I concede that solar power towers are technically feasible. Nuclear isn't the only technically feasible way of generating power.
However, right now, the cost is in the 10-14 cents/kWh range. The linked analysis also doesn't include the cost of aquiring the necessary land, the absolutely staggering transmission losses (New Mexico -> New York?), infrastructure for servicing these things in otherwise uninhabitable wastelands, and various other capital costs.
Nuclear plants operate currently in the 1.71 cents/kWh rangeright now, according to the WSJ. Coal is around 1.85, and gas, 4.06. Given these numbers, I think that when the fossil fuel crunch comes, we'll go nuclear, not solar, except for specialized applications. Personally, I don't think the extreme capital cost of solar power towers is worth the tiny safety advantage they bring.
The algae-in-the-desert proposal has serious problems. It glosses over the quantity of wastewater feedstock we'd need, and treats agricultural runoff, human sewage and other types of wastewater as having equivalent value, when in reality, they have different compositions. It also glosses over what would be done with the algea remnants after oil extraction. Besides, we're talking about replacing all current energy generation, not just the portion of that generation done using oil. It also has the same infrastructure problems that a massive solar power tower deployment would have. Finally, we're limiting ourselves to technologies that don't require any breakthroughs; this is completely unproven stuff. We might as well be talking about cold fusion and coal-deficating fairies.
Oil shale is nice, but it's still a fossil fuel, still dumps CO2 into the atmosphere, and might be more expensive that other options if we use it for power generation as well as transportation fuel.
I understand your concerns, but you're not helping matters by taking a 'just say no to nuclear' approach. I think policymakers will be willing to accept a lot, faced with the prospect of the lights not turning on one day.
Besides, it's only a matter of time before every two-bit despot in the world has a nuke. We're just going to have to deal with the situation. The consequences aren't all bad.
I agree with you that wind power must be an important part of our power generation capacity in the future. It is clean, simple, safe and renewable. Nevertheless, it can't supply all our power generation needs. I'm only advocating nuclear power for the portion of our energy budget that can't be supplied through "green" methods. Unfortunately, however, as the population is growing (and populous nations are industrializing), and the supply of green energy is fixed (we only get so much insolation, and the wind only blows so hard), it will supply an increasingly low percentage of power.
Can you name another power source that we have right now that can meet our needs, even in principle?
The only other plausiable alternative I can think of us a series of large satellites in orbit that beam power to earth in microwave form. These would entail a great deal of research and development to refine current technology, and would not be without risks themselves (ala SimCity).
We don't have nearly enough arable land in the whole world to produce enough biodiesel to satisfy world energy demand, and even if we did, biodiesel would pollute as much as fossil diesel*.
Wind power is variable, and we don't have a good way of storing it for long periods without a big loss of efficiency. Wind power is important, and will be a major source of power in the future, but it must be augmented by more constant sources.
Terrestrial solar power takes a great deal of land. Again, it has some limited applications, but overall, we don't have enough land for it to make sense. What are we going to do, cover the Mojave in mirrors and water towers? When you take into account the costs, you end up with negative net energy. That's not a winner.
Geothermal and hydroelectric power and clean, safe and simple, but they're already exploited to their maximum potential.
So, we're left with nuclear and coal. (Or orbital solar [or nuclear] power stations, but I doubt that's happening soon.)
* Yes, global CO2 balance would remain constant, unlike with fossil diesel. However, since the fuel for biodiesel would be grown over a wide area and generally consumed in a relatively small one, local pollution would continue to increase.
Everybody would love a solution that was cheap, plentiful, clean and safe, all at once. We don't have that technology now, and we may never have it.
There are only two technologies that can sustain present levels of baseload demend, even in the short-medium term: coal and nuclear. And coal is by far the less preferable option. How much CO2 and radioactie material is released by coal plants? How many workers have lung problems, or are just suffocated in collapsed mines? How many beautiful mountaintops are sliced clean off to extract a few tons of low-grade coal?
Nuclear is far from perfect, but it's our best option until we do develop a magic bullet that will make everyone happy.
First, radioactive waste has been on the planet far longer than man.
Second, the exclusion zone around Chernobyl is actually flourishing; the radioactivity there is actually about a third of what it is in Denver. Besides, the type of reactor used in Chernobyl was designed by a fool. No sane person would use a graphite moderated reactor today. The danger is far too great.
My main point is that risk is an essential part of civilization. In order to continue our way of life, which I believe is better than any that has existed previously, we must take some risks. Nuclear power generation is one of the lesser risks that we face in that ordeal. So safe are nuclear power plants today that I would volunteer to live next to one.
How many steam boilers exploded in coal plants in the 19th century? How many people died in train accidents during the early days of railroads? Safety improves with time, and it's really not fair to condemn the entire concept of nuclear power generation based on a few mistakes made in its very early years.
