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This is a post I wrote for a different forum, but the idea intrigues me.
When discussing energy solutions, the problem doesn't lie in the ideas--we all know ways to cut down on energy. The problem lies with practical application. The question we should be asking isn't what we should be doing differently, but how we can practically make it happen differently. Ormur, you specifically: Show nested quote +
Ormur:
single family houses that are dependent on cars as the only means of transport should be gotten rid of entirely.
this idea would cut back on a ton of wasted energy. your analysis of the way European towns work is really interesting and good. I didn't know that and its fascinating, honestly sounds fun to me because I always run everywhere. Anyway, the reason I chose for my post's example is because of this: "Good idea, but whats in it for me?" The problem comes down to money and satisfaction. If you can make it affordable and offer a more satisfying experience for a cheaper, more energy-efficient experience, a LOT of people would take that option. But honestly, in the US, I don't know how this could happen. But I can think of some stuff which would help -Efficient use of waterways -A system planned like the rail-system of European countries -A prompt rail service with an excellent PR/Graphic design section to make it seem friendly, inviting, and modern. people in the US are suckers for that -Jobs conveniently accessible by the railway -Energy-efficient houses (properly sealed, halfway underground, uses sun energy to heat water/solar panels/both) The problem with all of this are the initial costs and massive manpower required. Ways to cut down on costs: -Do it en-masse so all the supplies are cheaper -An efficient, streamlined management structure integrated country-wide -Adequate research, planning and testing for a project of this scale Manpower: -Give the people who do this a personal stake in it I can't really think of anything else. This is hard. Problems: -The United States is geographically HUGE. -We're already in huge debt. -Considerations for the already existing infrastructure -Considerations for the environment where this will be happening So, in some places, it might be better to adapt the current setup rather than make something new. To truly put something like this into motion would take years, decades even. I can't begin to fathom how to get something like this passed through congress or how to approach a congressman about it without sounding loony. Construction of buildings, consideration of placement and all that are lost on me. The more I think about this idea, the more excited I get. I should probably get started now.
For reference about the european stuff:
+ Show Spoiler +
Ormur:
Urban doesn't have to be the CBD of a major metropolis like New York. If you compare Western Europe with the US it achieves more energy efficiency for a number of reasons but density and public transport are a big one. Most Europeans don't live in large cities like New York or London but in small cities and suburbs.
However they are older, the countries have higher population densities and planning more often focuses on mass transit. Stockholm as an example has far flung suburbs or commuter towns that were specifically planned around the commuter rail system in the post-war years. They were planned to be large enough to have basic services and dense enough and small enough for the train station to be within walking distance everywhere.
With proper planning most people should be able to live as they like without being dependent on cars. In fact cities shouldn't be planned around cars at all, making everything reachable by walking, cycling or mass transit. Travel between cities and smaller urban areas should also be by train or bus. High speed rail networks can be both comfortable and efficient, provided they are powered by clean energy. Of course the US is bigger than Europe so flight would probably still be needed. Even Europeans travel far too much by airplane over short distances (and by car of course).
In regards to rural areas they are such an insignificant part of most developed countries, population vise, and yet necessary for food production that I don't have much objection to people living there. In fact globally urban dwellers are less efficient than rural dwellers because most of the latter are poor farmers whereas cities are usually wealthier and offer more opportunities for upwards-mobility, which in turn causes a larger footprint.
But in developed countries the split is between suburban and urban. As I said suburban doesn't necessarily have to be bad but it's easier to make urban areas more efficient and the kind of urban sprawl of endless cheap single family houses that are dependent on cars as the only means of transport should be gotten rid of entirely.
So, cool idea? Is my analysis correct? Agree/Disagree?
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I think the US should worry more about national debt, imo.
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Debt, and Corruption is why this will never happen.
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If you can come up with an efficient and energy-saving way of getting individuals to and from their jobs without having to walk any distance AND if it's cheaper than traditional automobiles, then we'll be on to something. If it lacks accurate transportation (rail systems can only get you to any point along the rail), or if it's too time consuming (bus systems have a bunch of stops, and everybody knows time is money), or if it's more expensive than cars, it's just not going to work. Period.
What we need is technological innovation to solve the energy problem, nothing we currently have will fill the automobile/oil niche well enough.
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Calgary25986 Posts
I'm sorry, but your idea boils down to higher efficiency in places with higher population density? Yep, that would be great. I just don't see anything about this thread that warrants discussion.
You know what will drive change? Money. When it's twice as cheap to take the bus than to fill my car with gas then I will start to think about it. Until that day, relying on morality and guilt won't drive change. If I can spend five times as much on energy efficient materials, I am thinking of what kind of return I will get on electricity and gas bills over my lifetime to get that money back, not how much oil, coal and natural gas I will protect.
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Well to start we can get our electricity from nuclear instead of anything else. It's clean, safe (Three Mile Island killed no one, and almost certainly harmed no one; Chernobyl was a flawed design coupled with operators overriding the safety features that did exist and almost assuredly would not happen in the US--and still only killed 30 people, all plant workers or emergency responders, and most likely didn't harm the general public ... and then weigh all this against the decades of successful operation by other commercial nuclear plants and the nuclear navies of the world), and cheap. The waste and spent fuel is not really a danger to anyone. And we have fuel for probably a million years or more. Generating electricity cleanly and cheaply (and effectively renewably) is really only a problem because we choose to make it so.
Switching to nuclear does have massive start-up costs because building a reactor is expensive, but running it is cheap.
(Ted Rockwell has a site here: http://learningaboutenergy.com/ for more).
That leaves generating energy for transport, which is trickier. Anything that can efficiently be electric can run off the grid and use the nuclear energy, but there are good reasons that cars and buses likely wouldn't switch to all-electric (batteries just don't have the same energy density that gasoline does, for one).
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thedeadhaji
39489 Posts
Over the last month or so, I've been thinking of similar things on a personal level. My personal conclusion is that we simply produce and consume unnecessarily. Much of what we produce and consume are designed only to take our minds off the drudgery that life has become for many of us. Transportation is a huge area in terms of energy efficiency, but I'm pretty sure "making useless shit" is also a pretty big one as well.
Of course, the day consumerism dies in the united states is the day the country goes kaput.
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People just don't understand. You know why everyone walks everywhere in Europe and cars aren't as prevalent? Things are fucking close. The entire country of France is the size of TEXAS. When I want to drive to a new city in the US I'm going to probably take a car or plane, mostly because if I didn't it would take a day of travel time on a train or bus.
Go America!
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crate, check this article out:
http://www.wired.com/magazine/2009/12/ff_new_nukes/
Once Thorium becomes commercially viable, most of the expense problems are solved, and we will be totally capable of switching over to nuclear with solar and wind supplementing the grid. There is no reason every building in America shouldn't have solar panels on it, btw. That would alleviate a lot of our energy problems.
As far as transportation, barring hydrogen cars finally becoming available, we'll probably have to use plug-in hybrids and the like for a little while longer. If battery technology keeps improving, too, we can eventually switch to full electric. Electricity will become guilt-free too, because we will be replacing coal and natural gas with Thorium or Uranium nuclear plants.
I'm pretty confidant the future will be much greener 
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On August 06 2010 05:24 crate wrote:Well to start we can get our electricity from nuclear instead of anything else. It's clean, safe (Three Mile Island killed no one, and almost certainly harmed no one; Chernobyl was a flawed design coupled with operators overriding the safety features that did exist and almost assuredly would not happen in the US--and still only killed 30 people, all plant workers or emergency responders, and most likely didn't harm the general public ... and then weigh all this against the decades of successful operation by other commercial nuclear plants and the nuclear navies of the world), and cheap. The waste and spent fuel is not really a danger to anyone. And we have fuel for probably a million years or more. Generating electricity cleanly and cheaply (and effectively renewably) is really only a problem because we choose to make it so. Switching to nuclear does have massive start-up costs because building a reactor is expensive, but running it is cheap. (Ted Rockwell has a site here: http://learningaboutenergy.com/ for more). That leaves generating energy for transport, which is trickier. Anything that can efficiently be electric can run off the grid and use the nuclear energy, but there are good reasons that cars and buses likely wouldn't switch to all-electric (batteries just don't have the same energy density that gasoline does, for one).
says the physics major
But seriously, I think the drawbacks of going nuclear are far outweighed by the benefits. Yes, there's some nuclear waste that we have to deal with but I'd take that over your standard pollution any day.
And people need to install solar panels more places, it's not that hard
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An inherent flaw in capitalism is that nobody takes into account systemic risk or non-$$$ considerations. Nobody thinks, "Oh when I buy this car taxes will go up to pay for the roads, I'll have to deal with congestion, global warming, drunk driving, noise pollution etc". America was purposefully marketed cars instead of more public transport and thats that. For a shitload of places it simply wouldn't be profitable.
Personally, I would love to take a train to school or work. Plenty of spare time to do homework.
Then again, I'm not a very good consumer. I don't even own furniture. You'll have a tough time convincing others to consider systemic risk. Even if they do, they probably don't see it as too risky.
Just keep up with the activism. Maybe you can find ways to get people to cut back in small ways.
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Funny how Ormur mentions NYC as a large city with the implication that it is neither densely populated nor dependent on public transportation. The irony here is that NYC is almost exactly what Ormur is describing as an ideal city. A large portion of New Yorkers rely on public transportation for their daily commutes, not cars. And I'm not only talking about the people living in Manhattan, I'm talking about across all five boroughs. In addition, NYC is also one of the most energy efficient cities in the country as a result of the mass transit system, apartment-building housing, and the likes. But the biggest irony of all is that NYC was not a planned city.
And regarding all the mention of the national debt, yes I do agree that this is a large blockade in this 'idea' you're proposing. If such an idea were to ever go underway, it should be done once the debt is lowered to a point where the nation can spend money on public works projects.
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On August 06 2010 05:39 sith wrote:
People just don't understand. You know why everyone walks everywhere in Europe and cars aren't as prevalent? Things are fucking close. The entire country of France is the size of TEXAS. When I want to drive to a new city in the US I'm going to probably take a car or plane, mostly because if I didn't it would take a day of travel time on a train or bus.
Go America!
Yeah right, that's why cars aren't used in Texas when people only travel in state (for example going to work...).
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On August 06 2010 05:44 Sunyveil wrote:
But seriously, I think the drawbacks of going nuclear are far outweighed by the benefits. Yes, there's some nuclear waste that we have to deal with but I'd take that over your standard pollution any day.
And people need to install solar panels more places, it's not that hard
What drawbacks to nuclear? Other than the construction cost and the fact that people don't understand it...? The understanding can and should be fixed, the construction cost probably won't but it will be made up by the fact that operating a nuke is cheaper than any other sort of plant.
Solar panels are rather inefficient, and producing more efficient ones is costly. The best spots for generating solar are largely away from population centers, so you lose energy in transmission. Solar energy is unreliable and already more expensive than nuclear or fossil fuel power. Solar panels are great for things that just need a small amout of power in the day, but it's just not realistic to get a large amount of our energy from solar. Solar also takes vastly more land area to produce energy than nuclear or fossil fuel plants.
