tBBT shows enough pure unadulterated American freedom that is in conflict with sanitized state controlled media. China isn't the only country whose govts are pissed with pure uncensored internet freedom. Even my Brazil "democracy" has tried to police twitter, facebook, google plus to censure critics of politicians specially right before elections. Remember Turkey has banned twitter and facebook. Realize that without serious state controlled media, China will fracture into dozens of states. It's internal language, cultural and social disparities rival only the former USSR. China invented the technique of legalism back in (259 BC – 210 BC) when "China Qin Shi Huang" gave his name to his country, in the past having even censured attempts to use history against current rulers.
And who's fault is that ? Lead, Mercury, Arsenic, Cadmium, (insert your favorite neurological poison here) is poisonous forever. All the many tons of carcinogenic materials dumped into the Fukushima environment by the oil refinery that burned for a week and many other environmental disasters got 1% of the attention the nuclear accident got. Radioactive elements decay into stable elements eventually loosing all of it's radioactivity. Plus alpha radiation from Uranium, Plutonium, Thorium is the easiest radiation to protect ourselves from. A sheet of paper is enough to stop alpha rays. So if you catch my drift the most important aspect of the subject is educating the people that radiation is way less serious than it's cracked up to be. I'm not saying that very high levels of radiation is harmless, it can kill or cause cancer. But that dirty bomb scenarios are way less serious than the media advertises. Consider Chernobyl acted like the biggest dirty bomb ever detonated. Notice there was no nuclear explosion, the explosion and subsequent fire was chemical. Even with all USSR incompetence after the accident just around 100 people died so far. Predicted worse case scenarios is 4000-6000 total deaths in the long run. Should iodine tablets have been administered a very high percentage of those predicted cancer deaths and cancer cases could have been avoided (perhaps as high as 80%). A cobalt, strontium, caesium dirty bomb is no cake walk, but it's not tens of thousands of deaths even if it happens right in Manhattan, Boston or some other high density area. What we have is a mass radiophobia problem. Just as irrational as people with aracnophobia or something of the kind. Sure we shouldn't go playing with spiders, but they don't deserve our panic.
Funny score 10 Reality score 0 Musk wouldn't build anything useless He already said next launch will land much closer to land. Next payload is 8 pretty small orbcomm satellites, it will use in the order of 50% of F9R payload capacity for the target orbit. It expect him to land no further than 50 miles from land, perhaps as little as 10-20 miles. The demand on the next launch as far as recovery will be much easier. The plan will likely be to tow the stage instead of placing it onboard.
One idea that has been persistently floated by SpaceX fans is some kind of floating platform that could be positioned to retrieve the booster without spending fuel to reverse course back to the launchpad. But that idea would probably require fairly calm oceans, would make the solution too limited.
I'm all for saving billions, just don't think that saving a billion is enough to buy a lot of classified spy or big DoD comm satellites, those cost over a billion a piece. Perhaps that should be the next step in Elon's endeavours, applying his SpaceX formula to DoD satellites. The he could save tens of billions of USA money over a decade. On the other hand, US$ 2 billion would pay for the production and launch costs of 12 GPS satellites (using SpaceX booster).
His first ex-wife once said, Elon has big brass balls. Besides the awesome ability to get things done, his apparent total lack of fear of anybody really defines him.
Just because you supply something do the government, it doesn't mean they should be guaranteed a profit. Federal procurement rules would require a competition once there are two suppliers to compete for it. ULA was the only game in town, not anymore, hence the requirement that DoD payloads that the already fully operational SpaceX F9R rocket can handle to be competed on. Elon is very clear that he isn't contesting payloads that he can't handle yet (need Falcon Heavy ready). He's only contesting payloads that he can handle today.
Wait until 2020. By then pretty much every IC car will be a hybrid and there will be at least 12 EV options in the market. 100mpg hybrid diesel cars will be a reality. The issue is car markers are always saving the best of laaaaaast. 100mpg hybrid diesel cars could be in the market already. At 100mpg economy, EVs would make zero sense for people that don't drive a lot. Consider a car with a 20 gallon tank could have 2000 miles range. What I am saying is EVs will be more expensive than IC cars at least until 2030, maybe forever. Probably the price gap will narrow.
If you believe in the cause, and drive a lot, a Tesla is like nuclear power. A huge upfront investment, that pays for itself in time. If you drive 200 miles / day, and keep the Tesla for 10 years, in the end the full cost of the car is paid by saved gas and maintenance costs. Even if you drive 100 miles / day, and keep the car for 10 years, it's the equivalent of purchasing a US$ 30k car + fuel + maintenance economics. A big part is having solar panels + feed in tariff scheme to make electricity even cheaper than utility charges. I'm assuming purchase of a cheaper model S, with 60kWh battery + supercharging and a few optionals and having federal + state EV subsidy.
The LEAF already costs half of a Tesla Model S. You just need to compare the LEAF to a 60kW model S without a lot of optionals. On the high end, a model S costs 3x a LEAF.
