As soon as your plant recognizes that its heat tank goes below a certain temperature, it signals the control center that it is ready to generate a certain amount of electrical power anytime soon. The center notes it down, so when the time comes (may right now, maybe in a few hours) it tells the plant to do it
But when everyone in your house is taking their morning shower ready to go to work/school you don't want to have to wait a few hours for the hot water to be ready - you want it now.
Anyway, since you can turn gas into heat at about the same efficiency as this thing turns gas into electricity + heat this is just a scam to offset the price of your (increased) gas consumption by the difference between the price of gas and electricity.
A magnificent rant, spoiled by at least one major error of fact:
Here's another one of those dirty little secrets the all pro nuke crowd forget [...] They use *partially* spent fuel to make mass quantities of poisonous and still radioactive enough munitions and armor
No they don't. "Depleted Uranium" is made from waste from enrichment, not reactors. No civilian reactor waste is recycled in the US.
I put "waste" in scare quotes because, with recycling, what comes out of a reactor isn't waste, it's partially burned fuel. Some of what comes out of the recycling plant is waste.
Still has nothing to do with CO2 emissions though.
and let the waste products used also vanish into thin air...
Because the waste products are so voluminous they need thousands of trucks a year to transport? Or maybe, for the little there is, one could have a railway line? You know, maybe it could be electrified? Using maybe nuclear power to produce the electricity?
(And those wacky Americans don't even transport the stuff, they just leave it on site).
Yes, let's magically produce uranium,plutonium,concrete,steel,copper out of thin air then, shall we ? and let the waste products used also vanish into thin air...
And no other electricity generation method uses concrete, steel or copper?
Claiming that production of uranium(*), concrete, steel and copper necessarily uses fossil fuels is stupid. At the moment it does because we don't have enough nukes.
(* in fact, as the scaremongering aussies admit uranium enrichment can be (read is already) done using electricity generated from nuclear power, see Tricastin - "The site houses 4 Pressurized water reactors [...] These reactors produce about 25 TWh/year, or 6% of France's electricity, but about 2/3rds of that goes right back into the Eurodif Uranium enrichment factory.)
So you don't use hot water at all in the summer then ? Explains a lot.
I don't use much of it for heating the house. I have a children so insane amounts of it get used in the shower every morning while they try to wake up before school.
Pro-tip - central heating uses radiators which can be turned off !
So what happens when your hot water tank hits 100 and all your radiators are turned off?
This system cannot be used for load following - you can't pump unplanned amounts of heat into peoples houses, they have to decide how much heat they want, so they decide how much electricity goes into the grid - lots on cold days in winter, not so much in summer.
(P.S. I don't turn my radiators off because I have an intelligent central heating system that doesn't heat the water if it notices that the house is already warm).
Also, in contrast to a nuclear plant, this swarm can react almost instantly to changes in supply or demand, thus complementing the fluctuating levels of power generated by wind and solar (try achieveing that with a centralized mega-plant).
but he's wrong. EDF does actually run some it's nuke plants in load following mode - it's not as efficient, but when you have a lot of plants why the hell not.
If Germany were to go 100% nuclear, who's left in Europe to buy their power?
All the other idiots who got rid of their nukes and now do nice green things like burn lignite to make power (yes Denmark I'm looking at you).
I guess we're also ignoring the fact that the workers breathe and engage in other activities in living that emit CO2.
The same argument is made in a stupid car ad - some loonies are living a "frugal" life trying to emit not CO2, and being interviewed - the guru of the loonies claims they've achieved zero CO2 emissions and the interviewer ripostes - "but you're emitting CO2 by breathing". The interviewer, and you, are only right if the food the breather ate was made from fossil fuels.
(Of course most of the food we eat these days is made from fossil fuels(*) - that's why we're all going to die when we run out of 'em, and that's why we're mad to be using them to generate electricity and heat our homes).
((*) Ammonia based fertilizers are made from natural gas).
Well, it's not green, but the mural on the cooling tower at the Cruas plant near Montélimar took 4,000 litres of paint, so you should be able to make a bit of dosh.
(Most paint production is one of the least "green" activities you could imagine - petrochemical shit all over the place).
I just love this quote on that scaremongering site:
If you ignore the vehicles that the workers use to get to work, the reactor does not produce any CO2. But it does use electricity, as well as produce it, and to the extent that electricity is largely produced by fossil fuels, this needs to be counted in the energy balance.