Wind has similar problems.
edit: LOL misread your sentence, gonna leave this up though.
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On August 06 2010 05:05 {CC}StealthBlue wrote:
Debt, and Corruption is why this will never happen.
Debt and corruption will always exist due to people's greed.
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United States22883 Posts
On August 06 2010 05:49 Romantic wrote:
An inherent flaw in capitalism is that nobody takes into account systemic risk or non-$$$ considerations. Nobody thinks, "Oh when I buy this car taxes will go up to pay for the roads, I'll have to deal with congestion, global warming, drunk driving, noise pollution etc". America was purposefully marketed cars instead of more public transport and thats that. For a shitload of places it simply wouldn't be profitable.
Personally, I would love to take a train to school or work. Plenty of spare time to do homework.
Then again, I'm not a very good consumer. I don't even own furniture. You'll have a tough time convincing others to consider systemic risk. Even if they do, they probably don't see it as too risky.
Just keep up with the activism. Maybe you can find ways to get people to cut back in small ways.
It's called an externality and economists do think about these things. It just doesn't have enough political leeway yet.
Anyways, thoughts like the OP are fairly one dimensional and impractical, and don't really address actual problems. I mean, if everyone just stopped eating beef and farmers didn't have to raise cattle, they would save an enormous amount of energy. What good is an idea like that? Why are we even discussing this?
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On August 06 2010 05:39 sith wrote:
People just don't understand. You know why everyone walks everywhere in Europe and cars aren't as prevalent? Things are fucking close. The entire country of France is the size of TEXAS. When I want to drive to a new city in the US I'm going to probably take a car or plane, mostly because if I didn't it would take a day of travel time on a train or bus.
Go America!
I don't want to label your post as dumb but ...it is. Everyone in Europe walks everywhere.....and the reason things are close...wtf
I give you 4 reasons why do people walk and use public transportation:
1. cars are expensive (gas and purchase price)
2. someone doesn't drive (there are a lot of people that just haven't learned to drive and they might even be in age where they don't feel they need to learn it anymore)
3. you can't get drunk when you have to drive
4. in my city, i get easier and faster to work by subway than by a car (traffic and shit)
There are probably like 5 another reasons better than things are "fucking close". Doesn't really matter if the place you want to go to is 30 km (19 miles) or 500 km (312 miles) away - still the best way to get there is car in US and in EUROPE. Also if i go 1 mile disatnce in city, i would better take car and everyone i know does.
only thing i agree with you on: Go America
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On August 06 2010 06:03 crate wrote:
What drawbacks to nuclear? Other than the construction cost and the fact that people don't understand it...?
So what do you plan to do with the massive amounts of radioactive waste, that would be continuously produced if everyone switches to nuclear energy?
Nuclear energy is only cheap if you don't consider the costs of waste dispatch in the long run.
Btw to say that Chernobyl did only kill 30 people is horribly misguided.
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On August 06 2010 05:49 Romantic wrote:
An inherent flaw in capitalism is that nobody takes into account systemic risk or non-$$$ considerations. Nobody thinks, "Oh when I buy this car taxes will go up to pay for the roads, I'll have to deal with congestion, global warming, drunk driving, noise pollution etc". America was purposefully marketed cars instead of more public transport and thats that. For a shitload of places it simply wouldn't be profitable.
Personally, I would love to take a train to school or work. Plenty of spare time to do homework.
Then again, I'm not a very good consumer. I don't even own furniture. You'll have a tough time convincing others to consider systemic risk. Even if they do, they probably don't see it as too risky.
Just keep up with the activism. Maybe you can find ways to get people to cut back in small ways.
Considerations like that are called negative externalities and can be mitigated with excise taxes.
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Sanya12364 Posts
On August 06 2010 05:49 Romantic wrote:
An inherent flaw in [b]capitalism!??[/b[ is that nobody takes into account systemic risk or non-$$$ considerations. Nobody thinks, "Oh when I buy this car taxes will go up to pay for the roads, I'll have to deal with congestion, global warming, drunk driving, noise pollution etc". America was purposefully marketed cars instead of more public transport and thats that. For a shitload of places it simply wouldn't be profitable.
Seriously, it's a flaw with only capitalism!?
That's a limitation of the human mind. People in general don't think beyond, several steps. For cars, of concern are: how much does it costs, where and how can I use it, what are its dangers, what are its comforts. Drunk driving and traffic congestion is factored into the equation. Noise pollution is a function of where you live and work and people pay attention to that. One extra car on the road doesn't add much to the equation.
What is left?
A. Taxes will go up to pay for roads.
Taxes were already leveed to pay for roads. Part of buying the car is a registration fee, which incidentally goes to pay for roads.
B. Global Warming
Exhaust pollution and smog might be an issue. Global warming is still unconvincing.
C. America was purposefully marketed cars.
America was purposefully helped into cars by its sprawling country. Ensenhower and the US interstate system helped along with that.
Public transportation makes sense in the biggest cities. Destroy the suburbs and that'll destroy the need for most cars.
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On August 06 2010 06:14 Jibba wrote:Show nested quote +On August 06 2010 05:49 Romantic wrote:
An inherent flaw in capitalism is that nobody takes into account systemic risk or non-$$$ considerations. Nobody thinks, "Oh when I buy this car taxes will go up to pay for the roads, I'll have to deal with congestion, global warming, drunk driving, noise pollution etc". America was purposefully marketed cars instead of more public transport and thats that. For a shitload of places it simply wouldn't be profitable.
Personally, I would love to take a train to school or work. Plenty of spare time to do homework.
Then again, I'm not a very good consumer. I don't even own furniture. You'll have a tough time convincing others to consider systemic risk. Even if they do, they probably don't see it as too risky.
Just keep up with the activism. Maybe you can find ways to get people to cut back in small ways. It's called an externality and economists do think about these things. It just doesn't have enough political leeway yet. Anyways, thoughts like the OP are fairly one dimensional and impractical, and don't really address actual problems. I mean, if everyone just stopped eating beef and farmers didn't have to raise cattle, they would save an enormous amount of energy. What good is an idea like that? Why are we even discussing this?
I only meant to point out the average people who create the demand for cars do not consider these sorts of things.
Economists are much smarter than I
Off topic, I made a diet plan for my mother that saves the environment!!! I convinced her to walk or ride a bike anywhere she needed to go within 3 miles of the house. Green Earth Cookie nominee, please?
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United States22883 Posts
On August 06 2010 06:03 crate wrote:Show nested quote +On August 06 2010 05:44 Sunyveil wrote:
But seriously, I think the drawbacks of going nuclear are far outweighed by the benefits. Yes, there's some nuclear waste that we have to deal with but I'd take that over your standard pollution any day.
And people need to install solar panels more places, it's not that hard What drawbacks to nuclear? Other than the construction cost and the fact that people don't understand it...? The understanding can and should be fixed, the construction cost probably won't but it will be made up by the fact that operating a nuke is cheaper than any other sort of plant. Solar panels are rather inefficient, and producing more efficient ones is costly. The best spots for generating solar are largely away from population centers, so you lose energy in transmission. Solar energy is unreliable and already more expensive than nuclear or fossil fuel power. Solar panels are great for things that just need a small amout of power in the day, but it's just not realistic to get a large amount of our energy from solar. Solar also takes vastly more land area to produce energy than nuclear or fossil fuel plants. Wind has similar problems. edit: LOL misread your sentence, gonna leave this up though.
Nuclear waste disposal is a national security concern. The current options are that we ship it across the country on trains (which are notoriously unsecure) to be buried, or we could follow the model of many European countries where the waste is reprocessed, in which case we're spending extra money and each plant would be storing weapons grade plutonium. They're still working on better methods for reprocessing in the National Labs.
Even if it's a slim chance, it's still a legitimate concern and it's a politically impossible concern on top of that.
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I have some points to be made:
1. + Show Spoiler +
-Efficient use of waterways
I don’t what you mean because of the lack of the details that you provided, but if you talk about straighten out the waterways then don’t do that. The fish needs a light current which a bended waterway give. If you straighten it out the current will be too strong for the fish. Anyways whatever efficiency you can gain from better use of waterways will be very small compared to what you can get from enhancing other systems.
2. + Show Spoiler +
I looked this up once long time ago, so I don’t have any sources, but its like if 1 dane use 1 amount of energy then 1 american will use 2 amounts of energy. That’s partially because in Denmark and other European countries have implemented additional green tax on stuff that is polluting like gas. The additional green tax have made us enhancing our systems so they have become more efficient but allas this is simple stuff and it wont stop the transition our climate is undergoing, and in order for this to work u need time, and we don’t have time, maybe only few years.
3. + Show Spoiler +You are correct that transportation is a source for pollution but there are 3 other areas aswell which should be evident from this picture: ![[image loading]](http://i38.tinypic.com/2iik2ex.jpg) Source: + Show Spoiler +Stationary combustion is what I would call power plants? So really its also because you burn oil and coal to generate electricity. Imagine if a big part of that could be generated through sun panels. That would really help a lot on the problem. Then you have dirty power plants to take care of the spikes and prey its enough to stop the transition our climate is undergoing. Also there may be hours of the day where there wont be electricity available, but hey you cant expect to live like you did yesterday. There is a problem and it needs to be fixed. So stop using that aircondition and if there still isn’t enough electricity then we can look into the electricity shortages there still might be. This of course also means you cant turn on 100 fucking trillion lightbulbs around Christmas. WTF is that for? The following is disturbing and needs to be in spoilers so kids wont be exposed to it. + Show Spoiler +
4. + Show Spoiler +
Infrastructure, the main subject of OP. Lol, I have speculated about this too. There are 2 ways to approach this problem. 1st way is to go electric cars, and let the electricity come from the sun. Then distance and 1 car per house isnt a problem. The 2nd way is to totally reorganize how everything is situated. Houses should be placed around industrial and farms should be placed around packing plants which should be placed around shopping centers which should be placed around houses. But this is really complicated and im not sure if it even could work, I mean just look at how much energy you put into to it just to make it happen. My opinion is that electric cars are the better alternative to the system we have today.
5. + Show Spoiler +
Wars. Wars pollute so much that they don’t even are included in the statistics. Enough said about that -.-
6. + Show Spoiler +
There should be a law forbidding companies to give economic support to politicians. And it should be illegal for politicians to receive money. Right now oil companies are paying huge amount of money to politicians so the politicians wont make laws that would make USA greeny. Politicians should have a private transparency budget so we can see that they don’t receive money from entities they shouldn’t receive money from
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On August 06 2010 06:03 crate wrote:Show nested quote +On August 06 2010 05:44 Sunyveil wrote:
But seriously, I think the drawbacks of going nuclear are far outweighed by the benefits. Yes, there's some nuclear waste that we have to deal with but I'd take that over your standard pollution any day.
