No, I'm just real big on rigorous peer review before allowing some guy to shoot shark piss up into my sinuses and dance around me holding a bunch of crystals before they fake pulling a bloody sheep's intestine out of me and tell me I'm "cured", but I should buy some snake oil just in case.
And Chinese research has a bad habit of claiming a lot of non-reproducible experiments as scientific fact.
People keep saying "with sufficient investment we could be 100% renewable". Sure, and everyone would be living inside a wind turbine coated with PV solar cells.
Probably not going to happen.
And you're still going to have areas where this sort of thing doesn't work for a good portion of the year.
Which means building a national power grid that could handle that sort of asymmetric load.
Now sure, we PV/Solar Thermal over Southern California, Nevada, New Mexico, Arizona and South/Central Texas. Maybe that's enough capacity. Maybe. Plus a few trillion batteries that need to be replaced every 5-10 years.
I'm pretty sure the investment for advanced nuclear would be significantly less and yield greater energy output.
Do a little bit of math. Find a nice strong wind turbine. Now calculate how many of them you'd need to provide even 25% of the country's 4 BILLION megawatt hour annual demand. Now do the same thing for PV Solar. Now do the same thing for Solar Thermal.
That's great for NYC. What about the outlying communities?
What about the people spread out all over hell and gone in Oklahoma? Texas? Idaho?
You simply have no idea (or are willfully ignoring the logistics) of what is required to keep this country in readily available electricity.
If low population density was a good thing, are you going to tell a farmer to give over half his fields to a PV or Solar Thermal installation? Plus however much space it'd take for a battery assembly to store it?
There are large swaths of time when the amount of wind is either insufficient or too excessive to operate the turbine. During which time the turbine generates...nothing.
As to the turbines following the direction.
Actually, there are static-placement wind farms. I've driven through several of them. Please, know what you're talking about.
I didn't say the US had tapped out all its hydro resources.
I said that further exploitation of hydro resources is going to be problematic due to environmental impact issues. Again, RTFA.
Then you draw the conclusion that you need to heat your house using nuclear power because there's no way biofuels...
You obviously aren't reading.
The problem with biomass fuel are the emissions. That and the fact that you can't expect a few billion people to go out chopping wood. If you think this is some sort of realistic solution, you're fucking insane.
How is doubing wind and solar "generous"
Because wind and solar have taken HOW long to get to where they're at. Doubling up in the short term is actually VERY generous. Heck, even if you QUADRUPLED output, you'd still be left with a power deficit of more than 50%.
As for your anti-US screed. I'll give it exactly the attention it deserves.
I'm saying "renewables can't currently meet our energy demands in the near and medium terms".
As such, if we want to divorce ourselves from fossil fuels and the pollution they cause, we need to look to things like nuclear for a base load.
Then, in the future, if we can get renewables to the point that they CAN provide base load, so much the better.
Not all-nuclear forever. Just until the technology for renewables catches up to our needs.
If we were to figure out vacuum energy tomorrow, I guarantee you'd see me dropping nuclear like a hot potato. But, for right now, nuclear's the cleanest, most self-contained option for base load power in the larger, more populous countries in the world.
No. As I've said elsewhere. I'm looking for a way forward. Until our ability to utilize renewables meets our demands.
I'm not saying "nuclear forever". I'm saying "nuclear for now", augmented by renewables.
This solution does the least damage to the environment as a whole.
The problem with your "everyone has solar panels" is that they're a waste of money in a good portion of the country and will pull nowhere CLOSE to their capacity, That and the maintenance requirements for such installations are logistically infeasible. Expecting the populace of the north central and northeast US to climb up on the roofs of their houses to sweep off solar panels is nuts.
Sure, being able to remove YOURSELF from the grid might be a good move. FOR YOU. Lots and lots of people simply don't have that sort of luxury
You're thinking like a guy who installs single family septic systems. Tack on a million more people? Sure! Just scale the single family system up, right?
If it takes 150 years to develop the technology, but we kill everyone off with climate change in 125 years, it doesn't help much.
Is nuclear a 100% safe and clean tech? No. But it's a way forward until the technology to pull/retain power from renewables hikes up an order of magnitude.
Not saying "forever". Just until we develop better, cleaner, sustainable tech.
