electric heating, which contributes to their overall low CO2 emissions from electricity generation.
Newer designs may abate the inefficiency of running in load-following but until those are replaced there will continue to be a heavy reliance on imports during cold snaps. This will continue to be a particular problem on weekends as some nuke plants are shutdown due to reduced demand.
It's my understanding that Lithuania's sole nuke plant has been inoperational since 2009 and the replacement isn't likely to start commercial operation before 2020.
We haven't been building them, so building few units at a time is expensive. Curiously though constructing over 50 units over 15 years didn't bankrupt France in the 1970s and 1980s. China [world-nuclear.org] is actually building them [wikipedia.org] on time [wikipedia.org] and on budget [newswire.ca] thanks to volume purchasing, high levels of standardization and coordination.
You forgot to congratulate China on their perfect record of nuclear safety. After all, there's no evidence to the contrary, right?:-D
And any speculation by Western running dogs who dare to cast aspersions on the glorious People's Republic can be summarily dismissed, of course. http://www.theguardian.com/env...
"As for LFTR, you are right, there are currently no ready and licensed designs, but that doesn't mean that we can't pursue them"
I don't know of anyone who's actively preventing it. What I do know is that the LFTR trolls appear on almost every fucking forum on the Internet to tout the superiority of the reactor as if it were a finished product and seem to be even worse bashers of renewable energy than the coal trolls.
This happens even on Kirk Sorenson's Energy From Thorium Facebook page, and Slashdot, too. If anything, they should be supporters of wind, solar, hydro & geothermal as a bridge tech until LFTR / MSR designs pan out, which could take 10-20 yrs.
" If we'd spent a small fraction of the money sunk into renewables" - how about this instead: "If we'd spent a tiny fraction of the money sunk into warfare or used to subsidize fossil fuels......"
If your parameters are valid to explain why France is better than Denmark , then let's see words from your own mouth, why these same parameters don't show why France is better than X.
"Oh love the smearing, but Russia is a normal country with normal people in it who want to do business" Feel the love and tell that to Mikhail Khodorkovsky. I understand he has unique insight on what constitutes normal business under Putin. Vitaly Lopota may have a few things to add as well.
"Have a look over here [templar.co.uk] and look specifically at the German interconnect. You'll see that it spends a majority of the time in the negative, meaning, power is going out over the link TO Germany" That can be highly misleading. The question is whether the grid is spilling power because it can't be used domestically or if it's sending out more because it's being requested. And, of course, the totals matter not just the amount of time it's positive or negative in one direction or the other.
" Let's look at taxation income and compare: France is again better off than Denmark" Germany, the UK, Austria, Finland & Norway, Italy, Spain & Portugal all rate higher than either. Why don't you apply your methodology to ALL the Euro countries? If it's good enough to compare France & Denmark, it should be good enough for the rest. I would fully expect France to dominate in all categories, right? If not, I await your explanation, with bated breath.
"Anyway, even if the French did heavily subsidize their nuclear power generation (which I don't think is the case" - EDF was formed by a government takeover of more than 1,000 utilities and until 1999 was owned & run entirely by the French government who still holds over 80% of it. You may be right but given the lack of transparency over what is probably the greatest civil infrastructure project in French history, it's not likely that what we think we know is the whole truth.
They're just facts, ma'am. Pity if you find them as "grasping".
If all the Euro countries has been as nuclear-dependent as France, the heat wave of 2003 would have been an even greater disaster and there would have been a fuckton of coal power needed as many of the hydro plants were also underperforming. The UK had a water shortage and Serbia saw the Danube drop to its lowest level in a century. On the upside, tanks & bombs that had been submerged since WW2 were rediscovered.
"This would be true of almost any heat engine-based power plant, regardless of the source of the heating, save for a few very high-temperature systems which can live with air cooling" AND "we know how to bridge those temporary loss gaps with hydro, fossil and other dispatchable short-term backup technology" Erm, when it's too hot to get enough water for cooling & the water levels are low enough to restrict hydropower & this would affect any "heat-engine based power plant", exactly what are you using as your "dispatchable short-term backup technology" to produce electricity? If you're down 20% and can't import, you're looking at rolling blackouts as a best-case scenario.
Now the intermittency of solar & wind are well-known and in the case of sunshine, it's highly predictable. And it looks like some countries have done a remarkable job of forecasting 24-48 hr wind production for more than 5 yrs. This won't solve the issue of prolonged lulls, however but it's not yet a major problem.