Of course the administration wants to encourage support for nuclear power. Any person who rationally looks at the alternatives (not to say this administration is rational) will do the same. It's the best way to wean us off of fossil fuels in general, and from dependence on unstable middle eastern countries in particular.
Current usage is about 68,000 tU/yr. Thus the world's present measured resources of uranium in the cost category slightly above present spot prices (4.7 Mt) and used only in conventional reactors, are enough to last for some 70 years. This represents a higher level of assured resources than is normal for most minerals. Further exploration and higher prices will certainly, on the basis of present geological knowledge, yield further resources as present ones are used up. There was very little uranium exploration between 1985 and 2005, so a significant increase in exploration effort could readily double the known economic resources, and a doubling of price from present levels could be expected to create about a tenfold increase in measured resources, over time.
This is in fact suggested in the IAEA-NEA figures if those covering estimates of all conventional resources are considered - 10 million tonnes (beyond the 4.7 Mt known economic resources), which takes us to over 200 years' supply at today's rate of consumption. This still ignores the technological factor mentioned below. It also omits unconventional resources such as phosphate deposits (22 Mt U recoverable as by-product) and seawater (up to 4000 Mt), which would be uneconomic to extract in the foreseeable future.
Widespread use of the fast breeder reactor could increase the utilisation of uranium sixty-fold or more. This type of reactor can be started up on plutonium derived from conventional reactors and operated in closed circuit with its reprocessing plant. Such a reactor, supplied with natural uranium for its "fertile blanket", can be operated so that each tonne of ore yields 60 times more energy than in a conventional reactor.
Besides, we have built functional breeder reactors; all we'd need to do is scale up operations. Also, if you disallow nuclear power, what alternative to do you propose? Coal? It spews toxic dust and CO2 into the air, for a while. Then, we will run out of it. Then what will the alternative be? Nuclear power or darkness. The longer we bury out heads in the sand, afraid of nuclear power, the more pullution from coal will enter the atmosphere. We're better off switching to nuclear power now.
There is no need for self-flagellation here. Too often, I see peak oil types tying alternate energy to the end of the Western lifestyle. That need not be the case, and by doing so, you diminish support for alterative energy entirely. As a society, we have chosen to live in suburbs, commute with automobiles, and fly airplanes around the world. If you don't approve of that lifestyle, you need not participate. But that issue has nothing to do with alternative energy. Energy is fungible. If we can generate power, we can take an energy loss making it useful for other purposes (e.g., transportation). Nuclear power can provide for all our energy needs and then some, all without giving up our way of life. We'll have to replace equipment to allow cars, planes and so on to run on some synthetic fuel, but that's an implementation detail; the basic concept need not change.
Given a choice between nuclear power and reverting to a 19th century lifestyle, I believe people will easily choose nuclear power, every time. And that's a good thing.
Language evolves, yes --- but look at what happened around the time of the last major language "evolution" --- the dark ages of Europe. Some of us want to delay that phase of our society's "evolution." If we do our best to stop ignorance in general, we can put our own dark ages off a little bit.
"Held accountable?" For what damages, exactly? For god's sake, we're not talking about a bank's website. All we're talking about is a way for people to slightly more easily discover information that was already public. You should be happy they responded as quickly as they did.
I was just reading the same section myself; after a discussion in freenode's #gnu, I must concede your point. I suppose that makes my cookbook example illegal as well.
No, you are wrong. Copyright places no restriction on the modification of a work. I can scribble in, say, a cookbook all I want and commit no violation of the terms, even if I then use that modified cookbook to prepare a meal for someone. Likewise, modifying software has no bearing on copyright (outside fascist DMCA provisions, of course.)
The speed of light is a constant in a vacuum. If it happened 1950 years ago, since the star is 1,950 light years away, we'd be seeing it today. For all practical purposes, it _is_ happening now.
I find that I can't work as effectively from home as I can from work, despite having access to the same tools. Granted, I'm more comfortable at home, but there's something about the physical separation of work and home that makes it easier to concentrate on work at my workplace and, conversly, more difficult to concentrate on work when I'm at home in my pajamas. It's as if, by hopping in my car and going to work, I enter some kind of "work mode" where I'm not as likely to waste hours reading slashdot or wikipedia. Even when nobody else is at work, on a Sunday.
I actually just implemented a DVD-based backup solution for my employer. While DVDs are much smaller than tapes, they're much cheaper, especially when buying in bulk. They're so cheap, in fact, that we can afford to do nothing but level-0 backups, which eliminates a great deal of complexity. We deal with the optical degradation problem by using error-correcting codes to gaurantee against the loss of one disc from any given backup set --- and we usually make multiple sets anyway. All in all, it's not a terrible system.
