@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/
@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.
@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.
>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.
~
@lain @mithrandir @kravietz
Batteries. Buy a phone, buy a Tesla, push dat curve.
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.
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.
@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
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).
> 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:
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
Sorry for your brother, but there's nothing in this story that indicates any relation between his health and his work in nuclear power plants.
By making this type of irrational fears drive your energy policy you're actually exposing yourself to sources of energy that *actually* cause way more deaths.
The graph doesn’t show the relationship between how much of each type of power is used. If nuclear serves 10 people and gas serves 100,000 people, you can’t say nuclear is better because 1 died from it and 10,000 died from gas.
The graph must be deaths in the industry. The graph doesn’t show whether the people killed by nuclear were too close to a failed reactor. That just shows why no one wants nuclear power anywhere near them.
The concrete problems are dirty bombs and waste storage, and concrete solves neither.
When we weren’t even yet at war on our home soil, I would say don’t build dirty bomb sites all over the place. Even if you post security guards all over plants 24/7, they wouldn’t be expecting one and a terrorist could easily through, and then there’s bombs dropped from above.
Saying the waste storage problem is solved because we’re just not going to do anything about it, just to leave it in concrete in the plants along with security 24/7 for thousands of years, is not feasible.
Excuse me, there was one case - in 1982 a Green activist Chaim Nissim obtained a RPG and fired five rockets at unfinished Superphénix plant in France to demonstrate how terrorists can destroy it but he didn't even scratch the concrete.
@kravietz I didn’t think anyone would do that. I mentioned the security to stop people getting inside and destroying the machinery and the security that would be needed forever to stop them, and I talked about bombing from above.
You’re pushing nuclear in a time of war to a public who rejected it in times of peace.
> pushing nuclear in a time of war to a public
I don't care about public, I care about pollution and climate change.
If you see the public being told that "Fukushima killed 20'000 of people" or "5G is causing COVID" you don't quietly affirm that "ah ok, maybe they're right", you just stand up and tell them this is bullshit.
I don’t care about public, I care about pollution and climate change.
And you think when everyone’s like China, where the people are just a herd of animals to be managed by government, everything will be better. It won’t. Look at your own statement. You are the public, and no one can see how you don’t realize that.
They’re still checking and finding cancers in the people exposed to radiation from Fukushima. And the stories of 5G causing COVID is baloney put forth to discredit the fact that it’s all spyware. There are trolls all over this place who exist only to make anyone stating the truth look like a raving lunatic.
I’d say that you, with your history, should know propaganda when you see it, but after this statement I think you do but use it for what it was intended.
You won’t realize you are that public until it’s too late.
> They’re still checking and finding cancers in the people exposed to radiation from Fukushima
I don't know who are "they" but UN has just found exactly opposite 10 years of studies:
@kravietz The UN is about as trustworthy as Wikipedia. What I stated is from specials on TV about Fukushima, how the people are dying, and how the government pays them for life, much shorter lives. It doesn’t matter if the UN says it’s not happening when it is. @lain @cjd @mithrandir
@kravietz I am the public you don’t care about because your science religiosity doesn’t let you question the lies and data manipulation of people controlled by grants and lucrative positions.
Science ain’t what it used to be by a long stretch.
> I am the public you don’t care about
I care about you enough to continue explaining and providing you with scientific evidence for three days, but when at the end all you can say is "IT'S ALL BIG ,PHARMA BITCHES" then it clearly means you don't care about anything I've said.
@kravietz @epic @lain @cjd @mithrandir It's wrong to paint all nuclear critics as science denying greenpeace nuts. Unless people are keeling over from acute radiation, there are so many cases where statistics show EG certain forms of cancer rising in nearby residents while the rest of the country shows declining rates of the same cancer - but its never "conclusively proven" to be related to a nuclear facility. eg the book "The Hanford Plaintiffs"
@mlg @epic @lain @cjd @mithrandir
People oppose things for various reasons. People who are misled or just concerned due to lack of information deserve respect and education.