The LEAF doesn't scare them, because they control LEAF sales. Have you ever seen a Nissan dealership actively offering a LEAF, or they just have them in case you already made up your mind ? BTW. When I lived in the USA I owned a Eagle Talon (the Mitsubishi Eclipse). Even though I drove it 150k miles over 7 years, I only gave it a single trip to the dealership, right before I sold it, just replaced fluids and tires. Replaced the battery once. There are many IC cars out there that can be driven for 200k miles with perhaps 3 trips to the dealerships. It's the sucker idiots that insist on buying a crappy Detroit car that is built to break down every couple of years. Unless forced to, I'll never buy an american designed car, except for a Tesla, ever again. Japanese/German cars rule.
They don't worship him, they worship his accomplishments and the way he's making a lot of conservative corporations look really bad. If you can't see Elon Musk as a model citizen, then I have less than zero respect for you. I never worshiped Jobs or Gates or Ellison. Cheering worshiping. I do cheer for his success. Go Musk Go ! Make Detroit, ULA, Rocketdyne, coal look really bad. Go !
There are millions of upper middle class hippies in the USA. They have grown up and gotten good jobs after woodstock. Those are exactly the ones willing to pay premium for a Tesla because they believe in the cause. It's not by chance that Tesla is still working with a production backlog in the order of 8 weeks. They can make enough cars for current demand. And demand is increasing non stop, even without any formal advertising. The Tesla X car dealer fight is a big win for Tesla, free advertising.
EVs are mainly charged at home, so they are usually charged daily, even if the battery still has plenty of juice. Charging an EV is just plugging an electric cord on your car at home. A Tesla can be programmed to wait until 1AM to charge or something of the kind. Can a LEAF do the same (plug in when you arrive at home, and the vehicle waits for the cheapest time to charge) ?
Then forget about the electric car, it will always be too expensive for you. Electric cars make economic sense for those who drive a lot. But those will feel range anxiety the worst.
You mean 50MWh ? 50MW is kinda meaningless for batteries, are you quoting discharge speed ? Typical of those in favor of solar and wind, most of them are not engineers. Even if solar+wind works just fine 364 days / year, that's one day too little. As long as solar+wind is replacing coal, I'm all for it, even replacing natural gas. But people forget that a new natural gas baseload plant is about 60% efficient, while a natural gas peaking plant is little over 20% efficient, so this only works if you can replace 90% of your baseload demand with solar+wind. So far most solar+wind in large countries have resulted in more CO2 emissions whenever solar+wind is replacing baseload. If it can reduce need for peaking, then it's great. Don't tell me baseload is not needed. This is a factoid that is yet to be proven. Replace all fossil fuels on a medium sized island like Puerto Rico, Hawaii, Bahamas or Bermuda, then we can compare notes on the economics.
Real soft landings require land or calm seas. Perhaps the criteria SpaceX needs is:
1 - Prove the rocket touchdown was precise (no more than a few meters off)
2 - Prove the rocket wasn't spinning or otherwise unstable instants prior to touchdown with water
3 - Show the rocket didn't break up for some time after splashdown
4 - Try to recover the rocket From what we know, criteria 1,2 and 3 were met. Criteria 4 is unknown so far (and is the least important one). With criteria 1,2 and 3 being met should be enough to give SpaceX hard data to convince NASA, FAA and USAF to at least allow for a near shore splashdown on the the launch (if not a real landing on terra firma).
The Germany plan includes two ways to preserve electricity when they over produce and retrieve it when they have a shortfall: 1 - It does include LOTS of pumped hydro, but the total of Germany's pumped hydro capacity is insufficient to store all overproduction 2 - Exporting electricity to its neighbors (at a lower price) and buying it back when there is a shortfall (at a higher price), but since that electricity is mostly nuclear and fossil, it represents an on demand peaking source Now they are shifting to investing on battery based electricity storage solutions (far more expensive than pumped hydro), specially having citizens owning large PV installations storing electricity themselves, such that they can limit selling overproduction during sunny summer days and use that overproduction in the night, and can buy off peak electricity in winter nights after peak hours are gone and consume it during the day (in the peak of winter PV systems produce less than 1/10th of summertime peak production, so they are close to useless in the winter). Funny thing is pumped hydro works much better with nuclear, since nuclear can produce 24x7 at 100% power (except for refuelling and maintenance outtages both planned), such that pumped hydro can be cycled almost fully on a daily basis, while energy storage capacity needs to be maintained for any periods when the wind underproduces for a few hours any time in the winter or in summer nights. That's the advantage of having a fully predictable electricity source (nuclear) versus a intermittent electricity source (solar is mostly predictable, while wind isn't very much predictable).
Oh yeah, if anybody is pro nuclear must be either misguided or a paid propagandist.