And people need to install solar panels more places, it's not that hard What drawbacks to nuclear? Other than the construction cost and the fact that people don't understand it...? The understanding can and should be fixed, the construction cost probably won't but it will be made up by the fact that operating a nuke is cheaper than any other sort of plant. Solar panels are rather inefficient, and producing more efficient ones is costly. The best spots for generating solar are largely away from population centers, so you lose energy in transmission. Solar energy is unreliable and already more expensive than nuclear or fossil fuel power. Solar panels are great for things that just need a small amout of power in the day, but it's just not realistic to get a large amount of our energy from solar. Solar also takes vastly more land area to produce energy than nuclear or fossil fuel plants. Wind has similar problems. edit: LOL misread your sentence, gonna leave this up though.
What about... hydrogen fuel cells???
DUN DUN DUN
Energy for transportation is the biggest one at least in the US; dunno much about other countries. I think the best way to do this would be through some kind of localized development, but barring a massive reduction of the human population (i.e. by nuclear war), I don't see how we can really improve our energy situation.
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On August 06 2010 06:18 silynxer wrote:Show nested quote +On August 06 2010 06:03 crate wrote:
What drawbacks to nuclear? Other than the construction cost and the fact that people don't understand it...? So what do you plan to do with the massive amounts of radioactive waste, that would be continuously produced if everyone switches to nuclear energy? Nuclear energy is only cheap if you don't consider the costs of waste dispatch in the long run. Btw to say that Chernobyl did only kill 30 people is horribly misguided.
Coal plants produce a pretty fair bit of radioactive waste. They spew it out into the atmosphere. Nuclear waste is either fission products which we currently let decay away, or it's uranium/plutonium/thorium that we can convert to more fuel. It's also not really a massive amount--compare the volume (or mass, if you prefer) of waste generated by nukes to the volume of waste generated by coal. Since nuclear reactions produce on the order of a million times as much energy per gram as chemical reactions, we'll automatically have less waste.
Show me the reports that conclude Chernobyl killed more than 30. The reports I've seen do not conclude it killed more (Rockwell says maybe 10 or 12 children died from thyroid surgery afterward; he also notes that there was no relation between the thyroid nodule occurrence rate and radiation dose received. He also says that a UN + WHO report concluded that no members of the public were harmed). That the response messed up a lot of people's lives is true.
I found this: http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2005/pr38/en/index.html
which says that the response to the disaster caused much more harm than the disaster itself. That can be prevented by not overreacting in the future.
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@Jibba:
Reprocessing only makes up to 10% (did only look it up on wikipedia but even if you double it, it's still a joke) the rest remains waste.
Burying is nice and all but space is limited and let there be any kind of water crack or landslide and you got radioactive groundwater. Of course at the moment the areas would be remote but I don't think it's a good idea in the long run to have contaminated areas or areas at risk to be contaminated all over the country .
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Did you really suggest hydrogen fuel cells? Some people really need to brush up on basic chemistry and physics before posting. Now that isn't to say more money can be devoted towards it, but right now it's pretty impractical.
Nuclear is pretty good for the immediate short-term. So silynxer, for the practical future, nuclear is pretty much the best barring some kind of major breakthrough.
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On August 06 2010 06:23 Jibba wrote:
or we could follow the model of many European countries where the nuclear waste is dumped in Somalia waters
fixed
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On August 06 2010 06:23 Jibba wrote:
Nuclear waste disposal is a national security concern. The current options are that we ship it across the country on trains (which are notoriously unsecure) to be buried, or we could follow the model of many European countries where the waste is reprocessed, in which case we're spending extra money and each plant would be storing weapons grade plutonium. They're still working on better methods for reprocessing in the National Labs.
Even if it's a slim chance, it's still a legitimate concern and it's a politically impossible concern on top of that.
Yes, this is a legitimate concern. There was a reactor at NRTS (now INL) that was to study fuel reprocessing that would not create weapons-grade plutonium but would create usable nuclear fuel. Its early results were encouraging, but the program was shut down before it could finish going through an entire fuel cycle. I don't remember the name of the reactor but I know it's discussed somewhere here: http://www.inl.gov/proving-the-principle/ (try after chapter 20, I don't exactly recall though).
Grabbing unprocessed spent fuel really isn't all that dangerous imo, it'd require processing to be useful for anything. A group with that capability most likely has a better way to get uranium than stealing spent fuel too.
edit: Personally I'm not at all convinced this is a problem that should turn us off of nuclear. Oh--and we don't actually have to ship it anywhere, it's quite safe to store spent fuel at plants (as Rockwell points out). We can, which is obviously more convenient for processing it for re-use.
edit 2: @d_3: Hydrogen fuel cells are far from being practical right now, so I don't see the point of discussing it in this context. Is it worth looking into? Possibly. But it won't solve anything for years.
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As far as cars are concerned
http://www.teslamotors.com/
These types of cars will solve this problem. Economy priced electric cars with 250+ mile ranges could hit the market as soon as 2014. Electric is the future. If Tesla can deliver on its goal of a 20,000 USD family sedan that can go 250+ miles on a single charge at less than a few cents per mile in electricity costs the impact one the energy economy would be enormous. Seeing as cars account for just under 50% of our oil consumption, and the internal combustion engine is far more cost inefficient than the huge economies of scale the power industry is built around you can see why. I don't think intrusive policy or some sort of personal green revolution will be the answer to our energy problem. Wisely investing in and implementing emerging technologies is.
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thedeadhaji
39489 Posts
On August 06 2010 05:49 Romantic wrote:
Personally, I would love to take a train to school or work. Plenty of spare time to do homework.
Then again, I'm not a very good consumer. I don't even own furniture.
fucking high five mate
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On August 06 2010 06:36 crate wrote:
edit 2: @d_3: Hydrogen fuel cells are far from being practical right now, so I don't see the point of discussing it in this context. Is it worth looking into? Possibly. But it won't solve anything for years.
It was a joke. I should know.
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On August 06 2010 06:41 thedeadhaji wrote:Show nested quote +On August 06 2010 05:49 Romantic wrote:
Personally, I would love to take a train to school or work. Plenty of spare time to do homework.
Then again, I'm not a very good consumer. I don't even own furniture.
fucking high five mate
*highfive*
Not having furniture is pretty cool. Easy to clean, healthy (getting up and sitting down 40 times a day is fairly significant).
My girlfriend demands furniture before she moves in, though 
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On August 06 2010 06:38 Aquafresh wrote:As far as cars are concerned http://www.teslamotors.com/These types of cars will solve this problem. Economy priced electric cars with 250+ mile ranges could hit the market as soon as 2014. Electric is the future. If Tesla can deliver on its goal of a 20,000 USD family sedan that can go 250+ miles on a single charge at less than a few cents per mile in electricity costs the impact one the energy economy would be enormous. Seeing as cars account for just under 50% of our oil consumption, and the internal combustion engine is far more cost inefficient than the huge economies of scale the power industry is built around you can see why. I don't think intrusive policy or some sort of personal green revolution will be the answer to our energy problem. Wisely investing in and implementing emerging technologies is.
No, this would only be a delaying tactic. I don't think you really understand how ingrained petroleum/fossil fuels are in energy production and industry. Perhaps it would be more efficient to burn our fuels at the plant and convert them into electricity for our cars, but it wouldn't eliminate our demand for oil. A transition into nuclear power would be able to alleviate a large part of it (i.e. cars powered by electricity generated by nuclear plants) though I imagine it would still be cheaper/more familiar to use petroleum.
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On August 06 2010 06:52 d3_crescentia wrote:Show nested quote +On August 06 2010 06:36 crate wrote:
edit 2: @d_3: Hydrogen fuel cells are far from being practical right now, so I don't see the point of discussing it in this context. Is it worth looking into? Possibly. But it won't solve anything for years. It was a joke. I should know.
I was hoping so, but....
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On August 06 2010 06:38 Aquafresh wrote:As far as cars are concerned http://www.teslamotors.com/These types of cars will solve this problem. Economy priced electric cars with 250+ mile ranges could hit the market as soon as 2014. Electric is the future. If Tesla can deliver on its goal of a 20,000 USD family sedan that can go 250+ miles on a single charge at less than a few cents per mile in electricity costs the impact one the energy economy would be enormous. Seeing as cars account for just under 50% of our oil consumption, and the internal combustion engine is far more cost inefficient than the huge economies of scale the power industry is built around you can see why. I don't think intrusive policy or some sort of personal green revolution will be the answer to our energy problem. Wisely investing in and implementing emerging technologies is.
Yes clearly that's the way to do it, just because there isn't a power plant on virtually every street corner doesn't mean that is a good idea. This won't stretch the power grid that currently running on what kind of fuel power plants? Yeah, thought so, don't believe the hype. Just like that ethanol hype a few years ago.
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I feel like "Green" anything shouldn't be planned in any way, what so ever. If a need for it exists it'll naturally occur as a the market responds to the wants of the people.
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@crate: It's pretty amusing how I saw just yesterday a documentary film about the different methods of counting the Chernobyl victims, especially critizising the UN interpretation. They mentioned the drawbacks of the evacuation as well.
I'm not a big fan of throwing around sources especially since I always have to find an english equivalent to the German sources I have at hand. But even if you look at the 2006 WHO paper you will find that even the smallest number of directly traceable caused deaths is now 56 and it is very difficult to estimate the actual number of deaths:
It is impossible to account for all additional cases of (not-thyroid) cancer since the expected number of additional deaths according to the dose-response relationship is around 4000 (for the 600000 people who were highly exposed) while the number of deaths caused by "natural" cancer in this timeframe would be around 120000.
For the 6 million people who were mildly exposed the expected additional fatalities are statistically insignificant (but still in the thousands).
But even though it is impossible to trace these fatalities directly to Chernobyl (even statistically) it is still incredible naive to say there weren't any and this is only considering cancer.
I never said I support coal plants in fact I'm strongly opposed to using coal as an energy source. So that coal is worse is not an argument. Until reprocessing rates somehow skyrocket nuclear power remains unsustainable in my opinion.
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On August 06 2010 07:56 silynxer wrote:
@crate: It's pretty amusing how I saw just yesterday a documentary film about the different methods of counting the Chernobyl victims, especially critizising the UN interpretation. They mentioned the drawbacks of the evacuation as well.
I'm not a big fan of throwing around sources especially since I always have to find an english aquivalent to the German sources I have at hand. But even if you look at the 2006 WHO paper you will find that even the smallest number of directly traceable caused deaths is now 56 and it is very difficult to estimate the actual number of deaths:
It is impossible to account for all additional cases of (not-thyroid) cancer since the expected number of additional deaths according to the dose-response relationship is around 4000 (for the 600000 people who were highly exposed) while the number of deaths caused by "natural" cancer in this timeframe would be around 120000.
For the 6 million people who were mildly exposed the expected additional fatalities are statistically insignificant (but still in the thousands).
But even though it is impossible to trace these fatalities directly to Chernobyl (even statistically) it is still incredible naive to say there weren't any and this is only considering cancer.
I never said I support coal plants in fact I'm strongly opposed to using coal as an energy source. So that coal is worse is not an argument. Until reprocessing rates somehow skyrocket nuclear power remains unsustainable in my opinion.
Well I'm just posting the information I've seen. If you have sources saying it's more, and those sources are right--ok, it's more. I've not seen them, and the sources I have seen put the death toll pretty low and the harm from radiation release also quite reasonable.