One more thing about the French nuke industry - it's pretty much owned outright by the government yet there's very little transparency with regard to cost. So the true price is not really known. Do I think it's higher than any other Euro country? No, but I do think there are subsidies in place that are masking the real cost and it's significantly higher than what we're led to believe.
Bottom line is that I'm not convinced any single tech is capable of handling the electricity needs of modern nations in a rapidly warming world, not nuclear & not renewables. Barring some miracle breakthrough, we're going to keep on needing a mix. But I would like to see coal cut back dramatically, even at great expense. And I don't support the German agenda to foreclose on nuclear plants that are in good operating condition.
Now about that French dumping. It's unclear exactly what was being sent to Russia but my question is WHY? Why isn't this being done in France? The fact that this was being done on the sly and that they abruptly ended the program 4 years early implies that Greenpeace was on to something. But exactly what I don't know. But if you have a program with the Russians that's shrouded in secrecy, you're lying about something.
Like how you managed to slip in a jab against "hipsters", who will no doubt destroy civilization. And you must be smoking a lot of crack if you think IE is a better browser.
TMI happened less than 2 weeks after the China Syndrome was released so it's easy to see why public opinion would have shifted against nuclear power.
Here's what Carter actually said about nuclear power in '77:
I am announcing today some of my decisions resulting from that review.
First, we will defer indefinitely the commercial reprocessing and recycling of the plutonium produced in the U.S. nuclear power programs. From our own experience, we have concluded that a viable and economic nuclear power program can be sustained without such reprocessing and recycling. The plant at Barnwell, South Carolina, will receive neither Federal encouragement nor funding for its completion as a reprocessing facility.
Second, we will restructure the U.S. breeder reactor program to give greater priority to alternative designs of the breeder and to defer the date when breeder reactors would be put into commercial use.
Third, we will redirect funding of U.S. nuclear research and development programs to accelerate our research into alternative nuclear fuel cycles which do not involve direct access to materials usable in nuclear weapons.
Fourth, we will increase U.S. production capacity for enriched uranium to provide adequate and timely supply of nuclear fuels for domestic and foreign needs.
Fifth, we will propose the necessary legislative steps to permit the U.S. to offer nuclear fuel supply contracts and guarantee delivery of such nuclear fuel to other countries.
Sixth, we will continue to embargo the export of equipment or technology that would permit uranium enrichment and chemical reprocessing.
Seventh, we will continue discussions with supplying and recipient countries alike, of a wide range of international approaches and frameworks that will permit all nations to achieve their energy objectives while reducing the spread of nuclear explosive capability. Among other things, we will explore the establishment of an international nuclear fuel cycle evaluation program aimed at developing alternative fuel cycles and a variety of international and U.S. measures to assure access to nuclear fuel supplies and spent fuel storage for nations sharing common nonproliferation objectives.
The Kemeny commission that Carter appointed to review TMI was made up of people chosen specifically for their neutral position on nuclear power. This, of course, is highly subjective but I've yet to see anyone point out anti-nuke bias against Kemeny or a member of that committee. One thing that came out of the review was that a crucial valve had not only failed in the open position on multiple occasions but had nearly caused an accident at Ohio's Davis-Besse facility 18 months prior and Babcock engineers had not notified customers of the problem.
What really resulted from Kemeny's review was that the industry as a whole failed itself and that can't be blamed on Jimmy Carter.
Carter was nowhere as anti-nuke as many think and considering that Reagan was very much pro-nuke ( and wasted no time removing the solar panels from the White House roof), he certainly had the motivation & wherewithal to reverse course. The truth is that TMI & Chernobyl galvanized public opinion and emboldened activists and the very high interest rates of the period, at one time over 20% and rarely below 8% prior to 1988, made the capital-intensive reactors very expensive to build while also battling activists in court.
I am announcing today some of my decisions resulting from that review.
First, we will defer indefinitely the commercial reprocessing and recycling of the plutonium produced in the U.S. nuclear power programs. From our own experience, we have concluded that a viable and economic nuclear power program can be sustained without such reprocessing and recycling. The plant at Barnwell, South Carolina, will receive neither Federal encouragement nor funding for its completion as a reprocessing facility.