While the anti nuclear folks predicts a massive catastrophe after each nuclear accident and are shown to be exaggerating the effects by an order of 1000 in average. Any presence of radioactivity anywhere is a sure sign of cancers, they don't prove those cancers are happening, content with throwing mud at nuclear. Raising doubt is enough. Come to think of it, those anti nuclear really sound like the paid ones, because they are shown to be radically alarmists all the time.
I'm not a fan of current pressurized water+solid fuel reactors but they are the only solution we know for sure we can solve climate change with total certainty. A paid nuclear propagandist would say LWR reactors are the eight wonder of the world. I want reactors that can't suffer accidents because they are fully passively safe instead of safe through a dozen active safety systems. I have debated this with lots of nuclear technologists that feel that LWR reactors are just fine, thank you.
So I love molten salt reactors because all technical materials about them show me they are truly walk away safe. They aren't pressure cookers trying to throw radiation into the atmosphere. Favorite design is a Fluoride (Lithium and Berrilyum) design. Actually inside the reactor everything is a Fluoride (Uranium, Thorium, Plutonium, Caesium,...). All of those nuclear atoms and fission products fluorides are solids or dense liquids even at modestly high temps, so they don't want to go into the atmosphere. It changes the whole ballgame.
I'm 41 BTW. My core area of expertise is IT and Telecom, but I would call myself a scientist of everything I work at, since I'm always trying to expand the proverbial box substantially all the time. I question everything. But above all, I have a huge problem with the lack of honesty of those with an anti nuclear stance. I'm also a private pilot, and I see all the time the sensationalism thrown at each aircraft accident, and all the BS invented by the media for maximum sensationalism. Nuclear gets the same badgering, but its worse, cause we have even less nuclear accidents than aircraft ones.
Honestly, I'm not paid to post here. This helps me think, blow steam. Like J.K.Rowling once said, if I stop writing, I'll go insane. Plus this goes around in circles anyways. It's not like this will be the ultimate argument that will settle this subject forever. I have already explained all my opinions on this subject. You don't need further answers from me. I know I can't silence anybody with an opinion, I'm not looking to a formal I give up. Bottom line is while Solar and Wind work just fine for small scale projects (compared to retail electricity prices), I'm still unconvinced about solar PV and wind turbines on a utility scale until I see a real world example for a half a million or larger isolated grid running on such sources. Every assertion that I'm not thinking, and that perhaps with more thinking I would see the light, no, I'm not going to think further, I'm waiting for a real world proof that it works until I believe. Then we can sort out the economics in a real world system. Until then, I believe in baseload and peaking sources. I believe that in solar+wind could scale up to 20% of total grid generation (with lots of load following like hydro, biomass and natural gas), but I'm convinced a grid 50% wind+solar will be seriously unstable with current tech. My opinion is we desperately need to loose the anti nuclear attitude. If nuclear were that risky, I'm sure we would see hundreds of former nuclear workers with cancers, showing symptoms of radiation sickness and other serious bad stuff. Instead what I see is lots of conjecture based on FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt). Green Peace has a US$ 200 million / yr budget. They have the money to do some serious studies and publish them. But I'm fully convinced those on the anti nuclear side are locked in a view that nuclear can't possibly be good, that their job isn't to sort out the truth, instead their job is to throw as much dirt as possible on the subject (exact definition of FUD). And I'm pissed that how ridiculous it has become. Since Three Mile Island we see a pattern of extreme dire predictions that are always off by a factor of 200 to 10000 in level of exaggeration and they never seem to learn. So, yeah, that's my agenda. I'm like youtube thunderf00t, I'm in it so cleanup the BS. I'm pro nuclear because I think we are killing the goose that is laying golden eggs every day. Until I see the likes of you starting a nuclear discussion agreeing that Chernobyl didn't kill one million or even 200 thousand people like predicted, but about 6000. Until you agree that the prediction that the Pacific is lost is totally bonkers. Like some guy measuring naturally occurring uranium / thorium radiation in a California beach as proof Fukushima radiation has poisoned his beloved beach. Or just cause some fish has measured borderline radiation levels over recommended maximums means eating that fish would be even a minimal radiation risk. Those levels are set because we can't experiment on people to find out what are the real risks, so they are utterly conservative. Or the fact that right now, the radiation exposure at the areas evacuated present a lower risk to life than living in downtown Tokyo, but Tokyo isn't being evacuated, while the Fukushima evacuation is still in place. Or that the health hazard of having a smoking parent is like an order of magnitude higher risk of cancer than living less than a mile from the Fukushima Daichi. Unless you can agree to those logical pieces of data, don't see much of a point in arguing anything else. Bye bye.