Regardless an accident of the same type is not possible in the types of nuclear plants the US uses (the biggest contributor was the positive void coefficient of reactivity, which basically means that as the core heats up reactivity goes up as well. All US plants afaik are the opposite and thus partially self-regulating) and the worst commercial US nuclear accident (TMI) killed no one directly, almost certainly did not do anything to the public, and as far as I know didn't harm the operators either. The SL-1 incident (you can read about it in "Proving the Principle" which I linked above) killed the three people in the core and did seriously expose emergency response crews to radiation, but I don't believe anyone outside the structure was seriously exposed to radiation. I'm not aware of any other US fatalities linked to nuclear reactors.
As for reprocessing, we have enough fuel to last without reproccessing and without breeder reactors for a couple hundred years I think, and breeder reactors can generate electricity while converting more U-238--or thorium, though I don't think the US has any thorium-based reactors--to fuel than they burn U-235 (I'm not familiar with what processing if any is needed for breeder reactors to use their bred fuel though).
If you're not agreeing with coal (or other fossil fuels, presumably), and you're not saying nuclear is good either ... what should we use? No one is going to start living without electricity. Solar and wind have many problems that I see as making them inadequate as a primary power source (Rockwell covers them on his site, and I have heard the same stuff from other sources). I'm not aware of any other possibilities for large-scale electricity generation for an entire nation.
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On August 06 2010 06:59 d3_crescentia wrote:Show nested quote +On August 06 2010 06:38 Aquafresh wrote:As far as cars are concerned http://www.teslamotors.com/These types of cars will solve this problem. Economy priced electric cars with 250+ mile ranges could hit the market as soon as 2014. Electric is the future. If Tesla can deliver on its goal of a 20,000 USD family sedan that can go 250+ miles on a single charge at less than a few cents per mile in electricity costs the impact one the energy economy would be enormous. Seeing as cars account for just under 50% of our oil consumption, and the internal combustion engine is far more cost inefficient than the huge economies of scale the power industry is built around you can see why. I don't think intrusive policy or some sort of personal green revolution will be the answer to our energy problem. Wisely investing in and implementing emerging technologies is. No, this would only be a delaying tactic. I don't think you really understand how ingrained petroleum/fossil fuels are in energy production and industry. Perhaps it would be more efficient to burn our fuels at the plant and convert them into electricity for our cars, but it wouldn't eliminate our demand for oil. A transition into nuclear power would be able to alleviate a large part of it (i.e. cars powered by electricity generated by nuclear plants) though I imagine it would still be cheaper/more familiar to use petroleum.
Did I say it would eliminate our demand for oil? Of course it won't, but it will certainly alleviate it. In no way will it be cheaper to use gas powered cars if the electrics I am talking about grab a decent share of the market. It may be more comfortable, and the shipping industry will certainly prefer them until new infrastructure is in place, but it definitely won't be cost effective. The whole idea is to be able to sell the cars at the same price as their competing ICE based cars. Combine this with the fact that even at the highest electricity prices (Hawaii) it is still cheaper per mile to power your vehicle electrically and you see why.
As far as oils impact on the energy industry? It depends on what you consider to be "the energy industry." As far as electricity generation is concerned, which is what we're talking about here, it does not play such a large roll. It is mostly used for industrial purposes, producing consumer goods such as plastics and lubricants, and fuel. Fuel is what we use about 70% of our oil for, and about 2/3 of that is gasoline, resulting in 46% of oil demand coming from what we put in our cars. Electric cars would drastically decrease that demand and shift the burden onto natural gas/coal based sources, which while not being ideal, are much more appealing than oil for environmental as well as political and economic reasons. I have no idea whether adopting Nuclear power is environmentally preferable to the primarily coal/natural gas based power we currently use, but it would almost certainly be more cost effective in the long run.
On August 06 2010 07:01 Judicator wrote:
Yes clearly that's the way to do it, just because there isn't a power plant on virtually every street corner doesn't mean that is a good idea. This won't stretch the power grid that currently running on what kind of fuel power plants? Yeah, thought so, don't believe the hype. Just like that ethanol hype a few years ago.
I don't even know what you're saying here. First of all petroleum only accounts for 1% of the power produced the US, perhaps you have it confused with natural gas? Second it is much more cost efficient to turn coal and other fossil fuels into electricity than it is to refine petroleum into gasoline and burn it in an ICE. Even if the increase in demand doubles the cost of electricity country wide (doubtfull) it would still be far less costly to operate your vehicle than if you were still paying for gas. There is no parallel to ethanol, so I don't know why you brought that up. Electric cars are not, and do not pretend to be, a new energy source as ethanol fuel did. It is simply a way to use existing source in a much more efficient way.
It's all about well to wheel efficiency, and electric power has almost always been superior to the alternatives. It is only recently that technology has advanced to the point where the performance is even and the range issues have decreased. Battery technology is on the verge of another major leap forward so electric powered vehicles are set to become even more appealing in the future.
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If it's about efficiency, the free market is much more able to deliver those solutions than any central planner, and it will be that way as long as resources are scarce and the planners are less knowledgeable than everyone else added together (very often the case)
So the first thing I question is that for anyone who is unsatisfied with the infrastructure laid out by a state, why not blame first and foremost the statist which 1-planned it, and 2- prohibited the market from laying competing infrastructure that may have been more efficient otherwise?
Its funny that if one were to die in a restaurant from food poisoning or slipping and falling on their neck, the first one to blame would be the restaurant owner; the manager. But in the case of public infrastructure, we blame intermediates, the weather, the people themselves, and the state goes impune... hundreds of thousands die on public roads every year, and who do people blame? Drunk drivers... and that's that. Funny that.
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On August 06 2010 08:07 crate wrote:
Well I'm just posting the information I've seen. If you have sources saying it's more, and those sources are right--ok, it's more. I've not seen them, and the sources I have seen put the death toll pretty low and the harm from radiation release also quite reasonable.
Regardless an accident of the same type is not possible in the types of nuclear plants the US uses (the biggest contributor was the positive void coefficient of reactivity, which basically means that as the core heats up reactivity goes up as well. All US plants afaik are the opposite and thus partially self-regulating) and the worst commercial US nuclear accident (TMI) killed no one directly, almost certainly did not do anything to the public, and as far as I know didn't harm the operators either. The SL-1 incident (you can read about it in "Proving the Principle" which I linked above) killed the three people in the core and did seriously expose emergency response crews to radiation, but I don't believe anyone outside the structure was seriously exposed to radiation. I'm not aware of any other US fatalities linked to nuclear reactors.
As for reprocessing, we have enough fuel to last without reproccessing and without breeder reactors for a couple hundred years I think, and breeder reactors can generate electricity while converting more U-238--or thorium, though I don't think the US has any thorium-based reactors--to fuel than they burn U-235 (I'm not familiar with what processing if any is needed for breeder reactors to use their bred fuel though).
If you're not agreeing with coal (or other fossil fuels, presumably), and you're not saying nuclear is good either ... what should we use? No one is going to start living without electricity. Solar and wind have many problems that I see as making them inadequate as a primary power source (Rockwell covers them on his site, and I have heard the same stuff from other sources). I'm not aware of any other possibilities for large-scale electricity generation for an entire nation.
It's kinda late and I'm going to try to make a better informed answer tomorrow but for now:
This seems to be the source in english http://www.iaea.org/Publications/Booklets/Chernobyl/chernobyl.pdf (well at least the numbers are similiar, weird how my initial numbers were different although from the same organisation)
With unsustainable I meant more the mass production of toxic waste which will be on earth as long as humans are. I have to look some numbers up on this but even in the process of handling the waste you get all kind of problems.
At the moment we can neither abandon coal nore nuclear plants and you are right that the regenerative plants have problems of their own. I would suggest to keep the existing conservative plants while expanding alternative ones and most importantly find ways to reduce the consumption.
Obviously I have no easy answer how to make the people use lesser electricity but I don't see another solution in the long run.
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I'll look over the report. My quick browsing suggests that it's mostly in-line with the WHO report I linked before (some emergency workers probably seriously harmed, a slight increase in mortality among the nearby population, obviously the same 30/31 direct deaths). Clearly bad, clearly a disaster, but the disaster itself was most likely less harmful overall than the evacuations and response to it. (Certainly at TMI this was the case, caused by a lack of reliable information and a lack of communications because of overwhelmed phone lines, but the industry has learned from TMI).
edit: And I personally have confidence in the US commercial nuclear industry and the engineering behind it. I don't forsee a Chernobyl-scale disaster happening in the US. I don't think another TMI (as in, a large-scale core meltdown) is likely either. The nuclear navy has run hundreds of subs and some carriers with pretty much a flawless record and those reactors obviously have to survive in conditions more extreme than commercial plants do. The commerical nuclear industry in the US has a great record.
Personally I think that actually significantly reducing consumption will be largely a futile effort. It's just plain cheaper to consume and produce more electricity than it is to use less in the first place, and this won't change in the forseeable future (particularly with nukes, since like I said we have, counting U-238 that we can turn into fuel via breeder reactors, millions of years of fuel--and to boot the main cost of the plants is building them, not operating. The price of nuclear energy isn't likely to rise significantly as far as I can see. Fossil fuel energy may well grow more expensive though). Reducing consumption is certainly a noble goal, but I think we have to be realistic here, and I don't think people are going to accept either of the two ways to use significantly less energy (either not using as much stuff that uses energy in the first place--less driving, less air conditioning, less appliance use, etc.; or paying more to live the same way. Certainly to an extent it is better to pay for more efficient refrigerators and air-conditioning systems and the like, but you do hit a definite wall there before you've "solved" the problem without getting very costly).
Producing cheap electricity right now means either fossil fuels or nuclear (or maybe hydroelectric, I'm not informed on that too much--but that's obviously geographically limited so not a nationwide solution, at least for the US) and all the information I have points to nukes being much more environmentally-friendly.
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Build more SCVs, mine more minerals, build more supply depots.
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Last time I looked from Earth, the United States is quite green compared to many spots on the planet. Isn't it also true that there are many more trees here now than when the country began?
The planet will take care of itself. We can certainly be more efficient, better stewards, etc. but it will be a gradual evolution towards better habits--not an overnight change imposed by centralized power. Nor should it be.
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A consistent subway system in major US cities would be great. I've been to places like Hong Kong, London, and Paris which all have nice subway systems, but there just isn't that much of that in America. I mean, New York has it, but I haven't been to any city on the West Coast which has a subway system. There's a pretty decent bus system around here in San Diego, but for a lot of trips there is really no option but to drive, or to suffer a long and costly bus ride which takes 4-5 times longer than driving(and that is if you are lucky)
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as 0neder said, the planet will be fine. humans and the earth will adapt to low water/food/energy either by population decrease through some measure or that good old fashioned human ingenuity through some miracle discovery. just sit back and take it as it comes.
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On August 06 2010 09:48 Roe wrote:
as 0neder said, the planet will be fine. humans and the earth will adapt to low water/food/energy either by population decrease through some measure or that good old fashioned human ingenuity through some miracle discovery. just sit back and take it as it comes.
