I remember the last time I went to renew my license to drive and I was asked for my signature. Before I signed I actually stopped to read what I was signing. I don't remember the actually wording but it was a release for searching me for drugs and alcohol at any time I am stopped by police. I don't recall the penalty but I believe it was simply a revocation of my license.
I remember having to provide a signature in the past but that was only so the police had a signature on the license to compare to what was given at the time of signing a citation.
So, what happens if I refuse a search at the time the police stop me? On one hand they could show a court I signed a release allowing a search. On the other there's precedent for people revoking permission at any time.
Let's say I am stopped, I refuse a search, and now the police charge me for driving without a license because my refusal invalidated my license to drive. Does driving without a license allow for a search of my vehicle?
This came up again when I came to a random checkpoint on the interstate. I was asked by a police officer for my license and insurance, and I initially refused. The officer just repeated the demand by shouting at me. I rolled my eyes and gave in. While the officer was looking at the papers I saw a dog being lead around my truck by another officer. The officer never called anyone to verify my documents were legitimate.
When I got home I went to look up the law on these checkpoints. First thing was that by law the state patrol was required to publish where and when these checkpoints would occur in advance. I don't know if they did so but a small print notation in the back of a local newspaper would probably meet that standard. Then I saw that they were limited in what they can look for in these stops. They are health and safety, license and insurance, and captured game. Health and safety means that they can check that the brakes, lights, and indicators work, that people are wearing their seat belts, children are in proper child seats, no obstructions of view, that kind of thing. Checking for license and insurance is pretty self explanatory. Checking on captured game means that every dead critter in my vehicle must have a proper game tag, and that my hunting license is current. The dog might have been sniffing for pheasants in my truck but let's just say I doubted it. Without calling in for revoked license to drive, and that I had paid my insurance bill, they made no real attempt to verify my papers and therefore checked nothing of what they were allowed to check by law.
Oh, another thing, while I was waiting to get free to move on my way I looked around to get an idea on how big of an operation this was. The cars were packed wide and deep at this abandoned truck stop or whatever it was. There were deputies from at least three counties there, and multiple K9 units from the state patrol.
Seems to me that the police are taking their business of violating our rights very seriously.
This judge is betting that the defendant doesn't have the resources to take the case to those higher levels where Constitutional arguments are taken seriously.
Chances are if some civil liberties organization decides to provide free legal counsel to see a precedent set by a higher court then they just drop the demand to unlock the phone and the ability to prevent future abuse is denied.
I'm thinking we need a new standard on what grants standing for taking bad law to court.
But can the batteries be improved to support a charge like that, or the charger?
A standard EV charger plug can provide about 20kW, that's 250 volt at 80 amps. That will recharge an 80kWh battery in 4 hours. To shorten that to 5 minutes means multiplying the amperes by 60*4/5=48. 48*80 amps is 3840 amps. Alternately the voltage could be raised, 250*48=12000 volts. Either way that's a 960kW connector you need on that car. Making it a 20 minute recharge puts that at a 240kW connector.
I'm probably getting my math wrong but I'm estimating that filling a 16 gallon gasoline tank in 5 minutes is somewhere around 12000kW through that fuel hose at a filling station. Is that right? That's pretty amazing if it is. Someone check my math, please.
I want magsafe so my toddler won't destroy my mac while crawling around,
I found the BreakSafe cable from Griffin to be a nice substitute. It does suck a bit to have to buy an accessory to restore functionality lost from a previous design. On the other hand $40 to protect a computer that cost over $1000 is not that bad in the greater scheme. Given that I have an option to buy a non-Apple power supply and cable means I'm not locked in to whatever Apple charges for spares. Since my last two laptops needed spare power supplies because I broke the one that came with it I expect to make up that $40 I spent on the Griffin cable by buying a non-Apple power supply.
a few usb ports I can use without a dongle,
Two possible responses pop to mind... A) Good luck finding that on any top end laptop from anyone. B) Define "a few".
I did some looking around at some laptops from some competitors and I noticed a pattern. There is likely to be only 3 or 4 USB ports, 1 might be USB-A and the rest USB-C. For video you get HDMI, mini-DP, USB-C/Thunderbolt3/DP, sometimes two of the above, sometimes none of the above. If there is an Ethernet port then it's some flimsy flip down RJ-45 or a proprietary mini-jack that needs a dongle, and that dongle might not come with it. Audio will be a single headphone port (likely doubles as digital out), or one input and one output. Power will be through one of the USB-C ports, a proprietary power jack, sometimes even both (which I think might be nice as it gives options), and none had a magnetic breakaway power jack that I could find.
In short, you will need dongles to plug in more than two things at a time on every laptop I saw in the same price range as a MacBook Pro, and if you want a magnetic breakaway power cable then you'll have to buy that from a third party.
my F-keys, and a sane keyboard.
Without testing the competition on this I can't comment.
I'm seeing new laptops that don't need a dongle but are weak on power, or have MacBook Pro level power and need dongles. Buy used, buy cheap, or buy dongles.
I expect that James Damore will never see a courtroom with his case against Google. He'll get a big fat pay-off out of court, and Google will make some kind of half apology where they say they did not fire anyone over comments over hiring practices and that they'll never do it again. After that I expect Damore to find work in his own company doing whatever it is he likes to do, and make appearances on TV shows and on the speaking circuit for most anyone that asks. Any other outcome will not be near as good for Google.
It appears you didn't get the memo, there's no alcohol in the Trump White House. He likes diet Pepsi.
Obama liked the marijuana. GW Bush reportedly did cocaine. Clinton liked cigars, but he didn't inhale. If Clinton didn't smoke the cigars, then why did he keep a box of them in the Oval Office?
I noticed your citation went out of its way to hide just how much fuel taxes contribute to paying for the roads. Reading between the lines my guess is that fuel taxes still pay for a plurality of road maintenance. I'm not going to run through the numbers in the article on paper to get a better idea on where the money comes from but just bouncing them around in my head I'm guessing that fuel taxes still pay for between 40% to 60% of road funds. If you think my guess is way off then show me some numbers.
This tells me that EV drivers are still getting a free ride on paying for the roads they drive on. Even if the fuel taxes pay for only 20% of the budget for roads then that's still a pretty significant subsidy on their miles.
I've seen the breakdown on where the money I pay for my fuel goes. No one makes more on the sale of that fuel than the government. If anyone thinks the oil companies are making out like bandits on this need to see just how much of that dollar spent goes to the government. At least the oil companies give me fuel to get me places, the government just uses that money to pay rich people to buy Tesla sedans. Let them pay for their own damned status symbol, I could have used my tax bill to buy new windows on my house.
Oh really? So where will schools get the 100 million from now?
They get the money for services provided like any other service provider, from the people getting the services. Given that the tax burden is lowered the people will benefit in either lower taxes or that money going to other services that could use those funds, like perhaps the military, police, and courts.
Good you can afford it. Not everyone can, nor can everyone put money upfront to save on the long run. And trades folk will find that their business is less than before.
If that money is coming from the people through income taxes, property taxes, and sales taxes then it's not the government buying them windows and furnaces, it's people putting money in a big pot and drawing from it in an almost random fashion. They might win based on the taxes they pay and the products they buy but in the end it's still their money except the government skimmed a little off the top to pay for all the people moving this money around.
