@anonymoose

Shrubs could be brown for winter but yes, the PV certainly didn't like the trees

@cjd

So you're so embarrassed by this rather ugly tree cosmetics that you start with apologetic excuse even though nobody said anything about PV 😂 Seriously, residential PV is one of the least effective and most expensive sources of energy. And yes, PV competes with nature.

@kravietz
Oh, didn't realize this was a meme thread, sorry about the science. Here, have some dead bees.

@cjd @kravietz I'm not convinced that it is bad to invest in nuclear power research. We're getting to the point now where thorium-based liquid salt reactors will be commercially available in 5-10 years. Many new thorium-based MSR designs would obviate concerns about traditional uranium-based nuclear power, in particular the risk of explosion from a meltdown would be nearly nil since they can be operated at 1 atmosphere of pressure, and their fuel would mostly be stuff that is considered a hazardus byproduct of rare-earth mining (which, coincidentally, is necessary to construct high-efficiency rechargable batteries)

@mithrandir @kravietz
Definitely worth investigating to some extent. Scaling properties on solar are hard to beat, but small self-contained nuclear batteries could be competitive.

@cjd @kravietz I think they would be useful in different situations -- solar and wind can provide surge power, nuclear can provide a baseline.

@cjd @kravietz (helps also to reduce the storage problem for renewable energy)

@mithrandir @kravietz
Per the link I dropped, problem with NEW nuclear is it takes like 15 years to bring it to completion. So shutting down nuclear prematurely is probably a bad plan, but spinning it up right now is kind of a case of too-little-too-late. New solar deployment is up within a year.

Also scaling properties. Every solar panel built makes building the next one cheaper. True too of reactors but not many of them are (ever) made so scale doesn't happen.

@cjd @kravietz
>New solar deployment is up within a year.
Indeed, it is quicker to build the plant, but the plant also takes up more space (with exceptions -- those towers outside Vegas are wonderfully compact, idk how much power they put out though), and you have to build it somewhere where you get sunlight/wind reliably enough that the plant is worth building. For a lot of cities that means the plant has to be far away, which leads to high line loss.

OTOH solar and wind are eminently the best strategy for power in rural and low-density urban areas, where the cost of land is cheaper and also it makes more sense to spread out power production. A small town would probably be better served by nearby solar and wind farms than a faraway nuclear plant.

The article you linked seems to be making an argument that *nothing* besides wind, solar, and waves should be invested in. That just seems shortsighted to me, especially when so many proposed power sources are still in their infancy.
>Every solar panel built makes building the next one cheaper.
Huh? You mean that it's easy to mass produce them, right? There is not an infinite supply of silicon, and the fixed marginal cost of the production process remains the same until you change the production process.

@cjd @kravietz also, IMO, people aren't addressing the topic of lowering energy consumption enough.

Think of how many megajoules of energy are wasted, every day, on serving and displaying online ads, or on playing poorly optimized video games, or on leaving TVs on while nobody is watching, or on inefficient incandescent bulbs. If you add it up it all becomes nontrivial. Modern life is just very energy inefficient.

@mithrandir @cjd @kravietz >Think of how many megajoules of energy are wasted, every day, on serving and displaying online ads, or on playing poorly optimized video games, or on leaving TVs on while nobody is watching, or on inefficient incandescent bulbs. If you add it up it all becomes nontrivial. Modern life is just very energy inefficient.

All this is nothing compared to Bitcoin

@newt @cjd @kravietz honestly I think it might add up to more than buttcoin. But yes quite a lot of power is wasted on the finance industry as well.

@mithrandir @cjd @kravietz no no, even if you take all of world banks combined and add all ads on top of that, it's still probably less than bitcoin

@newt @cjd @kravietz bitcoin is part of the finance industry.

@mithrandir @cjd @kravietz in terms of its size, it's a very small part. Like, the entire currently traded stock of Bitcoin is something like 10 billion dollars, last I checked.

@newt @mithrandir @kravietz
Forced meme by a bunch of broke newspapers who are shilling for investment banks.