Except when you consider the cost of the peaking sources or energy storage to give you a 99.9999% stable electrical grid. If a wind turbine gives you cheap electricity when the wind is blowing, it doesn't make it cheaper than natural gas, because gas will produce when you want it to produce. Solar is the same thing. Plus you are conveniently disregarding the cost of the real state used to install the solar panels. That's why I like rooftop solar, while I have little respect for those huge desert solar farms. We need a solution to make desert land perfectly livable. We need massive scale desalinization of seawater. The only people that can say they have an economical proposal to do that is the LFTR nuclear reactor (using waste heat means it's having zero or a tiny impact on the reactors electricity generation capacity). That's why I reject this statement of fact about the cost of solar and wind connected to the grid. Show me a real world system with zero fossil fuel energy sources being used, and then we can make a real world evaluation about the cost of wind and solar instead of a biased one like what you quote. This is why we always are locked in this circular debate. Baseload and peaking electricity sources are an essential characteristic of today's grid, and will probably be for another 20 years. Saying baseload is an outdated concept is an extreme exercise in wishful thinking.
You are ignoring the words of many serious environmentalist scientists. They are saying there's no way out without lots of more nuclear power ! People like James Hanson. All the folks that made Pandora's Promise. I watched every anti nuclear attempt to answer Pandora's Promise. Filled with utter generalities calling it names, void of facts.
I hope they succeed and that we know the honest cost to fix it. My main contention with the trillion euro number is the solution can't be applied in less developed countries. I'm not cheering for them to fail. I'm just being honest about the risks of failure. I'm specially worried about the risk of them not investing on nuclear and never reaching significant CO2 emissions reductions. The reality is in other forums populated by a few very anti nuclear germans, they see nuclear as absolutely unacceptable. There are way too many people that are like that. So I have some serious doubt Germany will ever build another nuclear power plant until "they feel the shit has hit the fan".
There is no question that Fukushima could have been avoided. With a cheap solution (moving the generators from the basement to higher floors, increasing tsunami defenses height, either would have done the job). And those exact suggestions were made to TEPCO years prior to Fukushima. But since they were suggestion instead of mandatory, and TEPCO was cash strapped, they thought since the reactors were fine for 35 years, why they needed to change. I wish those anti nuclear can conduct a serious honest study that proves your point, and that they announce they are going to conduct such study and publish the results regardless if they prove or disprove their point. My contention is we get no such honesty from anti nuclear folks, anything they might stumble upon that is pro nuclear is censured inside.
Every hydro dam that isn't full is an energy storage system. It can follow load demand. With its turbine generating full time (but variable load) regardless. I'm not against having economical energy storage. My contention is that purely pumped hydro doesn't get many viable sites. Some countries have none or extremely few. But the specific characteristics of wind turbines are extreme. They vary too much constantly. I'm not saying no to wind. I'm just saying that I have a big issue with saying we have the solution with solar+wind+energy storage alone, when the storage component is still perhaps a decade from becoming economical on a GWh scale. I'm not against solar or wind. I'm against those that say we don't need nuclear cause "renewables alone" are a sufficient solution. I'm pro geothermal power, but against those that ignore geothermal is produced by very inefficient thorium consumption (decay) in the earths core. Thorium is as renewable an energy source as geothermal. Thorium decay produces radioactive radon gas, which is one of the radioactivity sources we inhale from constantly. It seeps from the ground continously.
I am thinking for myself. I have college level physics education (engineering basic curriculum), and I have friends and relatives that are accomplished electrical engineers in transmission, industrial electricity consumption (MW+ levels) and some generation experience. You seem to ignore that the grid has ZERO energy storage characteristics. Ohms law isn't the issue. It's that electricity flows at the speed of light, use it or it overloads the grid (too much electricity = high voltage, too little = low voltage). Load following sources can't shift production like 1% up or down every sub second period. So I don't see you showing how I'm wrong to say that specially too many wind turbines on the grid with their power output from 0 - 35Km/h winds proportional to wind speed cubed, a mere drop from 35Km/h to 30Km/h reduces production by 1/3. The theory that having thousands of turbines linked up smooths that is certainly true when looking at 15+ minute power production intervals, but electricity is nanosecond by nanosecond ! The solution is technically simple, but economically daunting which is having gigantic electrical battery storage systems to smooth out the oscilations. To date it's still acknowledged as uneconomical. Huge capacitors would be much better (very fast charge/discharge, even though they have low energy density). Bottom line, I'm yet to see a self contained grid operating on at least 2/3 wind + solar year round. The case in point isn't Germany, it's the whole European grid, with nuclear + hydro + baseload fossil + peaking fossil producing well over 3/4 total electricity production, in that scenario, wind has plenty of buffer in the rest of the grid. That's why I insist on something like Hawaii, Puerto Rico, Bahamas, Bermuda that is big enough to become an energy storage challenge to run without fossil or nuclear sources. Show just one of those running on solar+wind+geothermal+biomass+hydro alone... Make it happen. I'm indifferent to being proven wrong or not. I'm not cheering against renewables. I'm just posing the challenge hoping some of you is an accomplished transmission and generation electrical engineer that shows me with solid arguments I'm wrong (that I will run by my buddies, on of which is my dad, to verify it, BTW most of them are retired, they have zero vested interest in renewables failing).
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tBBT shows enough pure unadulterated American freedom that is in conflict with sanitized state controlled media.