Electric cars are the quintessential example of high upfront cost (they are more expensive than internal combustion cars), but lower running costs (electricity to run them is cheaper, no oil change, no gearbox, no maintenance apart from tires and brakes).
There are mechanisms to deal with this other than the government giving you money now in exchange for what they'll take from you later in taxes. People can get loans, you know that don't you? If people decide that electric cars are a good investment then they will buy them.
Will you be buying an electric car soon by your logic?
I'll buy what I believe is good for me. I don't like the government using my money against my choices. I assume that Canada has elections? Seems to me that the people voted for a government to hand them some economic freedom.
Here's why I don't like government enforced environmental subsidies. There was a subsidy on compact florescent lights, perhaps it's still there. I bought some of these CFLs and they sucked. They took a long time to light up, didn't last near as long as advertised, contained mercury (which is a toxic mess if it should break), was hard on the eyes, and tended to interfere with IR remotes (that drove me batty until I figured that out). Then came LED lights. They produced light immediately, often cost less than CFL even after the subsidy, didn't contain anything toxic, lasts seemingly forever (hadn't seen one fail yet in years), but sometimes still kind of "funny" in the color of the light. The government spent a lot of MY MONEY on these shitty lights that I hated and possibly poisoned many children from broken bulbs. I can't get this money back, I saw no benefit, and the open market beat the government to picking the winner in competition to the old Edison bulb.
I got to visit my sister recently and see her new house. Every light in the house is LED and the lights are awesome. My guess is that these were expensive lights but they will last a very long time and the lighting is a very natural color. They didn't need a subsidy for these energy efficient lights because they recognized the return on investment, both in the value of money and the value of comfort/convenience. The government chose poorly and I'm left paying the bill.
I don't know who you are talking about but it's not me, I said none of those things.
Since you asked though I'll answer one of your questions.
I remember hearing of a local family that signed a 100 year lease on some farmland for a shopping mall or something to be built on it. This family has been living off the returns from that for a long time now. This seemed to me to be quite low risk because if anything goes wrong then they have a building they can lease to some other occupants, which has happened, or worst case they can tear everything up and go back to farming the land.
You might say that a nuclear power plant is different from a shopping mall. Let's consider the risks over time. At the beginning of construction the site will have to be cleared and leveled. If it stops here then the site is prepared for anything else, like housing or industry. Then it needs roads, utilities, train tracks, and likely a dock or port of some sort on a waterway. If it stops here then it's a nice industrial site. Then there needs to be an administration building and/or workshop for people to work from. If it stops here then it's still a site worthy of industrial development. Then the site needs a turbine hall, the start of a containment building, cooling towers, and so forth. Maybe it's not a general industrial site at this point but it's got the good start for conversion to a natural gas power plant, iron works, or some such. Then the reactor has to be put in. If it stops at this point then it's still a good start for a nuclear power plant in the future, and we have seen such sites get completed as nuclear power plants before. Even if the reactor building has to be cleared for conversion to burn coal or natural gas then it's still a far better site than starting from nothing. Once the reactor goes critical and starts producing steam then it's making money. So long as it makes money then it's something valuable even with the sunk cost in the land and structures. People will invest in this on the possibility of a return through dividends and/or the future value of the stock upon sale.
Why would people invest billions in something that might not produce a profit until their grandchildren take over? That's what I believe is a false premise. You assume that if an investment cannot pay off it's debt in one's lifetime that it has no value to a person. People buy and sell debt all the time. A nuclear power plant may be in debt for 30 or 40 years but people investing in it will know that it still has value because it can produce more than enough money to pay off the debt because it has an expected operational life span of 50, 60, or even 80 years.
Who pays for these things?
Short answer, people with money. Longer answer, people with money that understand that every investment comes with both risk of loses and a probability of future return. This risk and return is bought and sold like any commodity that can have it's value rise and fall. The ultimate pay out of this investment might not get settled for two or three generations but that doesn't matter if people can ride that wave for even a day through the buying and selling of a portion of that investment.
Energy sector jobs, particularly those based on carbon, have historically been one of the greatest wealth generating sectors. The abundance of carbon-based energy supplies were one of the big driving forces in the rise of the industrial west, which lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty and improved the heath and general welfare of entire nations. No "renewable" energy source has such a record; those expensive and unreliable "boutique" energy sources are primarily good for virtue signalling and fostering the political corruption that comes from fighting over government subsidies - each has its niche (solar, for example is great on Earth-orbiting satellites, and off-grid living in low latitudes) but they cannot be used as primary power sources without being backed-up by ready-on-demand nuclear or carbon-based generation.
It doesn't have to be carbon based generation to back up the wind and solar. It could be storage like hydroelectric dams. Norway has a lot of hydroelectric, it provides 98% of their electricity now. I don't know what the ratio would have to be between hydroelectric and unreliable energy like wind and solar but I'm guessing that there is a lot of room for Norway to experiment to find out.
I agree that fossil fuels brought the West from the stone age and into the iron age and beyond. Without coal there is no steel. Without steel there are no steam engines. Where I might disagree is in that fossil fuel was alone in this. Water wheels and sails did a lot to help civilization develop and spread. Mining coal and iron for steel allowed for sailing ships large enough to "stop the wind", called windjammers. These iron works often had tools powered by water wheels. It took all three, wind, water, and coal, to get where we are.
I guess if we don't want our young people becoming economically wealthy from oil and gas, we can encourage them to be drug dealers or pimps...
That only works if there is someone that can afford hookers and blackjack. The young people might be able to sell this stuff if the old people made their money from something else. I'm guessing that an economy that made their money on something other than drugs, prostitution, and gambling might be able to survive for some time high on the hog from that wealth, so long as there are some pig farmers to provide the hogs. There will be a point that the wealth runs thin or something replaces that source of wealth.
My guess is that the future source of wealth will be nuclear power. Of course we'll still have some wind and water power, solar and coal too I guess, but the bulk of it will come from nuclear.
The reason used electric vehicles are so cheap now is because they were subsidized by the government years earlier. So, what happens when the subsidies run out?
I expect prices to rise and then used electric cars won't be such a sweet deal any more.
That's a tax and spend government policy, nothing is free. If education were free then it would not require petroleum revenue.
generous unumployment insurance,
Also a tax and spend government policy.
generous parental leave,
I'm guessing also tax and spend.
domestic companies outside of the fossil fuel sector?
Tax and spend.
Also: high minimum wages.
Not tax and spend but not a burden on the economy if there is cheap oil to tax, and people can afford the higher wages because they see government subsidized education, parental leave, and unemployment insurance.
Oh, and it's easier to afford these things for a government that relies on it's NATO treaties to defend them against potential invaders instead of spending that money on funding their own military.
I'm sure that having enough hydroelectric power to provide 98% of their electricity demands helps. It's easy to sell petroleum products real cheap when you don't have to burn it for lights and cooking. Places like Saudi Arabia might have a lot of cheap oil but without something to keep the lights on then they are living in grass huts instead of high rises made of concrete and glass.
Also, electric motors weigh a lot less than the ICE.
That's true but the batteries in an electric car more than make up for the weight of fuel and engine in a gasoline car. Most batteries today have 1/100th the energy by weight of gasoline, and even the best batteries that might be found in a top end electric car is still less than 1/10th the energy by weight.
Weight is less of a problem when you have regenerative braking.
Regen braking is shit for stopping a vehicle. It can slow a car down gently but it can't be used for emergency braking or to come to a complete stop. It's also shit for extending the range on a car. The range it adds is in the noise of computing your total range.