No because its better to reduce consumption than to die...
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You can say a lot about nuclear energy and instead of me rambling on and say something semi-stupid im gonna go and reapeat what others have said before me, and can say it in a more proffesional way:
Nuclear-Nuclear: Exposing the myths
The nuclear industry is hoping that concern over climate change will result in support for nuclear power. However, even solely on the grounds of economic criteria it offers poor value for money in displacing fossil fuel plant. Further, with its high cost, long construction time, high environmental risk and problems resulting from waste management, it is clear that nuclear power does not offer a viable solution to climate change. Rather a mixture of energy efficiency and renewable energy offers a quicker, more realistic and sustainable approach to reducing CO2 emissions.
Exposing the myths 1: Nuclear power is economical and cost effective
The full costs of nuclear power have been seriously underestimated by all countries which have the technology, and it is only recently that the true costs have begun to come to light. The hidden costs of waste disposal, decommissioning and provision for accidents have never been adequately accounted for, resulting in a massive drain upon economies. This drain will continue for many years to come as the expensive and dangerous task of nuclear decommissioning gets underway.
Privatisation and liberalisation of the market in the UK, has led to the true costs of nuclear power being exposed. It has become clear that nuclear power cannot exist in a competitive energy market without significant subsidy from Government. This process is now being followed around the world with investors being unwilling to accept the high cost and risks associated with nuclear power. Moreover, if fully comprehensive insurance was required to cover all of the risks of nuclear accidents, the cost of electricity from nuclear power would increase many times from the present level.
Reactor decommissioning costs also remain a major uncertainty. In the UK, for example, the cost of dealing with the unwanted debris of the nuclear industry is officially estimated at about US$70 billion. Of this, just US$22 billion is covered in secure funding arrangements, with the remaining US$48 billion (almost 70%) likely to be paid for by taxpayers. The nuclear industry's claim that, "In most countries, the full costs of waste management and plant decommissioning will be funded from reserves accumulated from current revenues" [1] is clearly untrue.
Countries, particularly in Central and Eastern Europe, are continuing to build new nuclear plants even though it has been shown that investment in energy efficiency measures is the quickest and safest way to tackle their energy crises. For example, the nuclear power plants proposed to replace the remaining reactors at Chernobyl have consistently been shown not to be the least-cost option.
Also, in terms of cost-effectiveness in reducing CO2 emissions, nuclear power fairs very poorly. In 1995, after a year-long, exhaustive review of the case for nuclear power, the UK Government concluded that nuclear power is one of the least cost-effective ways in which to cut CO2 emissions. In the USA improving electricity efficiency is nearly seven times more cost effective than nuclear power for obtaining emissions reductions [2].
Nuclear power one of the least effective and most expensive ways in which to tackle climate change.
Exposing the myths 2: Nuclear power does not produce CO2
Nuclear power is not greenhouse friendly. While electricity generated from nuclear power entails no direct emissions of CO2, the nuclear fuel cycle does release CO2 during mining, fuel enrichment and plant construction. Uranium mining is one of the most CO2 intensive industrial operations and as demand for uranium grows CO2 emissions are expected to rise as core grades decline.
According to calculations by the Öko-Institute, 34 grams of CO2 are emitted per generated kWh in Germany [4]. The results from other international research studies show much higher figures - up to 60 grams of CO2 per kWh. In total, a nuclear power station of standard size (1,250MW operating at 6,500 hours/annum) indirectly emits between 376,000 million tonnes (Germany) and 1,300,000 million tonnes (other countries) of CO2 per year. In comparison to renewable energy, nuclear power releases 4-5 times more CO2 per unit of energy produced taking account of the whole fuel cycle.
Also, with its long development time a nuclear power programme offers no short-term possibility for reducing CO2 emissions.
Exposing the myths 3: Nuclear power is safe
Problems of security, safety and environmental impact have been perennial issues for the nuclear industry. Many countries have decided against the development of nuclear power on these grounds, but radioactive contamination is no respector of national borders and nuclear power plants threaten the health and well-being of all surrounding nations and environments. There is also the very serious problems of nuclear proliferation and trafficking.
The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) view is that if nuclear power were to be used extensively to tackle climate change, "The security threat ... would be colossal".
Just one month after The Economist, a British magazine, had declared in its lead article that the technology was "as safe as a chocolate factory" (1986), there followed a catastrophic nuclear accident at Chernobyl. The accident caused an immediate threat to the lives of 130,000 people living within a 30 kilometre radius who had to be evacuated (and who have been permanently relocated) and 300-400 million people in 15 nations were put at risk of radiation exposure. Forecasts of additional cancer deaths attributable to the Chernobyl accident range from 5,000 to 75,000 and beyond. The nuclear industry argues that the problems in the former Soviet Union are different to those in developed countries, but the United States itself had a serious accident at Three Mile Island in 1979. Whilst the new European Pressurised Reactor and the fusion programmes are being promoted as offering safer operation, no form of nuclear power technology is totally without risk of a major accident. With public opinion strongly set against nuclear power, it would be far better to invest in renewable forms of energy which have widespread public support. The development of new nuclear technology would mean spending huge amounts of money going down another nuclear road, with the prospect of finding the same type of problems and public opposition.
Recent in-depth studies in the United States challenge the claim that exposure to low-level doses of radiation is safe. The health and safety of employees, local communities and the contamination of the environment are genuine risks. A recent study (completed August 1997) funded by the US National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, examined the health and mortality of 14,095 workers from the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The study found "strong evidence of a positive association between low-level radiation and cancer mortality" [5]. As of 1990, 26.9% of deaths were due to cancer.
The exposure risk to workers in the uranium mining industry is also great.
Exposing the myths 4: Nuclear power is sustainable
Nuclear power plants produce extremely long-lived toxic wastes, for which there is no safe means of disposal. The only independent scrutiny of a Government waste management safety case [NIREX in the UK] led to the cancellation of the proposed test site for nuclear waste disposal. As disposal is not scientifically credible, there is no option other than interim storage of radioactive wastes. This means that the legacy of radioactive wastes will have to be passed on to the next generation. Producing long-lived radioactive wastes, with no solution for their disposal, leaving a deadly legacy for many future generations to come is contrary to the principle of sustainability, as laid out in Agenda 21 at the Earth Summit.
In 1976 the UK Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution warned that it is, "irresponsible and morally wrong to commit future generations to the consequences of fission power on a massive scale unless it has been demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt that at least one method exists for the safe isolation of these wastes for the indefinite future"[6]. Over twenty years on, still no such method has been found. Nuclear waste management policies are in disarray and there is growing public opposition to the transport and storage of nuclear waste - as has been demonstrated by the scenes at Gorleben, Germany.
Under no circumstances can nuclear power be considered to be sustainable.
Exposing the myths 5: Nuclear power can provide an endless source of energy
With the virtual demise of the Fast Breeder research programme and no foreseeable commercial development of fusion reactors, the belief that nuclear power can supply an endless source of energy is fast disappearing. The Japanese Monju Fast Breeder reactor has been inactive since a serious accident in December 1995, whilst the French Superphoenix and the breeder reactor programmes in the UK have been permanently closed.
Diminishing uranium supplies and the failure of the breeder reactor programmes mean that nuclear power will not be able to make a long-term contribution to meeting the world’s energy needs.
Exposing the myths 6: Nuclear power makes a vital contribution to energy supply
The assertion by the nuclear industry that, "It is essential that nuclear generating capacity is maintained if emissions from power generation are to be successfully limited over the next 10 to 15 year and beyond" [7] is fundamentally untrue. Emissions can be cut without building more nuclear power plant. In October 1997, the US Department of Energy released a report in which they concluded that the US could cut CO2 emissions to 1990 levels by 2010 with no net cost to the economy. Shell has forecast that renewables could meet up to 50% of the world’s energy demand by 2060 [8]. Nuclear power only supplies 17% of world electricity supply at present.
Nuclear power is seeing its role in the world's energy mix diminish. Since 1986, according to the IAEA, only three nuclear power stations have been ordered annually. In Europe fourteen out of fifteen European nations have no plans to develop nuclear power; the majority of the countries within the European Union have, "little desire to launch, or to re-invigorate, nuclear power programs" [9]; and nearly half of the EU countries are nuclear free and others are planning to decrease or phase out nuclear power completely. It is clear that the vast sums of money being spent on research and development and on subsidising the industry are in total disproportion to the contribution nuclear power is likely to make to Europe’s energy supply in the coming decades.
With a limited amount of funding available for research and development, reallocation of funds from nuclear power and towards renewable energy and energy efficiency would reduce the costs of these technologies, making them even more competitive. However, funds are still being wasted on nuclear power programmes, which are opposed by most people, are more expensive than other alternatives and require a long development time.
It is a myth that "Nuclear power is the only fully developed non-fossil fuel electricity generating option with the potential for large-scale expansion" [7]. Nuclear power plants take 10 years to build. Over the next 12 years the European Union is aiming for 10,000MW of wind power and 10,000MW of biomass to be developed. This is a just part of the solution and is equivalent to about 15 nuclear power plant.
Conclusions
Under no circumstances can nuclear power be considered to be a solution to climate change:
It is one of the most expensive ways to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. The nuclear industry does contribute to carbon dioxide emissions. No proven strategies exist for the permanent safe storage of nuclear waste.
Nuclear power poses a very real health risk.
Nuclear power is uneconomic, unsustainable and unsafe.
source:
http://www.nirs.org/factsheets/kyotonuc.htm
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On August 06 2010 05:31 thedeadhaji wrote:
Over the last month or so, I've been thinking of similar things on a personal level. My personal conclusion is that we simply produce and consume unnecessarily. Much of what we produce and consume are designed only to take our minds off the drudgery that life has become for many of us. Transportation is a huge area in terms of energy efficiency, but I'm pretty sure "making useless shit" is also a pretty big one as well.
Of course, the day consumerism dies in the united states is the day the country goes kaput.
Why don't you care about important environmental issues like Water Fluoridation and Corexit being dumped in the Gulf of Mexico?
You can either decrease your standard of living or increase your health and keep your personal freedoms. I would prefer the later.
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On August 06 2010 06:23 Jibba wrote:
Nuclear waste disposal is a national security concern. The current options are that we ship it across the country on trains (which are notoriously unsecure) to be buried, or we could follow the model of many European countries where the waste is reprocessed, in which case we're spending extra money and each plant would be storing weapons grade plutonium. They're still working on better methods for reprocessing in the National Labs.
Even if it's a slim chance, it's still a legitimate concern and it's a politically impossible concern on top of that.
You'd be hard-pressed to make anything weapon-grade from the nuclear waste produced by contemporary reactors.
As for reprocessing, storing weapons-grade plutonium at a nuclear reactor - that would be one of the more secure places in the world to store it.
Nuclear waste disposal is not a problem. We understand very well how to deal with it - dig a deep hole in an arid, rocky place, pile in the waste, pour it over with glass and concrete. It decays on it's own, and unless you've buried it in a hydrologically active area, you're not going to contaminate anything.