On the other hand, activists who actively mislead the public and distorting, inflating or inventing falsehoods, like Greenpeace or these "lithium-ion nuclear explosion" idiots are doing, are harmful and deserve nothing but contempt.
Their disinformation leads to choices that are by far worse off and more harmful.
@kravietz @epic @lain @cjd @mithrandir There is an argument to be made for nuclear but I don't think there is scientific consensus that is the only path to fully de-carbonized power generation.
From first principles there is ample potential to provide humanity's entire electrical consumption from nuclear or renewables sources. So it comes down to what is possible with todays technology, supply chains, etc. And it all gets reflected in cost - the metric that accounts for everything else.
@mlg @epic @lain @cjd @mithrandir
> from nuclear or renewables sources
"AND" nor "or"
Renewables are great when coupled with nuclear, and this is the only way to achieve scalable 24/7 low-carbon energy we know today.
> it all gets reflected in cost
It depends on methodology. In principle, externalities such as excess deaths from fossil fuels pollution and climate change are *not* captured by any metric such as LCOE.
@kravietz @epic @lain @cjd @mithrandir
173,000 terawatts continuous.
More energy received in 1 hour than is used in 1 year.
These are 100% FACTS just as real as the e=mc^2 energy released when an atomic reaction results in less mass.
100% nuclear is also not possible with todays technology, it assumes not-yet-existing technology that will take uncertain time and money to develop.
I'm just giving an example of externalities *not* being reflected in energy price.
If you prefer, look at PV & wind infrastructure prices which are super low because externalities of mining and manufacturing are not reflected in their price.
Ever wondered why rare earth metals or coal to manufacture them are not mined in EU with its Emissions Trading System?
@kravietz @mlg @epic @lain @mithrandir
I kind of like this windmill design because in principle, you could build them really large (like office buildings) and rotate them very slowly while still generating a fair amount of power. Also you can pretty easily change the "timing" such that all of the wind blows directly through and has no impact, for example in a hurricane.
@kravietz @mlg @epic @lain @mithrandir
It's like a weird "fringe science" windmill because people are building them but you really have to search to find them. Here's one in operation:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3tnXUCUXsU
If they can be mass produced cheaply then they might be competitive with PV but "no moving parts" is hard to beat...
@kravietz @mlg @epic @lain @mithrandir
I will say that there is a "survival of the species" benefit to wind/water/solar over any form of long-term stored energy, which is that stored energy releases heat while wind/water/solar uses energy which would become heat anyway.
We're not at the phase of development where nuclear is a real problem for climate change, but supposing we got cheap fusion, this situation would start to change. It's not about greenhouse gasses, it's just about releasing heat
@cjd This looks absolutely fantastic for homesteading! @kravietz @mlg @lain @mithrandir
@cjd @kravietz @epic @lain @mithrandir that's a cool variant i haven't seen. sort of reminds me of savonius wind turbine with pitch control added.
anything self-buildable out of scrap or repurposed does have a chance of being economical, even if its efficiency isn't as good as a modern manufactured equipment, the cost is close to 0. I don't think large scale funding or mass adoption will come to these types of projects but motivated DIYers with the right resources can "beat the system".
@mlg No, I don’t read Arabic, but I could read that site. 😀 @cjd @kravietz @lain @mithrandir
@mlg @cjd @epic @lain @mithrandir
Stewart Brand in his "Whole Earth discipline" (2011) praises favelas and other "slums" for being an example of organic growth of towns with extremely high space, energy and material efficiency.
@lain When Fox News was a thing for conservatives, I used to see Greg Gutfeld repeatedly say to stop all this esoteric talk and first get any other sort of energy to the millions in Africa who are killing themselves burning cow dung in their huts for cooking and warmth. Then work on the world. @kravietz @cjd @mithrandir @mlg
@epic @lain @mlg @cjd @mithrandir
When people speak about "getting X to Africa" they usually mean selling technology or intellectual property for fat licensing fees 😂
That's one paradox of the way people in the West are talking about "investing in energy-efficient technologies" (be it nuclear, renewables or modern windows) - investing always implies financial return on investment at the cost of less advantageous countries.
