Spot the difference 🤔

@kravietz
Even if someone cut down the trees in their yard, PV is still one of the best sources of energy:
https://cleantechnica.com/2020/12/16/mediocrity-is-the-enemy-of-the-solution/

@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.

@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.

@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 @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 @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 @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 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

@epic @lain @cjd @mithrandir

> crazy toxic like nuclear waste

Nuclear waste is not "crazy toxic". There are plenty of much more toxic things around and we are literally bathing in ionizing radiation every day, we evolved in an irradiated world. Here's a good scientific explainer on that:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pOvHxX5wMa8

@kravietz

Nuclear waste is not “crazy toxic”. There are plenty of much more toxic things around and we are literally bathing in ionizing radiation every day, we evolved in an irradiated world.

My brother was a truck driver for a long time, then got a degree in radiology and became an x-ray technician. The hospital had a mobile CAT-scan unit that went all over the US. He proposed that they pay him 1-1/2 times his wages and he would do both, so he did that for years. He made more, the hospital paid less.

After that he went into inspecting nuclear power plants for a few years. None of them ever failed tests and his badge never turned colors. He was never around more radiation than is deemed safe by all standards.

One reason two people weren’t needed for the mobile CT unit was because he was a giant of a man. Where normally the truck driver would help the tech move frail or overweight patients onto the bed of the CAT-scan machine he could move them alone without hurting them.

He slowly faded away until he is now on permanent disability. He can hardly see where he’s going, hasn’t much coordination, and is as thin as a rail. He really shouldn’t have to eat food because he carries a little briefcase around with him chock full of pills he has to take multiple times a day for I don’t know how many types of cancer.

It doesn’t matter how much radiation we’re constantly bombarded with. We shouldn’t add to it the most deadly form of energy ever created. Trading carbon emissions for nuclear radiation has to be one of the worst ideas ever imagined. @lain @cjd @mithrandir

@epic @lain @mithrandir @kravietz
That's a hell of a story, I mean a lot of people get cancer in their lifetime but multiple different cancers sounds like a statistical outlier. Now I know folks who worked in plants and did not (to my knowledge) get any cancer so clearly it's not simple.

But end of the day, I think the point is that precaution needs no justification. People running around saying "trust the science" don't have to live in your skin in 30 years.

@cjd @epic @lain @mithrandir

The logic here is very much like the anti-vaccination sentiment - in fear of non-existent (autism) or extremely unlikely (allergic reactions) side effects, people expose themselves to the risk of the actual preventable diseases whose side effects are much more likely and severe.