In comparison to renewable energy, nuclear power releases 4-5 times more CO2 per unit of energy produced taking account of the whole fuel cycle.
That number is meaningless without context. The question is, how much less CO2 does it emit, compared to burning coal - which is the main source of energy for the United States.
It may cost 34g of CO2/KWH with nuclear power... But it costs us 480g of CO2/KWH to burn coal - which is still the #1 source of energy in the United States.
Improving energy efficiency can only go so far - it's a great short-term gain, but in the long-term, we need to change where the electricity comes from.
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On August 06 2010 10:33 exeexe wrote:
You can say a lot about nuclear energy and instead of me rambling on and say something semi-stupid im gonna go and reapeat what others have said before me, and can say it in a more proffesional way:
Exposing the myths 1: Nuclear power is economical and cost effective
The full costs of nuclear power have been seriously underestimated by all countries which have the technology, and it is only recently that the true costs have begun to come to light. The hidden costs of waste disposal, decommissioning and provision for accidents have never been adequately accounted for, resulting in a massive drain upon economies.
A lot of this is that we treat nuclear waste with (at least Ted Rockwell claims this, I'm actually no expert on radiation dosage and the like) unnecessarily strict and unique regulations.
Moreover, if fully comprehensive insurance was required to cover all of the risks of nuclear accidents, the cost of electricity from nuclear power would increase many times from the present level.
If this happens, this is the government just shutting down the industry for little reason. (More on this below). The potential deadliness of nuclear power plants is no higher than other power plants. Hydroelectric dams could potentially kill thousands or tens of thousands. Coal plants have killed thousands. Commercial nuclear power has killed however many people have died from Chernobyl (SL-1 was for the US military. Like I said I'm not aware of any other deaths). Or so a quick google search says (http://www.physics.isu.edu/radinf/np-risk.htm for example. I've already linked Rockwell's site. You can find more).
The simple fact is that nuclear plants are not any more unsafe than fossil fuel plants as far as I can see. Requiring excessive insurance for an industry that has proven it doesn't need it? I don't see why that should happen (which is what this article is talking about).
Exposing the myths 2: Nuclear power does not produce CO2
Nuclear power is not greenhouse friendly. While electricity generated from nuclear power entails no direct emissions of CO2, the nuclear fuel cycle does release CO2 during mining, fuel enrichment and plant construction. Uranium mining is one of the most CO2 intensive industrial operations and as demand for uranium grows CO2 emissions are expected to rise as core grades decline.
According to calculations by the Öko-Institute, 34 grams of CO2 are emitted per generated kWh in Germany [4]. The results from other international research studies show much higher figures - up to 60 grams of CO2 per kWh. In total, a nuclear power station of standard size (1,250MW operating at 6,500 hours/annum) indirectly emits between 376,000 million tonnes (Germany) and 1,300,000 million tonnes (other countries) of CO2 per year. In comparison to renewable energy, nuclear power releases 4-5 times more CO2 per unit of energy produced taking account of the whole fuel cycle.
What are the comparable numbers for fossil fuel plants? Remember to count any CO2 production from mining coal, or drilling for natural gas, etc., since this does for nuclear.
Renewable energy has fewer emissions, but it's vastly more expensive and has not been proven to be able to scale up to power a country, while nuclear has (France is ~80% nuclear).
Exposing the myths 3: Nuclear power is safe
Just one month after The Economist, a British magazine, had declared in its lead article that the technology was "as safe as a chocolate factory" (1986), there followed a catastrophic nuclear accident at Chernobyl.
I've already talked about this, read above. It was bad, sure, but stuff just as bad has happened with other power plants:
To date, the largest number of noticeable deaths from coal burning was in an air pollution incident (London, 1952) where there were 3500 extra deaths in one week.
http://www.physics.isu.edu/radinf/np-risk.htm
I'm not going to debate about whether Chernobyl killed 3500; I'm not qualified to do that.
The nuclear industry argues that the problems in the former Soviet Union are different to those in developed countries, but the United States itself had a serious accident at Three Mile Island in 1979.
Which killed no one and did not release dangerous amounts of radiation to the public.
With public opinion strongly set against nuclear power,
Rockwell claims that surveys show that the American public favors nuclear. I'm not claiming to know which is right though.
Recent in-depth studies in the United States challenge the claim that exposure to low-level doses of radiation is safe.
Recent studies also claim that low-level radiation is essential for life and reducing background exposure lowers life expectancy (Rockwell claims this, I linked to a study in another topic (the one about mattresses)).
edit: One example that a quick Google search found: http://www.atomicinsights.com/Guests/AGC_06-11-06.pdf
BBC news report on this: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/3554422.stm
The exposure risk to workers in the uranium mining industry is also great.
Coal mining is pretty dangerous too. Less so than it was 50 years ago (in the US, at least: China still finds it cheaper to operate unsafely and just pay off families for deaths), but still dangerous and we use a much larger volume and mass of coal than we do uranium (of course, coal is I believe more common too). Oil drilling killed a fair few people in the Gulf this year I hear.
Exposing the myths 4: Nuclear power is sustainable
Nuclear power plants produce extremely long-lived toxic wastes, for which there is no safe means of disposal.
Coal plants put more radioactivity into the environment than nuclear plants! They expel them into the air, mostly.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste (there are other sources about this. Google should help).
Exposing the myths 5: Nuclear power can provide an endless source of energy
With the virtual demise of the Fast Breeder research programme and no foreseeable commercial development of fusion reactors, the belief that nuclear power can supply an endless source of energy is fast disappearing. The Japanese Monju Fast Breeder reactor has been inactive since a serious accident in December 1995, whilst the French Superphoenix and the breeder reactor programmes in the UK have been permanently closed.
Diminishing uranium supplies and the failure of the breeder reactor programmes mean that nuclear power will not be able to make a long-term contribution to meeting the world’s energy needs.
It's not inexhaustible, but we have the technology to make breeder reactors, and we have enough uranium already for thousands of years. The truly renewable technologies have not proven to be useable. Coal and natural gas won't last us as long.
Is nuclear perfect? No. Do I see a better option? No.
The article is making few demonstrably false claims. It is very misleading however, because it focuses only on the faults of nuclear plants, while conveniently ignoring comparison to fossil fuel plants.
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lol you are not supposed to compare nuclear power with coalpower. What you are to do instead is to compare nuclear technology with other non co2-emitting powerplants. Thats the purpose with the article anyways.
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On August 06 2010 11:44 exeexe wrote:
lol you are not supposed to compare nuclear power with coalpower. What you to do instead is to compare nuclear technology with other non co2-emitting powerplants.
Well, give me some examples of existing "non co2-emitting powerplants" that are actually, right now, a viable option for producing the majority of our electricity. My understanding is that there aren't any, that our options are essentially one or more of the following:
1) Fossil fuels
2) Nuclear
3) Stop using electricity
The public will not choose option 3.
Comparing nuclear to wind, solar, and the like is mostly pointless, because that's not what it's competing with. It's competing with fossil fuels.
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No we should not only focus on only 1 technology, because obiously it will be hard for one brand of technology to cover our basic needs. (read "basic needs" does for example not include aircondition lol). But if we get a broad mix of different technologies, then the sunpanels can supply power when the windmills doesnt get any wind and etc.
But the 3 major power plants i had in mind was sun, water and wind, but there are proberbly more. If they combined cant fill out your demand for power then its your problem and not a problem for the technology.
Its also pointless to compare nuclear power to coalpower because obiously nuclear power wins huge. So therefore nuclear power is competing with non co2 emitting power plants as something has to replace todays system.
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Solar, hydro, and wind likely cannot scale up to, alone, meet the electricity demands of the US and certainly not cheaply (as we use up the best land areas the cost will rise and both solar and wind use vastly more land area per megawatt-hour than nuclear or fossil fuels; nuclear and fossil fuel energy don't have this problem other than transporting the fuel). In addition, solar and wind are highly variable (wind turbine output goes as the cube of the wind speed), and there is no way to store large amounts of energy on the grid, so you get wasted energy and need to do much more work to make sure the variation doesn't cause outages. Wind is, in many places, strongest at times of low demand (at night, in the spring and fall); the best spots for solar production tend to be in the desert which means longer transmission distances and more lost to transmission; hydro is equally geographically-limited.
Right now the US gets something like 8% of its energy from hydro, wind, and solar combined (source is Rockwell's report: http://tedrockwell.typepad.com/files/factsreport2010apr.pdf).
There is no way the US is going to cut to using about 20-30% of the electricity it currently does (this would be my uninformed guess at the likely stable amount of electricity wind + solar + hydro could generate), so the current wind/solar/hydro technology we have is not a solution. There is certainly no evidence that solar/wind/hydro combined is enough to power a country alone.
If you have evidence that this is a viable solution, by all means link me to it. Everything I know about solar and wind points to it not being a viable option for generating the majority or even a large portion of the US's electricity.
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On August 06 2010 12:02 crate wrote:
In addition, solar and wind are highly variable (wind turbine output goes as the cube of the wind speed), and there is no way to store large amounts of energy on the grid,
You know what i have always wondered why people continue to say this. Why cant we build towers whos job is to lift some heavy object up in the air. That will store energy and if we have
energy in > energy out (of the entire grid) --> we raise the weight
and
energy out > energy in --> we lower the weight
Just make enough of these towers and problem is solved.
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On August 06 2010 12:08 exeexe wrote:Show nested quote +On August 06 2010 12:02 crate wrote:
In addition, solar and wind are highly variable (wind turbine output goes as the cube of the wind speed), and there is no way to store large amounts of energy on the grid, You know what i have always wondered why people continue to say this. Why cant we build towers whos job is to lift some heavy object up in the air. That will store energy and if we have energy in > energy out (of the entire grid) --> we raise the weight and energy out > energy in --> we lower the weight Just make enough of these towers and problem is solved.
I'm not saying it's not possible, I'm saying we don't have it. There was some company working on flywheels to store energy (Rockwell mentioned it in his report), which is the same basic idea as your suggestion. They don't story very much energy (less than a megawatt-hour) and are costly. I don't think scaling this up to store the variable energy from a largely solar or wind system would be economical, but I'm not an expert.
Regardless you will lose some energy in the process, you don't have 100% efficient engines. I don't know what the actual efficiency would be, but I think converting mechanical -> electrical (and vice-versa) is pretty efficient.
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yeah like this :D
![[image loading]](http://i34.tinypic.com/2n8v95d.jpg)
On August 06 2010 12:13 crate wrote:
Regardless you will lose some energy in the process, you don't have 100% efficient engines. I don't know what the actual efficiency would be, but I think converting mechanical -> electrical (and vice-versa) is pretty efficient.
yeah its magnetic plus friction. The generator should be placed on the same axel as the wheel the weight is rolling on. So the generator has to be on top of the tower, hopefully the tower can withstand the combined weight of it all.
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i don't drive, and i haven't gotten my L. if i ever drive anything it will be a motorcycle for gas efficiency and fun. sitting in a box on wheels doesn't seem that great to me.
of course i live in a city where this is feasible.
an interesting fact is that in a lot of euro and asia cities way more people drive small motorcycles because of gas and space efficiency than in the americas.
the amount of people i see sitting alone on the road in their pickup truck\minivan is just silly, even in my city which is barely a city.
