I have some cheapie RCA cables, and some monster rca cables(parents bought them). The only difference I can tell between the two, whether used for sound or video, is that the cheapies tend to be easier to be a little too loose for my tastes - I'd actually prefer them if I was moving wires all the time, but they've come loose a couple times. Note: these are ~$2-3 cables, where the monster racked in at ~$15 for the same length. Meanwhile, while the monster cable has a much better connector, they are also heavy enough to make me a bit concerned about their effect on the socket. The cabling areas also quickly get crowded with monster cables, as the connector takes ~3 time the volume, and the wire's about double the diameter.
Some careful shopping(like at the bigger radio shacks) you can find cables just as good for less than half the price of the monster brand. I'd be willing to pay the extra $2-3, doubling the price of the cable, for superior construction - IE less likely to break or corrode, and for a good fit(not too tight, not too loose).
Note that I said 'a certain amount' when I refered to the figuring out. Besides, I'd expect any good climatologist to be good enough with math that balancing a budget is rather easy - government is pretty much the only entity capable of running for long periods of time without balancing their budget.
If nothing else, a scientist who runs through their research grant too quickly isn't going to get as much science done.
Imagine the power we'd save(and observatories made happy) if we were to fit all the street lights with motion sensors along the lines of what many people have outside their garage. Heck, network them, so that lights 1 & 2 turn on when 1 detects motion, then 3 turns on when 2 detects it, so on and so forth.
On the other hand - you'd need professional crews with a crane to install them. Cost - $$$. The devices - cost $(in large quantities).
Electricity - cheap. Also, long life street lights generally take a while to warm up, so might have to replace them with something else. $$.
but for guitar amps there is a noticeable different between those that are tube and transistor based.
In which case I'd consider the amp part of the instrument.
I don't think that anybody here is arguing that components can't make a difference in the sound, but there will generally be an order of magnitude more difference between a 10 cent/meter cable and a $1/meter cable than between a $1/meter cable and a $10/meter cable. Given that, even with analogue signals, there might be.01% difference between the sound for $10 cable vs $100 cable, does spending the extra $90/meter on cable make sense? You'd be better off buying better speakers, amplifyer, player, etc...
Especially when you're talking about digital data. When it comes to digital sound, as long as you're getting enough of the bitstream for the error correction to work, you'll get the same sound. Even if there is no repair mechanism, you can't get any better than 100% - which any cable that meets specifications should allow rather easily.
If you live next to a radio station, shielded speaker cables might make sense. If you're working on classified data, go with STP. Otherwise, it doesn't make enough difference to matter.
You see, 'fixing the earth' is a complex affair, especially if you're not going to cop out and either eliminate humanity or return us to hunter-gatherer technology levels.
To the point that any climatologist should be able to balance a budget rather easily.
You see, I'd also expect them to be able to perform a certain amount of economic analysis and at least try to identify the 'best bang for the buck' methods for reducing pollution. After all, they are talking about messing with global economies. Causing a depression for trying to enforce uneconomical standards wouldn't help their cause in the long run. A prosperous economy has more funding for pollution controls, green research, efficiency improvements, etc...
All these are important issues, but only tangentially related to the question of whether Australians will get skin cancer from an hour spent outside.
They can wear sunscreen, which is a good idea even in areas not under the ozone hole.
Personally, I've heard for years about the dangers of ozone emissions from gasoline, etc. Maybe the ozone from those has finally made its way up to the upper atmosphere.
I've always thought it interesting that ozone is considered essential in the upper atmosphere; yet is considered pollution at ground level. That and I've always wondered how many of the 'ozone depleting' chemicals are capable of making it that high. Most of the ones I've seen are fairly heavy gases, that should tend to stay fairly low.
That and I wonder if the hole might not be a more or less natural phenomenon. After all, we discovered the hole pretty much when we first started measuring the ozone layer.
I agree with the parent - there are many, many chemical disasters that we should spend more effort on cleaning up rather than concentrating on this.
IMHO this comparison is not reason: there were no more major civil disaster because ocean liners became obsolete. There were very few ships similar to the Titanic (and there is now none), therefore there was no more accidents. In the same vein: no more nuclear power, no more risks.
Actually, they still have problems with boats sinking - generally I hear about 2-3 ferries sinking a year. Usually it's determined that needed maintenance wasn't being done combined with incompetent crew for 2nd/3rd world countries.
There are still lots of cruise ships out there. Maybe not as big - but they still use some of the safety techniques from that time period.
Building a clean coal plant costs now approx the same as a nuclear one. Taylorville (630 MW), for example (our case study), will cost 2 billion, which will be a very good achievement because this "clean coal" approach is pretty new and disruptive, therefore there are margins for savings. Remember that a nuclear is at the very minimum 2000+ per kW.
Are you just agreeing with what I said? 'Clean Coal' costs as much as a nuclear plant, still has the increased fuel costs of coal, and that's before you consider CO2 sequestriation. Oh, and your link states $1,500-$2,000/watt, not a 'very minimum 2000+ per kW.'
630MW@2Billion = $3.17/watt. Or about 50% higher than the price for nuclear. At that price I'd rather see your high-CF off shore wind farms.
I agree (and it is true for every form of optimization), but on the average we are very far from this point!
I'll agree and disagree with this. For new home insulation, new utilities, etc... It does indeed make sense to go with the higher efficiency levels. However, when it comes to retrofitting it frequently isn't, because it costs so much more. So replace the furnace with a high efficiency one when you'd be replacing the old one anyways. Buy a better refridgerator when the old one craps out.
After a certain point - you're looking at replacing the item, whether it's a house, car, or blender. Homes can last centuries.
In our case study: nope, thanks to IGCC
Better: no very dangerous waste nor nightmare at decommission time.
IGCC still loses a couple efficiency points when you tack on sequestriation. As for the waste - like I keep saying, it's ~95% fuel still. The remaining 5% will reach ambient in a couple hundred years, not thousands. Decommisioning is paid for in the USA by a fund each nuclear plant maintains. It helps by quite a bit when you go from a 40 year plant lifespan to a 60 year one.