Oh! Well! If YOU say so. I'll just take your word for it!
Or not.
See my reply to the AC from Denmark above.
100% renewable is not, currently, doable in the US.
In 2012, only a bit over 11% of all power generated in the US was renewable. More than half of that was Hydro.
Even if you had a PHENOMENAL growth rate in ALL renewable energy sectors (4x growth), you'd STILL be looking at a power deficit of more than 50%. You'd also see a fourfold increase (if not more, as it's taken years to get to this level of renewable production) in pollution from the manufacturing of said solutions.
Why can't we generate 100% of power we need with a combination of Wind/Solar/Hydro.
Because we've essentially built all the hydro we're going to build in the US. Even if we stopped caring about local ecology TODAY, and started building new hydro every place left, that'd still only double Hydro's capacity (which is currently 6-7% of our annual power consumption). So, generously, 14-15%.
That's just not enough for base load. It isn't.
Currently solar generates less than half a percent (0.3) total power consumption. Currently wind generates a bit over 4%. Even if we assumed AWESOME quadrupling of growth in these fields (which would be unlikely and cost prohibitive), we're still talking, on a good day, 32% of total power consumption. On a bad day, you're STILL at 15%.
You cannot run our power grid that way. Sorry.
We're fast approaching the time Denmark proves you wrong.
That's Denmark. The total land area of Denmark (proper) is less than.05% of what it is in the US. Total population of Denmark is 1.5% that of the US. Denmark's population density is four times that of the US. Annual power consumption in Denmark is less than 1% of what it is in the US. The per-capita energy consumption of Denmark is less than half what it is for the average US citizen.
It's very easy to build a nice, consolidated power grid when everything and everyone is so close at hand, the climate is so uniform, the natural resources are there, and the size and power consumption of the populace is so low.
Now, imagine you had to push power to guys in Ankara, in Turkey. Or better yet, imagine having to push power to people in Kuwait.
That's roughly the distances we're talking about from one end of the US to the other. And that's not including Hawaii or any of our territories.
So, tell me about these "fast approaching" times.
Solar thermal and betting big on batteries.
Again, land use issues and unsuitable for implementation outside of certain areas.
And batteries ARE coming along. But at nowhere near the speed we need them to be at. Not in the next 30-50 years.
As for "get a broom" for your solar panels.
You're seriously suggesting people climb a ladder, get up on their roof and sweep off solar panels? You ARE aware that not every building extant has a flat roof right?
Oh and why limit ourselves just to the USA?
Because the top producers and consumers of power are:
China, the US, India, Russia, Japan, Germany, Canada, France, Brazil, and South Korea.
Pretty much, of all of those, only Japan has the luxury of low land area and high population density.
The most prolific power users swing between 1900 and 90 watts per capita, with India being at the bottom and Canada being at the top.
Small, self-contained countries may or may not be able to get away with a power system monoculture that excludes nuclear. All of these larger countries simply don't have that luxury.
There is enough to supply all our energy needs if we choose.
Maybe in little backwoods Denmark there is. Or Greenland. Maybe it's enough for a few million people.
But when you're talking OVER half the population of the planet (the top 10 power consumers) and the distances involved (in China, you can walk for nearly 6000 miles STRAIGHT and never cross the border into another country). Then no, your little cookie-cutter solution simply doesn't fit.
Yes you can. (Generate 100% of your power with Wind/Solar/Hydro.)
Again, maybe in Denmark you can. Good for you. The world's a much bigger place than Denmark. So this country cousin attitude needs to go. Welcome to the big city.
Thank you for not commenting the fact that the wind always blows.
That's just it. It doesn't. At least not always in the direction or speed required by the turbine.
I've driven through wind farms before, on VERY windy days. And half the farm has the turbines locked down. Why? The wind's coming in from the wrong direction. And you don't run turbines in severe storms, especially not in Tornado Alley. All you'll do is overstress the equipment and damage it. And yes, on some days you just have calm, or a very light breeze.
It makes it that much easier not to take you seriously.
If you want to ignore me, that's your problem. Please, resume your ostrich impersonation.
And regarding hydro: If there's not enough of it, why use it when the wind blows and the sun shines?