So, since the plant needs electricity to keep the lights on, and so much electricity is generated by fossil fuels, you should count the CO2 emitted by a fossil fuel plant to generate the electricity used to keep the lights on in a nuke plant as if it were emitted by the nuke plant. WTF!
Every single argument(*) on that site is an argument for increasing nuclear power generation so we can use nuke's to replace the non-nuke powered steps.
(* except for the CO2 emitted by the concrete in the plant. And we all know that no other power generation technology uses concrete, so nukes are uniquely bad. Not.)
There is one thing that nucular[sic] plants can't do, namely ramp up in a minute.
So, I've got one of these thingies, it's high summer, everyone turns on the aircond - bam! My house heating system turns on. WTF!
As for "Nuclear plants take a few hours to get going", like I said elsewhere - talk to the French. The EDF run some of their plants in load following mode, they have just so damn many of them.
Also, in contrast to a nuclear plant, this swarm can react almost instantly to changes in supply or demand, thus complementing the fluctuating levels of power generated by wind and solar (try achieveing that with a centralized mega-plant).
building infrastructure like decent roads and water supplies in sub-Saharan Africa (and enabling basic economic development and human welfare)
Ah, the old "whitey's on the moon"/"so much trouble in the world" problem.
Frankly I think we need to get whitey on the moon as fast as we can to stop the fucker messing around in Baghdad, Kabul, Tehran, Islamabad and just about every other fucking place you can think of.
I'll expand your idea to my local utility, Progress Energy in Florida. Progress Energy estimates that a two reactor plant is going to cost $17 billion (http://www.newsobserver.com/business/story/993686.html)
At an 8% cost of capital, that is 1.36 billion a year. With a 35 useful lifetime of the plant, there is an additional.5 billion a year to repay the capital. Throw in some of the other costs you mention (fuel, labor, property taxes, etc) and let's say the plant needs to earn 2 billion a year with no profit for the owners.
I know the dollar isn't worth as much as it used to be, but USD 8.5 billion for 1154MWe seems a little high. The Flamanville 3 reactor is budgeted at EUR 3.3 billion ( ~ USD 4.8 billion) for 1600MWe.
As for 8% for the capital, the EDF just raised EUR 3.2 billion at 4.5%
The major difference between our [USA?] service and theirs [rest of the world?] is that our plans aren't rated by data transferred per month. In the EU, Japan, even Australia, end users have 5G, 10G, 25G plans et al.
Typical slashdot, guy gets "insightful" for something that's untrue. I'm in France, part of the EU, I have an ADSL2+ connection at home - no data transfer limit, the 3-5Mbit/s speed limit is imposed by the 3.5Km distance between my house and the DSLAM. I have a "50Mbit/s" FTTH (GPON) connection at work, no data transfer limit, it often gives me speeds of around 75Mbit/s even though it's sold as 50. (Last test I did).
Slashdot Mirror
But when everyone in your house is taking their morning shower ready to go to work/school you don't want to have to wait a few hours for the hot water to be ready - you want it now.
Anyway, since you can turn gas into heat at about the same efficiency as this thing turns gas into electricity + heat this is just a scam to offset the price of your (increased) gas consumption by the difference between the price of gas and electricity.
A magnificent rant, spoiled by at least one major error of fact:
No they don't. "Depleted Uranium" is made from waste from enrichment, not reactors. No civilian reactor waste is recycled in the US.
I put "waste" in scare quotes because, with recycling, what comes out of a reactor isn't waste, it's partially burned fuel. Some of what comes out of the recycling plant is waste.
Still has nothing to do with CO2 emissions though.
Sorry, forgot about the "deadly" "waste".
Because the waste products are so voluminous they need thousands of trucks a year to transport? Or maybe, for the little there is, one could have a railway line? You know, maybe it could be electrified? Using maybe nuclear power to produce the electricity?
(And those wacky Americans don't even transport the stuff, they just leave it on site).
And no other electricity generation method uses concrete, steel or copper?
Claiming that production of uranium(*), concrete, steel and copper necessarily uses fossil fuels is stupid. At the moment it does because we don't have enough nukes.
(* in fact, as the scaremongering aussies admit uranium enrichment can be (read is already) done using electricity generated from nuclear power, see Tricastin - "The site houses 4 Pressurized water reactors [...] These reactors produce about 25 TWh/year, or 6% of France's electricity, but about 2/3rds of that goes right back into the Eurodif Uranium enrichment factory.)
I don't use much of it for heating the house. I have a children so insane amounts of it get used in the shower every morning while they try to wake up before school.
So what happens when your hot water tank hits 100 and all your radiators are turned off?