There is no perfect-at-birth thingie (early defects are especially common on new electronic systems, but also on mechanical and electric ones). Let's have them enhanced. The very first nuclear plant was very dangerous, clunky and did not produce much power:-)
I'm not arguing that they can't be improved, just that in seeking higher efficiencies they ended up sacrificing durability. Is saving a kw/h a week worth cutting 10-25% of a system's useful lifespan? Heck, for a while they were making homes so well sealed that many became chemical disasters from buildup of home cleaners/chemicals*.
It may also be explained by a lack of competition(?)
Difficult to say for the home HVAC systems. There are about six brands in that zone that are manufactured in different areas. According to my dad, all suffered from that problem. The problem was that in order to get the last % of efficiency, parts needed to be made thinner, like the radiator, and they found that holes were developing. In older systems, the pipes and fins were thicker, reducing efficiency, but any corrosion had to develop further to cause a breach. The higher efficiency devices were also more fiddly; requiring more manhours to fix/maintain.
*One of the reasons I like using simple green where possible.
Not Bizarro World at all. More complex regulation usually translates into 'loopholes'. Not to mention, once you start getting complicated with the regulations, you're more likely to see corporate shills writing the regulations to put even more loopholes that you could drive a mac truck through; assuming you have the money to hire a modest staff of lawyers and accountants to pull of the tricks.
To make your example a little more realistic - it'd be like reducing traffic accidents by simplifying the road system. Eliminate five & six way intersections, for example. Go to on-ramps and limited access/exits for highways. Don't have a lot of varying speed limits in a given length of road. Some will disagree with me, but going to traffic circles rather than red lights or stop signs can reduce accidents.
As for laws, you'd be looking at eliminating stuff like requiring hand signals for turns, having a person walking before the car holding a torch and ringing a bell. Honking your horn before making a turn. Stuff like that.
One many usages it replaces gridpowered or oil-burning stuff.
Bingo. Of course, Grandma burns, wood, oil, or even coal depending on her mood and the weather.
Chernobyl. TMI (no one knows for sure why it did not degenerate into a complete meltdown). Yeah, there are people saying that the tech is OK now, just as some said, before the disaster/incident that those Cherno/TMI plants were safe.
They said the Titanic could never sink. It did. What I'm talking about is that her sister ships, with additional modifications were indeed far harder to sink than the Titanic, though an additional two were lost to mines - but stayed up long enough for full evacuations.
Modern cars are, on average, the safest today - but that's been true for decades, each additional generation is safer than the previous.
Let's add clean coal (it already started, at the federal and local level) and energy conservation, and we are done with the coal problem with no new nuclear plant.
The problem I have with this is that 'clean coal' plants are shaping up to be as expensive as nuclear plants, with higher operating expenses that go even higher if you want CO2 sequestration.
Conservation's fine and dandy (I've retroffited my house with additional insulation), but after a certain point it costs more than it's worth. For example, some modern high efficiency AC systems are turning out to not last as long and require more expensive maintenance - the gain in efficiency is wiped out by the requirement of having the service truck drive out there, not to mention cost. That's because the high efficiency parts have turned out to be less durable. These are not hardware store specials, but high end professionally installed systems.
Though I can't say whether that's because of metallurgical parts having to be built that light, or they compromised on manufacturing expense(IE not a good enough alloy), or just plain 'made in china'.
Now it just seems like you're ignoring my earlier statements.
I usually put stuff against wind because it currently has the best economics. Big solar heat plants that use mirrors instead of photovoltiacs are about double the cost per watt, and photovoltiacs are 4-10 times as expensive.
Biomass makes plenty of sense in some areas - Heck, my grandmother uses it to heat her house. Still, there's very little sense in trying to use it for electricity - we're better off rendering it to ethanol or biodiesel for reducing our oil usage.... while re-affirming his support of wind energy. Egoism or stupidity...
I've never liked Sen. Kennedy, but that was one of my head shakers. The current hypocrisy of many of the 'green' politicians irk me tremendously. Al Gore, for example, runs around in vehicles that he says we shouldn't have, flies all over the place, and uses enough electricity in a month to power all my energy needs for a year.
That's one of the most weird assertion touted by the nuclear industry. It is not solid and leads to implicit very disputed "conclusions". Briefly: radionuclides emitted by coal plants are not very active nor concentrated.
They're the same particles - radiation is radiation. An alpha particle is an alpha, a beta a beta, neutrons... There's more odd facts, like the senate building is too radioactive to be approved at a nuclear plant, as the granite it was made of is mildly radioactive. There are coal sources in use where if we were to collect the uranium in it it'd produce more power than the burning of the coal.
Moreover many assessments are done below the average latency of a radiation-induced cancer (12 years) and with no reminder of the fact that linking most pathologies to a given low-level radiation exposure is extremely difficult, which causes this "linear? non-linear?" debate.
However, studies of high-background radiation areas vs low-background radiation areas have found no increased levels of cancer.
Nuclear is often touted as a perfect answer to carbon-dioxyde 'pollution', but it isn't because the major part (from 60% to 90%) of it is not produced by electricity sources. Nuclear powerplant or clean-energy sources of gridpower will not make a real difference. To illustrate this say that even France (very nuclearized!), albeit it fights hard for a long time in order to avoid using oil (even when it comes to cars!), is simply not able to cope with it.
Coal electricity generation is one of the larger producers of CO2 in the USA. Shutting them down, besides eliminating all the real pollution they produce, would drop our CO2 emissions by quite a bit. Cheap power can help to develop affordable alternatives to oil powered vehicles.
For example, you could collocate an ethanol plant to help make use of the waste heat.
On the other hand, it looks like you'll never be able to convince me that nuclear power isn't safe, and likewise, I won't be able to convince you that it can be done safely.
Look - the highest target you've mentioned is 40% renewable. Even if we were to achieve that, we'd still need to make up the remaining 60%. Nuclear would be the best option for that.
A chunk of that 50% would be community colleges though - two year programs. That's why I specified four year programs. Then I wouldn't underestimate that there's also a whole range of college programs - ranging from almost brain-dead easy to incredibly difficult.