Second, we will restructure the U.S. breeder reactor program to give greater priority to alternative designs of the breeder and to defer the date when breeder reactors would be put into commercial use.
Third, we will redirect funding of U.S. nuclear research and development programs to accelerate our research into alternative nuclear fuel cycles which do not involve direct access to materials usable in nuclear weapons.
Fourth, we will increase U.S. production capacity for enriched uranium to provide adequate and timely supply of nuclear fuels for domestic and foreign needs.
Fifth, we will propose the necessary legislative steps to permit the U.S. to offer nuclear fuel supply contracts and guarantee delivery of such nuclear fuel to other countries.
Sixth, we will continue to embargo the export of equipment or technology that would permit uranium enrichment and chemical reprocessing.
Seventh, we will continue discussions with supplying and recipient countries alike, of a wide range of international approaches and frameworks that will permit all nations to achieve their energy objectives while reducing the spread of nuclear explosive capability. Among other things, we will explore the establishment of an international nuclear fuel cycle evaluation program aimed at developing alternative fuel cycles and a variety of international and U.S. measures to assure access to nuclear fuel supplies and spent fuel storage for nations sharing common nonproliferation objectives.
I do think that France's build-out of nuclear plants was impressive but your worship of them should be tempered by a couple facts.
First is that as many as 17 of their 58 plants have been knocked offline or scaled back in a single heatwave because of a shortage of water for cooling thereby needing to import from their neighbors to keep the lights on and costing up to $1300 per megawatt hour. The normal peak power prices are usually below $100 per MW-hr. A warming climate will lead to this happening more frequently.
Also, they've been caught dumping nuclear waste in Russia. The lie was that it was sent to be separated and re-enriched to be returned but the truth is that 90% never comes back. Right now, it seems that no one who has a significant build-up of nuclear waste is doing a proper job of managing it. Who knows how much has been dumped in backwater nations or into the oceans. And that's with nuclear providing 12% of global electricity. What will the waste problem look like if we try to get to 50% in a hurry? Those thorium trolls may be right but it's not likely we'll know for sure before 2030.
Bullshit. From 1973 - 1979, about 40 planned reactors were cancelled because of fears of overcapacity. About 53 that were approved before TMI were completed although subject to more stringent oversight. Unit 1 of TMI was allowed to restart operations in '85 and is licensed to operate until 2034. Carter had described the overall event as minor to his cabinet after visiting the site. It's true that TMI & Carter did have a considerable impact on nuke plants in the USA but the event that really put the hurt on the industry did NOT happen during Carter's tenure.
No. It's not besides the point. His point was that Tesla get a huge subsidy on every car but it's only about 10% of the average selling price of a Model S, maybe not even that. If you're buying one of the other popular EVs, your rebate could be as much at 30%.
Making any car is going to have a certain environmental impact and EVs are not exempt but lithium isn't one of the problem materials as it's not particularly toxic and it's not typically mined but produced from brine salts or, increasingly, from geothermal flowback.
And coal usage for electricity generation is falling, the new or existing plants are being made cleaner & more efficient, which means it's even more difficult for ICEs & hybrids to compete with EVs.
Slashdot Mirror
WTF are they going to do with $2 million? They're going to need a fuckton more cash than that to develop anything that has a hope of success.
??What?? Exactly how is Michigan keeping the nuclear electrons separate from the dirty coal electrons?
It's a grid so power is shunted from producer to consumer as required and I'm sure that Michigan, like pretty much everyone else, operates nuclear as near-constant baseload.
Aside from the convenience of having the Gigafactory close to Fremont, building it in the southwest gives Tesla the opportunity to provide some of their own power using wind & solar and perhaps even sell to the grid and earn rebates and credits.
Michigan would have to ante up a pretty sweet deal to offset that but I suppose Elon has enough money to buy Detroit outright.
Unfortunately, that info will be hard to come by unless someone in Russia or France finds his inner Snowden.
The reason why I'm so leery of the Russians is because of Putin's strong, meddling hand. If the government's involved, he's involved and if he's involved, there's deception.
"Has nuclear power stations" - true, but how did you miss that it's 60% coal-fired electricity, double the nuke %age output?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L...
The batteries don't care but Elon does. You do know he's involved in Solar City (rumored to be the largest single shareholder) and they just bought Silevo?
I suspect he's going to be one of his own big customers.
As opposed to hiring Canadians?
This is about office space not factory floor so import duties & NAFTA don't apply.