Again, the wind doesn't always blow and the sun doesn't always shine. And you need a dependable power source for base load. Wind/Solar may, eventually, have the OVERALL capacity, but it's still an undependable source. Hydro may be a dependable source, but it's a limited source. Simply using the two together leaves you with gaps in your power coverage when Wind/Solar CANNOT make up the difference. And, if we're talking about powering the entire country, there just isn't enough Hydro for base load for that. PERIOD.
It seems odd to bemourn a lack of energy storage while pretending that hydro does not exist. On a good day wind and solar can do the job alone! Hydro is for the bad days ONLY.
And I'm NOT "pretending hydro doesn't exist". Just pointing out that the US has tapped out basically ALL of it's available hydro resources. And the few unexploited areas available to hydro are basically locked away by environmentalist interests (one of the few places where the environmentalist groups are rangling with one another).
Hydro, in the US accounts for approximately 6-7% of total power generation in the US. And conservative estimates think that, if we exploit remaining resources, we could double that. And that's ASSUMING that they win out against the environmentalist lobby.
And, for renewable energy resources, it accounts for roughly 66%.
Solar accounts for about 0.3% of total power generation in the US. Wind power accounts for about 4.25% of total power generation in the US.
So. Assuming a GENEROUS doubling of everything, tell me how 23% of total power generation in limited areas is going to keep the lights on in the US. Tell me about how such a severe power deficit will enable us to grow beyond such a hurdle!
1, and 4 are moot when you are generating all the power you need from your own roof... Now, batteries need to catch up, but a bank of batteries in your basement can keep a house overnight if it's well insulated.
This is assuming you're in a place where it's feasible to do this (see #2, as none of these points exists in a vacuum from the others).
For places like the North Central and North Eastern US, you don't get enough hours of daylight, nor enough quality of light during a good portion of the year to pull more than a trickle charge off a normal sized rooftop. And that's BEFORE calculating a foot of snow and ice on the roof.
1: Land use. 2: Suitability. 3: While these resources are more or less infinitely renewable, they're not dependable. It isn't always sunny. And the wind isn't always blowing in the right direction or at the right speed. 4: We simply don't have the infrastructure in place to ship large quantities of power from one end of the country to the other, and the transmission losses would be ridiculous.
No because Hydro and Geothermal together can't supply sufficient base load (at least in the US). And Wind and Solar dependable enough to be used for base load. PERIOD.
On a GOOD DAY, yes, Hydro and Geothermal, augmented by Wind and Solar could probably handle the requirements for that day.
But what about the next day? And the day after that? And the one after that?
Are you ready to deal with nationwide, rolling blackouts?
I'm not saying that these methods can't eventually offset their manufacturing debts. But pretending they're "clean" from start to finish is disingenuous.
Call me when you can actually get 4-5 BILLION megawatt-hours a year out of Wind and Solar in a stable manner 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.
Oh. And I will NOT be holding my breath waiting for you.
That's just it. Wind turbines and solar are NEVER going to be producing the majority of power (unless we cut back DRASTICALLY on our power consumption).
There's only so many suitable places to put these facilities because of the amount of land use required in addition to the areas having the proper environmental factors to maximize generation time.
And your fallback is currently natural gas (non-renewable, and has its own environmental impacts) with the pipe dream of magically efficient, magically long-lived power storage (which would bring its own additional costs and environmental impact.
Slashdot Mirror
No, I'm just real big on rigorous peer review before allowing some guy to shoot shark piss up into my sinuses and dance around me holding a bunch of crystals before they fake pulling a bloody sheep's intestine out of me and tell me I'm "cured", but I should buy some snake oil just in case.
And Chinese research has a bad habit of claiming a lot of non-reproducible experiments as scientific fact.
I'm going to wait until someone who isn't essentially gambling with their patients' lives without informed consent can review these findings.
I know not what this 0E, BX, 3-4-5E you speak of are!
Nothing! Nada!
There is only first and second editions!
Shut up and take my positive mod points!
Reading the OP last night, I could hear Gary Oldman in my head.
Nice to know I'm not the only one.
There is no "overkill".
There is only "kill" with varying levels of confidence.
Shoot a guy once, and there's always the possibility he's not dead.
Shoot him 300 times, and yeah, you're pretty certain of him.