This system cannot be used for load following - you can't pump unplanned amounts of heat into peoples houses, they have to decide how much heat they want, so they decide how much electricity goes into the grid - lots on cold days in winter, not so much in summer.
(P.S. I don't turn my radiators off because I have an intelligent central heating system that doesn't heat the water if it notices that the house is already warm).
Follow the link. The (G)GP said:
but he's wrong. EDF does actually run some it's nuke plants in load following mode - it's not as efficient, but when you have a lot of plants why the hell not.
All the other idiots who got rid of their nukes and now do nice green things like burn lignite to make power (yes Denmark I'm looking at you).
The same argument is made in a stupid car ad - some loonies are living a "frugal" life trying to emit not CO2, and being interviewed - the guru of the loonies claims they've achieved zero CO2 emissions and the interviewer ripostes - "but you're emitting CO2 by breathing". The interviewer, and you, are only right if the food the breather ate was made from fossil fuels.
(Of course most of the food we eat these days is made from fossil fuels(*) - that's why we're all going to die when we run out of 'em, and that's why we're mad to be using them to generate electricity and heat our homes).
((*) Ammonia based fertilizers are made from natural gas).
Well, it's not green, but the mural on the cooling tower at the Cruas plant near Montélimar took 4,000 litres of paint, so you should be able to make a bit of dosh.
(Most paint production is one of the least "green" activities you could imagine - petrochemical shit all over the place).
I just love this quote on that scaremongering site:
So, since the plant needs electricity to keep the lights on, and so much electricity is generated by fossil fuels, you should count the CO2 emitted by a fossil fuel plant to generate the electricity used to keep the lights on in a nuke plant as if it were emitted by the nuke plant. WTF!
Every single argument(*) on that site is an argument for increasing nuclear power generation so we can use nuke's to replace the non-nuke powered steps.
(* except for the CO2 emitted by the concrete in the plant. And we all know that no other power generation technology uses concrete, so nukes are uniquely bad. Not.)
So, I've got one of these thingies, it's high summer, everyone turns on the aircond - bam! My house heating system turns on. WTF!
As for "Nuclear plants take a few hours to get going", like I said elsewhere - talk to the French. The EDF run some of their plants in load following mode, they have just so damn many of them.
Talk to the French.
France currently produces 1/10 of the C02 per kWh that Germany does.
Ah, the old "whitey's on the moon"/"so much trouble in the world" problem.
Frankly I think we need to get whitey on the moon as fast as we can to stop the fucker messing around in Baghdad, Kabul, Tehran, Islamabad and just about every other fucking place you can think of.
But the bugger just won't go.
There's your problem, they should've used K-Y.
Wow, a reactor designed by Goat.cx man.
Wah? There's good radiation and bad radiation now? No-one ever gets cancer from radon in the basement anymore?
Nope. The prices are set by the markets. You know, London and New York.
OPEC tries to control production, but OPEC members only produce about a third of the oil.
(They do have about 2/3 of the reserves however).
I know the dollar isn't worth as much as it used to be, but USD 8.5 billion for 1154MWe seems a little high. The Flamanville 3 reactor is budgeted at EUR 3.3 billion ( ~ USD 4.8 billion) for 1600MWe.
As for 8% for the capital, the EDF just raised EUR 3.2 billion at 4.5%
Where do you live? I thought the USSR had collapsed?
What is this "support" shit? It's running Linux, If you want OGG just apt-get install it.
I don't get it.
Who gives a fuck whether the networks "carry it".
You want the phone - buy it. Then it's yours. You do what you want with it.
This isn't 1966 you know.
Typical slashdot, guy gets "insightful" for something that's untrue. I'm in France, part of the EU, I have an ADSL2+ connection at home - no data transfer limit, the 3-5Mbit/s speed limit is imposed by the 3.5Km distance between my house and the DSLAM. I have a "50Mbit/s" FTTH (GPON) connection at work, no data transfer limit, it often gives me speeds of around 75Mbit/s even though it's sold as 50. (Last test I did).
Yeah, if it were a vaccine in the traditional sense you'd be bitten by huge flying cows, not little mosquitoes.
Ok, if you're worried about easily detectable changes.
What if the malware makes hard to detect changes, or, even worse, no changes at all and just copies your nice data to some naughty person?
which protects the uninteresting, easy to reinstall OS and apps, and leaves your important data swinging naked in the wind.
Unless you run your browser in a jail, of course.
Why not? It's not like he wouldn't believe stock trading doesn't happen.