I know that regen braking saves on brake repairs. What also saves on brakes on ICE powered vehicles is engine braking. In large vehicles engine braking has been standard for a long time. If brake wear becomes something that people look for in buying a car then I expect future ICE powered vehicles to add the software needed to the existing anti-lock and cruise control electronics to reduce brake wear, that is if this isn't already a thing. I hear people talk of electric vehicles not needing oil changes either. If oil changes and brake repairs stay as cheap as they are now, and we keep seeing cars getting more and more miles on each oil change, then this will become a very minor point very soon. What happens then is both electric and ICE cars getting the same miles between visits to an auto shop, and the price difference in the stop being very small.
Added weight adds to tire wear. Braking adds wear regardless if it is regen, friction, or engine braking. Maybe that electric car can avoid wear on brakes and not need oil changes but it will need tires more often, or more expensive tires, for the same miles because of the added weight of the batteries to get the same range.
Another thing, this isn't either or any more. Hybrid electric cars are a thing. Add in potential competition from alternatives like natural gas as fuel and the decisions for getting a pure electric car fades, or at least gets really muddy.
My used 2015 Nissan leaf was significantly cheaper to buy than an equivalent ICE car and is significantly cheaper to run.
Do you think it possible that this could be because of the car being subsidized on its first sale, low demand for used electric cars, or some combination of the two? I'm pleased that you are happy with your purchase but if more people wanted electric cars then you would not have been able to buy that Leaf as cheaply as you did.
A quick Google search tells me that the average time a buyer of a new car keeps their vehicle is 6 years. You bought a car used that's only 3 years old. Why would someone keep a car for only 3 years and then sell it? Perhaps they were not satisfied with it? That might also explain the low price you paid, the seller was willing to take a bath on the sale to be rid of it. The original owner might not have sold at an effective loss but the dealer where you bought it from may have. If it's such a great car then it's likely to have stayed with its original owner for another couple years.
I don't know how much you paid, where you bought it, or how you defined "equivalent". This is all very subjective and when it comes down to it all this subjectivity is reflected by something objective, price. People buy all the time on how they compute cost to benefit, dealers adjust prices to what people are willing to pay. My guess is that you defined "equivalent" differently enough from the rest that you viewed this Leaf as a deal compared to the "equivalent" models offered. Had more people shared your view of value then the price of that Leaf would have been higher.
Given that the government is still subsidizing electric car sales for them to still sell as poorly as they do tells me that electric cars are still a terrible deal for large portions of the population. Maybe this is based on people having a view of electric cars that is outdated, and that people will have to learn to dispose of an old bias. What helps to enforce this bias is seeing a question on their tax forms on if they bought an electric car in the last year, and getting money if they answer yes. If electric cars are the best deal out there today then it's time to get rid of the subsidy and let the bias against electric cars go with it.
By the time that's required, ICE will be an expensive sinking ship.
I've been hearing things like that for 35+ years now. I've learned to become very very patient on waiting for anything to replace petroleum fuels. My best guess for the future now is someone will develop a means to synthesize hydrocarbons using nuclear power. We'll still be burning gasoline, only it won't be from oil drilled out of the ground.
Tell me something, when do you predict that this will happen? I predict that we'll be burning petroleum in cars, trucks, trains, planes, and ships, for at least another 30 years. After that we could see synthetic fuels have enough infrastructure, and petroleum become hard enough to find, to be the primary fuel. Alternatively there's the possibility of some new technology to come along, or we have some widespread war or plague and we're back to horses and sails to move about. The chances of electric powered transportation to dominate look very slim.
Oh, and there has to be a plan for these people to keep making money after the plant is shut down, such as being able to build a new power plant.
A third coercion! This is why nuclear is failing though, people are wise to the game.
What coercion? Shutting down a nuclear power reactor and not having anything to replace it means the lights go out for the customers of that utility. They will be very protective of that energy producing asset unless they are allowed to replace it with something. I didn't say a new nuclear power plant, I said they'd have to be able to stay in business with any power plant. If you want them to go with solar instead then let them do that. They'd need to have a site to put the collectors and not have people protest over displacing some turtle or butterfly. If you want them to go with wind power instead then let them build windmills without people protesting about birds getting killed.
I like wind power, I think it has a lot of promise. If it's going to be successful then people will need a license to build. Do windmills kill birds? I'm certain that they do. Do I care? Not really. Birds are jerks and I need electricity to run my air conditioner and heat my burritos in the microwave.
I'm wise to your game. You are so concerned about the "environment" that you'd rather protect some worthless bait fish than see a hydroelectric dam provide electricity and water to people. Fuck you and all your ignorant SJW tree hugging BANANAs. If all you got is to say no to everything then expect to be ignored as people get some work done.
(For the acronym impaired that's BANANA for Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anyone.)
As much as you want to rant over your imagined enemies, the fact is, those businesses do care who supplies their power, and they are not going with nuclear
They prefer the alternatives.
Is that why nuclear power produces 20% of the electricity in the USA while wind and solar produce what is a rounding error by comparison? I'm quite certain that businesses don't care where their electricity comes from. The customers might care, which is why companies like Tesla and Apple announce efforts to buy electricity from wind and solar. They don't much care if it raises their costs, they just raise the price of their products to compensate.
Nope. Your false claims are showing. They actually did of the building of prototypes and designs and...begged for the government to pay for it. And the results? More begging.
That's why the subsidies are worthless. They never produce results. They claim based on their simulations that miracles will happen, demand money, then fail
Sounds a lot like the subsidies for wind and solar too. They keep begging for subsidies because if they don't get subsidies then the oceans will rise and drown us all!!
We keep hearing of miracles that will come from wind and solar but they have yet to come. Here's the difference though, solar and wind have been allowed licenses to operate while nuclear has not. You say nuclear has not delivered? I say its because the government has not allowed them to even try. They can't prove it viable until the government issues a license to actually build something.
Sorry, but actually the electrical industry is downscaling because they are revising their energy estimates for the future, and that is yet another reason they won't be trying to build nuclear plants. Too much investment, too little return.
How would you know? No one has been allowed to even try for 40+ years. Anyone can go to the NRC website and see that people have been applying for licenses. That means people are willing to invest. The problem is that the NRC drags their feet until the applicants get fed up and withdraw the application. A quick look at a couple of the applications shows it took TEN YEARS to get a license. Maybe if the government got up off their thumbs then we'd have seen more old coal plants shut down and replaced with carbon free nuclear.
If people fear nuclear power more than global warming then I'm not so sure global warming is any real threat. They'd rather wait for solar power to be cheaper than coal, and dump subsidies into that money pit, than see nuclear be successful.
You hate the fact that they're useless, don't you?
Those nuclear submarines are quite useful, I'm not so sure about you though. What those nuclear subs are useful for is proving daily that nuclear power is safe. That must really bother you, seeing nuclear power so safe and clean that sailors can be sealed up in a big metal tube with a reactor for months at a time and come out just as happy and healthy as when they went in.
Animals will pick rusting metal? Iron will poison the soil? Yea, because old metal can't already be found all over farms.
As someone that grew up on a dairy farm I can say these are real things. Cattle are known to eat metal and if it doesn't tear their insides apart and kill them from internal bleeding then they can get real stupid and lethargic from heavy metal poisoning. Old metal can't be found all over working farms because that would be considered a hazard to the animals and would get a farmer fined or shut down by state inspectors.