China isn't the only country whose govts are pissed with pure uncensored internet freedom. Even my Brazil "democracy" has tried to police twitter, facebook, google plus to censure critics of politicians specially right before elections. Remember Turkey has banned twitter and facebook.
Realize that without serious state controlled media, China will fracture into dozens of states. It's internal language, cultural and social disparities rival only the former USSR.
China invented the technique of legalism back in (259 BC – 210 BC) when "China Qin Shi Huang" gave his name to his country, in the past having even censured attempts to use history against current rulers.
And who's fault is that ?
Lead, Mercury, Arsenic, Cadmium, (insert your favorite neurological poison here) is poisonous forever. All the many tons of carcinogenic materials dumped into the Fukushima environment by the oil refinery that burned for a week and many other environmental disasters got 1% of the attention the nuclear accident got.
Radioactive elements decay into stable elements eventually loosing all of it's radioactivity.
Plus alpha radiation from Uranium, Plutonium, Thorium is the easiest radiation to protect ourselves from. A sheet of paper is enough to stop alpha rays.
So if you catch my drift the most important aspect of the subject is educating the people that radiation is way less serious than it's cracked up to be.
I'm not saying that very high levels of radiation is harmless, it can kill or cause cancer.
But that dirty bomb scenarios are way less serious than the media advertises.
Consider Chernobyl acted like the biggest dirty bomb ever detonated. Notice there was no nuclear explosion, the explosion and subsequent fire was chemical.
Even with all USSR incompetence after the accident just around 100 people died so far. Predicted worse case scenarios is 4000-6000 total deaths in the long run.
Should iodine tablets have been administered a very high percentage of those predicted cancer deaths and cancer cases could have been avoided (perhaps as high as 80%).
A cobalt, strontium, caesium dirty bomb is no cake walk, but it's not tens of thousands of deaths even if it happens right in Manhattan, Boston or some other high density area.
What we have is a mass radiophobia problem. Just as irrational as people with aracnophobia or something of the kind. Sure we shouldn't go playing with spiders, but they don't deserve our panic.
Funny score 10
Reality score 0
Musk wouldn't build anything useless
He already said next launch will land much closer to land.
Next payload is 8 pretty small orbcomm satellites, it will use in the order of 50% of F9R payload capacity for the target orbit.
It expect him to land no further than 50 miles from land, perhaps as little as 10-20 miles.
The demand on the next launch as far as recovery will be much easier. The plan will likely be to tow the stage instead of placing it onboard.
One idea that has been persistently floated by SpaceX fans is some kind of floating platform that could be positioned to retrieve the booster without spending fuel to reverse course back to the launchpad. But that idea would probably require fairly calm oceans, would make the solution too limited.
I'm all for saving billions, just don't think that saving a billion is enough to buy a lot of classified spy or big DoD comm satellites, those cost over a billion a piece.
Perhaps that should be the next step in Elon's endeavours, applying his SpaceX formula to DoD satellites. The he could save tens of billions of USA money over a decade.
On the other hand, US$ 2 billion would pay for the production and launch costs of 12 GPS satellites (using SpaceX booster).
His first ex-wife once said, Elon has big brass balls. Besides the awesome ability to get things done, his apparent total lack of fear of anybody really defines him.
Just because you supply something do the government, it doesn't mean they should be guaranteed a profit.
Federal procurement rules would require a competition once there are two suppliers to compete for it.
ULA was the only game in town, not anymore, hence the requirement that DoD payloads that the already fully operational SpaceX F9R rocket can handle to be competed on.
Elon is very clear that he isn't contesting payloads that he can't handle yet (need Falcon Heavy ready). He's only contesting payloads that he can handle today.
Wait until 2020. By then pretty much every IC car will be a hybrid and there will be at least 12 EV options in the market.
100mpg hybrid diesel cars will be a reality.
The issue is car markers are always saving the best of laaaaaast.
100mpg hybrid diesel cars could be in the market already.
At 100mpg economy, EVs would make zero sense for people that don't drive a lot.
Consider a car with a 20 gallon tank could have 2000 miles range.
What I am saying is EVs will be more expensive than IC cars at least until 2030, maybe forever. Probably the price gap will narrow.
If you believe in the cause, and drive a lot, a Tesla is like nuclear power. A huge upfront investment, that pays for itself in time.
If you drive 200 miles / day, and keep the Tesla for 10 years, in the end the full cost of the car is paid by saved gas and maintenance costs.
Even if you drive 100 miles / day, and keep the car for 10 years, it's the equivalent of purchasing a US$ 30k car + fuel + maintenance economics.
A big part is having solar panels + feed in tariff scheme to make electricity even cheaper than utility charges.
I'm assuming purchase of a cheaper model S, with 60kWh battery + supercharging and a few optionals and having federal + state EV subsidy.
The LEAF already costs half of a Tesla Model S. You just need to compare the LEAF to a 60kW model S without a lot of optionals. On the high end, a model S costs 3x a LEAF.