But even if Tesla were to start assembling cars in Ontario, I don't see what would be any different between their vehicles and the many millions of cars the Big Six have produced there over many decades.
As a single jurisdiction, Southern Ontario is the NorthAm's largest producer of automobiles
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L...
The Gigafactory would have to be built somewhere with good solar & wind resources so if you want to combine that with prison expertise, the best option would be Arizona and Tesla can hire Sheriff Joe.
If you're going to consider Detroit, you might as well relocate to southern Ontario. Long history of auto manufacturing & the people are civilized.
France has a big issue to face in the coming decade or two, which is replacement of the nuclear fleet as their reactors will be 40-50 yrs old by 2025.
And there's also the as-yet unresolved problem of a longterm dump site unless Bure has been definitively chosen.
Other issues include the use of some nukes in load-following mode and heavy reliance on electric heating, which contributes to their overall low CO2 emissions from electricity generation.
Newer designs may abate the inefficiency of running in load-following but until those are replaced there will continue to be a heavy reliance on imports during cold snaps. This will continue to be a particular problem on weekends as some nuke plants are shutdown due to reduced demand.
It's my understanding that Lithuania's sole nuke plant has been inoperational since 2009 and the replacement isn't likely to start commercial operation before 2020.
You forgot to congratulate China on their perfect record of nuclear safety. :-D
After all, there's no evidence to the contrary, right?
And any speculation by Western running dogs who dare to cast aspersions on the glorious People's Republic can be summarily dismissed, of course.
http://www.theguardian.com/env...
"As for LFTR, you are right, there are currently no ready and licensed designs, but that doesn't mean that we can't pursue them"
I don't know of anyone who's actively preventing it. What I do know is that the LFTR trolls appear on almost every fucking forum on the Internet to tout the superiority of the reactor as if it were a finished product and seem to be even worse bashers of renewable energy than the coal trolls.
This happens even on Kirk Sorenson's Energy From Thorium Facebook page, and Slashdot, too.
If anything, they should be supporters of wind, solar, hydro & geothermal as a bridge tech until LFTR / MSR designs pan out, which could take 10-20 yrs.
" If we'd spent a small fraction of the money sunk into renewables" - how about this instead:
"If we'd spent a tiny fraction of the money sunk into warfare or used to subsidize fossil fuels......"
If your parameters are valid to explain why France is better than Denmark , then let's see words from your own mouth, why these same parameters don't show why France is better than X.
"Oh love the smearing, but Russia is a normal country with normal people in it who want to do business"
Feel the love and tell that to Mikhail Khodorkovsky. I understand he has unique insight on what constitutes normal business under Putin.
Vitaly Lopota may have a few things to add as well.
"Have a look over here [templar.co.uk] and look specifically at the German interconnect. You'll see that it spends a majority of the time in the negative, meaning, power is going out over the link TO Germany"
That can be highly misleading. The question is whether the grid is spilling power because it can't be used domestically or if it's sending out more because it's being requested. And, of course, the totals matter not just the amount of time it's positive or negative in one direction or the other.
" Let's look at taxation income and compare: France is again better off than Denmark"
Germany, the UK, Austria, Finland & Norway, Italy, Spain & Portugal all rate higher than either.
Why don't you apply your methodology to ALL the Euro countries? If it's good enough to compare France & Denmark, it should be good enough for the rest.
I would fully expect France to dominate in all categories, right?
If not, I await your explanation, with bated breath.
"Anyway, even if the French did heavily subsidize their nuclear power generation (which I don't think is the case" - EDF was formed by a government takeover of more than 1,000 utilities and until 1999 was owned & run entirely by the French government who still holds over 80% of it.
You may be right but given the lack of transparency over what is probably the greatest civil infrastructure project in French history, it's not likely that what we think we know is the whole truth.
They're just facts, ma'am. Pity if you find them as "grasping".
If all the Euro countries has been as nuclear-dependent as France, the heat wave of 2003 would have been an even greater disaster and there would have been a fuckton of coal power needed as many of the hydro plants were also underperforming. The UK had a water shortage and Serbia saw the Danube drop to its lowest level in a century. On the upside, tanks & bombs that had been submerged since WW2 were rediscovered.
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/ed...