Also, in one breath you say it takes heavy equipment to cut them down and in the next you say they will topple so easily as to be a hazard.
I didn't say cut them down, I said cut them apart.
But in TX,itâ(TM)s much cheaper to use wind over nuclear.
Let's just pretend that less than 1% of the world population live in Texas. Let's also pretend that there are lots of people that live on islands, where land is expensive, and the neighbors to this island don't like them very much so they can't just buy their electricity from them. Let's also pretend that this describes many hundreds of millions of people in the world. What then?
We are not going to live in a world powered by wind. We are going to have to figure out how to make nuclear power work. This is going to take a lot of time, a lot of money, and a lot of effort. We got solar and wind to be far cheaper and therefore more viable as energy sources with lots of time, money, and effort so it's not like this has not been done before.
Mostly what nuclear power needs is practice. The USA has built only a handful of new nuclear power plants in the last 40 years, after building over 100 in 20 or 30 years. These 40, 50, and 60+ year old reactors will have to be shut down soon for safety reasons. We're going to get a lot of practice decommissioning those plants, that should bring down the costs. Something will have to replace them and it will be nuclear power, except for maybe those that live in Texas.
The US used to see a new nuclear power plant come online every 2 months. Estimates are that with growth in demand since then and the retiring of old coal and nuclear we will have to bring one new nuclear power plant online every month. Assuming they last for 50 years then that means we will have to keep bringing one new nuclear power plant online every month because after 50 years of building nuclear power plants we'll have to start replacing those we are building now. That's assuming zero growth in energy demand. Those new nuclear reactors would be replacing only existing capacity.
Maybe Texas can go with wind instead, and Arizona use solar, but for the rest of the USA the only thing cheap enough to replace the aging coal and nuclear plants is new nuclear.
You want to claim that wind and solar will get cheaper? Then I'll just say that nuclear will get cheaper too. Today nuclear is cheaper than solar. Except for Texas we find that today nuclear is cheaper than wind. What will the prices of these energy sources be in 50 years? I don't know, but we know that right now if we want cheap energy then it's going to include nuclear power.
So you agree that there is a fund to decommission nuclear power plants? Good. I'll take that over not having anything at all like wind power.
The claims have been that the nuclear power plants are not being cleaned up. This can be shown to be false. It may be taking a long time, it may be running over budget, but the mess is being cleaned up. The problem with windmills now is that they've been leaving the mess for others to clean up, and walking away with the profits.
The nuclear power mess would be cleaned up more quickly if the Democrats had not been holding up the construction of nuclear waste storage sites. I'm guessing what would also help is issuing licenses for new reactors on the old sites. They'll get real motivated to clear the site if they know that by doing so they can put a new reactor there. The Democrats have been holding up the issuance of nuclear power licenses too.
1. Turbines don't "wear out". Only the bearing wear, and they can be replaced.
Right, because you know more about windmill maintenance than the people that have been managing them for decades.
2. The towers don't "go bad" either. They will stand for centuries.
No, they don't, material fatigue is a thing. I don't have data on windmill towers in front of me but I'm quite certain that the metal supports for power lines have a design lifespan of 80 to 90 years. Maybe a windmill tower is quite different in some way but I'd like to see some data on that before I believe you.
3. Wind towers do not create a "wasteland". The surrounding land can continue to be used for grazing, crops, whatever.
Right, surrounding land with rusting towers scattered about. Towers that make good lightning rods and can electrocute cattle or set a crop on fire. Towers that can topple in the wind, which create a hazard to animals, plants, and humans. Towers that will rust and introduce iron into the soil, which can poison the crop, and poison the animals that are too stupid to not lick the metal.
4. Turbines contain plenty of valuable copper, steel, rare earths, etc. We should worry more about someone stealing them than abandoning them.
If you read the article (yep, I know) then you'd know that it takes heavy equipment to cut the thick metal and haul away the pieces. Cutting the pieces smaller on site takes more time and labor and therefore becomes not profitable. I'm guessing that someone could go out with a not much more than a cutting torch and some rope, climb the tower, cut away chunks, and be able to sell that for scrap. The thing is that the fuel for the torch to cut the metal, and for the truck to haul the pieces, costs money. Steel is not all that valuable and so it would take economies of scale to have a chance to make it profitable. People might be able to make a profit on the copper and such with small scale work but that still leaves the steel towers.
I'm pretty sure it's called the tragedy of communism.
I'm pretty sure its called the tragedy of the commons, but I like your term better. I believe that communism is more accurate and I'm going to copy that from you in the future.
Actually, the big concern is that nobody wants to buy the power from them, as alternatives keep springing up. This gets them antsy as the reactors need to distribute the power, and they are useless without being able to do so. And that means...no funds to retire.
Two things here...
First, you want me to believe that no one is willing to buy electricity from a nuclear power plant? Bullshit. No body cares where the electricity comes from, especially not a business that has work to do. Saying "nobody" is a bit hyperbolic since there's always some hippy that can't stand nuclear power but such people are also the kind that put solar panels on their roof and go off grid, they aren't paying any utility bills anyway.
Second, if they have no funds to retire, because no one is buying, then they will keep going until the do have funds to retire. If you want that nuclear power plant to have money to shut down later then you buy the electricity now. Oh, and there has to be a plan for these people to keep making money after the plant is shut down, such as being able to build a new power plant.
Sorry, but none of those ideas have panned out. They aren't appealing even with the tens of billions of subsidies they've gotten.
They haven't panned out because the government has never issued a license for them. The government is very risk adverse, to the point of being crippled to make any changes to the rules on licensing. We've been making the same reactor with minor variations on a theme for 60 years. People ask for a new license and the government says, "We don't know if this is safe." The response is, "We'd like to prove to you it is safe by building a demonstration reactor." "How can we know that is safe" "We can do that with these plans and simulations." "We'll need to see a working prototype first." "That's what we are asking for, a license to build a working prototype." "We can't issue a license to build anything until you can show it's safe."
Subsidies are worthless no matter how much is spent without a license to build a real world reactor. The simulations are only as good as the data used to create them and to get that data means building a prototype to get that data from.
Nope. Sounds like scare tactics to me, as you try to create a hysteria over an image, without actual robustness to your examinations.
You can live with your delusions of a nuclear free world only so long, then reality bites. Go read a book or something.
They just can't get those gen 3 reactors to deliver on their promises.
And they can't deliver on those promises until the government starts issuing licenses to build those Gen3 reactors.
Sorry, but it turns out we could have literally built homes for Americans that would have reduced energy costs by more than we've gotten from nuclear subsidies.
Sorry, but a growing population and a shrinking number of operating nuclear power reactors means that at some point those lines on the graph crosses and the space in between the lines is the growing energy shortage. If you want to see an ecological disaster then make energy so scarce and expensive that people will be cutting down every tree in sight for firewood to stay warm.
And that isn't even counting the wastefulness of nuclear subs.
It seems ludicrously seld-defeating in the long run.
In the long run all the competition is seeing the same expense and lowered quality work. There might be someone that comes along that is willing to hire those with experience but unless they have enough shops to hoover up the experienced workers at any significant magnitude then it does little to break the others to do away with this collusion.
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I remember the last time I went to renew my license to drive and I was asked for my signature. Before I signed I actually stopped to read what I was signing. I don't remember the actually wording but it was a release for searching me for drugs and alcohol at any time I am stopped by police. I don't recall the penalty but I believe it was simply a revocation of my license.