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To store 1 megawatt-hour of electric energy as gravitational potential energy, you'd need to raise a 1000-metric-ton object 3.6 km into the air (assuming 100% conversion)
The highest man-made structure is ~830 m tall. The biggest heavy-duty cranes we have can lift a bit over 1000 metric tons (at least that's what I got from google).
So I think right now the technology to store energy as gravitational potential energy doesn't exist, at least economically. To get to the same point as the flywheels that have been tested you'd still need to go 900m high with a 1000-metric-ton object, which I'm not sure is possible (edit for clarity: I mean "possible with the technology we have right now")
Having good energy storage is good regardless of what type of electricity we're generating though, since it would help to prevent outages (in case of a emergency shutdown of some plant, for instance).
edit: Post below is correct, I'm off. It's 360m in the first part, 90m in the second. This is doable, though I'm not sure whether it's better than flywheels or what the costs would be.
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On August 06 2010 12:27 crate wrote:
To store 1 megawatt-hour of electric energy as gravitational potential energy, you'd need to raise a 1000-metric-ton object 3.6 km into the air (assuming 100% conversion)
Make that 360 meters kk.
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On August 06 2010 11:53 exeexe wrote:
But the 3 major power plants i had in mind was sun, water and wind, but there are proberbly more. If they combined cant fill out your demand for power then its your problem and not a problem for the technology.
World energy consumption is expected to surge, especially as the living conditions in developing countries improve in the next few decades. To put it quite simply, your options have many drawbacks, with the primary one being cost. Solar and wind are much more expensive than conventional options, nuclear included. Even worse, they're not really reliable - what happens when the sun goes down (Which it does on a daily basis) or the wind dies down? You can't ramp production up or down either, and electricity usage does vary seasonally and hourly. Energy storage requires additional infrastructure and costs. Even worse, if you're using something like solar that only produces electricity half the day, that means you need twice as much generating capacity as you would compared to something that works all the time (Well, not exactly since usage goes down at night, but you get the idea)
Hydro is actually a pretty economical option, but is sadly not without its environmental impacts. Not to mention you only have so many rivers you can dam. Not possible for it to form the backbone of power generation. Wind suffers from the same problem of limited geography. For that matter, so does solar.
I actually recently did a study on solar power, working off what is commercially available. The results were not encouraging. Generally speaking, today, without subsidies, a solar panel can barely expect to pay its own cost back in its lifetime - and this doesn't even include inflation. And this was done using one of the most sunny areas in the US.
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On August 06 2010 13:48 Underwhelmed wrote:
- what happens when the sun goes down (Which it does on a daily basis) or the wind dies down?
The sun never sets if you go west.
Source:
youtube.com
Go west where the sky is blue - is ofcourse a hint that it will never be night :D
On August 06 2010 13:48 Underwhelmed wrote:
I actually recently did a study on solar power, working off what is commercially available. The results were not encouraging. Generally speaking, today, without subsidies, a solar panel can barely expect to pay its own cost back in its lifetime - and this doesn't even include inflation. And this was done using one of the most sunny areas in the US.
We are talking about solving a problem of the interest of the society. Not planning the budget of the next year for a corporation. We are solving a problem, not earning money. So fuck the economics, thats a secondary objective.
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On August 06 2010 14:03 exeexe wrote:
We are talking about solving a problem of the interest of the society.
Society really doesn't want to pay ... how much? Five times as much maybe? I dunno, really; I've not looked in to the costs other than hearing from a lot of sources that solar is expensive. But society doesn't want to pay much more for its electricity. So if it's not economical, it's not going to happen.
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On August 06 2010 14:17 crate wrote:Show nested quote +On August 06 2010 14:03 exeexe wrote:
We are talking about solving a problem of the interest of the society. Society really doesn't want to pay ... how much? Five times as much maybe? I dunno, really; I've not looked in to the costs other than hearing from a lot of sources that solar is expensive. But society doesn't want to pay much more for its electricity. So if it's not economical, it's not going to happen.
I dont know, but i know your wars are expensive too and the society apperently wants to pay for that.
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On August 06 2010 14:03 exeexe wrote:The sun never sets if you go west. Source: youtube.comGo west where the sky is blue - is ofcourse a hint that it will never be night :D
Transmitting electricity across vast distances starts running into problems of inefficiency and infrastructure.
We are talking about solving a problem of the interest of the society. Not planning the budget of the next year for a corporation. We are solving a problem, not earning money. So fuck the economics, thats a secondary objective.
Don't be stupid. Money is always relevant because it's representative of costs involved and it doesn't pop out of nowhere. What is it going to cost society to solve this problem?
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On August 06 2010 05:05 {CC}StealthBlue wrote:
Debt, and Corruption is why this will never happen.
The idea that man is to blame for global warming is absurd enough.
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On August 06 2010 14:32 Underwhelmed wrote:
Transmitting electricity across vast distances starts running into problems of inefficiency and infrastructure.
Yeah but also the demand for electricity drops rampantly after the sun has set. Not in our society but in the future.
Don't be stupid. Money is always relevant because it's representative of costs involved and it doesn't pop out of nowhere. What is it going to cost society to solve this problem?
Rather you should ask what does it cost society if the problem will not be solved?
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On August 06 2010 14:40 exeexe wrote:
Yeah but also the demand for electricity drops rampantly after the sun has set. Not in our society but in the future.
I wish I had your confidence in predicting the future.
Rather you should ask what does it cost society if the problem will not be solved?
Along with "Of all potential solutions, which one has the least cost to society?". And this is why cost is very much relevant. It would be nice if in the future solar became cheap and efficient enough to replace nuclear, but I wouldn't bet the farm on it just yet. Of the options we have available right now, nuclear is the best.
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I would not mind trains at all, I visited Frankfurt a few weeks ago and didn't step inside a car once. I used public transportation 100% of the time, and it was efficient (just bought a train pass), fast, and there wasn't any garbage in the stations or in the cars. Very enjoyable, although I'm sure it must have a pretty high upkeep and cost a lot to establish. Does anyone know if it pay for itself through sales?
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On August 06 2010 12:27 crate wrote:
To store 1 megawatt-hour of electric energy as gravitational potential energy, you'd need to raise a 1000-metric-ton object 3.6 km into the air (assuming 100% conversion)
The highest man-made structure is ~830 m tall. The biggest heavy-duty cranes we have can lift a bit over 1000 metric tons (at least that's what I got from google).
So I think right now the technology to store energy as gravitational potential energy doesn't exist, at least economically. To get to the same point as the flywheels that have been tested you'd still need to go 900m high with a 1000-metric-ton object, which I'm not sure is possible (edit for clarity: I mean "possible with the technology we have right now")
Having good energy storage is good regardless of what type of electricity we're generating though, since it would help to prevent outages (in case of a emergency shutdown of some plant, for instance).
edit: Post below is correct, I'm off. It's 360m in the first part, 90m in the second. This is doable, though I'm not sure whether it's better than flywheels or what the costs would be.
This is actually ridiculously absurd for either number - the technology may exist, but I sincerely doubt it will be cost-effective. An average American household uses about 11 MWh a year, and there are some 110 million households in America right now (with both projected to grow, of course). That's about 1 billion MWh per month or so.
With the current technological constraints in place, that means we'd have to have 1 billion cranes lifting 1 billion compact cars to the height of approximately the Empire State Building to store energy.
I suppose we could construct this giant GPE-storage system in the middle of nowhere (i.e. Kansas) but would it really be worth it compared to our other options?
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On August 06 2010 12:13 crate wrote:Show nested quote +On August 06 2010 12:08 exeexe wrote:On August 06 2010 12:02 crate wrote:
In addition, solar and wind are highly variable (wind turbine output goes as the cube of the wind speed), and there is no way to store large amounts of energy on the grid, You know what i have always wondered why people continue to say this. Why cant we build towers whos job is to lift some heavy object up in the air. That will store energy and if we have energy in > energy out (of the entire grid) --> we raise the weight and energy out > energy in --> we lower the weight Just make enough of these towers and problem is solved. I'm not saying it's not possible, I'm saying we don't have it. There was some company working on flywheels to store energy (Rockwell mentioned it in his report), which is the same basic idea as your suggestion. They don't story very much energy (less than a megawatt-hour) and are costly. I don't think scaling this up to store the variable energy from a largely solar or wind system would be economical, but I'm not an expert. Regardless you will lose some energy in the process, you don't have 100% efficient engines. I don't know what the actual efficiency would be, but I think converting mechanical -> electrical (and vice-versa) is pretty efficient.
We're already using it in pumped storage power plants. It's just that instead of lifting solid weights, we lift water from a lower lake to an upper lake. The one I was working at last month produces 2.4GW (8*300MW) which is really noticeable, with about 80% efficiency. The civil engineering costs are huge but once you're done it can run forever and quite cheaply.
They weren't built as renewable energy sources backups (I don't think people really cared about this back then outside of commercial brochures), but rather as nuclear power plants backups (they don't like changing their power output), or plainly to make money (buy elecricity during off-peak hours, sell back during peak hours). But it would certainly work very well with renewable energy sources as well.
As many renewable energy sources as you can + nuclear reactors for the rest + PSPs (or whatever other storage solutions we have, but for now it's mostly PSPs) looks pretty solid to me. And by pretty solid I just mean better than anything fossil fuels can come up with right now.
Btw how can it take more time to travel by train than by car in the USA? Are the trains really slow or something? Highways' speed limits are pretty low in the USA so I thought the trains would rape cars easily. In France when I go back to my parents' home, it's either 2h00 by train (will be even faster after the high-speed railway is completed all the way), or 3h00-3h30 by car and you can't even sleep or read or do anything basically and you have a higher risk of getting yourself killed... it's a no-brainer really, especially since both cost about as much (high fuel prices + highway toll), unless you're like 4 people in the car.
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i take the train to school 
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On August 06 2010 16:13 d3_crescentia wrote:
An average American household uses about 11 MWh a year, and
Ofcourse you do -.-
+ Show Spoiler +
But could it not be lower? Just asking, no hints or anything. Just plain thoughts coming out of my head from out of nowehere.
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-Efficient use of waterways
-A system planned like the rail-system of European countries
-A prompt rail service with an excellent PR/Graphic design section to make it seem friendly, inviting, and modern. people in the US are suckers for that
-Jobs conveniently accessible by the railway
-Energy-efficient houses (properly sealed, halfway underground, uses sun energy to heat water/solar panels/both)
All of this is being done, which is a good thing and in San Francisco our public transit is one of the best I have ridden in the U.S. I do think it should be more popularized, not just the lower end communities taking it. I really dont even think it's HOW in this case as much as if people will drop their ego and get on a fucking bus.
BTW, my house is fully powered by solar energy by a great company that you rent the panels from and just pay them a monthly fee, they also install them for free. Only thing we had to pay for besides the monthly bill was an electrical service upgrade.
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The problem isn't neither technological nor economical. The only thing missing is political will.