"This would be true of almost any heat engine-based power plant, regardless of the source of the heating, save for a few very high-temperature systems which can live with air cooling" AND "we know how to bridge those temporary loss gaps with hydro, fossil and other dispatchable short-term backup technology"
Erm, when it's too hot to get enough water for cooling & the water levels are low enough to restrict hydropower & this would affect any "heat-engine based power plant", exactly what are you using as your "dispatchable short-term backup technology" to produce electricity?
If you're down 20% and can't import, you're looking at rolling blackouts as a best-case scenario.
Now the intermittency of solar & wind are well-known and in the case of sunshine, it's highly predictable. And it looks like some countries have done a remarkable job of forecasting 24-48 hr wind production for more than 5 yrs.
This won't solve the issue of prolonged lulls, however but it's not yet a major problem.
One more thing about the French nuke industry - it's pretty much owned outright by the government yet there's very little transparency with regard to cost.
So the true price is not really known.
Do I think it's higher than any other Euro country? No, but I do think there are subsidies in place that are masking the real cost and it's significantly higher than what we're led to believe.
Bottom line is that I'm not convinced any single tech is capable of handling the electricity needs of modern nations in a rapidly warming world, not nuclear & not renewables. Barring some miracle breakthrough, we're going to keep on needing a mix.
But I would like to see coal cut back dramatically, even at great expense. And I don't support the German agenda to foreclose on nuclear plants that are in good operating condition.
Now about that French dumping.
It's unclear exactly what was being sent to Russia but my question is WHY? Why isn't this being done in France? The fact that this was being done on the sly and that they abruptly ended the program 4 years early implies that Greenpeace was on to something.
But exactly what I don't know. But if you have a program with the Russians that's shrouded in secrecy, you're lying about something.
Like how you managed to slip in a jab against "hipsters", who will no doubt destroy civilization.
And you must be smoking a lot of crack if you think IE is a better browser.
TMI happened less than 2 weeks after the China Syndrome was released so it's easy to see why public opinion would have shifted against nuclear power.
Here's what Carter actually said about nuclear power in '77:
I am announcing today some of my decisions resulting from that review.
First, we will defer indefinitely the commercial reprocessing and recycling of the plutonium produced in the U.S. nuclear power programs. From our own experience, we have concluded that a viable and economic nuclear power program can be sustained without such reprocessing and recycling. The plant at Barnwell, South Carolina, will receive neither Federal encouragement nor funding for its completion as a reprocessing facility.
Second, we will restructure the U.S. breeder reactor program to give greater priority to alternative designs of the breeder and to defer the date when breeder reactors would be put into commercial use.
Third, we will redirect funding of U.S. nuclear research and development programs to accelerate our research into alternative nuclear fuel cycles which do not involve direct access to materials usable in nuclear weapons.
Fourth, we will increase U.S. production capacity for enriched uranium to provide adequate and timely supply of nuclear fuels for domestic and foreign needs.
Fifth, we will propose the necessary legislative steps to permit the U.S. to offer nuclear fuel supply contracts and guarantee delivery of such nuclear fuel to other countries.
Sixth, we will continue to embargo the export of equipment or technology that would permit uranium enrichment and chemical reprocessing.
Seventh, we will continue discussions with supplying and recipient countries alike, of a wide range of international approaches and frameworks that will permit all nations to achieve their energy objectives while reducing the spread of nuclear explosive capability. Among other things, we will explore the establishment of an international nuclear fuel cycle evaluation program aimed at developing alternative fuel cycles and a variety of international and U.S. measures to assure access to nuclear fuel supplies and spent fuel storage for nations sharing common nonproliferation objectives.
The Kemeny commission that Carter appointed to review TMI was made up of people chosen specifically for their neutral position on nuclear power.
This, of course, is highly subjective but I've yet to see anyone point out anti-nuke bias against Kemeny or a member of that committee.
One thing that came out of the review was that a crucial valve had not only failed in the open position on multiple occasions but had nearly caused an accident at Ohio's Davis-Besse facility 18 months prior and Babcock engineers had not notified customers of the problem.
What really resulted from Kemeny's review was that the industry as a whole failed itself and that can't be blamed on Jimmy Carter.
Carter was nowhere as anti-nuke as many think and considering that Reagan was very much pro-nuke ( and wasted no time removing the solar panels from the White House roof), he certainly had the motivation & wherewithal to reverse course.