The LEAF doesn't scare them, because they control LEAF sales. Have you ever seen a Nissan dealership actively offering a LEAF, or they just have them in case you already made up your mind ?
BTW. When I lived in the USA I owned a Eagle Talon (the Mitsubishi Eclipse). Even though I drove it 150k miles over 7 years, I only gave it a single trip to the dealership, right before I sold it, just replaced fluids and tires. Replaced the battery once. There are many IC cars out there that can be driven for 200k miles with perhaps 3 trips to the dealerships.
It's the sucker idiots that insist on buying a crappy Detroit car that is built to break down every couple of years.
Unless forced to, I'll never buy an american designed car, except for a Tesla, ever again. Japanese/German cars rule.
They don't worship him, they worship his accomplishments and the way he's making a lot of conservative corporations look really bad.
If you can't see Elon Musk as a model citizen, then I have less than zero respect for you.
I never worshiped Jobs or Gates or Ellison. Cheering worshiping. I do cheer for his success. Go Musk Go ! Make Detroit, ULA, Rocketdyne, coal look really bad. Go !
There are millions of upper middle class hippies in the USA. They have grown up and gotten good jobs after woodstock.
Those are exactly the ones willing to pay premium for a Tesla because they believe in the cause.
It's not by chance that Tesla is still working with a production backlog in the order of 8 weeks. They can make enough cars for current demand. And demand is increasing non stop, even without any formal advertising. The Tesla X car dealer fight is a big win for Tesla, free advertising.
EVs are mainly charged at home, so they are usually charged daily, even if the battery still has plenty of juice.
Charging an EV is just plugging an electric cord on your car at home.
A Tesla can be programmed to wait until 1AM to charge or something of the kind. Can a LEAF do the same (plug in when you arrive at home, and the vehicle waits for the cheapest time to charge) ?
Then forget about the electric car, it will always be too expensive for you. Electric cars make economic sense for those who drive a lot. But those will feel range anxiety the worst.
You mean 50MWh ? 50MW is kinda meaningless for batteries, are you quoting discharge speed ?
Typical of those in favor of solar and wind, most of them are not engineers.
Even if solar+wind works just fine 364 days / year, that's one day too little.
As long as solar+wind is replacing coal, I'm all for it, even replacing natural gas. But people forget that a new natural gas baseload plant is about 60% efficient, while a natural gas peaking plant is little over 20% efficient, so this only works if you can replace 90% of your baseload demand with solar+wind.
So far most solar+wind in large countries have resulted in more CO2 emissions whenever solar+wind is replacing baseload. If it can reduce need for peaking, then it's great.
Don't tell me baseload is not needed. This is a factoid that is yet to be proven. Replace all fossil fuels on a medium sized island like Puerto Rico, Hawaii, Bahamas or Bermuda, then we can compare notes on the economics.
Real soft landings require land or calm seas.
Perhaps the criteria SpaceX needs is:
1 - Prove the rocket touchdown was precise (no more than a few meters off)
2 - Prove the rocket wasn't spinning or otherwise unstable instants prior to touchdown with water
3 - Show the rocket didn't break up for some time after splashdown
4 - Try to recover the rocket
From what we know, criteria 1,2 and 3 were met. Criteria 4 is unknown so far (and is the least important one).
With criteria 1,2 and 3 being met should be enough to give SpaceX hard data to convince NASA, FAA and USAF to at least allow for a near shore splashdown on the the launch (if not a real landing on terra firma).
The Germany plan includes two ways to preserve electricity when they over produce and retrieve it when they have a shortfall:
1 - It does include LOTS of pumped hydro, but the total of Germany's pumped hydro capacity is insufficient to store all overproduction
2 - Exporting electricity to its neighbors (at a lower price) and buying it back when there is a shortfall (at a higher price), but since that electricity is mostly nuclear and fossil, it represents an on demand peaking source
Now they are shifting to investing on battery based electricity storage solutions (far more expensive than pumped hydro), specially having citizens owning large PV installations storing electricity themselves, such that they can limit selling overproduction during sunny summer days and use that overproduction in the night, and can buy off peak electricity in winter nights after peak hours are gone and consume it during the day (in the peak of winter PV systems produce less than 1/10th of summertime peak production, so they are close to useless in the winter).
Funny thing is pumped hydro works much better with nuclear, since nuclear can produce 24x7 at 100% power (except for refuelling and maintenance outtages both planned), such that pumped hydro can be cycled almost fully on a daily basis, while energy storage capacity needs to be maintained for any periods when the wind underproduces for a few hours any time in the winter or in summer nights.
That's the advantage of having a fully predictable electricity source (nuclear) versus a intermittent electricity source (solar is mostly predictable, while wind isn't very much predictable).
Oh yeah, if anybody is pro nuclear must be either misguided or a paid propagandist.
While the anti nuclear folks predicts a massive catastrophe after each nuclear accident and are shown to be exaggerating the effects by an order of 1000 in average.