@mithrandir @kravietz
1. "Naive" economies of scale, bigger more efficient factories, better processes.
2. R&D-based economies of scale: more people buy PV, more competition, more R&D investment --> higher efficiency, longer lasting PV made with cheaper materials and processes.

Same story as batteries. It's not govt research that's driving these curves, it's competition.

@mithrandir @kravietz
Every time you buy a cell phone, you're pushing the battery energy density curve forward a little bit more.
Everybody installing PV is pushing the solar energy curve.

BTW this effect is really well understood by investors, which is why Tesla has a market cap higher than Chevron, Shell, Total and PetroChina COMBINED.

@cjd @mithrandir

> this effect is really well understood by investors

This is an interesting perspective, as we are currently specifically combating effects of consumption-focused economy created specifically by investors. Make no mistake, investments in renewables are no different - they're just after a quick buck here, not after decarbonisation.

@kravietz @mithrandir

@cjd @mithrandir @kravietz this looks pretty good and should solve a lot of energy issues simply by being the most cost effective option. do you know how to the energy storage problem will be tackled? I.e. the sun doesn't shine at night?

@lain @mithrandir @kravietz
Batteries. Buy a phone, buy a Tesla, push dat curve.

@cjd @lain @kravietz nah I actually hate Li-ion batteries. Manufacturing them involves dumping lots of poison onto the ground, as does mining the lithium. Sodium-ion or bust IMO.

@cjd @mithrandir @kravietz so nothing new really. But yeah, with more PV there'll be more demand for batteries, and with such a fortune to be made there'll be solutions.

@lain @cjd @kravietz *pounds table with fists* sodium-ion! Sodium-ion!

@lain @mithrandir @kravietz
Yeah, the battery industry is absolutely brutal, if you got a better process then it'll make you rich, but if someone else comes out ahead then you're out of business.

@lain @cjd @mithrandir

Yes, now go and read about all the mined resources that we make them of:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421518302726

@lain @cjd @mithrandir

Because PV is actually made mostly of mined resources, as this friendly ad from Australian Mining (!) demonstrates

@kravietz @lain @mithrandir
A PV cell is mined and then runs 10 years. A cm3 of gas is mined and then burned within a couple of hours.

Also I prefer the Australians, they don't try to invade Europe every chance they get.

@cjd @lain @mithrandir

I don't think anybody supports fossil fuels in this thread, so this argument is irrelevant.

The problem with PV is specifically what you described - it runs 10 years, and then you need a new one.

Per 1 W of energy mining requirements are much higher for PV than other sources.

Then you need a whole lot of them due to low surface power density.

Then you need even more due to low capacity factor.

And then you need storage.

@kravietz @cjd @lain This graph is not very useful -- mining uranium is much more difficult and has many more nasty byproducts than mining anything in a solar cell, for instance, plus there's just less uranium (and it needs extensive processing, depending on the reactor type)

@mithrandir @lain @cjd

Not true. Rare earth metal mining is just as environmentally intensive as uranium. As a matter of fact, uranium and rare earth metals are sometimes mined together.

https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/rare-earth-mining-china-social-environmental-costs

But then, due to very low surface power density of PV and wind, you need whole lot of rare earth metals. Just scroll to the table...

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421518302726

@kravietz @mithrandir @cjd why is PV seen as cost competitive with fossil fuels and nuclear then? (Not a gotcha, an honest question)

@lain @cjd @mithrandir

Because the cost that we are usually discussing is not actual cost ("how much I pay per kWh") but LCOE (levelized cost of energy), an indicator that models a cost from a very specific perspective - today investor's one, rather than from consumer or CO2 emissions. LCOE doesn't take into account that PV does *not* produce energy overnight, nor storage or smart grid. All the externalities are just left out here.

@kravietz @lain @cjd but the amount of rare earth metals required per watt is so low it doesn't even show up on your graph.