As you stated, many never finish, though I'm a textbook case of why you don't close the books(first degree at 27). Heck, my mother didn't get her bachelor's until she was 40.
Probably has something to do with that only a fraction of our population goes to a university for a four year program, much less longer. I think that if you look at US Citizens who go into these programs that you'll see a noticeable skew in which schools they come from.
Remember, while our schools might be below average compared with other first world nations, it's also an extremely fragmented system - unlike how some school systems are nationally administered, you have to remember that every state has it's own school system - indeed you can frequently substitute counties and cities in there as well. This means in that while the USA has some of the worst schools in the world - we also have some of the best in the world. There are regions where public schools would be considered excellent, and areas where anybody who's anybody send their children to private institutions.
Finally, we've been concentrating too much on mediocrity - spending too much effort on making sure everybody we can meets minimum standards, rather than trying to push students as far as they'll go.
I showed that much higher capacity factors are already reached, and that ~90% is planned on at least a farm. Those 'maths' may no apply
Planned where? I'll admit that, with proper installation and careful selection of location, higher capacity factors can be achieved - but no where near 90%. As you stated, the world record isn't even 60%. The facility averages 52%. Go ahead and install wind where it makes sense - but it doesn't make sense in enough locations for it to be more than a minor source of our electricity in the future, much like how we've pretty much maximized our potential hydroelectric sources in much of the world.
AFAIK this is a record for this type of setup, not an absolute one nor an asymptote
Ah, so we should forge ahead with, according to you, inefficient installations when new technologies will enable higher efficiency at lower costs?
It costs more but has less annoyances (sight, sound...) and better capacity factor. Each need has its more adequate solution.
I'll agree with the 'less annoyances' - though I'll note that Senator Kennedy has been running a campaign against an offshore wind system because he sails there. Another reduction in 'annoyances' would be a reduction in pollution - I've read the stats on coal plants and I'd really like to get rid of them. Besides - you can argue the same thing about a nuclear plant - relative to it's power generation it has a much smaller footprint than a wind farm or dam. I'm not looking for 'adequate' solutions - I want the most optimal/best one.
For what I know this is not anymore a major problem, thanks to appropriate building material and design. It does not impede the already running farms.
Because that's factored in. Note that I was talking about maintenance expenses. They probably ended up compensating by sealing items more, but I'm sure they still have to go out and repaint the stuff fairly frequently and replace sacrificial anodes. This adds up quickly when you're talking about hundreds or thousands of turbines.
AFAIK those are among the worst problems, but every year some new approach and thingie appears in order to further alleviate them. Moreover we are looking for cost effectiveness rather than absolute performance ('efficiency', as in physics): operational research (aimed at TCO!) will do when it comes to cope with "A given site offers better cap. fact. but higher costs than another..."
Yep, and as I keep telling you, nuclear power beats wind and solar for cost effectiveness. Coal beats nuclear until you start trying to factor in the cost of pollution or emission controls so they don't pollute.
For what I know a turbine auto-protects (temporarily ceases producing power) itself when the wind is too strong, but this limitation is from time to time raised by new models.
Just like how new reactors are safer, cheaper, and more efficient than old ones.
Wind: no risk (China syndrome, leak, dissemination of weapon-related technology...), no fuel (cost, strategic implications...), each unit is cheap and easy to 'duplicate' (compared to nuclear), maintenance is "a breeze" (compared to nuclear), no waste...
Unknown but assumed small risk, I don't generally take movies as being credible*, the nuclear industry has a decades long record of emitting less radiation than coal plants, nuclear fuel is an 'insignificant' expense, maintenance is at least centralized for a nuclear plant, and the waste is currently still 95% fuel.
All this for about 6% of the cost, right now? This is a no brainer, even with risk-provisions.
That's assuming your cost assumptions hold true. They're predicting being able to build nuclear power for $1-1.50/watt once it gets going.
Moreover the fast pace of recent wind-techno enhancements show that there is room for R&D: let's invest into wind R&D, during the next 10 years, the amount of money poured into civil nuclear during it peak R&D phase...
Does the $392,261 per agent seem excessive to anyone else? I suppose it depends on what kind of support staff gets lumped into that bucket.
Exactly.
Say an Agent makes $60k. You have to pay for his health care(it's like a military job in that respect), another $10k or so. Training, $10-100k. Taxes, ~$4k. Equipment, $2k. Admin support, retirement benefits, $10k
Office space, new furniture, computer, etc... ~10k,
Non-field supervisor: $150k per 10 field agents, $15k each. Vehicle: $40k. Travel: $40k or more.
It quickly adds up. You have to get not only enough money to pay the new agent, but to bring him up to speed, equip him and enable him to do his job.
It is a friekin' 3D model/avatar, not a real female, that's what juvenile about it. Not that there's anything inherently wrong with being juvenile every now and then, but one should at least acknowledge it.
And I'd rather have a poster of Angelina Jolie on my wall than Brad Pitt.
At least for many of us humans, we're fully capable of extrapolating the 'missing stuff'. And no, it's not a juvenile attribute.
Sure, I consider myself a big kid, but I have fun. And like what Scudsucker said, 'prefer != sexual fixation'.
I happen to like images of the female body, especially excellent examples of them. On the other hand, yes, it's like the difference between erotica and kink: Using a feather is erotica, using the whole chicken is kink.
You give me five seconds to click on the picture I prefer, and pop up an image of a woman and a man, and the vast majority of the time I'd click on the woman. I say 'vast majority' because I'd prefer a picture of a cowboy over a 300lb fattie. Of course, you ask who I'd rather have sex with(said cowboy vs fattie) I'd answer neither.
The convenient disaster's explanation summed up by "Cherno was ill-designed to the point of being very dangerous" is AFAIK moot. I'm not able to detail but here is an account AFAIK adequate, please let me know if there is a flaw.
They also made various changes to Chernobyl reactors 1-3 to make them safer. I read a documentary on Chernobyl when I was in school - it reads like a circus of clowns, much like TMI.
My point remains: Production level US reactors were always safer in design than Chernobyl. Sure, test and research reactors weren't always, but that's because they didn't have a clue. One of the bigger points is that we pre-entomb the reactors in a huge pressure dome - that's designed to take the pressure of the reactor exploding. Steam explosions are unlikely - if nothing else the larger size gives it much more surface area to radiate heat.
