@kravietz @themactep Pretty sure nobody reasonable claims we can (at the moment) run purely on solar? Sounds a bit like a strawman argument. Either way current consumption levels are impossible to sustain especially at scale, even if we radically increase nuclear share (which im not fundametaly against, but the radical centralisation is also a problem in such a scenario). Every solution has its pros and cons.
@kravietz @harce @themactep as for public transport, I would want public transport run on local community (city, for example) level. And then I'd want to have inter-city public transport run by the state. Local communities know best what they need locally. Inter-city level needs more coordination.
That's a pretty good model for electric grid, I'd say. Although I'd love to hear from an electric engineer!
@rysiek @harce @themactep@fosstodon.org
> you're going wind+solar
It doesn't work this way with wind and solar - because they are highly variable, you need either a massive (PWh) battery storage (non-existent), or massive hydro dams or massive country-wide smart grid (non-existent) or power-to-gas grid (non-existent).
Each of these is a single, massive, coordinated investment that cannot be done "local communities".
@kravietz @rysiek @harce @themactep
in UK until about 1990 we had nationalised Electricity Boards, the Central Electricity Generating board and the National Grid (which linked all these together).
Other than some strikes and power cuts in the 1970s these worked - electricity was affordable, the lights stayed on and not having 100% profit motive meant there was money to invest in research and training. These were privatised for relatively short term gains around late 80s/early 90s..
@kravietz @rysiek @harce @themactep
the local Electricity Board was organised per region, it was SEB (Southern Electricity Board) in Reading and Eastern Electricity Board in Ipswich (and some bits of London).
The old territories still exist in the areas of Distribution Network Operators who own the infrastructure such as service cables, smaller substations (these things end up as a de facto monopoly as it makes 0 sense to have companies duplicating infrastructure in the same area)
@kravietz @vfrmedia @harce @themactep you are aware that "public" doesn't necessarily mean "state-run". It can (and often should) be local government. As I have pointed out multiple times already.
@rysiek @kravietz @harce @themactep
in UK local Councils and other organisations such as London Transport did often use to generate electricity until about the 1930s-1940s; but they couldn't agree on common technical standards such as voltage, frequency, whether to use AC or DC or how to interconnect supplies for resilience.
So in the end central govt merged these organisations into the regional Electricity Boards and eventually (by late 1960s) standardised on 240V 50Hz power..
@rysiek @harce @themactep@fosstodon.org
This dream very much resembles the history of Bitcoin -- "you can run your own node", "you can mint your own coins", "we're all decentralized" and then after a few years you and up with highly centralised oligarchy of a few pools running mostly in one country.
Economy of scale 🤷
@kravietz @harce @themactep if that happens to the electric grid, you will be proven right, congratulations. Seems like it's worth a try though?
Public transport is a good model precisely because you get stuff that can be done on local level (local city transport - locally-run power generation), and stuff that needs to be done on state level (inter-city transport - power grid, large energy storage, baseline power generation from nuclear etc).
The problem with wind and solar is not only that they are variable (so require a centralised buffering) but also they have extremely low surface power density.
Because you only get from 2 W/m2 (wind) to 7 W/m2 (PV), you need really vast area to be able to produce reasonable amount of energy. To put that into scale, a 400 MW off-shore wind farm occupies 70 km2 while a 2000 MW nuclear of gas plant maybe 1 km2.
But apart from rooftop PV, the only scalable option available for decentralisation would be gas co-generation - so basically your in-house gas boiler also produces electricity which it feeds into the grid.
This makes *some* sense for houses which *already* have gas for heating, otherwise it makes none.
Or am I missing something?
@kravietz @harce this is obviously a bit "out there", but:
https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2017/07/breakthrough-in-size-safety-of-a-complete-nuclear-power-module-in-a-shipping-container.html
My point is: there are many ways to skin this cat. And while the role of the national government in regulating and running state-wide infrastructure is crucial, there is value in not summarily dismissing the role of local government or community-level governance, even.
I would prefer a world where as much power(sic!) is in local communities, as possible.
@kravietz
@themactep Cuz its a single point of fail, which NHS or public transport dont have. Ie. less countries mine uranium than produce oil.