@kravietz Gutfeld wasn’t. He was saying shut up about coal and ship some to them to save their lives. Do whatever’s necessary to save their lives. He wasn’t thinking profit at all, just lives, and that all this talk about how to save the world doesn’t matter when you’re letting millions die because you’re worried it’s the wrong energy. Your life’s good enough, now save someone, damnit! (That’s Gutfeld) @lain @mlg @cjd @mithrandir
@epic @lain @cjd @mithrandir @kravietz The story has changed recently now that you can justify PV with economics rather than altruism https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/solar-pv-prices
cow dung in a hut places don't already have the grid infrastructure to drop in a megawatt scale coal plant. for underdeveloped places PV and microgrid technology compares favorably to centralized generation in total project cost. one stat i've heard: wheres the most home solar installs? germany, right? no bangladesh
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-bangladesh-climatechange-technology-t/bangladeshi-solar-sharing-start-up-aims-to-cut-power-waste-idUSKBN24332L
@lain They can’t afford electric heating and cooking devices. I was just talking about fire in individual huts same as they use but which won’t kill them. (No coal comments. I’m still alive.) @mlg @cjd @kravietz @mithrandir
@mlg You and I think differently. I meant deliver some truckloads of coal to the villages because burning it in the huts is far better than cow dung, anything is. And they don’t have electronic devices except in some countries everyone’s got a phone for banking. That’s cool. @lain @cjd @mithrandir @kravietz
@epic @lain @mlg @cjd @mithrandir
From first hand experience, cow dung isn't that bad as fuel - yes, I've done that in mountains a few times out of curiosity :) What is really bad for health is burning any solid fuel in a confined space like hut.
And of course if many people are involved, effect of scale kicks in and you end up with vast treeless areas as in Wales because biomass has even worse power density than PV and wind.
@kravietz The huts are sort of parabolic domes made out of cow dung and mud themselves with a hole in top for a chimney. How is that not like you sitting by the fireplace as a child? @lain @mlg @cjd @mithrandir
@epic @lain @mlg @cjd @mithrandir
Yes, or made of wood but the key factor is that there's 1) a fireplace inside, 2) no chimney, so the smoke just freely rises inside and exits through a hole in the roof. You are literally being smoked inside, and you breath the smoke all the time.
I didn't live in such huts, just slept ocassionally when hiking in mountains.
@kravietz If the parabolic shapes of the huts don’t help, then it’s coal smoke vs cow dung smoke. Coal wins. 🙌 😀 @lain @mlg @cjd @mithrandir
@epic @lain @mlg @cjd @mithrandir
Actually, there are few things more harmful than coal ash, especially fly ash. Coal, as anything dug from deep underground, contains a lot of inorganic elements such as arsenic, barium, uranium etc. When burned, all that turns into particulate matter that is then inhaled and migrates from lungs to bloodstream. Then there's all volatile organic carcirogens such as benzopirenes...
/info/ornlreview/rev26-34/text/colmain.html
@epic @lain @mlg @cjd @mithrandir
The URL got garbled - it's about volumes of radioactive elements released with fly ash from coal power plants.
But that's of course not regulated, because coal is "traditionally safe" and this is why Germany preferred to keep coal plants until 2038 😂
@kravietz I didn’t read it. The point was that people should get off their high horses and save some people instead of saving the world from their armchairs. That’s all it was about. Individuals, not climates. @lain @mlg @cjd @mithrandir
@epic @lain @mlg @mithrandir @kravietz
Overheard: The more rich/privileged people are, they more they talk about climate change.
@epic @lain @cjd @mithrandir @kravietz well, to go on the 50th tangent on this thread. you can have a clean burn with coal or biomass provided you have the right stove design for the fuel, correct fuel preparation, and correct stove operation.