Shoot him with a missile, and now you're sure he's not just merely dead, he's really most sincerely dead.
Just...fire it from outside it's blast radius...(See "Fireball in 10x10 room")
People keep saying "with sufficient investment we could be 100% renewable". Sure, and everyone would be living inside a wind turbine coated with PV solar cells.
Probably not going to happen.
And you're still going to have areas where this sort of thing doesn't work for a good portion of the year.
Which means building a national power grid that could handle that sort of asymmetric load.
Now sure, we PV/Solar Thermal over Southern California, Nevada, New Mexico, Arizona and South/Central Texas. Maybe that's enough capacity. Maybe. Plus a few trillion batteries that need to be replaced every 5-10 years.
I'm pretty sure the investment for advanced nuclear would be significantly less and yield greater energy output.
Do a little bit of math. Find a nice strong wind turbine. Now calculate how many of them you'd need to provide even 25% of the country's 4 BILLION megawatt hour annual demand.
Now do the same thing for PV Solar.
Now do the same thing for Solar Thermal.
Now calculate the land usage.
Come back when you have a realistic answer.
That's great for NYC. What about the outlying communities?
What about the people spread out all over hell and gone in Oklahoma? Texas? Idaho?
You simply have no idea (or are willfully ignoring the logistics) of what is required to keep this country in readily available electricity.
If low population density was a good thing, are you going to tell a farmer to give over half his fields to a PV or Solar Thermal installation? Plus however much space it'd take for a battery assembly to store it?
How about you come back to reality.
Show me a day without wind
Try actually reading what I've written.
There are large swaths of time when the amount of wind is either insufficient or too excessive to operate the turbine. During which time the turbine generates...nothing.
As to the turbines following the direction.
Actually, there are static-placement wind farms. I've driven through several of them. Please, know what you're talking about.
I didn't say the US had tapped out all its hydro resources.
I said that further exploitation of hydro resources is going to be problematic due to environmental impact issues. Again, RTFA.
Then you draw the conclusion that you need to heat your house using nuclear power because there's no way biofuels...
You obviously aren't reading.
The problem with biomass fuel are the emissions. That and the fact that you can't expect a few billion people to go out chopping wood. If you think this is some sort of realistic solution, you're fucking insane.
How is doubing wind and solar "generous"
Because wind and solar have taken HOW long to get to where they're at. Doubling up in the short term is actually VERY generous. Heck, even if you QUADRUPLED output, you'd still be left with a power deficit of more than 50%.
As for your anti-US screed. I'll give it exactly the attention it deserves.
I'm saying "renewables can't currently meet our energy demands in the near and medium terms".
As such, if we want to divorce ourselves from fossil fuels and the pollution they cause, we need to look to things like nuclear for a base load.
Then, in the future, if we can get renewables to the point that they CAN provide base load, so much the better.
Not all-nuclear forever. Just until the technology for renewables catches up to our needs.
If we were to figure out vacuum energy tomorrow, I guarantee you'd see me dropping nuclear like a hot potato. But, for right now, nuclear's the cleanest, most self-contained option for base load power in the larger, more populous countries in the world.
No. As I've said elsewhere. I'm looking for a way forward. Until our ability to utilize renewables meets our demands.
I'm not saying "nuclear forever". I'm saying "nuclear for now", augmented by renewables.
This solution does the least damage to the environment as a whole.
The problem with your "everyone has solar panels" is that they're a waste of money in a good portion of the country and will pull nowhere CLOSE to their capacity, That and the maintenance requirements for such installations are logistically infeasible. Expecting the populace of the north central and northeast US to climb up on the roofs of their houses to sweep off solar panels is nuts.
Sure, being able to remove YOURSELF from the grid might be a good move. FOR YOU. Lots and lots of people simply don't have that sort of luxury
You're thinking like a guy who installs single family septic systems. Tack on a million more people? Sure! Just scale the single family system up, right?
Wrong.
That's the "If you have a hammer" principle.
I'm not saying these things aren't good within little hotbox environments.
However, pretending like widespread deployment is an actual solution for the entire world? Fantasy at best. Damn lies at worst.
If it takes 150 years to develop the technology, but we kill everyone off with climate change in 125 years, it doesn't help much.