@mithrandir @lain @cjd

They are required in small amounts but also mined in small amounts. The whole global output is like 150'000 tons. Per this paper for PV alone we would need to increase this by 3000%.

@mithrandir @lain @kravietz
Love how they have this little black sliver "Geological repository". Cost of storing the waste 100,000 years is way higher than that, but I guess that's close to the cost of giving it to the Mafia to dump off the coast of Somalia.

@cjd @mithrandir @kravietz I thought the nuclear waste will just be burned off in newer type reactors

@lain @mithrandir @kravietz
I know this is supposed to work with thorium reactor designs, didn't think anything in production now does it.

@lain @cjd @kravietz generally newer reactors are more efficient, leading to less fuel included in waste, ideally none. Most of the reason why nuclear waste needs to be stored so long is that there is *a lot* of it, so even though the half-life is short (half-life is inversely proportional to radioactivity), it remains dangerous for a long period.

Most true fission products are either extremely radioactive and degrade in a few hours or days, or are not very radioactive and are in low enough quantities that they become benign within a couple hundred years. Most nuclear waste is actually just fuel that didn't get converted into fission products.

@mithrandir @cjd @kravietz but I thought you can dig those back out and burn them off too

@mithrandir @lain @cjd

> nuclear waste needs to be stored so long is that there is *a lot*

Quite the opposite. These containers on photo are the whole nuclear waste from Switzerland for the last ~50 years.

And whole UK's nuclear waste for the last 60 years is ~2200 m3 which is about the amount a coal plant outputs in a few days of operations.

So no, nuclear waste is absolutely tiny amounts.

@cjd That’s the problem most people have with nuclear power, after the elephant in the room, dirty bombs all over your country. It’s hard to convince a people who couldn’t hold their country together for 300 years that there’s a good plan for the next 10,000 years. (Did you write 100,000 on purpose?) @mithrandir @lain @kravietz

@epic @lain @cjd @mithrandir

But it's based on three fundamental misconceptions:

1) that only nuclear reactors produce radioactive waste

2) that it needs storing for 100'000 or 10'000 years

3) that radioactive waste is the *only* one that needs safe storage for a long time

@kravietz I have spoken before with people in the industry whose job was to push nuclear power, which is nothing but a solution of what to do with the existing waste we have now.

1) that only nuclear reactors produce radioactive waste I’ve not heard of anything producing nuclear waste in the massive amounts that nuclear power or weapons do. Do you mean small amounts like for medical purposes?

2) that it needs storing for 100’000 or 10’000 years Those proponents never said that long-term storage wasn’t necessary, never was the thousands of years contested. Their solution was it would be encased in concrete and stored at the reactor sites themselves. I found that silly because those sites won’t last that long either and it would be even harder to get people to accept a reactor near their home. (And check the comma key on your keyboard. I think it’s on upside down)

3) that radioactive waste is the only one that needs safe storage for a long time I’ve heard the big problem with solar power is its disposal too. Not crazy toxic like nuclear waste, but must be disposed of in dumps lined with rubber or similar, like you would batteries or computer parts. What else needs long-term storage in figures like thousands of years (which was not denied by the people selling it).

@lain @cjd @mithrandir

@cjd @mithrandir @lain

Not true. Reactor waste loses 93% of its activity in just 100 years, but even before that 96% of it can be recycled back into MOX fuel. Nobody except for France does that because uranium is just too cheap, and there's too little waste to even bother.

But even more importantly, nuclear waste is *not* only that from reactors - X-ray and industry also produce radioactive waste that needs to be stored.

@kravietz @mithrandir @lain
Kinda doubt anybody's really storing it. Same old story as Recycling. Everyone hands it off to someone else until eventually it ends up in the hands of some guy who throws it in the ocean.

@cjd @mithrandir @lain

Orano la Hague, France - they already recycle spent fuel into MOX fuel, I think Russia does that as well

https://scitech.video/videos/watch/53184e23-6490-4158-a616-68af6afc0925

And no, reactor waste is extremely tightly controlled by IAEA.