Finally, we're talking the model T's of nuclear reactors - can we start at least building honda civics?
An anon comment, referring to E.ON Netz Germany which is mainly (if not only) on shore. Let's forget about it.
First: It wasn't an anon comment it was by a user of the name 'Windpower Research'. Well, at least not an anon comment by slashdot standards.;)
Second, the E.On Germany figure was 18.37% capacity factor(IE truly pathetic), I was pointing out the earlier figure for the off-shore site mentioned in the article, based on actual math.
On particularly favorable locations and in theory some can run an impressive 96% of the time (8440 hours per year),
Like a nuclear plant
and at 5 MW full power 38% of the time.
If we figure that it averages 2.5MW the rest of the time that'd be a cap. factor of 67%, which is not bad.
On an existing site: Since opening in 2000, the turbines at this wind farm have had an average capacity factor of 52% and, according to this report, in 2005 averaged a world record 57.9%..
Ah, a world record. Of 57.9% So much for your 90% figure.
Still, there are more comments. I'll give you that off-shore wind has a higher capacity factor on average than on land. Still, I'll ask that you address a couple issues:
First, how does the cost of installing turbines off shore compare to on shore? I'm pretty sure they'd be more expensive. Second, how does maintenance costs compare when you have turbines exposed to salt air? Third, How many areas are suitable for the installation of off shore wind turbines at these efficiency levels; I'm sure there are many issues with depth and waves that at the least can increase costs if the depth of the sea floor isn't within a certain range. Fourth, how many of these are within useful ranges of cities and other customers for the electricity Fifth, will they have to shut great swaths of these down when a storm passes through?
You still gotta get it cheaper, as you still need backup power for it, much moreso than a nuclear plant. Remember, even a higher capacity factors, it still produces power when it wants to more so than a nuclear plant.
Actually it does. Waste reactor rods are still ~95% fuel. If you reprocess that or use it in a breeder reactor, you burn the rest of the fuel, and are left with radioactive elements that have short half-lives, capable of being at ambient in only a few hundred years.
For the low level stuff, hospitals actually generate more than nuclear plants, and again, it's not actually that dangerous.
Two meltdowns, in 40 years, during the youth of the nuclear industry. I don't ask for perfect records, accidents happen - even hydroelectric occasionally kills people. Heck, give it enough time and people will die from wind towers. Especially off-shore ones.
We still have those electic meters that were suppose to become superfluous.
That was a short term process. We also don't have furniture that housewives simply hose down.
You may think that the learning curve has been ascended,
It's never ascended, there's always further to go. It's just that we're far enough along it for it to be safe and economically useful.
Has the industry stopped asking for subsidies? Does the industry feel it can raise capital without loan guarantees?
Have solar/wind companies stopped asking for subsidies or loan guarantees?
It is prepared to post a bond to cover liability for an accident?
See the price-anderson act.
That would only cost 4-10 cents per kWh over 40 years. It would give much greater confidence if they behaved like they were ready to take responsibility rather than wearing a big REGULATE ME! sign taped to their back all the time.
By your estimate. By my estimate it's already there. $10 billion as a matter of fact. As for the regulate sign - where's your condemnation of radio(FCC), and airplanes(FAA). Increasing the number of reactors would increase this amount, because all nuclear reactors share the bond fund.
Let's not forget that even if the reactor vessel [i]had[/i] failed, there as still a secondary containment structure around the reactor to contain the radiation.
That alone would have saved Chernobyl as well, if it'd had one.
Oh yeah, and Chernobyl reactors were still producing power until the last one was shut down in 2000.
The Ukraine makes noises about restarting them every so often to get aid out of Europe.
Is there reason to believe that uranium mines will be considerably safer than this in the event that all the effort is shifted to nuclear?
One word: Volume.
The volume needed to mine enough uranium to produce a kWh of electricity is so much less than coal that you can get rather extreme on safety, not to mention the sheer fact that you need fewer miners.
To get a picture of it - a coal plant can go through two or more 100 car trainloads of coal a day. A single car of uranium can power a similarly sized nuclear plant for a year. Even though coal is pretty much shoveled directly into the burners while uranium has to be refined, even at a 1000 to 1(1000 tons ore to 1 ton reactor-ready material), you're talking about mining something like.1% of the material.
By the way, it is a myth that you do not need backups and secondary sources with coal/nuclear/gas - both power-lines and the generators themselves trip out all the time, so a cetain amount of ready-to-roll-backup is needed for a stable system anyway..
Sure, for critical systems like hospitals, phones, and server farms, but your average grocery store is able to last through the average power outage without having to throw all the food away without any generator backup.
If your power solution is so unreliable as to have most people looking into building level UPS units, there's a problem.
In the long term, the answer is coming in the form of improved energy storage/regulation technology, like Ultracaps, as well as more traditional methods like pumped hydroelectric storage.
Ultracaps don't even come within orders of magnitude of the cost per kWh of storage necessary for the sort of backup that would be necessary if we were 100% wind/solar. Traditional solutions suffer from a rather classic problem - suitable sites where they can be economically built are few and far between. I did see a system where they had the wind turbines turning pneumatic compressers rather than electric generators, moving generation to where the air was released. This allowed you to stabilize power over time because you could simply let pressure build up when power demands were lower than the power the wind was providing, and dropped pressure when the opposite occured.
The problem with this solution is that you lose efficiency and increase cost(the tubing involved increases cost by something like 30% by itself). They also proposed exploiting natural underground caverns to hold pressurized air so the system could ride out calms even lasting multiple days - part of the problem with this is that those caverns are mostly already used for other things and they rarely occur where the climate is suitable for wind turbines(strong steady winds).
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I have some cheapie RCA cables, and some monster rca cables(parents bought them). The only difference I can tell between the two, whether used for sound or video, is that the cheapies tend to be easier to be a little too loose for my tastes - I'd actually prefer them if I was moving wires all the time, but they've come loose a couple times. Note: these are ~$2-3 cables, where the monster racked in at ~$15 for the same length. Meanwhile, while the monster cable has a much better connector, they are also heavy enough to make me a bit concerned about their effect on the socket. The cabling areas also quickly get crowded with monster cables, as the connector takes ~3 time the volume, and the wire's about double the diameter.