I remember having to provide a signature in the past but that was only so the police had a signature on the license to compare to what was given at the time of signing a citation.
So, what happens if I refuse a search at the time the police stop me? On one hand they could show a court I signed a release allowing a search. On the other there's precedent for people revoking permission at any time.
Let's say I am stopped, I refuse a search, and now the police charge me for driving without a license because my refusal invalidated my license to drive. Does driving without a license allow for a search of my vehicle?
This came up again when I came to a random checkpoint on the interstate. I was asked by a police officer for my license and insurance, and I initially refused. The officer just repeated the demand by shouting at me. I rolled my eyes and gave in. While the officer was looking at the papers I saw a dog being lead around my truck by another officer. The officer never called anyone to verify my documents were legitimate.
When I got home I went to look up the law on these checkpoints. First thing was that by law the state patrol was required to publish where and when these checkpoints would occur in advance. I don't know if they did so but a small print notation in the back of a local newspaper would probably meet that standard. Then I saw that they were limited in what they can look for in these stops. They are health and safety, license and insurance, and captured game. Health and safety means that they can check that the brakes, lights, and indicators work, that people are wearing their seat belts, children are in proper child seats, no obstructions of view, that kind of thing. Checking for license and insurance is pretty self explanatory. Checking on captured game means that every dead critter in my vehicle must have a proper game tag, and that my hunting license is current. The dog might have been sniffing for pheasants in my truck but let's just say I doubted it. Without calling in for revoked license to drive, and that I had paid my insurance bill, they made no real attempt to verify my papers and therefore checked nothing of what they were allowed to check by law.
Oh, another thing, while I was waiting to get free to move on my way I looked around to get an idea on how big of an operation this was. The cars were packed wide and deep at this abandoned truck stop or whatever it was. There were deputies from at least three counties there, and multiple K9 units from the state patrol.
Seems to me that the police are taking their business of violating our rights very seriously.
This judge is betting that the defendant doesn't have the resources to take the case to those higher levels where Constitutional arguments are taken seriously.
Chances are if some civil liberties organization decides to provide free legal counsel to see a precedent set by a higher court then they just drop the demand to unlock the phone and the ability to prevent future abuse is denied.
I'm thinking we need a new standard on what grants standing for taking bad law to court.
Do you have skunkworks or Oompa Loompa?
Please say Oopa Loompa...
Please say Oopa Loompa...
Please say Oopa Loompa...
The grid can be improved.
But can the batteries be improved to support a charge like that, or the charger?
A standard EV charger plug can provide about 20kW, that's 250 volt at 80 amps. That will recharge an 80kWh battery in 4 hours. To shorten that to 5 minutes means multiplying the amperes by 60*4/5=48. 48*80 amps is 3840 amps. Alternately the voltage could be raised, 250*48=12000 volts. Either way that's a 960kW connector you need on that car. Making it a 20 minute recharge puts that at a 240kW connector.
I'm probably getting my math wrong but I'm estimating that filling a 16 gallon gasoline tank in 5 minutes is somewhere around 12000kW through that fuel hose at a filling station. Is that right? That's pretty amazing if it is. Someone check my math, please.
I want magsafe so my toddler won't destroy my mac while crawling around,
I found the BreakSafe cable from Griffin to be a nice substitute. It does suck a bit to have to buy an accessory to restore functionality lost from a previous design. On the other hand $40 to protect a computer that cost over $1000 is not that bad in the greater scheme. Given that I have an option to buy a non-Apple power supply and cable means I'm not locked in to whatever Apple charges for spares. Since my last two laptops needed spare power supplies because I broke the one that came with it I expect to make up that $40 I spent on the Griffin cable by buying a non-Apple power supply.
a few usb ports I can use without a dongle,
Two possible responses pop to mind...
A) Good luck finding that on any top end laptop from anyone.
B) Define "a few".
I did some looking around at some laptops from some competitors and I noticed a pattern. There is likely to be only 3 or 4 USB ports, 1 might be USB-A and the rest USB-C. For video you get HDMI, mini-DP, USB-C/Thunderbolt3/DP, sometimes two of the above, sometimes none of the above. If there is an Ethernet port then it's some flimsy flip down RJ-45 or a proprietary mini-jack that needs a dongle, and that dongle might not come with it. Audio will be a single headphone port (likely doubles as digital out), or one input and one output. Power will be through one of the USB-C ports, a proprietary power jack, sometimes even both (which I think might be nice as it gives options), and none had a magnetic breakaway power jack that I could find.
In short, you will need dongles to plug in more than two things at a time on every laptop I saw in the same price range as a MacBook Pro, and if you want a magnetic breakaway power cable then you'll have to buy that from a third party.
my F-keys, and a sane keyboard.
Without testing the competition on this I can't comment.
I'm seeing new laptops that don't need a dongle but are weak on power, or have MacBook Pro level power and need dongles. Buy used, buy cheap, or buy dongles.
I expect that James Damore will never see a courtroom with his case against Google. He'll get a big fat pay-off out of court, and Google will make some kind of half apology where they say they did not fire anyone over comments over hiring practices and that they'll never do it again. After that I expect Damore to find work in his own company doing whatever it is he likes to do, and make appearances on TV shows and on the speaking circuit for most anyone that asks. Any other outcome will not be near as good for Google.
It appears you didn't get the memo, there's no alcohol in the Trump White House. He likes diet Pepsi.
Obama liked the marijuana. GW Bush reportedly did cocaine. Clinton liked cigars, but he didn't inhale. If Clinton didn't smoke the cigars, then why did he keep a box of them in the Oval Office?
I noticed your citation went out of its way to hide just how much fuel taxes contribute to paying for the roads. Reading between the lines my guess is that fuel taxes still pay for a plurality of road maintenance. I'm not going to run through the numbers in the article on paper to get a better idea on where the money comes from but just bouncing them around in my head I'm guessing that fuel taxes still pay for between 40% to 60% of road funds. If you think my guess is way off then show me some numbers.
This tells me that EV drivers are still getting a free ride on paying for the roads they drive on. Even if the fuel taxes pay for only 20% of the budget for roads then that's still a pretty significant subsidy on their miles.
I've seen the breakdown on where the money I pay for my fuel goes. No one makes more on the sale of that fuel than the government. If anyone thinks the oil companies are making out like bandits on this need to see just how much of that dollar spent goes to the government. At least the oil companies give me fuel to get me places, the government just uses that money to pay rich people to buy Tesla sedans. Let them pay for their own damned status symbol, I could have used my tax bill to buy new windows on my house.
Oh really? So where will schools get the 100 million from now?
They get the money for services provided like any other service provider, from the people getting the services. Given that the tax burden is lowered the people will benefit in either lower taxes or that money going to other services that could use those funds, like perhaps the military, police, and courts.
Good you can afford it. Not everyone can, nor can everyone put money upfront to save on the long run. And trades folk will find that their business is less than before.
If that money is coming from the people through income taxes, property taxes, and sales taxes then it's not the government buying them windows and furnaces, it's people putting money in a big pot and drawing from it in an almost random fashion. They might win based on the taxes they pay and the products they buy but in the end it's still their money except the government skimmed a little off the top to pay for all the people moving this money around.