Is nuclear a 100% safe and clean tech? No. But it's a way forward until the technology to pull/retain power from renewables hikes up an order of magnitude.
Not saying "forever". Just until we develop better, cleaner, sustainable tech.
You should probably NEVER watch Idiocracy then.
Nope. 100% renewable is perfectly doable.
Oh! Well! If YOU say so. I'll just take your word for it!
Or not.
See my reply to the AC from Denmark above.
100% renewable is not, currently, doable in the US.
In 2012, only a bit over 11% of all power generated in the US was renewable. More than half of that was Hydro.
Even if you had a PHENOMENAL growth rate in ALL renewable energy sectors (4x growth), you'd STILL be looking at a power deficit of more than 50%.
You'd also see a fourfold increase (if not more, as it's taken years to get to this level of renewable production) in pollution from the manufacturing of said solutions.
Why can't we generate 100% of power we need with a combination of Wind/Solar/Hydro.
Because we've essentially built all the hydro we're going to build in the US. Even if we stopped caring about local ecology TODAY, and started building new hydro every place left, that'd still only double Hydro's capacity (which is currently 6-7% of our annual power consumption). So, generously, 14-15%.
That's just not enough for base load. It isn't.
Currently solar generates less than half a percent (0.3) total power consumption.
Currently wind generates a bit over 4%. Even if we assumed AWESOME quadrupling of growth in these fields (which would be unlikely and cost prohibitive), we're still talking, on a good day, 32% of total power consumption. On a bad day, you're STILL at 15%.
You cannot run our power grid that way. Sorry.
We're fast approaching the time Denmark proves you wrong.
That's Denmark. .05% of what it is in the US.
The total land area of Denmark (proper) is less than
Total population of Denmark is 1.5% that of the US.
Denmark's population density is four times that of the US.
Annual power consumption in Denmark is less than 1% of what it is in the US.
The per-capita energy consumption of Denmark is less than half what it is for the average US citizen.
It's very easy to build a nice, consolidated power grid when everything and everyone is so close at hand, the climate is so uniform, the natural resources are there, and the size and power consumption of the populace is so low.
Now, imagine you had to push power to guys in Ankara, in Turkey.
Or better yet, imagine having to push power to people in Kuwait.
That's roughly the distances we're talking about from one end of the US to the other. And that's not including Hawaii or any of our territories.
So, tell me about these "fast approaching" times.
Solar thermal and betting big on batteries.
Again, land use issues and unsuitable for implementation outside of certain areas.
And batteries ARE coming along. But at nowhere near the speed we need them to be at. Not in the next 30-50 years.
As for "get a broom" for your solar panels.
You're seriously suggesting people climb a ladder, get up on their roof and sweep off solar panels? You ARE aware that not every building extant has a flat roof right?
Oh and why limit ourselves just to the USA?
Because the top producers and consumers of power are:
China, the US, India, Russia, Japan, Germany, Canada, France, Brazil, and South Korea.
Pretty much, of all of those, only Japan has the luxury of low land area and high population density.
The most prolific power users swing between 1900 and 90 watts per capita, with India being at the bottom and Canada being at the top.
Small, self-contained countries may or may not be able to get away with a power system monoculture that excludes nuclear.
All of these larger countries simply don't have that luxury.
There is enough to supply all our energy needs if we choose.
Maybe in little backwoods Denmark there is. Or Greenland. Maybe it's enough for a few million people.
But when you're talking OVER half the population of the planet (the top 10 power consumers) and the distances involved (in China, you can walk for nearly 6000 miles STRAIGHT and never cross the border into another country). Then no, your little cookie-cutter solution simply doesn't fit.
Yes you can. (Generate 100% of your power with Wind/Solar/Hydro.)
Again, maybe in Denmark you can. Good for you. The world's a much bigger place than Denmark. So this country cousin attitude needs to go. Welcome to the big city.
Thank you for not commenting the fact that the wind always blows.
That's just it. It doesn't. At least not always in the direction or speed required by the turbine.
I've driven through wind farms before, on VERY windy days. And half the farm has the turbines locked down. Why? The wind's coming in from the wrong direction.
And you don't run turbines in severe storms, especially not in Tornado Alley. All you'll do is overstress the equipment and damage it.