How would DirectX interfaces help the slightest bit with a medical system? Programming will has more to do with solid methodology than tinking with the latest new toy language. Colleges shouldn't teach programming languages; they should teach how to program. From that, any particular language, be in bourne shell or C#, will come naturally.
Slashdot Mirror
Woah -- I had no idea it was that much. Thanks.
I concede that solar power towers are
technically feasible. Nuclear isn't the only technically feasible way of generating power.
However, right now, the cost is in the 10-14 cents/kWh range. The linked analysis also doesn't include the cost of aquiring the necessary land, the absolutely staggering transmission losses (New Mexico -> New York?), infrastructure for servicing these things in otherwise uninhabitable wastelands, and various other capital costs.
Nuclear plants operate currently in the 1.71 cents/kWh range right now, according to the WSJ. Coal is around 1.85, and gas, 4.06. Given these numbers, I think that when the fossil fuel crunch comes, we'll go nuclear, not solar, except for specialized applications. Personally, I don't think the extreme capital cost of solar power towers is worth the tiny safety advantage they bring.
The algae-in-the-desert proposal has serious problems. It glosses over the quantity of wastewater feedstock we'd need, and treats agricultural runoff, human sewage and other types of wastewater as having equivalent value, when in reality, they have different compositions. It also glosses over what would be done with the algea remnants after oil extraction. Besides, we're talking about replacing all current energy generation, not just the portion of that generation done using oil. It also has the same infrastructure problems that a massive solar power tower deployment would have. Finally, we're limiting ourselves to technologies that don't require any breakthroughs; this is completely unproven stuff. We might as well be talking about cold fusion and coal-deficating fairies.
Oil shale is nice, but it's still a fossil fuel, still dumps CO2 into the atmosphere, and might be more expensive that other options if we use it for power generation as well as transportation fuel.
I understand your concerns, but you're not helping matters by taking a 'just say no to nuclear' approach. I think policymakers will be willing to accept a lot, faced with the prospect of the lights not turning on one day.
Besides, it's only a matter of time before every two-bit despot in the world has a nuke. We're just going to have to deal with the situation. The consequences aren't all bad.
Thanks for the link. Interesting. We still have to worry about the existing housing stock though.
I agree with you that wind power must be an important part of our power generation capacity in the future. It is clean, simple, safe and renewable. Nevertheless, it can't supply all our power generation needs. I'm only advocating nuclear power for the portion of our energy budget that can't be supplied through "green" methods. Unfortunately, however, as the population is growing (and populous nations are industrializing), and the supply of green energy is fixed (we only get so much insolation, and the wind only blows so hard), it will supply an increasingly low percentage of power.
Can you name another power source that we have right now that can meet our needs, even in principle?
The only other plausiable alternative I can think of us a series of large satellites in orbit that beam power to earth in microwave form. These would entail a great deal of research and development to refine current technology, and would not be without risks themselves (ala SimCity).
We don't have nearly enough arable land in the whole world to produce enough biodiesel to satisfy world energy demand, and even if we did, biodiesel would pollute as much as fossil diesel*.
Wind power is variable, and we don't have a good way of storing it for long periods without a big loss of efficiency. Wind power is important, and will be a major source of power in the future, but it must be augmented by more constant sources.
Terrestrial solar power takes a great deal of land. Again, it has some limited applications, but overall, we don't have enough land for it to make sense. What are we going to do, cover the Mojave in mirrors and water towers? When you take into account the costs, you end up with negative net energy. That's not a winner.
Geothermal and hydroelectric power and clean, safe and simple, but they're already exploited to their maximum potential.
So, we're left with nuclear and coal. (Or orbital solar [or nuclear] power stations, but I doubt that's happening soon.)
* Yes, global CO2 balance would remain constant, unlike with fossil diesel. However, since the fuel for biodiesel would be grown over a wide area and generally consumed in a relatively small one, local pollution would continue to increase.
Everybody would love a solution that was cheap, plentiful, clean and safe, all at once. We don't have that technology now, and we may never have it.
There are only two technologies that can sustain present levels of baseload demend, even in the short-medium term: coal and nuclear. And coal is by far the less preferable option. How much CO2 and radioactie material is released by coal plants? How many workers have lung problems, or are just suffocated in collapsed mines? How many beautiful mountaintops are sliced clean off to extract a few tons of low-grade coal?
Nuclear is far from perfect, but it's our best option until we do develop a magic bullet that will make everyone happy.
First, radioactive waste has been on the planet far longer than man.
Second, the exclusion zone around Chernobyl is actually flourishing; the radioactivity there is actually about a third of what it is in Denver. Besides, the type of reactor used in Chernobyl was designed by a fool. No sane person would use a graphite moderated reactor today. The danger is far too great.