Some careful shopping(like at the bigger radio shacks) you can find cables just as good for less than half the price of the monster brand. I'd be willing to pay the extra $2-3, doubling the price of the cable, for superior construction - IE less likely to break or corrode, and for a good fit(not too tight, not too loose).
Note that I said 'a certain amount' when I refered to the figuring out. Besides, I'd expect any good climatologist to be good enough with math that balancing a budget is rather easy - government is pretty much the only entity capable of running for long periods of time without balancing their budget.
If nothing else, a scientist who runs through their research grant too quickly isn't going to get as much science done.
Bingo. Efficiency of action.
Imagine the power we'd save(and observatories made happy) if we were to fit all the street lights with motion sensors along the lines of what many people have outside their garage. Heck, network them, so that lights 1 & 2 turn on when 1 detects motion, then 3 turns on when 2 detects it, so on and so forth.
On the other hand - you'd need professional crews with a crane to install them. Cost - $$$. The devices - cost $(in large quantities).
Electricity - cheap. Also, long life street lights generally take a while to warm up, so might have to replace them with something else. $$.
Decisions, Decisions.
but for guitar amps there is a noticeable different between those that are tube and transistor based.
.01% difference between the sound for $10 cable vs $100 cable, does spending the extra $90/meter on cable make sense? You'd be better off buying better speakers, amplifyer, player, etc...
In which case I'd consider the amp part of the instrument.
I don't think that anybody here is arguing that components can't make a difference in the sound, but there will generally be an order of magnitude more difference between a 10 cent/meter cable and a $1/meter cable than between a $1/meter cable and a $10/meter cable. Given that, even with analogue signals, there might be
Especially when you're talking about digital data. When it comes to digital sound, as long as you're getting enough of the bitstream for the error correction to work, you'll get the same sound. Even if there is no repair mechanism, you can't get any better than 100% - which any cable that meets specifications should allow rather easily.
If you live next to a radio station, shielded speaker cables might make sense. If you're working on classified data, go with STP. Otherwise, it doesn't make enough difference to matter.
You're either wierd or have low expectations.
You see, 'fixing the earth' is a complex affair, especially if you're not going to cop out and either eliminate humanity or return us to hunter-gatherer technology levels.
To the point that any climatologist should be able to balance a budget rather easily.
You see, I'd also expect them to be able to perform a certain amount of economic analysis and at least try to identify the 'best bang for the buck' methods for reducing pollution. After all, they are talking about messing with global economies. Causing a depression for trying to enforce uneconomical standards wouldn't help their cause in the long run. A prosperous economy has more funding for pollution controls, green research, efficiency improvements, etc...
All these are important issues, but only tangentially related to the question of whether Australians will get skin cancer from an hour spent outside.
They can wear sunscreen, which is a good idea even in areas not under the ozone hole.
Personally, I've heard for years about the dangers of ozone emissions from gasoline, etc. Maybe the ozone from those has finally made its way up to the upper atmosphere.
I've always thought it interesting that ozone is considered essential in the upper atmosphere; yet is considered pollution at ground level. That and I've always wondered how many of the 'ozone depleting' chemicals are capable of making it that high. Most of the ones I've seen are fairly heavy gases, that should tend to stay fairly low.
That and I wonder if the hole might not be a more or less natural phenomenon. After all, we discovered the hole pretty much when we first started measuring the ozone layer.
I agree with the parent - there are many, many chemical disasters that we should spend more effort on cleaning up rather than concentrating on this.
IMHO this comparison is not reason: there were no more major civil disaster because ocean liners became obsolete. There were very few ships similar to the Titanic (and there is now none), therefore there was no more accidents. In the same vein: no more nuclear power, no more risks.
:-)
Actually, they still have problems with boats sinking - generally I hear about 2-3 ferries sinking a year. Usually it's determined that needed maintenance wasn't being done combined with incompetent crew for 2nd/3rd world countries.
There are still lots of cruise ships out there. Maybe not as big - but they still use some of the safety techniques from that time period.
Building a clean coal plant costs now approx the same as a nuclear one. Taylorville (630 MW), for example (our case study), will cost 2 billion, which will be a very good achievement because this "clean coal" approach is pretty new and disruptive, therefore there are margins for savings. Remember that a nuclear is at the very minimum 2000+ per kW.
Are you just agreeing with what I said? 'Clean Coal' costs as much as a nuclear plant, still has the increased fuel costs of coal, and that's before you consider CO2 sequestriation. Oh, and your link states $1,500-$2,000/watt, not a 'very minimum 2000+ per kW.'
630MW@2Billion = $3.17/watt. Or about 50% higher than the price for nuclear. At that price I'd rather see your high-CF off shore wind farms.
I agree (and it is true for every form of optimization), but on the average we are very far from this point!
I'll agree and disagree with this. For new home insulation, new utilities, etc... It does indeed make sense to go with the higher efficiency levels. However, when it comes to retrofitting it frequently isn't, because it costs so much more. So replace the furnace with a high efficiency one when you'd be replacing the old one anyways. Buy a better refridgerator when the old one craps out.
After a certain point - you're looking at replacing the item, whether it's a house, car, or blender. Homes can last centuries.
In our case study: nope, thanks to IGCC
Better: no very dangerous waste nor nightmare at decommission time.
IGCC still loses a couple efficiency points when you tack on sequestriation. As for the waste - like I keep saying, it's ~95% fuel still. The remaining 5% will reach ambient in a couple hundred years, not thousands. Decommisioning is paid for in the USA by a fund each nuclear plant maintains. It helps by quite a bit when you go from a 40 year plant lifespan to a 60 year one.
There is no perfect-at-birth thingie (early defects are especially common on new electronic systems, but also on mechanical and electric ones). Let's have them enhanced. The very first nuclear plant was very dangerous, clunky and did not produce much power
I'm not arguing that they can't be improved, just that in seeking higher efficiencies they ended up sacrificing durability. Is saving a kw/h a week worth cutting 10-25% of a system's useful lifespan? Heck, for a while they were making homes so well sealed that many became chemical disasters from buildup of home cleaners/chemicals*.