Electric cars are the quintessential example of high upfront cost (they are more expensive than internal combustion cars), but lower running costs (electricity to run them is cheaper, no oil change, no gearbox, no maintenance apart from tires and brakes).
There are mechanisms to deal with this other than the government giving you money now in exchange for what they'll take from you later in taxes. People can get loans, you know that don't you? If people decide that electric cars are a good investment then they will buy them.
Will you be buying an electric car soon by your logic?
I'll buy what I believe is good for me. I don't like the government using my money against my choices. I assume that Canada has elections? Seems to me that the people voted for a government to hand them some economic freedom.
Here's why I don't like government enforced environmental subsidies. There was a subsidy on compact florescent lights, perhaps it's still there. I bought some of these CFLs and they sucked. They took a long time to light up, didn't last near as long as advertised, contained mercury (which is a toxic mess if it should break), was hard on the eyes, and tended to interfere with IR remotes (that drove me batty until I figured that out). Then came LED lights. They produced light immediately, often cost less than CFL even after the subsidy, didn't contain anything toxic, lasts seemingly forever (hadn't seen one fail yet in years), but sometimes still kind of "funny" in the color of the light. The government spent a lot of MY MONEY on these shitty lights that I hated and possibly poisoned many children from broken bulbs. I can't get this money back, I saw no benefit, and the open market beat the government to picking the winner in competition to the old Edison bulb.
I got to visit my sister recently and see her new house. Every light in the house is LED and the lights are awesome. My guess is that these were expensive lights but they will last a very long time and the lighting is a very natural color. They didn't need a subsidy for these energy efficient lights because they recognized the return on investment, both in the value of money and the value of comfort/convenience. The government chose poorly and I'm left paying the bill.
First you state that...
I don't know who you are talking about but it's not me, I said none of those things.
Since you asked though I'll answer one of your questions.
I remember hearing of a local family that signed a 100 year lease on some farmland for a shopping mall or something to be built on it. This family has been living off the returns from that for a long time now. This seemed to me to be quite low risk because if anything goes wrong then they have a building they can lease to some other occupants, which has happened, or worst case they can tear everything up and go back to farming the land.
You might say that a nuclear power plant is different from a shopping mall. Let's consider the risks over time. At the beginning of construction the site will have to be cleared and leveled. If it stops here then the site is prepared for anything else, like housing or industry. Then it needs roads, utilities, train tracks, and likely a dock or port of some sort on a waterway. If it stops here then it's a nice industrial site. Then there needs to be an administration building and/or workshop for people to work from. If it stops here then it's still a site worthy of industrial development. Then the site needs a turbine hall, the start of a containment building, cooling towers, and so forth. Maybe it's not a general industrial site at this point but it's got the good start for conversion to a natural gas power plant, iron works, or some such. Then the reactor has to be put in. If it stops at this point then it's still a good start for a nuclear power plant in the future, and we have seen such sites get completed as nuclear power plants before. Even if the reactor building has to be cleared for conversion to burn coal or natural gas then it's still a far better site than starting from nothing. Once the reactor goes critical and starts producing steam then it's making money. So long as it makes money then it's something valuable even with the sunk cost in the land and structures. People will invest in this on the possibility of a return through dividends and/or the future value of the stock upon sale.
Why would people invest billions in something that might not produce a profit until their grandchildren take over? That's what I believe is a false premise. You assume that if an investment cannot pay off it's debt in one's lifetime that it has no value to a person. People buy and sell debt all the time. A nuclear power plant may be in debt for 30 or 40 years but people investing in it will know that it still has value because it can produce more than enough money to pay off the debt because it has an expected operational life span of 50, 60, or even 80 years.
Who pays for these things?
Short answer, people with money. Longer answer, people with money that understand that every investment comes with both risk of loses and a probability of future return. This risk and return is bought and sold like any commodity that can have it's value rise and fall. The ultimate pay out of this investment might not get settled for two or three generations but that doesn't matter if people can ride that wave for even a day through the buying and selling of a portion of that investment.
Energy sector jobs, particularly those based on carbon, have historically been one of the greatest wealth generating sectors. The abundance of carbon-based energy supplies were one of the big driving forces in the rise of the industrial west, which lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty and improved the heath and general welfare of entire nations. No "renewable" energy source has such a record; those expensive and unreliable "boutique" energy sources are primarily good for virtue signalling and fostering the political corruption that comes from fighting over government subsidies - each has its niche (solar, for example is great on Earth-orbiting satellites, and off-grid living in low latitudes) but they cannot be used as primary power sources without being backed-up by ready-on-demand nuclear or carbon-based generation.
It doesn't have to be carbon based generation to back up the wind and solar. It could be storage like hydroelectric dams. Norway has a lot of hydroelectric, it provides 98% of their electricity now. I don't know what the ratio would have to be between hydroelectric and unreliable energy like wind and solar but I'm guessing that there is a lot of room for Norway to experiment to find out.
I agree that fossil fuels brought the West from the stone age and into the iron age and beyond. Without coal there is no steel. Without steel there are no steam engines. Where I might disagree is in that fossil fuel was alone in this. Water wheels and sails did a lot to help civilization develop and spread. Mining coal and iron for steel allowed for sailing ships large enough to "stop the wind", called windjammers. These iron works often had tools powered by water wheels. It took all three, wind, water, and coal, to get where we are.
I guess if we don't want our young people becoming economically wealthy from oil and gas, we can encourage them to be drug dealers or pimps...
That only works if there is someone that can afford hookers and blackjack. The young people might be able to sell this stuff if the old people made their money from something else. I'm guessing that an economy that made their money on something other than drugs, prostitution, and gambling might be able to survive for some time high on the hog from that wealth, so long as there are some pig farmers to provide the hogs. There will be a point that the wealth runs thin or something replaces that source of wealth.
My guess is that the future source of wealth will be nuclear power. Of course we'll still have some wind and water power, solar and coal too I guess, but the bulk of it will come from nuclear.
I see, so my theory was correct.
The reason used electric vehicles are so cheap now is because they were subsidized by the government years earlier. So, what happens when the subsidies run out?
I expect prices to rise and then used electric cars won't be such a sweet deal any more.
Invest fossil fuel revenue in free education,
That's a tax and spend government policy, nothing is free. If education were free then it would not require petroleum revenue.
generous unumployment insurance,
Also a tax and spend government policy.
generous parental leave,
I'm guessing also tax and spend.
domestic companies outside of the fossil fuel sector?
Tax and spend.
Also: high minimum wages.
Not tax and spend but not a burden on the economy if there is cheap oil to tax, and people can afford the higher wages because they see government subsidized education, parental leave, and unemployment insurance.
Oh, and it's easier to afford these things for a government that relies on it's NATO treaties to defend them against potential invaders instead of spending that money on funding their own military.
I'm sure that having enough hydroelectric power to provide 98% of their electricity demands helps. It's easy to sell petroleum products real cheap when you don't have to burn it for lights and cooking. Places like Saudi Arabia might have a lot of cheap oil but without something to keep the lights on then they are living in grass huts instead of high rises made of concrete and glass.
Also, electric motors weigh a lot less than the ICE.
That's true but the batteries in an electric car more than make up for the weight of fuel and engine in a gasoline car. Most batteries today have 1/100th the energy by weight of gasoline, and even the best batteries that might be found in a top end electric car is still less than 1/10th the energy by weight.
Weight is less of a problem when you have regenerative braking.