My main point is that risk is an essential part of civilization. In order to continue our way of life, which I believe is better than any that has existed previously, we must take some risks. Nuclear power generation is one of the lesser risks that we face in that ordeal. So safe are nuclear power plants today that I would volunteer to live next to one.
How many steam boilers exploded in coal plants in the 19th century? How many people died in train accidents during the early days of railroads? Safety improves with time, and it's really not fair to condemn the entire concept of nuclear power generation based on a few mistakes made in its very early years.
Of course the administration wants to encourage support for nuclear power. Any person who rationally looks at the alternatives (not to say this administration is rational) will do the same. It's the best way to wean us off of fossil fuels in general, and from dependence on unstable middle eastern countries in particular.
Besides, we have built functional breeder reactors; all we'd need to do is scale up operations. Also, if you disallow nuclear power, what alternative to do you propose? Coal? It spews toxic dust and CO2 into the air, for a while. Then, we will run out of it. Then what will the alternative be? Nuclear power or darkness. The longer we bury out heads in the sand, afraid of nuclear power, the more pullution from coal will enter the atmosphere. We're better off switching to nuclear power now.
*sigh*
There is no need for self-flagellation here. Too often, I see peak oil types tying alternate energy to the end of the Western lifestyle. That need not be the case, and by doing so, you diminish support for alterative energy entirely. As a society, we have chosen to live in suburbs, commute with automobiles, and fly airplanes around the world. If you don't approve of that lifestyle, you need not participate. But that issue has nothing to do with alternative energy. Energy is fungible. If we can generate power, we can take an energy loss making it useful for other purposes (e.g., transportation). Nuclear power can provide for all our energy needs and then some, all without giving up our way of life. We'll have to replace equipment to allow cars, planes and so on to run on some synthetic fuel, but that's an implementation detail; the basic concept need not change.
Given a choice between nuclear power and reverting to a 19th century lifestyle, I believe people will easily choose nuclear power, every time. And that's a good thing.
So what? We dispose of far more toxic chemical waste more casually than we deal with nuclear waste. It's just the n-word that drives people bonkers.
That doesn't make any sense. Why would being able to see better than most people stop someone from being a pilot?
No mod points, so "Hear hear!" instead.
Language evolves, yes --- but look at what happened around the time of the last major language "evolution" --- the dark ages of Europe. Some of us want to delay that phase of our society's "evolution." If we do our best to stop ignorance in general, we can put our own dark ages off a little bit.
I don't believe this. Sources?
"Held accountable?" For what damages, exactly? For god's sake, we're not talking about a bank's website. All we're talking about is a way for people to slightly more easily discover information that was already public. You should be happy they responded as quickly as they did.
"Massive breach of privacy" my ass.
I was just reading the same section myself; after a discussion in freenode's #gnu, I must concede your point. I suppose that makes my cookbook example illegal as well.
No, you are wrong. Copyright places no restriction on the modification of a work. I can scribble in, say, a cookbook all I want and commit no violation of the terms, even if I then use that modified cookbook to prepare a meal for someone. Likewise, modifying software has no bearing on copyright (outside fascist DMCA provisions, of course.)
I don't understand what you mean. ANY effect any phenomenon has on us will travel, at the fastest, at the speed of light.
The speed of light is a constant in a vacuum. If it happened 1950 years ago, since the star is 1,950 light years away, we'd be seeing it today. For all practical purposes, it _is_ happening now.
I find that I can't work as effectively from home as I can from work, despite having access to the same tools. Granted, I'm more comfortable at home, but there's something about the physical separation of work and home that makes it easier to concentrate on work at my workplace and, conversly, more difficult to concentrate on work when I'm at home in my pajamas. It's as if, by hopping in my car and going to work, I enter some kind of "work mode" where I'm not as likely to waste hours reading slashdot or wikipedia. Even when nobody else is at work, on a Sunday.
I actually just implemented a DVD-based backup solution for my employer. While DVDs are much smaller than tapes, they're much cheaper, especially when buying in bulk. They're so cheap, in fact, that we can afford to do nothing but level-0 backups, which eliminates a great deal of complexity. We deal with the optical degradation problem by using error-correcting codes to gaurantee against the loss of one disc from any given backup set --- and we usually make multiple sets anyway. All in all, it's not a terrible system.
Why not alias Arial to Helvetica in fontconfig? It's not exactly the same, but it's close.
How would DirectX interfaces help the slightest bit with a medical system? Programming will has more to do with solid methodology than tinking with the latest new toy language. Colleges shouldn't teach programming languages; they should teach how to program. From that, any particular language, be in bourne shell or C#, will come naturally.
We use a system that tracks users based on how they came to our site; it works quite well.