It may also be explained by a lack of competition(?)
Difficult to say for the home HVAC systems. There are about six brands in that zone that are manufactured in different areas. According to my dad, all suffered from that problem. The problem was that in order to get the last % of efficiency, parts needed to be made thinner, like the radiator, and they found that holes were developing. In older systems, the pipes and fins were thicker, reducing efficiency, but any corrosion had to develop further to cause a breach. The higher efficiency devices were also more fiddly; requiring more manhours to fix/maintain.
*One of the reasons I like using simple green where possible.
Nice link, just what I was trying to think of.
Not Bizarro World at all. More complex regulation usually translates into 'loopholes'. Not to mention, once you start getting complicated with the regulations, you're more likely to see corporate shills writing the regulations to put even more loopholes that you could drive a mac truck through; assuming you have the money to hire a modest staff of lawyers and accountants to pull of the tricks.
To make your example a little more realistic - it'd be like reducing traffic accidents by simplifying the road system. Eliminate five & six way intersections, for example. Go to on-ramps and limited access/exits for highways. Don't have a lot of varying speed limits in a given length of road. Some will disagree with me, but going to traffic circles rather than red lights or stop signs can reduce accidents.
As for laws, you'd be looking at eliminating stuff like requiring hand signals for turns, having a person walking before the car holding a torch and ringing a bell. Honking your horn before making a turn. Stuff like that.
Sorry for the delay, was busy.
One many usages it replaces gridpowered or oil-burning stuff.
Bingo. Of course, Grandma burns, wood, oil, or even coal depending on her mood and the weather.
Chernobyl. TMI (no one knows for sure why it did not degenerate into a complete meltdown). Yeah, there are people saying that the tech is OK now, just as some said, before the disaster/incident that those Cherno/TMI plants were safe.
They said the Titanic could never sink. It did. What I'm talking about is that her sister ships, with additional modifications were indeed far harder to sink than the Titanic, though an additional two were lost to mines - but stayed up long enough for full evacuations.
Modern cars are, on average, the safest today - but that's been true for decades, each additional generation is safer than the previous.
Let's add clean coal (it already started, at the federal and local level) and energy conservation, and we are done with the coal problem with no new nuclear plant.
The problem I have with this is that 'clean coal' plants are shaping up to be as expensive as nuclear plants, with higher operating expenses that go even higher if you want CO2 sequestration.
Conservation's fine and dandy (I've retroffited my house with additional insulation), but after a certain point it costs more than it's worth. For example, some modern high efficiency AC systems are turning out to not last as long and require more expensive maintenance - the gain in efficiency is wiped out by the requirement of having the service truck drive out there, not to mention cost. That's because the high efficiency parts have turned out to be less durable. These are not hardware store specials, but high end professionally installed systems.
Though I can't say whether that's because of metallurgical parts having to be built that light, or they compromised on manufacturing expense(IE not a good enough alloy), or just plain 'made in china'.
Now it just seems like you're ignoring my earlier statements.
... while re-affirming his support of wind energy. Egoism or stupidity...
I usually put stuff against wind because it currently has the best economics. Big solar heat plants that use mirrors instead of photovoltiacs are about double the cost per watt, and photovoltiacs are 4-10 times as expensive.
Biomass makes plenty of sense in some areas - Heck, my grandmother uses it to heat her house. Still, there's very little sense in trying to use it for electricity - we're better off rendering it to ethanol or biodiesel for reducing our oil usage.
I've never liked Sen. Kennedy, but that was one of my head shakers. The current hypocrisy of many of the 'green' politicians irk me tremendously. Al Gore, for example, runs around in vehicles that he says we shouldn't have, flies all over the place, and uses enough electricity in a month to power all my energy needs for a year.
That's one of the most weird assertion touted by the nuclear industry. It is not solid and leads to implicit very disputed "conclusions". Briefly: radionuclides emitted by coal plants are not very active nor concentrated.
They're the same particles - radiation is radiation. An alpha particle is an alpha, a beta a beta, neutrons... There's more odd facts, like the senate building is too radioactive to be approved at a nuclear plant, as the granite it was made of is mildly radioactive. There are coal sources in use where if we were to collect the uranium in it it'd produce more power than the burning of the coal.
Moreover many assessments are done below the average latency of a radiation-induced cancer (12 years) and with no reminder of the fact that linking most pathologies to a given low-level radiation exposure is extremely difficult, which causes this "linear? non-linear?" debate.
However, studies of high-background radiation areas vs low-background radiation areas have found no increased levels of cancer.
Nuclear is often touted as a perfect answer to carbon-dioxyde 'pollution', but it isn't because the major part (from 60% to 90%) of it is not produced by electricity sources. Nuclear powerplant or clean-energy sources of gridpower will not make a real difference. To illustrate this say that even France (very nuclearized!), albeit it fights hard for a long time in order to avoid using oil (even when it comes to cars!), is simply not able to cope with it.
Coal electricity generation is one of the larger producers of CO2 in the USA. Shutting them down, besides eliminating all the real pollution they produce, would drop our CO2 emissions by quite a bit. Cheap power can help to develop affordable alternatives to oil powered vehicles.
For example, you could collocate an ethanol plant to help make use of the waste heat.
On the other hand, it looks like you'll never be able to convince me that nuclear power isn't safe, and likewise, I won't be able to convince you that it can be done safely.
Look - the highest target you've mentioned is 40% renewable. Even if we were to achieve that, we'd still need to make up the remaining 60%. Nuclear would be the best option for that.
A chunk of that 50% would be community colleges though - two year programs. That's why I specified four year programs. Then I wouldn't underestimate that there's also a whole range of college programs - ranging from almost brain-dead easy to incredibly difficult.
As you stated, many never finish, though I'm a textbook case of why you don't close the books(first degree at 27). Heck, my mother didn't get her bachelor's until she was 40.