Simple solutions exist and are working all around the globe. From better public transportation to better waste management. You only don't see more change because one side's lobbyists are richer than the other side's lobbyists.
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On August 06 2010 22:41 VIB wrote:
The problem isn't neither technological nor economical. The only thing missing is political will.
Simple solutions exist and are working all around the globe. From better public transportation to better waste management. You only don't see more change because one side's lobbyists are richer than the other side's lobbyists.
What's in for a politician to work on a project efficiently, when he can earn much more and have a better life working for lobbyists? Every single government project has to be at least overpaid to be built, compared to a market project, for the mere fact you're paying lousy bureaucratic overhead.
I'm more comfortable saying that it is primarily an economical problem, and that is the economic calculation problem.
Replacing economical interest by political interest is also a sub-par incentive solution to get things done. Political power, as tempting as it is, is best rewarding when it can be monetized. Few to no politicians are politicians for good will alone.
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On August 06 2010 06:21 TanGeng wrote:Show nested quote +On August 06 2010 05:49 Romantic wrote:
An inherent flaw in [b]capitalism!??[/b[ is that nobody takes into account systemic risk or non-$$$ considerations. Nobody thinks, "Oh when I buy this car taxes will go up to pay for the roads, I'll have to deal with congestion, global warming, drunk driving, noise pollution etc". America was purposefully marketed cars instead of more public transport and thats that. For a shitload of places it simply wouldn't be profitable.
Seriously, it's a flaw with only capitalism!? That's a limitation of the human mind. People in general don't think beyond, several steps. For cars, of concern are: how much does it costs, where and how can I use it, what are its dangers, what are its comforts. Drunk driving and traffic congestion is factored into the equation. Noise pollution is a function of where you live and work and people pay attention to that. One extra car on the road doesn't add much to the equation. What is left? A. Taxes will go up to pay for roads. Taxes were already leveed to pay for roads. Part of buying the car is a registration fee, which incidentally goes to pay for roads. B. Global Warming Exhaust pollution and smog might be an issue. Global warming is still unconvincing. C. America was purposefully marketed cars. America was purposefully helped into cars by its sprawling country. Ensenhower and the US interstate system helped along with that. Public transportation makes sense in the biggest cities. Destroy the suburbs and that'll destroy the need for most cars.
My dad does traffic forecasting, and the environmentalists are always trying to get him to manipulate the reports, to say that if we have dense housing and work that traffic will go down. This is downright incorrect. The more wealthy someone gets the more separated their home and workplace will be. IE not many people want to live in Oakland CA, but tons of corporate people work there. Also, mass transit isn't practical when traveling such distances. Also, the traffic in southern california is awful, but they won't let them put in more roads, as it is argued that this will increase traffic. The answer to this is yes, it will increase traffic marginally, but people will spend less time driving, hence actually improving gas mileage and decreasing CO2 output.
Also, these 'smart growth projects' aren't working, because few people want to live there, they are generally actually quite expensive, and even though they are near businesses and retail, there are other/better businesses retail centers nearby.
Also, high speed rail is a sham. It would have to be heavily subsidized, and although it is more environmentally friendly, SouthWest would be faster and cheaper...
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On the European stuff:
Living in the Netherlands means that no matter where you are, the ground you're standing has been mapped, researched and has seen about 12 different destination plans. Since the Netherlands have a lot of people living on a small area we try to get the most out of every sqaure centimeter ground we got ^^
My village is a perfect example of a suburb discrbed in the example. I can walk to almoste everything and if that fails I can get there by bike. Furthermore we got 2 train stations, meaning that I can reach almoste every important Dutch city in 3 hours.
Now this works great in some European countires, but I doubt it will work well in the US. First of all the US is a lot bigger, the infrastructure needed to get everywhere with public transport in a reasonable time would be huge. Second, americans love there cars. The other forms of transportation need to be really good to ensure a lot of people switch. Also I see some problems creating a good infra structure, concidering you need good cross state communication to make it happen.
+ Show Spoiler + A good first stap would be for the US to raise the fuel prices. It's ridiculous how few you guys are paying.
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Anything that reduces oil consumption and has a high initial startup cost has a high chance of failure in this country. It's too profitable to keep things at the status quo.
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Also something to think about is aside from getting an awesome bus/train system you have to get the middle class to want to use it. Aside from large cities such as New York and Sanfransico many places in the US have a terrible stigma against public transportation.
For example the suburb that I used to live in had a pretty decent bus system but everyone knew that only the poor people took the bus and no one would be caught dead riding it. Throughout the day you would see the buses running with like 2 people on them, such a waste.
In a lot of places the system is already there, people just don't want to use it.
(Disclaimer, I don't own a car and bike/bus everywhere I go, not because I want to really but because I have to.)
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On August 07 2010 03:56 Eben wrote:
Also something to think about is aside from getting an awesome bus/train system you have to get the middle class to want to use it. Aside from large cities such as New York and Sanfransico many places in the US have a terrible stigma against public transportation.
For example the suburb that I used to live in had a pretty decent bus system but everyone knew that only the poor people took the bus and no one would be caught dead riding it. Throughout the day you would see the buses running with like 2 people on them, such a waste.
In a lot of places the system is already there, people just don't want to use it.
(Disclaimer, I don't own a car and bike/bus everywhere I go, not because I want to really but because I have to.)
yeah well i guess there's no cure for stupidity
i dont give a fig if i look poor because i take the train or the bus. its more comfortable (driving a car sucks, passenger not so bad) and you can take out schoolwork to do or a gameboy or whatever to pass the time
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Sanya12364 Posts
On August 07 2010 02:35 Amestir wrote:+ Show Spoiler + A good first stap would be for the US to raise the fuel prices. It's ridiculous how few you guys are paying.
It's more ridiculous how much you Europeans are paying. The roads are a different matter and it is ridiculous how much space in the US is dedicated to roads for cars.
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Sanya12364 Posts
On August 07 2010 02:26 Froadac wrote:Show nested quote +On August 06 2010 06:21 TanGeng wrote:On August 06 2010 05:49 Romantic wrote:
An inherent flaw in [b]capitalism!??[/b[ is that nobody takes into account systemic risk or non-$$$ considerations. Nobody thinks, "Oh when I buy this car taxes will go up to pay for the roads, I'll have to deal with congestion, global warming, drunk driving, noise pollution etc". America was purposefully marketed cars instead of more public transport and thats that. For a shitload of places it simply wouldn't be profitable.
Seriously, it's a flaw with only capitalism!? That's a limitation of the human mind. People in general don't think beyond, several steps. For cars, of concern are: how much does it costs, where and how can I use it, what are its dangers, what are its comforts. Drunk driving and traffic congestion is factored into the equation. Noise pollution is a function of where you live and work and people pay attention to that. One extra car on the road doesn't add much to the equation. What is left? A. Taxes will go up to pay for roads. Taxes were already leveed to pay for roads. Part of buying the car is a registration fee, which incidentally goes to pay for roads. B. Global Warming Exhaust pollution and smog might be an issue. Global warming is still unconvincing. C. America was purposefully marketed cars. America was purposefully helped into cars by its sprawling country. Ensenhower and the US interstate system helped along with that. Public transportation makes sense in the biggest cities. Destroy the suburbs and that'll destroy the need for most cars. My dad does traffic forecasting, and the environmentalists are always trying to get him to manipulate the reports, to say that if we have dense housing and work that traffic will go down. This is downright incorrect. The more wealthy someone gets the more separated their home and workplace will be. IE not many people want to live in Oakland CA, but tons of corporate people work there. Also, mass transit isn't practical when traveling such distances. Also, the traffic in southern california is awful, but they won't let them put in more roads, as it is argued that this will increase traffic. The answer to this is yes, it will increase traffic marginally, but people will spend less time driving, hence actually improving gas mileage and decreasing CO2 output. Also, these 'smart growth projects' aren't working, because few people want to live there, they are generally actually quite expensive, and even though they are near businesses and retail, there are other/better businesses retail centers nearby. Also, high speed rail is a sham. It would have to be heavily subsidized, and although it is more environmentally friendly, SouthWest would be faster and cheaper...
Actually, I think that is the point of my post. You actually have to produce a cultural shift and destroy the desirability of living in the suburbs. Tolled roadways with variable rates are probably the best way to reduce traffic congestion.
Railway is good for cargo and bulk transport not for passengers who want to go places. The US could cut down on some energy just by switching from trucks to rail for interstate hauls.
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On August 07 2010 07:58 TanGeng wrote:Show nested quote +On August 07 2010 02:26 Froadac wrote:On August 06 2010 06:21 TanGeng wrote:On August 06 2010 05:49 Romantic wrote:
An inherent flaw in [b]capitalism!??[/b[ is that nobody takes into account systemic risk or non-$$$ considerations. Nobody thinks, "Oh when I buy this car taxes will go up to pay for the roads, I'll have to deal with congestion, global warming, drunk driving, noise pollution etc". America was purposefully marketed cars instead of more public transport and thats that. For a shitload of places it simply wouldn't be profitable.
Seriously, it's a flaw with only capitalism!? That's a limitation of the human mind. People in general don't think beyond, several steps. For cars, of concern are: how much does it costs, where and how can I use it, what are its dangers, what are its comforts. Drunk driving and traffic congestion is factored into the equation. Noise pollution is a function of where you live and work and people pay attention to that. One extra car on the road doesn't add much to the equation. What is left? A. Taxes will go up to pay for roads. Taxes were already leveed to pay for roads. Part of buying the car is a registration fee, which incidentally goes to pay for roads. B. Global Warming Exhaust pollution and smog might be an issue. Global warming is still unconvincing. C. America was purposefully marketed cars. America was purposefully helped into cars by its sprawling country. Ensenhower and the US interstate system helped along with that. Public transportation makes sense in the biggest cities. Destroy the suburbs and that'll destroy the need for most cars. My dad does traffic forecasting, and the environmentalists are always trying to get him to manipulate the reports, to say that if we have dense housing and work that traffic will go down. This is downright incorrect. The more wealthy someone gets the more separated their home and workplace will be. IE not many people want to live in Oakland CA, but tons of corporate people work there. Also, mass transit isn't practical when traveling such distances. Also, the traffic in southern california is awful, but they won't let them put in more roads, as it is argued that this will increase traffic. The answer to this is yes, it will increase traffic marginally, but people will spend less time driving, hence actually improving gas mileage and decreasing CO2 output. Also, these 'smart growth projects' aren't working, because few people want to live there, they are generally actually quite expensive, and even though they are near businesses and retail, there are other/better businesses retail centers nearby. Also, high speed rail is a sham. It would have to be heavily subsidized, and although it is more environmentally friendly, SouthWest would be faster and cheaper... Actually, I think that is the point of my post. You actually have to produce a cultural shift and destroy the desirability of living in the suburbs. Tolled roadways with variable rates are probably the best way to reduce traffic congestion. Railway is good for cargo and bulk transport not for passengers who want to go places. The US could cut down on some energy just by switching from trucks to rail for interstate hauls.
Exactly. I was just elaborating on your point.
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