EG masonry stoves or russian/finnish fireplaces in rich places, or lorena-rocket stoves or "champion" top lit updraft gasifiers in resource constrained situations. they provide heat and cooking more economically but won't charge a laptop
@epic @lain @mlg @cjd @mithrandir
I did live in houses with wood/coal oven though and with a proper chimney you don't get much smoke inside. Fuel cycle is the largest pain in the ass here, as you need to continuously bring fuel - coal or wood, usually stored outside, coal is pretty dirty and dusty, then you need to clean ashes, which are even more dirty and dusty etc.
@kravietz Did them both in different places when I was a kid too. Wood chopping in Oscoda (Michigan) winter keeps you warm except your feet. In Bolton (Lancashire), the coal chute from the street brought delivered coal right into the living room bin. A covered bin. Quite a good idea to wait a few minutes before opening it no matter how cold you were. 😀 @lain @mlg @cjd @mithrandir
@mlg @epic @lain @cjd @mithrandir
A boring digression regarding the "Solar PV module price" - IRENA is LCOE study, and LCOE isn't "price", or even what most people understand as "cost" :)
@kravietz You are aware you’ve created a monster, right? @mlg @lain @cjd @mithrandir
@epic @lain @mlg @cjd @mithrandir
I created a monster when I started this thread, something that feels like a month ago 😂 But look, we're having a civilised discussion after all. To be honest Mastodon sucks for this type of multi-thread discussion that forks into specialised subjects. We need a better tool for that 🤔
@kravietz @epic @lain @cjd @mithrandir It's not boring to me. afaik that worldindata graph is PV module price, not LCOE, no metric is perfect because there is such a range of systems PV modules can be installed in. Mounted using existing building roofs or installed with a ground mount ballast, installed along with battery system or used standalone, Installed with a inverter for AC systems or as part of a DC system.
@mlg @epic @lain @cjd @mithrandir
I checked - I saw they use Irena 2019 study on the bottom of the graph, and Irena is one of the "golden trio" (Lazard, Irena, BNEF). And it's also LCOE.
> along with battery system
That's one of reasons for my skepticism. You get 14 kWh for $12k for Tesla PowerWall so roughly $850 per 1 kWh. Industrial batteries cost $137 per kWh, so a battery to store daily output from a 5 MW wind tower is $5m.
@kravietz @epic @lain @cjd @mithrandir Oh well coincidentally its very close to the same price as PV panels available to consumers online, if that price is LCOE I guess at scale they're even cheaper.
Why does a 5 MW turbine need a battery of a particular size, eg 24 hour of output storage? Isn't that dependent on what grid its connected to, what other resources are on that grid already, and what the demand of that grid is?
@mlg @epic @lain @cjd @mithrandir
No particular reason, just had to choose some storage capacity for calculation. They get fossil gas backing anyway 😂
@lain @epic @mlg @mithrandir @kravietz
Unfortunately corruption.
@lain @epic @mlg @cjd @mithrandir
Oh yes, absolutely. In the Soviet times we recycled everything much more efficiently than today, and devices were always fixed rather than replaced (shortages). In Cuba you can see 60's cars still being used today and generally lots of creative re-use and recycling of stuff. But I certainly wouldn't like to live in Cuba or back in Soviet times specifically because you had to spend more time fucking around with broken stuff than doing anything else 😂
@kravietz @epic @lain @cjd @mithrandir i think theres unmitigated damage from mining and manufacturing, in energy also in aerospace and semiconductor manufacturing, probably everything is cheaper than it would be if we were extracting and building ethically every step of the supply chain.
Is uranium mined and enriched in EU either?
@mlg @epic @lain @cjd @mithrandir
None as of now, a typical case:
> Czech Republic still has deposits of uranium ore but mining is not planned in the near future due to low price of Uranium.
Ukraine does produce uranium but it's not EU.
@kravietz @epic @lain @cjd @mithrandir Once again
https://mastodon.sdf.org/@mlg/105922970007831901