Probably has something to do with that only a fraction of our population goes to a university for a four year program, much less longer. I think that if you look at US Citizens who go into these programs that you'll see a noticeable skew in which schools they come from.
Remember, while our schools might be below average compared with other first world nations, it's also an extremely fragmented system - unlike how some school systems are nationally administered, you have to remember that every state has it's own school system - indeed you can frequently substitute counties and cities in there as well. This means in that while the USA has some of the worst schools in the world - we also have some of the best in the world. There are regions where public schools would be considered excellent, and areas where anybody who's anybody send their children to private institutions.
Finally, we've been concentrating too much on mediocrity - spending too much effort on making sure everybody we can meets minimum standards, rather than trying to push students as far as they'll go.
I showed that much higher capacity factors are already reached, and that ~90% is planned on at least a farm. Those 'maths' may no apply
Planned where? I'll admit that, with proper installation and careful selection of location, higher capacity factors can be achieved - but no where near 90%. As you stated, the world record isn't even 60%. The facility averages 52%. Go ahead and install wind where it makes sense - but it doesn't make sense in enough locations for it to be more than a minor source of our electricity in the future, much like how we've pretty much maximized our potential hydroelectric sources in much of the world.
AFAIK this is a record for this type of setup, not an absolute one nor an asymptote
Ah, so we should forge ahead with, according to you, inefficient installations when new technologies will enable higher efficiency at lower costs?
It costs more but has less annoyances (sight, sound...) and better capacity factor. Each need has its more adequate solution.
I'll agree with the 'less annoyances' - though I'll note that Senator Kennedy has been running a campaign against an offshore wind system because he sails there. Another reduction in 'annoyances' would be a reduction in pollution - I've read the stats on coal plants and I'd really like to get rid of them. Besides - you can argue the same thing about a nuclear plant - relative to it's power generation it has a much smaller footprint than a wind farm or dam. I'm not looking for 'adequate' solutions - I want the most optimal/best one.
For what I know this is not anymore a major problem, thanks to appropriate building material and design. It does not impede the already running farms.
Because that's factored in. Note that I was talking about maintenance expenses. They probably ended up compensating by sealing items more, but I'm sure they still have to go out and repaint the stuff fairly frequently and replace sacrificial anodes. This adds up quickly when you're talking about hundreds or thousands of turbines.
AFAIK those are among the worst problems, but every year some new approach and thingie appears in order to further alleviate them. Moreover we are looking for cost effectiveness rather than absolute performance ('efficiency', as in physics): operational research (aimed at TCO!) will do when it comes to cope with "A given site offers better cap. fact. but higher costs than another..."
Yep, and as I keep telling you, nuclear power beats wind and solar for cost effectiveness. Coal beats nuclear until you start trying to factor in the cost of pollution or emission controls so they don't pollute.
For what I know a turbine auto-protects (temporarily ceases producing power) itself when the wind is too strong, but this limitation is from time to time raised by new models.
Just like how new reactors are safer, cheaper, and more efficient than old ones.
Wind: no risk (China syndrome, leak, dissemination of weapon-related technology...), no fuel (cost, strategic implications...), each unit is cheap and easy to 'duplicate' (compared to nuclear), maintenance is "a breeze" (compared to nuclear), no waste...
Unknown but assumed small risk, I don't generally take movies as being credible*, the nuclear industry has a decades long record of emitting less radiation than coal plants, nuclear fuel is an 'insignificant' expense, maintenance is at least centralized for a nuclear plant, and the waste is currently still 95% fuel.
All this for about 6% of the cost, right now? This is a no brainer, even with risk-provisions.
That's assuming your cost assumptions hold true. They're predicting being able to build nuclear power for $1-1.50/watt once it gets going.
Moreover the fast pace of recent wind-techno enhancements show that there is room for R&D: let's invest into wind R&D, during the next 10 years, the amount of money poured into civil nuclear during it peak R&D phase...
Does the $392,261 per agent seem excessive to anyone else? I suppose it depends on what kind of support staff gets lumped into that bucket.
Exactly.
Say an Agent makes $60k. You have to pay for his health care(it's like a military job in that respect), another $10k or so. Training, $10-100k. Taxes, ~$4k. Equipment, $2k. Admin support, retirement benefits, $10k
Office space, new furniture, computer, etc... ~10k,
Non-field supervisor: $150k per 10 field agents, $15k each.
Vehicle: $40k.
Travel: $40k or more.
It quickly adds up. You have to get not only enough money to pay the new agent, but to bring him up to speed, equip him and enable him to do his job.
It is a friekin' 3D model/avatar, not a real female, that's what juvenile about it. Not that there's anything inherently wrong with being juvenile every now and then, but one should at least acknowledge it.
And I'd rather have a poster of Angelina Jolie on my wall than Brad Pitt.
At least for many of us humans, we're fully capable of extrapolating the 'missing stuff'. And no, it's not a juvenile attribute.
Sure, I consider myself a big kid, but I have fun. And like what Scudsucker said, 'prefer != sexual fixation'.
I happen to like images of the female body, especially excellent examples of them. On the other hand, yes, it's like the difference between erotica and kink: Using a feather is erotica, using the whole chicken is kink.
You give me five seconds to click on the picture I prefer, and pop up an image of a woman and a man, and the vast majority of the time I'd click on the woman. I say 'vast majority' because I'd prefer a picture of a cowboy over a 300lb fattie. Of course, you ask who I'd rather have sex with(said cowboy vs fattie) I'd answer neither.
The convenient disaster's explanation summed up by "Cherno was ill-designed to the point of being very dangerous" is AFAIK moot. I'm not able to detail but here is an account AFAIK adequate, please let me know if there is a flaw.
They also made various changes to Chernobyl reactors 1-3 to make them safer. I read a documentary on Chernobyl when I was in school - it reads like a circus of clowns, much like TMI.
My point remains: Production level US reactors were always safer in design than Chernobyl. Sure, test and research reactors weren't always, but that's because they didn't have a clue. One of the bigger points is that we pre-entomb the reactors in a huge pressure dome - that's designed to take the pressure of the reactor exploding. Steam explosions are unlikely - if nothing else the larger size gives it much more surface area to radiate heat.