And yes, on some days you just have calm, or a very light breeze.
It makes it that much easier not to take you seriously.
If you want to ignore me, that's your problem. Please, resume your ostrich impersonation.
And regarding hydro: If there's not enough of it, why use it when the wind blows and the sun shines?
Again, the wind doesn't always blow and the sun doesn't always shine. And you need a dependable power source for base load.
Wind/Solar may, eventually, have the OVERALL capacity, but it's still an undependable source.
Hydro may be a dependable source, but it's a limited source.
Simply using the two together leaves you with gaps in your power coverage when Wind/Solar CANNOT make up the difference.
And, if we're talking about powering the entire country, there just isn't enough Hydro for base load for that. PERIOD.
It seems odd to bemourn a lack of energy storage while pretending that hydro does not exist. On a good day wind and solar can do the job alone! Hydro is for the bad days ONLY.
And I'm NOT "pretending hydro doesn't exist". Just pointing out that the US has tapped out basically ALL of it's available hydro resources. And the few unexploited areas available to hydro are basically locked away by environmentalist interests (one of the few places where the environmentalist groups are rangling with one another).
Hydro, in the US accounts for approximately 6-7% of total power generation in the US. And conservative estimates think that, if we exploit remaining resources, we could double that.
And that's ASSUMING that they win out against the environmentalist lobby.
And, for renewable energy resources, it accounts for roughly 66%.
Solar accounts for about 0.3% of total power generation in the US.
Wind power accounts for about 4.25% of total power generation in the US.
So. Assuming a GENEROUS doubling of everything, tell me how 23% of total power generation in limited areas is going to keep the lights on in the US.
Tell me about how such a severe power deficit will enable us to grow beyond such a hurdle!
I await, tingling in antici...pation.
1, and 4 are moot when you are generating all the power you need from your own roof... Now, batteries need to catch up, but a bank of batteries in your basement can keep a house overnight if it's well insulated.
This is assuming you're in a place where it's feasible to do this (see #2, as none of these points exists in a vacuum from the others).
For places like the North Central and North Eastern US, you don't get enough hours of daylight, nor enough quality of light during a good portion of the year to pull more than a trickle charge off a normal sized rooftop. And that's BEFORE calculating a foot of snow and ice on the roof.
Try harder.
West "BY GOD!" Virginia!
One Big Family!
1: Land use.
2: Suitability.
3: While these resources are more or less infinitely renewable, they're not dependable. It isn't always sunny. And the wind isn't always blowing in the right direction or at the right speed.
4: We simply don't have the infrastructure in place to ship large quantities of power from one end of the country to the other, and the transmission losses would be ridiculous.
If you wanna live in a cave and convert to militant Islam so you can be "safe" from terrorists, be my guest.
And don't think that risk isn't being factored in.
This is what risk management is all about.
No because Hydro and Geothermal together can't supply sufficient base load (at least in the US).
And Wind and Solar dependable enough to be used for base load. PERIOD.
On a GOOD DAY, yes, Hydro and Geothermal, augmented by Wind and Solar could probably handle the requirements for that day.
But what about the next day?
And the day after that?
And the one after that?
Are you ready to deal with nationwide, rolling blackouts?
I'm not saying that these methods can't eventually offset their manufacturing debts. But pretending they're "clean" from start to finish is disingenuous.
Not fossil fuel consumption.
Nuclear.
Turbines and solar panels are good technology and helpful in supplying peak power.
But we need to move off non-renewable, polluting fossil fuels for baseline power.
And remember, currently it isn't JUST Wind and Solar.
It's Wind-plus-Natural Gas and Solar-plus-Natural Gas.
Call me when you can actually get 4-5 BILLION megawatt-hours a year out of Wind and Solar in a stable manner 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.
Oh. And I will NOT be holding my breath waiting for you.
That's just it. Wind turbines and solar are NEVER going to be producing the majority of power (unless we cut back DRASTICALLY on our power consumption).
There's only so many suitable places to put these facilities because of the amount of land use required in addition to the areas having the proper environmental factors to maximize generation time.
And your fallback is currently natural gas (non-renewable, and has its own environmental impacts) with the pipe dream of magically efficient, magically long-lived power storage (which would bring its own additional costs and environmental impact.