@harce @themactep@fosstodon.org
But if there's like ~20 nuclear fuel suppliers worldwide then how can we even talk about "single point"?
Most of Eastern Europe for decades had just a single oil and gas supplier, only in 2000's countries like Poland obtained maybe 1-2 additional sources and that was already massive step towards diversification.
Ukraine faced this problem in 2014 after Crimea as it obtained 100% of nuclear fuel from Russia. Since 2015 they have also Sweden and this is diversification.
@kravietz
@themactep
OK, wording defeated my argument; as for a SPoF I was comming back to the centralisation argument: if there's one-two reactors powering a country it takes 1-2 "incidents" to turn off all power. Same is true for coal in Poland btw since Bełchatów iż something over 40% of power IIRC.
@harce @themactep@fosstodon.org
In this you are 100% right, but I don't think any country (maybe for very small ones) plans to rely on *literally* single large power plant. UK has 7 of nuclear and dozens of gas/coal spread across the whole island.
Poland is far from that but this is the preference of the society - we at least have plenty of churches to pray in case of an actual blackout 🤷
@harce @themactep@fosstodon.org
This last part I would like to explore further: we as society make choices, and these choices are often trade-offs.
Recent Texas situation a good example: grid operators made specific predictions which didn't account for actually very unusual weather, which resulted in limited supply of energy. People are angry.
Let's imagine grid increases the safety margin (=supply reserves) to cover for unusually cold weather *each season,* but costs money. People are angry.
@kravietz
@themactep
Back to the point of overconsumption and overdependence. The fact that our expectations are not met by the actual conditions of the planet we live on is not the planets fault...
@harce @themactep@fosstodon.org
To be honest, I don't know.
Myself personally I routinely spend months in mountains living in very rough conditions, sometimes literally in a cave, and I can enjoy it. On the other hand, without all the hi-tech equipment made from advanced alloys and synthetics (=much energy) I wouldn't enjoy it and even probably survive.
This is myself. And then there's the rest of the society. So it's complicated.
One thing we definitely need is more and more education.
@harce @themactep@fosstodon.org
Same for Germany: people are scared to death of "nuclear apocalypse", they want all NPP shut down and now. Scared people are angry.
But they still want their energy 24/7, which VRE are unable to supply so if you just shut down NPP you get blackouts. People are angry.
Trade-off: shut down NPP and replace the missing power with fossil gas and coal, which are *perceived* as safe even if the data shows otherwise 🤷
@kravietz
@themactep People not acting in their best self interest, especially long time, is hardly news. But education and actual empowerment are a whole different topic (one I'm very keen on btw)
@harce @themactep@fosstodon.org
To be honest, most people don't care. There's gov.uk and EU websites for public consultations and I personally don't care about 99% topics posted there. Or maybe I put that differently: I would care but there's just too much of that and too little time.
Maybe we should vote on high-level topics that can be boiled down to actual policy decisions.
@harce @themactep@fosstodon.org
On the other hand, if you're in the gov and you *know* option A is better than B (because you got data), then you should educate people about it.
When we started to face the return of measles in Poland due to anti-vaxxers, I once casually asked some vaccinology doctors on a conference when there was any public education campaign about vaccines in Poland - I mean a country-wide one, with banners, radio, TV etc.
The answer was a blank stare and then "well maybe in 50's".
@harce @themactep@fosstodon.org
On the other hand you can see Polish government being extremely active in terms of "education" on many other topics - WW2, "gender ideology" etc. So it's not matted of being totally passive, it's matter of specific choices. I can't explain it, maybe it's reflection of individual preferences of people who run the government, but then again these people were *elected* by 1/3 of Poles.
@kravietz @themactep Yeah, there's a massive difference between education and indoctrination. The reason is why Francisco Ferrer was murdered my the state and church.
@kravietz @harce @themactep because resiliency. If you want economies of scale, go nuclear. If you're going wind+solar, it makes sense to have them run by local communities or even at a lower level.
You want a state-run health system for negotiating power and coordination, since there is a metric shit-ton to coordinate in a health system. Electric grid, while complicated, is a way less complicated problem, easier to have local energy producers.