Finally, we're talking the model T's of nuclear reactors - can we start at least building honda civics?
An anon comment, referring to E.ON Netz Germany which is mainly (if not only) on shore. Let's forget about it.
;)
First: It wasn't an anon comment it was by a user of the name 'Windpower Research'. Well, at least not an anon comment by slashdot standards.
Second, the E.On Germany figure was 18.37% capacity factor(IE truly pathetic), I was pointing out the earlier figure for the off-shore site mentioned in the article, based on actual math.
On particularly favorable locations and in theory some can run an impressive 96% of the time (8440 hours per year),
Like a nuclear plant
and at 5 MW full power 38% of the time.
If we figure that it averages 2.5MW the rest of the time that'd be a cap. factor of 67%, which is not bad.
On an existing site: Since opening in 2000, the turbines at this wind farm have had an average capacity factor of 52% and, according to this report, in 2005 averaged a world record 57.9%..
Ah, a world record. Of 57.9% So much for your 90% figure.
Still, there are more comments. I'll give you that off-shore wind has a higher capacity factor on average than on land. Still, I'll ask that you address a couple issues:
First, how does the cost of installing turbines off shore compare to on shore? I'm pretty sure they'd be more expensive.
Second, how does maintenance costs compare when you have turbines exposed to salt air?
Third, How many areas are suitable for the installation of off shore wind turbines at these efficiency levels; I'm sure there are many issues with depth and waves that at the least can increase costs if the depth of the sea floor isn't within a certain range.
Fourth, how many of these are within useful ranges of cities and other customers for the electricity
Fifth, will they have to shut great swaths of these down when a storm passes through?
Ok, fine, let's figure this out again.
Offshore Wind, @50% capacity factor, at $1.30/watt. $2.60/watt
Nuclear, $2.20/watt @90% capacity factor. $2.44/watt
You still gotta get it cheaper, as you still need backup power for it, much moreso than a nuclear plant. Remember, even a higher capacity factors, it still produces power when it wants to more so than a nuclear plant.
Just curious, but do you have an idea of how much radiation is represented by 7 curies?
Radioactive waste doesn't have such a use.
Actually it does. Waste reactor rods are still ~95% fuel. If you reprocess that or use it in a breeder reactor, you burn the rest of the fuel, and are left with radioactive elements that have short half-lives, capable of being at ambient in only a few hundred years.
For the low level stuff, hospitals actually generate more than nuclear plants, and again, it's not actually that dangerous.
Always late and over budget.
Not always, especially outside the USA.
Can't operate without a meltdown.
Two meltdowns, in 40 years, during the youth of the nuclear industry. I don't ask for perfect records, accidents happen - even hydroelectric occasionally kills people. Heck, give it enough time and people will die from wind towers. Especially off-shore ones.
We still have those electic meters that were suppose to become superfluous.
That was a short term process. We also don't have furniture that housewives simply hose down.
You may think that the learning curve has been ascended,
It's never ascended, there's always further to go. It's just that we're far enough along it for it to be safe and economically useful.
Has the industry stopped asking for subsidies? Does the industry feel it can raise capital without loan guarantees?
Have solar/wind companies stopped asking for subsidies or loan guarantees?
It is prepared to post a bond to cover liability for an accident?
See the price-anderson act.
That would only cost 4-10 cents per kWh over 40 years. It would give much greater confidence if they behaved like they were ready to take responsibility rather than wearing a big REGULATE ME! sign taped to their back all the time.
By your estimate. By my estimate it's already there. $10 billion as a matter of fact. As for the regulate sign - where's your condemnation of radio(FCC), and airplanes(FAA). Increasing the number of reactors would increase this amount, because all nuclear reactors share the bond fund.
Let's not forget that even if the reactor vessel [i]had[/i] failed, there as still a secondary containment structure around the reactor to contain the radiation.
That alone would have saved Chernobyl as well, if it'd had one.
Oh yeah, and Chernobyl reactors were still producing power until the last one was shut down in 2000.
The Ukraine makes noises about restarting them every so often to get aid out of Europe.
Bush already made a partial retraction on it, so it's getting more research. That's a semi-good thing, at least.
Is there reason to believe that uranium mines will be considerably safer than this in the event that all the effort is shifted to nuclear?
.1% of the material.
One word: Volume.
The volume needed to mine enough uranium to produce a kWh of electricity is so much less than coal that you can get rather extreme on safety, not to mention the sheer fact that you need fewer miners.
To get a picture of it - a coal plant can go through two or more 100 car trainloads of coal a day. A single car of uranium can power a similarly sized nuclear plant for a year. Even though coal is pretty much shoveled directly into the burners while uranium has to be refined, even at a 1000 to 1(1000 tons ore to 1 ton reactor-ready material), you're talking about mining something like
By the way, it is a myth that you do not need backups and secondary sources with coal/nuclear/gas - both power-lines and the generators themselves trip out all the time, so a cetain amount of ready-to-roll-backup is needed for a stable system anyway..
Sure, for critical systems like hospitals, phones, and server farms, but your average grocery store is able to last through the average power outage without having to throw all the food away without any generator backup.
If your power solution is so unreliable as to have most people looking into building level UPS units, there's a problem.
In the long term, the answer is coming in the form of improved energy storage/regulation technology, like Ultracaps, as well as more traditional methods like pumped hydroelectric storage.
Ultracaps don't even come within orders of magnitude of the cost per kWh of storage necessary for the sort of backup that would be necessary if we were 100% wind/solar. Traditional solutions suffer from a rather classic problem - suitable sites where they can be economically built are few and far between. I did see a system where they had the wind turbines turning pneumatic compressers rather than electric generators, moving generation to where the air was released. This allowed you to stabilize power over time because you could simply let pressure build up when power demands were lower than the power the wind was providing, and dropped pressure when the opposite occured.
The problem with this solution is that you lose efficiency and increase cost(the tubing involved increases cost by something like 30% by itself). They also proposed exploiting natural underground caverns to hold pressurized air so the system could ride out calms even lasting multiple days - part of the problem with this is that those caverns are mostly already used for other things and they rarely occur where the climate is suitable for wind turbines(strong steady winds).