The truth is that TMI & Chernobyl galvanized public opinion and emboldened activists and the very high interest rates of the period, at one time over 20% and rarely below 8% prior to 1988, made the capital-intensive reactors very expensive to build while also battling activists in court.
Here's an excerpt from a '77 speech:
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu...
I am announcing today some of my decisions resulting from that review.
First, we will defer indefinitely the commercial reprocessing and recycling of the plutonium produced in the U.S. nuclear power programs. From our own experience, we have concluded that a viable and economic nuclear power program can be sustained without such reprocessing and recycling. The plant at Barnwell, South Carolina, will receive neither Federal encouragement nor funding for its completion as a reprocessing facility.
Second, we will restructure the U.S. breeder reactor program to give greater priority to alternative designs of the breeder and to defer the date when breeder reactors would be put into commercial use.
Third, we will redirect funding of U.S. nuclear research and development programs to accelerate our research into alternative nuclear fuel cycles which do not involve direct access to materials usable in nuclear weapons.
Fourth, we will increase U.S. production capacity for enriched uranium to provide adequate and timely supply of nuclear fuels for domestic and foreign needs.
Fifth, we will propose the necessary legislative steps to permit the U.S. to offer nuclear fuel supply contracts and guarantee delivery of such nuclear fuel to other countries.
Sixth, we will continue to embargo the export of equipment or technology that would permit uranium enrichment and chemical reprocessing.
Seventh, we will continue discussions with supplying and recipient countries alike, of a wide range of international approaches and frameworks that will permit all nations to achieve their energy objectives while reducing the spread of nuclear explosive capability. Among other things, we will explore the establishment of an international nuclear fuel cycle evaluation program aimed at developing alternative fuel cycles and a variety of international and U.S. measures to assure access to nuclear fuel supplies and spent fuel storage for nations sharing common nonproliferation objectives.
I do think that France's build-out of nuclear plants was impressive but your worship of them should be tempered by a couple facts.
First is that as many as 17 of their 58 plants have been knocked offline or scaled back in a single heatwave because of a shortage of water for cooling thereby needing to import from their neighbors to keep the lights on and costing up to $1300 per megawatt hour.
The normal peak power prices are usually below $100 per MW-hr.
A warming climate will lead to this happening more frequently.
Also, they've been caught dumping nuclear waste in Russia. The lie was that it was sent to be separated and re-enriched to be returned but the truth is that 90% never comes back.
Right now, it seems that no one who has a significant build-up of nuclear waste is doing a proper job of managing it. Who knows how much has been dumped in backwater nations or into the oceans. And that's with nuclear providing 12% of global electricity.
What will the waste problem look like if we try to get to 50% in a hurry? Those thorium trolls may be right but it's not likely we'll know for sure before 2030.
Bullshit.
From 1973 - 1979, about 40 planned reactors were cancelled because of fears of overcapacity. About 53 that were approved before TMI were completed although subject to more stringent oversight.
Unit 1 of TMI was allowed to restart operations in '85 and is licensed to operate until 2034. Carter had described the overall event as minor to his cabinet after visiting the site.
It's true that TMI & Carter did have a considerable impact on nuke plants in the USA but the event that really put the hurt on the industry did NOT happen during Carter's tenure.
That clusterfuck was called CHERNOBYL.
More than half of the Danish electricity cost is tax and their per-capita CO2 emissions are well below the high-income OECD average.
No. It's not besides the point.
His point was that Tesla get a huge subsidy on every car but it's only about 10% of the average selling price of a Model S, maybe not even that.
If you're buying one of the other popular EVs, your rebate could be as much at 30%.
Making any car is going to have a certain environmental impact and EVs are not exempt but lithium isn't one of the problem materials as it's not particularly toxic and it's not typically mined but produced from brine salts or, increasingly, from geothermal flowback.
And coal usage for electricity generation is falling, the new or existing plants are being made cleaner & more efficient, which means it's even more difficult for ICEs & hybrids to compete with EVs.
And he didn't even make a secret of it.
Today is the 8th anniversary of his post about the "Tesla Master Plan, just between you & me"
http://www.teslamotors.com/blo...
Oh, for fuck's sake. Go read the "Tesla Master Plan, just between you & me" that Elon posted on the Tesla forums EIGHT FUCKING YEARS ago TODAY.
http://www.teslamotors.com/blo...
He's only a few years & 1 model behind schedule; not bad for the 1st real auto startup in America in decades.