Any presence of radioactivity anywhere is a sure sign of cancers, they don't prove those cancers are happening, content with throwing mud at nuclear. Raising doubt is enough. Come to think of it, those anti nuclear really sound like the paid ones, because they are shown to be radically alarmists all the time.
I'm not a fan of current pressurized water+solid fuel reactors but they are the only solution we know for sure we can solve climate change with total certainty. A paid nuclear propagandist would say LWR reactors are the eight wonder of the world. I want reactors that can't suffer accidents because they are fully passively safe instead of safe through a dozen active safety systems. I have debated this with lots of nuclear technologists that feel that LWR reactors are just fine, thank you.
So I love molten salt reactors because all technical materials about them show me they are truly walk away safe. They aren't pressure cookers trying to throw radiation into the atmosphere. Favorite design is a Fluoride (Lithium and Berrilyum) design. Actually inside the reactor everything is a Fluoride (Uranium, Thorium, Plutonium, Caesium, ...). All of those nuclear atoms and fission products fluorides are solids or dense liquids even at modestly high temps, so they don't want to go into the atmosphere. It changes the whole ballgame.
I'm 41 BTW. My core area of expertise is IT and Telecom, but I would call myself a scientist of everything I work at, since I'm always trying to expand the proverbial box substantially all the time. I question everything. But above all, I have a huge problem with the lack of honesty of those with an anti nuclear stance. I'm also a private pilot, and I see all the time the sensationalism thrown at each aircraft accident, and all the BS invented by the media for maximum sensationalism. Nuclear gets the same badgering, but its worse, cause we have even less nuclear accidents than aircraft ones.
Honestly, I'm not paid to post here. This helps me think, blow steam. Like J.K.Rowling once said, if I stop writing, I'll go insane.
Plus this goes around in circles anyways. It's not like this will be the ultimate argument that will settle this subject forever.
I have already explained all my opinions on this subject. You don't need further answers from me.
I know I can't silence anybody with an opinion, I'm not looking to a formal I give up.
Bottom line is while Solar and Wind work just fine for small scale projects (compared to retail electricity prices), I'm still unconvinced about solar PV and wind turbines on a utility scale until I see a real world example for a half a million or larger isolated grid running on such sources. Every assertion that I'm not thinking, and that perhaps with more thinking I would see the light, no, I'm not going to think further, I'm waiting for a real world proof that it works until I believe. Then we can sort out the economics in a real world system. Until then, I believe in baseload and peaking sources. I believe that in solar+wind could scale up to 20% of total grid generation (with lots of load following like hydro, biomass and natural gas), but I'm convinced a grid 50% wind+solar will be seriously unstable with current tech.
My opinion is we desperately need to loose the anti nuclear attitude. If nuclear were that risky, I'm sure we would see hundreds of former nuclear workers with cancers, showing symptoms of radiation sickness and other serious bad stuff. Instead what I see is lots of conjecture based on FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt). Green Peace has a US$ 200 million / yr budget. They have the money to do some serious studies and publish them. But I'm fully convinced those on the anti nuclear side are locked in a view that nuclear can't possibly be good, that their job isn't to sort out the truth, instead their job is to throw as much dirt as possible on the subject (exact definition of FUD). And I'm pissed that how ridiculous it has become. Since Three Mile Island we see a pattern of extreme dire predictions that are always off by a factor of 200 to 10000 in level of exaggeration and they never seem to learn. So, yeah, that's my agenda. I'm like youtube thunderf00t, I'm in it so cleanup the BS. I'm pro nuclear because I think we are killing the goose that is laying golden eggs every day. Until I see the likes of you starting a nuclear discussion agreeing that Chernobyl didn't kill one million or even 200 thousand people like predicted, but about 6000. Until you agree that the prediction that the Pacific is lost is totally bonkers. Like some guy measuring naturally occurring uranium / thorium radiation in a California beach as proof Fukushima radiation has poisoned his beloved beach. Or just cause some fish has measured borderline radiation levels over recommended maximums means eating that fish would be even a minimal radiation risk. Those levels are set because we can't experiment on people to find out what are the real risks, so they are utterly conservative. Or the fact that right now, the radiation exposure at the areas evacuated present a lower risk to life than living in downtown Tokyo, but Tokyo isn't being evacuated, while the Fukushima evacuation is still in place. Or that the health hazard of having a smoking parent is like an order of magnitude higher risk of cancer than living less than a mile from the Fukushima Daichi.
Unless you can agree to those logical pieces of data, don't see much of a point in arguing anything else.
Bye bye.
Except when you consider the cost of the peaking sources or energy storage to give you a 99.9999% stable electrical grid.
If a wind turbine gives you cheap electricity when the wind is blowing, it doesn't make it cheaper than natural gas, because gas will produce when you want it to produce.
Solar is the same thing.
Plus you are conveniently disregarding the cost of the real state used to install the solar panels. That's why I like rooftop solar, while I have little respect for those huge desert solar farms.