Regen braking is shit for stopping a vehicle. It can slow a car down gently but it can't be used for emergency braking or to come to a complete stop. It's also shit for extending the range on a car. The range it adds is in the noise of computing your total range.
I know that regen braking saves on brake repairs. What also saves on brakes on ICE powered vehicles is engine braking. In large vehicles engine braking has been standard for a long time. If brake wear becomes something that people look for in buying a car then I expect future ICE powered vehicles to add the software needed to the existing anti-lock and cruise control electronics to reduce brake wear, that is if this isn't already a thing. I hear people talk of electric vehicles not needing oil changes either. If oil changes and brake repairs stay as cheap as they are now, and we keep seeing cars getting more and more miles on each oil change, then this will become a very minor point very soon. What happens then is both electric and ICE cars getting the same miles between visits to an auto shop, and the price difference in the stop being very small.
Added weight adds to tire wear. Braking adds wear regardless if it is regen, friction, or engine braking. Maybe that electric car can avoid wear on brakes and not need oil changes but it will need tires more often, or more expensive tires, for the same miles because of the added weight of the batteries to get the same range.
Another thing, this isn't either or any more. Hybrid electric cars are a thing. Add in potential competition from alternatives like natural gas as fuel and the decisions for getting a pure electric car fades, or at least gets really muddy.
My used 2015 Nissan leaf was significantly cheaper to buy than an equivalent ICE car and is significantly cheaper to run.
Do you think it possible that this could be because of the car being subsidized on its first sale, low demand for used electric cars, or some combination of the two? I'm pleased that you are happy with your purchase but if more people wanted electric cars then you would not have been able to buy that Leaf as cheaply as you did.
A quick Google search tells me that the average time a buyer of a new car keeps their vehicle is 6 years. You bought a car used that's only 3 years old. Why would someone keep a car for only 3 years and then sell it? Perhaps they were not satisfied with it? That might also explain the low price you paid, the seller was willing to take a bath on the sale to be rid of it. The original owner might not have sold at an effective loss but the dealer where you bought it from may have. If it's such a great car then it's likely to have stayed with its original owner for another couple years.
I don't know how much you paid, where you bought it, or how you defined "equivalent". This is all very subjective and when it comes down to it all this subjectivity is reflected by something objective, price. People buy all the time on how they compute cost to benefit, dealers adjust prices to what people are willing to pay. My guess is that you defined "equivalent" differently enough from the rest that you viewed this Leaf as a deal compared to the "equivalent" models offered. Had more people shared your view of value then the price of that Leaf would have been higher.
Given that the government is still subsidizing electric car sales for them to still sell as poorly as they do tells me that electric cars are still a terrible deal for large portions of the population. Maybe this is based on people having a view of electric cars that is outdated, and that people will have to learn to dispose of an old bias. What helps to enforce this bias is seeing a question on their tax forms on if they bought an electric car in the last year, and getting money if they answer yes. If electric cars are the best deal out there today then it's time to get rid of the subsidy and let the bias against electric cars go with it.
By the time that's required, ICE will be an expensive sinking ship.
I've been hearing things like that for 35+ years now. I've learned to become very very patient on waiting for anything to replace petroleum fuels. My best guess for the future now is someone will develop a means to synthesize hydrocarbons using nuclear power. We'll still be burning gasoline, only it won't be from oil drilled out of the ground.
Tell me something, when do you predict that this will happen? I predict that we'll be burning petroleum in cars, trucks, trains, planes, and ships, for at least another 30 years. After that we could see synthetic fuels have enough infrastructure, and petroleum become hard enough to find, to be the primary fuel. Alternatively there's the possibility of some new technology to come along, or we have some widespread war or plague and we're back to horses and sails to move about. The chances of electric powered transportation to dominate look very slim.
Oh, and there has to be a plan for these people to keep making money after the plant is shut down, such as being able to build a new power plant.
A third coercion! This is why nuclear is failing though, people are wise to the game.
What coercion? Shutting down a nuclear power reactor and not having anything to replace it means the lights go out for the customers of that utility. They will be very protective of that energy producing asset unless they are allowed to replace it with something. I didn't say a new nuclear power plant, I said they'd have to be able to stay in business with any power plant. If you want them to go with solar instead then let them do that. They'd need to have a site to put the collectors and not have people protest over displacing some turtle or butterfly. If you want them to go with wind power instead then let them build windmills without people protesting about birds getting killed.
I like wind power, I think it has a lot of promise. If it's going to be successful then people will need a license to build. Do windmills kill birds? I'm certain that they do. Do I care? Not really. Birds are jerks and I need electricity to run my air conditioner and heat my burritos in the microwave.
I'm wise to your game. You are so concerned about the "environment" that you'd rather protect some worthless bait fish than see a hydroelectric dam provide electricity and water to people. Fuck you and all your ignorant SJW tree hugging BANANAs. If all you got is to say no to everything then expect to be ignored as people get some work done.
(For the acronym impaired that's BANANA for Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anyone.)
As much as you want to rant over your imagined enemies, the fact is, those businesses do care who supplies their power, and they are not going with nuclear
They prefer the alternatives.
Is that why nuclear power produces 20% of the electricity in the USA while wind and solar produce what is a rounding error by comparison? I'm quite certain that businesses don't care where their electricity comes from. The customers might care, which is why companies like Tesla and Apple announce efforts to buy electricity from wind and solar. They don't much care if it raises their costs, they just raise the price of their products to compensate.
Nope. Your false claims are showing. They actually did of the building of prototypes and designs and...begged for the government to pay for it. And the results? More begging.
That's why the subsidies are worthless. They never produce results. They claim based on their simulations that miracles will happen, demand money, then fail
Sounds a lot like the subsidies for wind and solar too. They keep begging for subsidies because if they don't get subsidies then the oceans will rise and drown us all!!
We keep hearing of miracles that will come from wind and solar but they have yet to come. Here's the difference though, solar and wind have been allowed licenses to operate while nuclear has not. You say nuclear has not delivered? I say its because the government has not allowed them to even try. They can't prove it viable until the government issues a license to actually build something.
Sorry, but actually the electrical industry is downscaling because they are revising their energy estimates for the future, and that is yet another reason they won't be trying to build nuclear plants. Too much investment, too little return.
How would you know? No one has been allowed to even try for 40+ years. Anyone can go to the NRC website and see that people have been applying for licenses. That means people are willing to invest. The problem is that the NRC drags their feet until the applicants get fed up and withdraw the application. A quick look at a couple of the applications shows it took TEN YEARS to get a license. Maybe if the government got up off their thumbs then we'd have seen more old coal plants shut down and replaced with carbon free nuclear.
If people fear nuclear power more than global warming then I'm not so sure global warming is any real threat. They'd rather wait for solar power to be cheaper than coal, and dump subsidies into that money pit, than see nuclear be successful.
You hate the fact that they're useless, don't you?
Those nuclear submarines are quite useful, I'm not so sure about you though. What those nuclear subs are useful for is proving daily that nuclear power is safe. That must really bother you, seeing nuclear power so safe and clean that sailors can be sealed up in a big metal tube with a reactor for months at a time and come out just as happy and healthy as when they went in.
Animals will pick rusting metal? Iron will poison the soil? Yea, because old metal can't already be found all over farms.
As someone that grew up on a dairy farm I can say these are real things. Cattle are known to eat metal and if it doesn't tear their insides apart and kill them from internal bleeding then they can get real stupid and lethargic from heavy metal poisoning. Old metal can't be found all over working farms because that would be considered a hazard to the animals and would get a farmer fined or shut down by state inspectors.
