@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 Thatās the problem most people have with nuclear power, after the elephant in the room, dirty bombs all over your country. Itās hard to convince a people who couldnāt hold their country together for 300 years that thereās 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 Iāve 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 100ā000 or 10ā000 years Those proponents never said that long-term storage wasnāt 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 wonāt 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 itās on upside down)
3) that radioactive waste is the only one that needs safe storage for a long time Iāve 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 ācrazy toxicā. 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 werenāt 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 heās going, hasnāt much coordination, and is as thin as a rail. He really shouldnāt 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 donāt know how many types of cancer.
It doesnāt matter how much radiation weāre constantly bombarded with. We shouldnāt 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 doesnāt 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 canāt 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 doesnāt 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 werenāt even yet at war on our home soil, I would say donāt build dirty bomb sites all over the place. Even if you post security guards all over plants 24/7, they wouldnāt be expecting one and a terrorist could easily through, and then thereās bombs dropped from above.
Saying the waste storage problem is solved because weāre 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 SuperphƩnix plant in France to demonstrate how terrorists can destroy it but he didn't even scratch the concrete.
@kravietz I didnāt 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.
Youāre 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 donāt care about public, I care about pollution and climate change.
And you think when everyoneās like China, where the people are just a herd of animals to be managed by government, everything will be better. It wonāt. Look at your own statement. You are the public, and no one can see how you donāt realize that.
Theyāre 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 itās all spyware. There are trolls all over this place who exist only to make anyone stating the truth look like a raving lunatic.
Iād 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 wonāt realize you are that public until itās too late.
> Theyāre 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 doesnāt matter if the UN says itās not happening when it is. @lain @cjd @mithrandir
@kravietz I am the public you donāt care about because your science religiosity doesnāt let you question the lies and data manipulation of people controlled by grants and lucrative positions.
Science aināt what it used to be by a long stretch.
> I am the public you donāt 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.
@kravietz @epic @lain @cjd @mithrandir Hence, to produce 15 TW by 2050 would require roughly 14,636 new 1-GWe nuclear power plants. Construction of this number of plants would require,11 on average, the commissioning of a new nuclear power plant somewhere in the world every day continuously for 40 years. ...
At this rate, the estimated global conventional uranium terrestrial resources (17.1 MtU) (NEA 2002) would be exhausted in less than 10 years.
@mlg @epic @lain @cjd @mithrandir
> uranium terrestrial resources
This assumes the current fuel cycle in US where 4% of fuel rods is actually used and these "spent" rods are treated as waste.
In reality, 96% can be recycled back into MOX fuel:
https://scitech.video/videos/watch/53184e23-6490-4158-a616-68af6afc0925
You just didn't scroll down to the next page (BN-800 reactor went into operation in 2020 in Russia):
@mlg @epic @lain @cjd @mithrandir
Wait, so you didn't watch the video? Orano la Hague has been reprocessing fuel for the last 50 years or so.
The only reason why MOX is not widely used is economical - mined uranium is very cheap and abundant.
@kravietz @epic @lain @cjd @mithrandir Yes we can assume "current existing in the real world" technology.
If you want me to believe "progress is just around the corner" for a technology that's been well known, well funded, and well implemented for DECADES but yet its impossible for any number of improvements in renewables or energy storage to happen? something doesn't add up