We need a solution to make desert land perfectly livable. We need massive scale desalinization of seawater. The only people that can say they have an economical proposal to do that is the LFTR nuclear reactor (using waste heat means it's having zero or a tiny impact on the reactors electricity generation capacity).
That's why I reject this statement of fact about the cost of solar and wind connected to the grid. Show me a real world system with zero fossil fuel energy sources being used, and then we can make a real world evaluation about the cost of wind and solar instead of a biased one like what you quote.
This is why we always are locked in this circular debate. Baseload and peaking electricity sources are an essential characteristic of today's grid, and will probably be for another 20 years. Saying baseload is an outdated concept is an extreme exercise in wishful thinking.
You are ignoring the words of many serious environmentalist scientists. They are saying there's no way out without lots of more nuclear power !
People like James Hanson. All the folks that made Pandora's Promise.
I watched every anti nuclear attempt to answer Pandora's Promise. Filled with utter generalities calling it names, void of facts.
I hope they succeed and that we know the honest cost to fix it.
My main contention with the trillion euro number is the solution can't be applied in less developed countries.
I'm not cheering for them to fail. I'm just being honest about the risks of failure.
I'm specially worried about the risk of them not investing on nuclear and never reaching significant CO2 emissions reductions.
The reality is in other forums populated by a few very anti nuclear germans, they see nuclear as absolutely unacceptable. There are way too many people that are like that. So I have some serious doubt Germany will ever build another nuclear power plant until "they feel the shit has hit the fan".
There is no question that Fukushima could have been avoided. With a cheap solution (moving the generators from the basement to higher floors, increasing tsunami defenses height, either would have done the job). And those exact suggestions were made to TEPCO years prior to Fukushima. But since they were suggestion instead of mandatory, and TEPCO was cash strapped, they thought since the reactors were fine for 35 years, why they needed to change.
I wish those anti nuclear can conduct a serious honest study that proves your point, and that they announce they are going to conduct such study and publish the results regardless if they prove or disprove their point. My contention is we get no such honesty from anti nuclear folks, anything they might stumble upon that is pro nuclear is censured inside.
Every hydro dam that isn't full is an energy storage system. It can follow load demand. With its turbine generating full time (but variable load) regardless.
I'm not against having economical energy storage. My contention is that purely pumped hydro doesn't get many viable sites. Some countries have none or extremely few.
But the specific characteristics of wind turbines are extreme. They vary too much constantly. I'm not saying no to wind. I'm just saying that I have a big issue with saying we have the solution with solar+wind+energy storage alone, when the storage component is still perhaps a decade from becoming economical on a GWh scale.
I'm not against solar or wind. I'm against those that say we don't need nuclear cause "renewables alone" are a sufficient solution.
I'm pro geothermal power, but against those that ignore geothermal is produced by very inefficient thorium consumption (decay) in the earths core. Thorium is as renewable an energy source as geothermal. Thorium decay produces radioactive radon gas, which is one of the radioactivity sources we inhale from constantly. It seeps from the ground continously.
I am thinking for myself. I have college level physics education (engineering basic curriculum), and I have friends and relatives that are accomplished electrical engineers in transmission, industrial electricity consumption (MW+ levels) and some generation experience.
You seem to ignore that the grid has ZERO energy storage characteristics. Ohms law isn't the issue. It's that electricity flows at the speed of light, use it or it overloads the grid (too much electricity = high voltage, too little = low voltage).
Load following sources can't shift production like 1% up or down every sub second period.
So I don't see you showing how I'm wrong to say that specially too many wind turbines on the grid with their power output from 0 - 35Km/h winds proportional to wind speed cubed, a mere drop from 35Km/h to 30Km/h reduces production by 1/3. The theory that having thousands of turbines linked up smooths that is certainly true when looking at 15+ minute power production intervals, but electricity is nanosecond by nanosecond !
The solution is technically simple, but economically daunting which is having gigantic electrical battery storage systems to smooth out the oscilations. To date it's still acknowledged as uneconomical. Huge capacitors would be much better (very fast charge/discharge, even though they have low energy density).
Bottom line, I'm yet to see a self contained grid operating on at least 2/3 wind + solar year round. The case in point isn't Germany, it's the whole European grid, with nuclear + hydro + baseload fossil + peaking fossil producing well over 3/4 total electricity production, in that scenario, wind has plenty of buffer in the rest of the grid.
That's why I insist on something like Hawaii, Puerto Rico, Bahamas, Bermuda that is big enough to become an energy storage challenge to run without fossil or nuclear sources. Show just one of those running on solar+wind+geothermal+biomass+hydro alone... Make it happen. I'm indifferent to being proven wrong or not. I'm not cheering against renewables. I'm just posing the challenge hoping some of you is an accomplished transmission and generation electrical engineer that shows me with solid arguments I'm wrong (that I will run by my buddies, on of which is my dad, to verify it, BTW most of them are retired, they have zero vested interest in renewables failing).