Also, in one breath you say it takes heavy equipment to cut them down and in the next you say they will topple so easily as to be a hazard.
I didn't say cut them down, I said cut them apart.
You're a fucking retard.
That's quite possible.
But in TX,itâ(TM)s much cheaper to use wind over nuclear.
Let's just pretend that less than 1% of the world population live in Texas. Let's also pretend that there are lots of people that live on islands, where land is expensive, and the neighbors to this island don't like them very much so they can't just buy their electricity from them. Let's also pretend that this describes many hundreds of millions of people in the world. What then?
We are not going to live in a world powered by wind. We are going to have to figure out how to make nuclear power work. This is going to take a lot of time, a lot of money, and a lot of effort. We got solar and wind to be far cheaper and therefore more viable as energy sources with lots of time, money, and effort so it's not like this has not been done before.
Mostly what nuclear power needs is practice. The USA has built only a handful of new nuclear power plants in the last 40 years, after building over 100 in 20 or 30 years. These 40, 50, and 60+ year old reactors will have to be shut down soon for safety reasons. We're going to get a lot of practice decommissioning those plants, that should bring down the costs. Something will have to replace them and it will be nuclear power, except for maybe those that live in Texas.
The US used to see a new nuclear power plant come online every 2 months. Estimates are that with growth in demand since then and the retiring of old coal and nuclear we will have to bring one new nuclear power plant online every month. Assuming they last for 50 years then that means we will have to keep bringing one new nuclear power plant online every month because after 50 years of building nuclear power plants we'll have to start replacing those we are building now. That's assuming zero growth in energy demand. Those new nuclear reactors would be replacing only existing capacity.
Maybe Texas can go with wind instead, and Arizona use solar, but for the rest of the USA the only thing cheap enough to replace the aging coal and nuclear plants is new nuclear.
You want to claim that wind and solar will get cheaper? Then I'll just say that nuclear will get cheaper too. Today nuclear is cheaper than solar. Except for Texas we find that today nuclear is cheaper than wind. What will the prices of these energy sources be in 50 years? I don't know, but we know that right now if we want cheap energy then it's going to include nuclear power.
So you agree that there is a fund to decommission nuclear power plants? Good. I'll take that over not having anything at all like wind power.
The claims have been that the nuclear power plants are not being cleaned up. This can be shown to be false. It may be taking a long time, it may be running over budget, but the mess is being cleaned up. The problem with windmills now is that they've been leaving the mess for others to clean up, and walking away with the profits.
The nuclear power mess would be cleaned up more quickly if the Democrats had not been holding up the construction of nuclear waste storage sites. I'm guessing what would also help is issuing licenses for new reactors on the old sites. They'll get real motivated to clear the site if they know that by doing so they can put a new reactor there. The Democrats have been holding up the issuance of nuclear power licenses too.
1. Turbines don't "wear out". Only the bearing wear, and they can be replaced.
Right, because you know more about windmill maintenance than the people that have been managing them for decades.
2. The towers don't "go bad" either. They will stand for centuries.
No, they don't, material fatigue is a thing. I don't have data on windmill towers in front of me but I'm quite certain that the metal supports for power lines have a design lifespan of 80 to 90 years. Maybe a windmill tower is quite different in some way but I'd like to see some data on that before I believe you.
3. Wind towers do not create a "wasteland". The surrounding land can continue to be used for grazing, crops, whatever.
Right, surrounding land with rusting towers scattered about. Towers that make good lightning rods and can electrocute cattle or set a crop on fire. Towers that can topple in the wind, which create a hazard to animals, plants, and humans. Towers that will rust and introduce iron into the soil, which can poison the crop, and poison the animals that are too stupid to not lick the metal.
4. Turbines contain plenty of valuable copper, steel, rare earths, etc. We should worry more about someone stealing them than abandoning them.
If you read the article (yep, I know) then you'd know that it takes heavy equipment to cut the thick metal and haul away the pieces. Cutting the pieces smaller on site takes more time and labor and therefore becomes not profitable. I'm guessing that someone could go out with a not much more than a cutting torch and some rope, climb the tower, cut away chunks, and be able to sell that for scrap. The thing is that the fuel for the torch to cut the metal, and for the truck to haul the pieces, costs money. Steel is not all that valuable and so it would take economies of scale to have a chance to make it profitable. People might be able to make a profit on the copper and such with small scale work but that still leaves the steel towers.
I'm pretty sure it's called the tragedy of communism.
I'm pretty sure its called the tragedy of the commons, but I like your term better. I believe that communism is more accurate and I'm going to copy that from you in the future.
Actually, the big concern is that nobody wants to buy the power from them, as alternatives keep springing up. This gets them antsy as the reactors need to distribute the power, and they are useless without being able to do so. And that means...no funds to retire.
Two things here...
First, you want me to believe that no one is willing to buy electricity from a nuclear power plant? Bullshit. No body cares where the electricity comes from, especially not a business that has work to do. Saying "nobody" is a bit hyperbolic since there's always some hippy that can't stand nuclear power but such people are also the kind that put solar panels on their roof and go off grid, they aren't paying any utility bills anyway.
Second, if they have no funds to retire, because no one is buying, then they will keep going until the do have funds to retire. If you want that nuclear power plant to have money to shut down later then you buy the electricity now. Oh, and there has to be a plan for these people to keep making money after the plant is shut down, such as being able to build a new power plant.
Sorry, but none of those ideas have panned out. They aren't appealing even with the tens of billions of subsidies they've gotten.
They haven't panned out because the government has never issued a license for them. The government is very risk adverse, to the point of being crippled to make any changes to the rules on licensing. We've been making the same reactor with minor variations on a theme for 60 years. People ask for a new license and the government says, "We don't know if this is safe." The response is, "We'd like to prove to you it is safe by building a demonstration reactor." "How can we know that is safe" "We can do that with these plans and simulations." "We'll need to see a working prototype first." "That's what we are asking for, a license to build a working prototype." "We can't issue a license to build anything until you can show it's safe."
Subsidies are worthless no matter how much is spent without a license to build a real world reactor. The simulations are only as good as the data used to create them and to get that data means building a prototype to get that data from.
Nope. Sounds like scare tactics to me, as you try to create a hysteria over an image, without actual robustness to your examinations.
You can live with your delusions of a nuclear free world only so long, then reality bites. Go read a book or something.
They just can't get those gen 3 reactors to deliver on their promises.
And they can't deliver on those promises until the government starts issuing licenses to build those Gen3 reactors.
Sorry, but it turns out we could have literally built homes for Americans that would have reduced energy costs by more than we've gotten from nuclear subsidies.
Sorry, but a growing population and a shrinking number of operating nuclear power reactors means that at some point those lines on the graph crosses and the space in between the lines is the growing energy shortage. If you want to see an ecological disaster then make energy so scarce and expensive that people will be cutting down every tree in sight for firewood to stay warm.
And that isn't even counting the wastefulness of nuclear subs.
Go take a long walk off a short pier.
It seems ludicrously seld-defeating in the long run.
In the long run all the competition is seeing the same expense and lowered quality work. There might be someone that comes along that is willing to hire those with experience but unless they have enough shops to hoover up the experienced workers at any significant magnitude then it does little to break the others to do away with this collusion.